Powerful Professional Development
Building Expertise Within the Four Walls of Your School
- Diane Yendol-Hoppey - University of North Florida, USA
- Nancy Fichtman Dana - University of Florida, Gainesville, USA
Foreword by Stephanie Hirsh
Continuing Professional Development | Designing & Evaluating Staff Development | Team Building
Rather than advocating a specific method, Powerful Professional Development: Building Expertise Within the Four Walls of Your School presents a full toolbox of professional development strategies with suggestions for implementation and recommendations about which tools to use at different times and in different contexts. Using this comprehensive resource, schools can move away from the traditional model of professional development that relies on outside experts, and instead draw on and develop the skills and talents of their own faculty.
Covering a range of approaches and techniques and sharing examples of lessons learned from schools and districts that have cultivated these approaches successfully, the authors describe and evaluate a full spectrum of models of job-embedded PD, including
- Book study
- Webinars
- Co-teaching
- Open space technology
- Lesson study
- Action research
- Coaching
- Professional learning communities
- Online communities, and more.
“This book pulls together critical elements necessary for schools to harness and harvest the talent that exists within their walls. The authors offer a menu of practical, integrated, research-based tools and processes that engage and empower teachers and administrators to co-construct a powerful form of job-embedded professional development that is relevant, focused, and organic. In so doing, schools transform themselves into a self-sustaining learning organization.”
“The structure of this book makes it the perfect resource for any school team or leader striving to implement job-embedded professional development resulting in improved teacher practice and student learning. The authors not only provide all of the tools for our work as district leaders, principals, teacher leaders, or coaches, they also present illustrations from educators in the field to demonstrate application of the tools.”
“I love, love, love this book! It’s a veritable smorgasbord of strategies for professional development that maximizes time and on-site expertise. From the perspective of an educator hungry for cost-effective, proven ways to promote ongoing, job-embedded professional learning, this is an à la carte menu from which to build healthy professional development ‘meals’ based on specific needs and available resources.”
"Yendol-Hoppey and Dana recognize our 'reality of the moment' and offer solutions that will allow us to continue in our quest to make good teachers great."
