BEST PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
PRACTICES

ALABAMA BEST PRACTICES CENTER

What Is Your Professional Development IQ?
Do you know the answer to this question? According to research, what school investment yields the greatest increase in student achievement? Or this one: According to teachers, what is the number one reason for professional growth?

The Best Practices Center was established in mid-1999 by A+ as a public/private partnership to focus on improving student achievement by raising the quality of teaching through professional development. The concept of the Best Practices Center emerged during the work of the Task Force on Teaching and Student Achievement, organized by A+ to study and make recommendations about ways that the state could improve student achievement in Alabama.

Though the focus of this site is Alabama, many of the practices cited are 'best' practices for any school or district endeavoring to provide high-quality professional learning experiences for educators.

http://www.bestpracticescenter.org/profdev/

TEACHERS WHO LEARN, KIDS WHO ACHIEVE

What does it take to translate teacher professional development into impressive learning gains for students? A research study of eight schools that won the U.S. Department of Education’s National Award for Model Professional Development has been distilled into this brief and compelling story of successful school reform. A culture of learning - for teachers, students, the entire community - pervades these schools, and this book provides a glimpse of what it looks like.

Teacher voices and vignettes give life to the guiding principles that researchers identified across these disparate sites – one similar to yours.

http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/rs/179

NORTH CENTRAL REGIONAL EDUCATIONAL LABORATORY

Visit this site to review the Toolkit for Schools and Districts Based on the National Awards Program for Model Professional Development.

The toolkit is available in a web version, as Adobe Acrobat Reader (.pdf) files which you can download and read. The Acrobat Reader is available free. You can download the Adobe Acrobat Reader version of the toolkit as one big file or you can download the individual sections of the toolkit.

http://www.ncrel.org/pd/toolkit.htm