Language Arts - Volume 82, Issue 5, 2005

The South Carolina Reading Initiative is a statewide, long-term, site-based professional development project designed to improve children’s literacy achievement by increasing teachers’ knowledge of reading and literacy instruction. Three specific bodies of research informed this project: (1) research on effective staff development, (2) research on teacher quality and (3) research on best practices in English Language Arts. The program is grounded in social constructivist theory and inquiry-based pedagogy. Five data-driven stories, spanning various iterations of this learner-centered initiative, illustrate the transformative nature of this approach to professional development.

This article examines the changes over time in a voluntary teacher research group that focuses on the relationships between literacy and social justice. The changes in how the group members interact and the issues they consider provide implications that may be useful for other educators interested in forming teacher networks.

The authors of this article argue that professional development on literacy instruction should go beyond instructional methods to teacher identity. Reading and discussing poetry and literature, as well as writing to examine powerful themes in teachers’ lives, can help educators explore and deepen their identity as language arts teachers. Casbon, Shagoury and Smith describe a two-year personal and professional development model based on the work of Parker Palmer called the Courage to Teach. Interviews and surveys with participants showed that the retreat setting, seasonal themes, and human interaction had a profound effect on teachers’ and administrators’ renewed commitment to literacy education.

This article describes a teacher study group focusing on After School Writing Circles for elementary students as a site of Thirdspace professional development. Borrowing the concept of Thirdspace from postmodern geographer Edward Soja, the authors argue that professional development works best when teachers engage in the dual work of imagining and making real opportunities for education that connect with learners’ emerging passions.

This article describes an innovative professional development model that uses on-site Teaching/Learning Centers in which teachers work and collaborate with other teachers to learn about effective methods of literacy instruction for linguistically and culturally diverse students. This model fosters collaborative, sustained, on-site, and practical development in which teachers plan, model, observe, discuss, and reflect together as they transform their practice.

Lesson study is a form of professional development long favored by teachers in Japan that has recently gained attention in many parts of the United States. Teachers participating in lesson study immerse themselves in a cycle of instructional improvement focused on planning, observing, and revising “research lessons.”; These research lessons are actual classroom lessons that provide opportunities for teachers to implement their ideas about effective teaching as they learn to carefully record student learning in order to evaluate the research lessons, the students, and their own understandings about teaching and learning.