Even as new recommendations for the education of teachers were emerging in the 1990s, teacher educators in this country already were exploring ways to improve their programs. The need for career-long professional development, combined with the need to restructure schools and teacher preparation programs, created a unique opportunity for collaborative approaches to systemic reform, where the many components of reform are addressed and their interdependencies and inter-relationships are recognized (Goodlad, 1990, 1994; Holmes Group 1986, 1990, 1995). Many individual school districts and states have now recognized the critical connection between ongoing professional development during the induction and post-induction years of teaching. They also have begun to institute a variety of programs that professionally nurture and sustain beginning teachers during the first years of their careers beyond the induction period. Descriptions of several of these programs are provided in Appendix D.
As noted throughout this report, there have been numerous calls for institutions of higher education to improve teacher education through enhanced communication among science and mathematics educators, scientists, and mathematicians. These calls for reform also have urged the creation of formal connections between institutions of higher education and public schools (e.g., Holmes Group, 1986; Goodlad, 1994). In keeping with this more systemic approach, a movement has been emerging slowly since the 1980s that seeks to improve simultaneously the education of both prospective and practicing teachers through partnerships between schools and postsecondary institutions.
Various labels have been applied to this movement and to the products that have emerged. These labels include “professional development schools,” “clinical schools,” “professional practice schools,” “school-university partnerships,” and “partnership schools” (Whitford and Metcalf-Turner, 1999). Professional Development School (PDS), the descriptor selected by the Holmes Group (1986), still predominates in the educational literature. It is the term this report will use to denote any intentional collaboration between a college or university and one or more.
K-12 schools for teacher preparation and school renewal.
Such collaborative arrangements adhere to several important principles:
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They offer learning programs for diverse populations of students;
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They ground preparation for novice teachers in classroom practice;
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They articulate and establish consensus about professional goals and responsibilities for experienced educators; and
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Many conduct research that adds to educators’ knowledge about how to make schools more effective and productive (Holmes Group, 1990).
These collaborative movements were established on the premise that a student’s education should be viewed as an integrated continuum from preschool through university. When viewed in this light, significant improvement in any one part of the educational system in isolation can be seen as unlikely to have much effect on improving education in general unless concomitant improvements are made throughout the system. Thus, improvement in K-12 schools cannot be expected until the preparation of teachers and administrators improves at the university level. In turn, even the best teachers and administrators cannot be sustained professionally until the system becomes more effective in providing high-quality professional development and empowering those who have primary responsibility for educating children. Simultaneous and coordinated feedback and renewal are essential components of this movement (Goodlad, 1994).
An effective PDS, therefore, is much more than a collection of people in a building. “It entails an attitude, a perspective, a professional predisposition that releases educators to share what they know and to improve the teaching of students and the preparation of future educators” (Richardson, 1994). Participation in a PDS collaboration involves willingness by all of the partners to question old habits and new trends in education and to suggest different ways of reaching current and future goals. Professional Development Schools have become laboratories for observation, experimentation, and extended practice. A PDS can be a site where teachers, students, and university faculty create new knowledge and experiment with, evaluate, and revise practices. Ultimately, the PDS concept embodies a commitment to do what is necessary to ensure that all students (K-16) become engaged learners.
Like student learning, teacher education also is an extremely complex process. PDS collaborations encourage educators to restructure teacher education systemically rather than through a series of disjointed, incremental reforms. For example, a PDS offers to preservice and novice teachers systematic field experiences within realistically complex learning environments. By integrating content and pedagogy in an atmosphere of relevance for their studies, these experiences become a unifying feature of education for student teachers.
Currently, there are over 600 reported examples of partnerships between universities and school districts involving the PDS approach to educational reform (Abdal-Haqq, 1998).2 Many more such programs may exist that are unreported or that employ some, but not all, of the principles of the PDS movement.
