Professional Development

In its second round of funding from The Wallace Foundation, a major priority for this new project is to expand the technical assistance it provides to The Wallace Foundation and its funded network of states and districts as part of its national initiative to transform education leadership in urban school districts.

The MathScape: Seeing and Thinking Mathematically Curriculum Center provides support to school districts using the MathScape curriculum. The center offers training institutes and workshops, hosts a Web site offering online support, develops implementation materials, and disseminates information about the curriculum’s effectiveness.

This research project investigates the effectiveness of online professional development programs for teachers. Specifically, it addresses three questions: (1) How effective are online programs in improving teachers’ content knowledge and classroom practices as compared with other models of professional development? (2) How do interactions among participants and facilitators differ across online models, and how do these interactions contribute to learning? and (3) What factors make for successful online professional development programs?

TinC (Technology in Class) tests the effectiveness of a software tool, Draft:Builder (previously developed at EDC), when it is integrated into an innovative curriculum. The curriculum, The American History Idol, builds basic skills in finding the main idea, locating supporting details, organizing information, and writing a persuasive essay. It draws on biographies of historical figures, thus linking social studies and English language arts. The software tool helps students create outlines and draft text.

AIM works with schools across the country to become academically excellent, responsive to the developmental needs of young adolescents, and socially equitable. Every school is different, given its particular student population, faculty, local community, and organizational history. Each school faces a different set of challenges, based on its state and local standards, past performance, and resources. AIM staff help schools analyze their strengths and needs, determine priorities, and develop solutions that fit their situations.

EEC’s YouthLearn Initiative has been awarded this sub-task of designing training materials for the IES-led dot-EDU—DRC—Improving Basic Education for Girls. This work has included revising existing training materials around student-centered learning and contributing to the design of a train-the-trainer professional development strategy.

CC&F/EDC is collaborating with Early Childhood Associates, Inc., and RISE Learning Solutions to develop a four-unit, multimedia training package for Head Start mentor-coaches. The Head Start mentor-coach instructional design will prepare mentor-coaches to guide teachers in adopting research-based practices that foster young children’s language and literacy development. The instructional design’s distributed learning model will include tutored video instruction and Web-based learning.

This two-year project, funded by the Japan Foundation’s Center for Global Partnership (CGP), will develop and pilot test curriculum materials that use picture books to expose lower primary (grades 1–3) Japanese school children to present-day American culture and all of its diversity. EDC, in partnership with Iwate University’s Faculty of Education, will create teaching materials based on American picture books and design hands-on, highly experiential activities to complement the books.

Working with the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), EDC supports middle and high schools identified as “in need of corrective action” (i.e., they have not met Adequate Yearly Progress standards for three years). EDC Turnaround Facilitators work on-site in assigned schools two days a week, providing leadership and teacher development aimed at instructional improvement and student achievement. Project staff also give RIDE staff feedback and recommendations to improve services to districts and schools.

EDC will create professional development modules to help middle-grades teachers improve accessibility to the general mathematics curriculum for students with mild to moderate disabilities. At the center of each module will be a DVD that shows classroom footage of accessibility strategies in action. In addition to the videotape, each module will include a facilitator’s guide with professional development activities, handouts, PowerPoint slides, and other resources.