EDU 8869
Developing Communities of Professional Practice

Protocol for the Course Portfolio
 

Students will complete two projects for EDU 8869 to demonstrate their synthesis of the course content.  The first project is a comprehensive five-year plan detailing how students will develop communities of professional practice in their schools.  The second project is a statement detailing a comprehensive vision of the school as a community of professional practice.

Project #1:   A Comprehensive Five-Year Plan for Teacher Professional Development in a Community of Professional Practice

This project challenges students to think practically about the phenomenology of teacher professional development and its trajectory throughout a teacher’s career.  The purpose of this project is for students to integrate this understanding into the goals that students will specify in Project #2.

After students have learned about the concept of “learning to teach,” they will sketch in brief outline form what the research indicates is the general career trajectory of the expert teacher, that is, how one develops into an “expert” teacher. This outline will also include some specific attainments/achievements as well as needs that teachers have at each age/stage of professional development as they engage in learning to teach. Although this research details no specific “biography” (as if there exists a “one best way” or “straightjacket” to develop expert teachers), students will use the research for discussing a general trajectory.  Students might consider their responses to the following questions to sketch this trajectory:

• What does the research suggest about teacher professional development as this follows a somewhat stable trajectory?
• What generic ages/stages characterize that trajectory? What generic accomplishments/achievements identify each age/stage?
• What does research identify as preoccupying teachers’ considerations along that trajectory?
• What does research suggest teachers really need at each age/stage?
• What does research insinuate about the needs of teachers during and after their first few years of teaching?
• In light of all of this, what is it that experienced teachers need?
• What approaches to professional development offer the promise of providing for the learning needs of teachers at the differing ages/stages of their professional development?
• What principles should guide planning for professional development at each age/stage?
• Based upon these ideas, how might teachers think about programming for professional development?
   

There are two goals students to be achieved in completing this project.  One goal is that students will formulate a biography for use in designing individual and group teacher professional development as part of the larger endeavor, building a community of professional development in their schools (the content of Exercise #2).  The second goal is that students will develop “shorthand” style or speaking with colleagues and various publics about the topic of teacher professional development.  This will enable students, reminiscent of Don Quichote tilting after windmills, not to be constantly chasing after “new trends” purported to “improve schooling” while failing to do anything substantive about it.

Project #1 will be organized and presented in the first section of the course portfolio as follows:

      Section           Content                                                                                     Length

           1                A matrix describing the trajectory of teaching expertise.               

                             Integrating professional experience with research, identify the stages and significant learnings that lead to the development of teaching expertise. [This trajectory is best presented in a 3 X 2 matrix with embedded “layers” giving an additional dimension to the matrix.]

           2                A definition of teacher learning.                                                    3

                             Detail what experience and research indicate about how teachers “learn to teach.”

           3                Synthesize a definition of “professional development.”              3

                             Based upon the ideas generated through the student’s experience and research, synthesize a definition of professional development.

Students should be careful to ensure that educational research supports the ideas about teacher learning and professional development specified in Exercise #1.

Project #2: The School as a Community of Professional Practice

This project challenges students to envision their schools not simply as public institutions where teaching and learning transpire but, more substantively, as communities of professional practice wherein teachers share a common purpose and are intent upon improving the culture of teaching and learning in their schools by utilizing data-driven decision making to formulate short-term and long-term school-wide improvement plans.

To this end, students will: 1) study theoretical and practical literature from a variety of academic disciplines describing the culture which characterize various communities of professional practice; 2) apply this literature to their schools in order to envision and evaluate possibilities for transforming the culture of their schools into communities of professional practice as well as the challenges and obstacles that students will need to confront and overcome if that cultural transformation is to be achieved  successfully; 3) to formulate a list of prioritized short-term (1-3 years) and long-term goals (3‑5 years) constituting a school-wide improvement plan and to specify the data that teachers will use to assess the degree of success achieved each year as this plan unfolds; and, 4) to identify resources teachers will need to achieve success and to describe why teachers need these resources if they are to translate those goals into tangible achievements.

Project #2 will be organized and presented in the first section of the course portfolio as follows:

      Section           Content                                                                                     Length

           1                A vision of the student’s school as a community of practice        ~5

           2                Short-term and long-term goals with mode of assessment          ~2
                             for each goal

           3                Resources required                                                                     ~1

Summary:

When students have completed these two projects, not only will they have explicated a clear and comprehensive plan that will serve as a sound foundation for future decision making but students will also have developed their skills in scholarly writing. More substantively, students will have become more capable of making ethical decisions, as Aristotle used that term in the Nicomachean Ethics.

The course portfolio must comply with the following:

• Use a D-ring binder (approximately 2 inches) to organize the portfolio.
• There should be a properly formatted cover page.
• Tabs and dividers should be used to separate each exercise as well as the References and Appendix sections.
• All materials must be formatted according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition).

The course portfolio accounts for 80% of the final grade.