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School reform policies and school administrators are increasingly positioning teacher leaders (TLs) with the responsibility to facilitate professional learning for their colleagues. Although ample evidence exists to suggest the need for facilitators to be highly skilled for teachers' learning to be optimized, there is a dearth of research describing how TLs act as effective instructional leaders with their colleagues in professional learning communities. The have been no empirical studies describing effective models for supporting the leadership development of the TLs who are charged with learning to take on the role of instructional leader at their school sites. The research presented in this article intends to address this gap in the literature by documenting a teacher leader network (TLN) that is part of the Mills Teacher Scholars (MTS), a professional development program that supports teachers to develop as TLs. In this study, the authors describe one TLN meeting at which 21 teachers convened to learn how to develop as teacher instructional leaders responsible for facilitating substantive data conversations with their colleagues. They analyze the affordances this learning community provides for TLs, with a goal of making visible how the TLs were supported in strengthening the skills and dispositions required to be effective facilitators of evidence-informed conversations that would move their colleagues' thinking and learning forward.

We examine how teacher leaders (TLs), working in a low-income urban elementary school, supported their colleagues to learn how to collect quality formative data and to discuss it in collaborative conversations in order to make their students' learning visible. The TLs faced challenges reflecting consequences resulting from the district's high stakes accountability policies restricting teachers' agency with instructional decision-making and limiting their definitions of data as summative test scores. We document how the TLs worked to reframe teachers' understanding of data to include evidence of student thinking and supported their colleagues to reclaim teaching as professional versus technical work.

Our self-study has two main purposes: (1) to understand the value of self-study for credential program graduates to confront in transformative ways the pedagogical challenges of urban schools, and (2) to add to an exploration of self-study for non-teacher educators and strengthen our preparation of candidates to enact such inquiry. To answer these questions, we orchestrated a dialogic exchange with three Master's students who used self-study to research and improve their teaching in urban elementary schools. We analyzed their papers both to see how consistent they were with the characteristics of self-study and to determine the nature of lessons learned in relation to our social justice goals. In addition, in the following year we gathered and analyzed information about their post-study reactions to self-study and its continuing influence. In their self-studies all three examined assumptions guiding their teaching by analyzing pertinent data and functioning as critical friends for each other; their work was consistent with self-study requirements. Written reflections and interviews all mentioned the transformative influence of self-study on their thinking and practice. We also discovered that we should strengthen our guidance with regard to the specifics of self-study methodology, as in the need to look for disconfirming evidence. Although their commitment to the process was maintained, we need to explore whether and how self-study might be engaged more informally. Overall, we found that self-study invites teachers to question discriminatory categories with empirical evidence and empowers them to redefine their profession and question regressive policies.

This paper explores a new pedagogical approach to teaching teachers to assume a learning or inquiry stance in their practice. It is based on an assumption that professional learning is a core capability of good teaching that is responsive to the changing needs of children, schools, and communities. One source of teacher learning is practice--one's own practice and the practice of others. Whereas there is much written about teachers learning from their own practice, there is scant attention in the field currently about learning from the practice of others. What do we mean by learning from the practice of others? Beyond visiting their classrooms, how might teachers access the practice of others so that they can learn from it? How does learning work proceed? This paper grapples with these questions as a frame for discussing one teacher education attempt at preparing teachers to learn from the practice of others. It begins by making a case for learning as a centerpiece of good teaching, and then proceeds to describe one example of how the inquiry practice of experienced teachers was used to teach teacher inquiry to a group of novice teachers in California. (Contains 2 notes.)

Describes Mills College's graduate-level teacher credential program, addressing the appropriateness of student teaching placements in relation to the aims and ideology of the teacher education program and examining the four dimensions of fieldwork as a learning context (nested learning, blending principles, safety, and reflective focus). Implications for practice and further study include placement order and supervisor support. (SM)

Investigates structural effects of 4 research conditions designed to facilitate reflection about teaching practices among 12 student teachers. Uses colleagues as classroom observers and conversation-participants to help student teachers analyze their teaching effectiveness and content. Employs student teachers' portfolios to promote reflection. Argues teacher education programs should incorporate methods that encourage reflection. (CH)

Campano, Gerald. 2007. Immigrant Students and Literacy: Reading, Writing and Remembering. New York: Teachers College Press. 135 pp. $21.95 (soft cover) Edmundson, Mark. 2002. Teacher: The One Who Made the [...]

Provides an introduction to a series of articles from teacher educators and teacher education researchers concerning how teachers learn and acquire knowledge. Each of the nine articles addressing teacher learning and how it might be accomplished more effectively in both inservice and preservice settings is summarized. (GLR)

Results of a study of six novice teachers' self-reported knowledge aquisition suggests that coursework and field experience offer distinct opportunities for learning about teaching. The study is reported and discussed. The novice teachers' comments are excerpted throughout the article. (JL)