Get a play-by-play guide to implementing PLC concepts. Each chapter begins with a story focused on a particular challenge. A follow-up analysis of the story identifies the good decisions or common mistakes made in relation to that particular scenario. The authors examine the research behind best practice and wrap up each chapter with recommendations and tools you can use in your school.

Using a conversational voice, the authors provide a foundation as well as a blueprint and tools to craft a community-engaged course. Based on extensive research, the book provides a scope and sequence of information and skills ranging from an introduction to community engagement, to designing, implementing, and assessing a course, to advancing the craft to prepare for promotion and tenure as well as how to become a citizen-scholar and reflective practitioner. An interactive workbook that can be downloaded from Campus Compact accompanies this tool kit with interactive activities that are interspersed throughout the chapters. The book and workbook can be used by individual readers or with a learning community.

Lesson Study has been actively introduced from Japan to various parts of the world, starting with the US. Such introduction is heavily connected with a focus on mathematics education and there is a strong misconception that Lesson Study is only for mathematics or science. The introduction is usually done at the departmental or form level and there has been a strong question about its sustainability in schools. This book comprehensively explores the idea of Lesson Study for Learning Community (LSLC) and suggests that reform for the culture of the school is needed in order to change learning levels among the children, teachers and even parents. In order for this to happen, the ways of management and leadership are also included as objectives of LSLC, as are practices at the classroom level. It argues that LSLC is a comprehensive vision and framework of school reform and needs to be taken up in a holistic way across disciplines. Chapters include: How to Create Time How to Build the Team How to Promote Reform How to Reform Daily Lessons How to Conduct a Research Lesson How to Discuss Observed Lessons How to Sustain School Reform based on LSLC Strong interest in LSLC is already prevalent in Asian countries, such as Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore and is now being introduced more in the west. This book will be of great interest to those involved in education policy and reform, and for practitioners of education at all levels.

As schools struggle to teach all students, the multi-age teaching and learning framework has emerged as one of today’s most effective ways to structure schools. Multi-age Learning Community (MAC) Program is a professional development program in action. It presents a framework that can transform schools from a graded system to a multi-age learning environment. This multi-age school targets students’ individual and personal needs and allows students to excel and succeed. The school reform climate today focuses on schools of choice and building effective school environments. This multi-age program creates a unique school niche that is marketable to families. Parents have the option of sending their children to schools that concentrate on achievement that best meets the needs of the learner without disrupting the mandates of the curricula. This book is intended to assist educators at all levels of all school organizations, as well as give policymakers, educators and parents the information on an effective school program. This book gives information on how to transform schools into multi-age classrooms. This book is divided into four parts that explain both the theory and the practice of effective strategies for the multi-age school program: Organizational Practice, Building Culture, Learning Processes, and Assessment and Systemic Improvement. There are specific basic principles and practices that are integrated into a quality and effective framework discussed in the chapters of this book. Each chapter begins with a vignette based on my experiences in multiage schools and concludes with an educator’s reflection to recap the concepts in the chapter. Each chapter also integrates snapshots that areshort real-to-life passages that bring to life concepts discussed in the chapter. Although this book discusses multi-age schools, these ideas may be applied to all school environments. To accommodate all school programs, at the end of each chapter, a section titled Application for All Schools is a framework that discusses just how to apply chapter concepts in any school or classroom program. It is recommended that the reader review the book one time in sequence and then reread each chapter as needed, to give meaning to the reader’s purpose.

International education, service-learning, and community-based global learning programs are robust with potential. They can positively impact communities, grow civil society networks, and have transformative effects for students who become more globally aware and more engaged in global civil society – at home and abroad. Yet such programs are also packed with peril. Clear evidence indicates that poor forms of such programming have negative impacts on vulnerable persons, including medical patients and children, while cementing stereotypes and reinforcing patterns of privilege and exclusion. These dangers can be mitigated, however, through collaborative planning, design, and evaluation that advances mutually beneficial community partnerships, critically reflective practice, thoughtful facilitation, and creative use of resources. Drawing on research and insights from several academic disciplines and community partner perspectives, along with the authors’ decades of applied, community-based development and education experience, they present a model of community-based global learning that clearly espouses an equitable balance between learning methodology and a community development philosophy.Emphasizing the key drivers of community-driven learning and service, cultural humility and exchange, seeking global citizenship, continuous and diverse forms of critically reflective practice, and ongoing attention to power and privilege, this book constitutes a guide to course or program design that takes into account the unpredictable and dynamic character of domestic and international community-based global learning experiences, the varying characteristics of destination communities, and a framework through which to integrate any discipline or collaborative project. Readers will appreciate the numerous toolboxes and reflective exercises to help them think through the creation of independent programming or courses that support targeted learning and community-driven development. The book ultimately moves beyond course and program design to explore how to integrate these objectives and values in the wider curriculum and throughout formal and informal community-based learning partnerships.

In the third edition of Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work®, authors Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Thomas W. Many, and Mike Mattos provide educators with a comprehensive, bestselling guide to transforming their schools into professional learning communities (PLCs). In this revised version, contributor and Canadian educator Karen Power has adapted the third edition for Canadian educators, emphasizing how Canadian educators can effectively improve learning for each student across their unique and widely diverse provinces and territories. Rewritten so that the scenarios, research, and language appropriately meet the needs of Canadian educators, this version is packed with real-world strategies and advice that will assist readers in transforming their school or district into a successful PLC.

This book focuses on special organizational configurations for schools in diverse parts of the world. Some of these new organizational and institutional designs are called multi-service schools, others are called extended service schools and still others are called community learning centers. While these schools have different names and notable different characteristics, they belong in the same category because of a common feature in their design: they connect schools with once-separate community programs and services.Chief among the prototypes for these new organizational and institutional designs are the ones featured in the book’s title. Some are called multi-service schools to indicate that they selectively provide some new programs and services. Others are called extended service schools to indicate that they serve young people beyond the regular school day, seeking influence and control over out-of-school time while enabling alternative teaching-learning strategies, and providing services other than typical “pupil support services.” Still others are called community learning centers, a name that showcases the educational functions and priorities of schools and announcing priorities for adult learning and development. Community schools, still called in some places full-service community schools, serves as a prototype that increasingly positions schools as multi-purpose, multi-component, anchor institutions serving identifiable neighborhoods and entire rural communities. The book is structured to enhance understanding of these organizational prototypes and provides comparative social analysis. It also identifies knowledge needs and gaps as well as developmental territory for the future.

This book presents a theory of learning that starts with the assumption that engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we get to know what we know and by which we become who we are. The primary unit of analysis of this process is neither the individual nor social institutions, but the informal 'communities of practice' that people form as they pursue shared enterprises over time. To give a social account of learning, the theory explores in a systematic way the intersection of issues of community, social practice, meaning, and identity. The result is a broad framework for thinking about learning as a process of social participation. This ambitious but thoroughly accessible framework has relevance for the practitioner as well as the theoretician, presented with all the breadth, depth, and rigor necessary to address such a complex and yet profoundly human topic.

This book charts the development of a whole-institution approach to university-community engagement at a modern Australian university, highlighting the pivotal role that curriculum renewal can play in organizational transformation. It describes how Macquarie University’s PACE (Professional and Community Engagement) program developed and fostered a culture of learning that has been at the center of academic renewal, differentiation, and institutional change. It details the development of the PACE pedagogical model, the establishment of the network of stakeholder relationships which underpin it, and the embedding of the model across the whole institution. Authored by those directly involved in the change project, this book tells the story of PACE, its achievements, challenges, success factors and future directions. A series of dovetailing contributions by leading international scholars of university-community engagement set the PACE story in its global context. This book adds to the scholarship of learning through community engagement, provides international perspectives on trends and issues in university-community engagement, contributes to a broader understanding of the practice and pedagogy of community engagement, and discusses the challenges and opportunities of implementing and sustaining change in the higher education sector.

"Place: it's where we're from; it's where we're going. . . . It asks for our attention and care. If we pay attention, place has much to teach us." With this belief as a foundation, The Power of Place offers a comprehensive and compelling case for making communities the locus of learning for students of all ages and backgrounds. Dispelling the notion that place-based education is an approach limited to those who can afford it, the authors describe how schools in diverse contexts—urban and rural, public and private—have adopted place-based programs as a way to better engage students and attain three important goals of education: student agency, equity, and community. This book identifies six defining principles of place-based education. Namely, it 1. Embeds learning everywhere and views the community as a classroom. 2. Is centered on individual learners. 3. Is inquiry based to help students develop an understanding of their place in the world. 4. Incorporates local and global thinking and investigations. 5. Requires design thinking to find solutions to authentic problems. 6. Is interdisciplinary. For each principle, the authors share stories of students whose lives were transformed by their experiences in place-based programs, elaborate on what the principle means, demonstrate what it looks like in practice by presenting case studies from schools throughout the United States, and offer action steps for implementation. Aimed at educators from preK through high school, The Power of Place is a definitive guide to developing programs that will lead to successful outcomes for students, more fulfilling careers for teachers, and lasting benefits for communities.