How the Professional Development School and Community School strategy might benefit from an integrated perspective serves as the guiding framework for this volume of Research in Professional Development Schools. This book advocates for blending these two approaches to address the needs of P-20 settings and their communities. Because we recognize the inherent strengths in both models, we encouraged chapters that had as a primary focus one or both models as they sought to support teacher preparation and K-12 partners. Subsequently, a series of questions framed the conversation around the potential for combining these models as well as what such an integrated model might present for teacher education programs, K-12 partners, and their communities. Since this volume explores three different aspects of the relationship between Professional Development Schools and Community Schools, a set of guiding questions were offered to guide the specific models addressed.

Teacher education in the United States is changing to meet new policy demands for centering clinical practice and developing robust school-university partnerships to better prepare high-quality teachers for tomorrow’s schools. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SCHOOLS (PDSs) have recently been cited in national reports as exemplars of high-quality school-university partnerships in the clinical preparation of teachers. According to the National Association for Professional Development Schools, PDSs have Nine Essentials that distinguish them from other school-university collaborations. But even with that guidance, working across the boundaries of schools and universities remains messy, complex, and, quite frankly, hard. That’s why, perhaps, there is such diversity in school-university partnerships. For the last thirty years, educators have been fascinated yet puzzled with how to build PDSs. Clinically Based Teacher Education in Action: Cases from PDSs addresses that perplexity by providing images of the possible in school-university collaboration. Each chapter closely examines one of the NAPDS Nine Essentials and then provides three cases from PDSs that target that particular essential. In this way, readers can see how different PDSs from across the globe are innovating to actualize that essential in PDS development. The editors provide commentary, addressing themes across the three cases. Each chapter ends with questions to start collaborative conversations and a field-based activity meant to propel your PDS work forward.

Rethinking School-University Partnerships: A New Way Forward provides educational leaders in K-12 schools and colleges of education with insight, advice, and direction into the task of creating partnerships. In current times, colleges of education and local school districts need each other like never before. School districts struggle with pipeline, recruitment, and retention issues. Colleges of education face declining enrollment and a shifting educational landscape that fundamentally changes the way that teachers are trained and what local school districts expect their teachers to be able to do. It is with these overlapping constraints and converging interests that partnerships emerge as a foundational strategy for strengthening the education of our teachers. With nearly 80 contributors from 16 states (and Jamaica) representing 39 educational institutions, the partnerships described in this book are different from the ways in which colleges of education and school districts have traditionally worked with one another. In the past, these loose relationships centered primarily on student teaching and/or field experience placements. In this arrangement, the relationship was directed towards ensuring that the local schools were amenable to hosting students from the college of education so that the student/candidate could complete the requirements to earn a teaching license. In our view, this paradigm needs to be enlarged and shifted.

Featuring scholarly descriptions, teacher leader reflections, and thoughtful questions, this thoughtful collection will immerse readers in deep exploration of teacher leadership and student learning; definitions, structures, and cultures that promote teacher leadership; and teacher leader preparation and development.

This classic book, edited by Linda Darling-Hammond, explains the function, structure, and philosophy of the professional development school. The text includes case studies, taken from urban and suburban settings, that illustrate the accomplishments of these schools as well as the challenges they face as they strive to create a new and viable vision for the improvement of the American educational system.

Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving process that organizations can use to address wicked and complex problems of practice. Within the PK-12 space, design thinking has been employed to engage educators in an innovative approach to address challenges like curriculum redesign, instructional engagement, and designing physical spaces. The use of design thinking in the PK-12 space is a result of the evolution of an organizational improvement process that puts people at the center of problem-solving initiatives. Design thinking is seen as both a process and a mindset that enables people to look at problems in new ways and address these problems through creative approaches. In this book we share case studies of PK-12 schools and other educational organizations that have used design thinking, as well as research studies that have studied aspects of design thinking in the PK-12 space. We have brought together a variety of research-based and illustrative case studies around design thinking in PK-12 education that explore the development and implementation of design thinking in practice.

The literature on preparing and sustaining quality teachers has suggested that to be successful, teacher preparation and development require a mutual collaboration and a synergy of effort among partners, most typically a school district and a university teacher preparation program. One response has been to draw universities and school districts together in true partnership through Professional Development Schools ( PDSs). Together, the partners are responsible for creating environments in schools and in university classrooms that can transform into clinical sites dedicated to best practices and professional growth for all. This book is designed to offer practical applications on how partners can work together to implement the mission and goals of the PDS by providing ways that PDS partners can engage in a much deeper and more profound experience that results in a synergistic relationship. Joint involvement in application of practice takes each partner to a level far greater than traditional teacher education and professional development practices while creating a cooperative community of practice centered on teacher and student learning.

Ferrara and Jacobson go inside community schools across the country to explore the different roles that make this collaborative education reform work. This book provides practitioners, policymakers, family members, youth, and local leaders a greater understanding of the different roles that make up a community school and tools for action. Built on years of practice, research, and continuous improvement, community schools are an innovative, effective, and grassroots strategy for bringing schools and communities together in order to improve outcomes for students, families, and communities. This education reform is growing as school site, local, and state leaders seek collaborative solutions to our schools’ most persistent challenges. The contributors, experts in the field, represent a diverse group of people with longstanding commitments to the community school strategy. From principals to family members, from community partners to teachers, this book illustrates how together, we all have a part to play in the development of successful community schools.

In keeping with the tradition set forth in volumes 1-4, this fifth volume, Creating Visions for University- School Partnerships: A Volume in Professional Development School Research, continues to exemplify current thinking of practitioners and researchers in the field. The range of authors from the Prek-16 arena illustrates the ways in which professional development schools generate possible solutions to the complex problems facing educators. The diversity of their work represents perspectives of classroom teachers, preservice teachers, school leaders, and university faculty who grapple with identifying “ways of knowing” and “ways of doing” that enhance educational outcomes for Prek-12 students while also serving to transform the profession. The volume’s contents of 19 chapters divided into four areas: (1) Clinically Rich Practices (2) PDS Stakeholders’ Perspectives (3) Enriching Content Area Instruction (4) Family Engagement, gives us a more vivid picture of the work that partnerships are doing to fulfill the PDS promise for improving teaching and learning at every level.