Teachers play a critical role in the success of their students, both academically and in regard to long term outcomes such as higher education participation and economic attainment. Expectations for teachers are increasing due to changing learning standards and a rapidly diversifying student population. At the same time, there are perceptions that the teaching workforce may be shifting toward a younger and less experienced demographic. These actual and perceived changes raise important questions about the ways teacher education may need to evolve in order to ensure that educators are able to meet the needs of students and provide them with classroom experiences that will put them on the path to future success. Changing Expectations for the K-12 Teacher Workforce: Policies, Preservice Education, Professional Development, and the Workplace explores the impact of the changing landscape of K-12 education and the potential for expansion of effective models, programs, and practices for teacher education. This report explores factors that contribute to understanding the current teacher workforce, changing expectations for teaching and learning, trends and developments in the teacher labor market, preservice teacher education, and opportunities for learning in the workplace and in-service professional development.

Because what we do in staff development can best be understood in terms of Contexts, Strategies, and Structures, the remainder of the book features distinguished educators who write from their own unique experiential and theoretical stances. Jacqueline Ancess describes how teachers in New York City secondary schools increase their own learning while improving student outcomes • Milbrey W. McLaughlin and Joel Zarrow demonstrate how teachers learn to use data to improve their practice and meet educational standards • Lynne Miller presents a case study of a long-lived school, university partnership • Beverly Falk recounts stories of teachers working together to develop performance assessments, to understand their student’s learning, to re-think their curriculum, and much more • Laura Stokes analyzes a school that successfully uses inquiry groups. There are further contributions (including some from novice teachers) by Anna Richert Ershler, Ann Lieberman, Diane Wood, Sarah Warshauer Freedman, and Joseph P. McDonald. These powerful exemplars from practice provide a much-needed overview of what matters and what really works in professional development today.

Professional Development Schools offers a close-up, comprehensive look at the state of professional development schools in the United States today. The vision of an ideal professional development school (PDS) is drawn from the best-known P-12 practices and optimum sites for preparing novice teachers. This "ideal" PDS would continually generate, test, and refine new knowledge and organizational structures. Abdal-Haqq poses the following questions regarding whether the PDS is performing its intended role: Is the PDS improving the curriculum, instruction, and structure of P-12 schools through professional development of educators? and Is it making substantive, positive differences in students' learning levels? To find answers, the author examines substantial amounts of evidence from various sources: student interviews and follow-up studies with teacher education graduates; surveys with preservice teachers on attitudes, beliefs, and self-efficacy; and reviews in student journals. Abdal-Haqq also investigates the important questions of time and money. She explores the kinds of additional fiscal and human resources necessary to start up and sustain a PDS.