Growing Teachers: Partnerships in Staff Development

Just as young children learn about the world around them by playing its scripts, teachers learn about teaching and learning by playing a teacher's script, observing what happens, and discussing all of the possibilities with other teachers. This book applies a constructivist model to staff development, describing staff development activities that were open in design and that defined philosophy and process but not outcomes. Each of the stories told in the book involved a partnership between one or more early childhood programs and some other agency or individual working with teaching staff to facilitate growth. Following an introduction by Elizabeth Jones exploring how teachers construct knowledge about teaching and how "growing" teachers differs from training them, the chapters in the book are: (1) "Telling Our Stories: The CDA Process in Native American Head Start" (C. David Beers); (2) "Moving Out of Silence: The CDA Process with Alaska Native Teachers" (Kathrin Greenough); (3) "Catching Teachers 'Being Good': Using Observation To Communicate" (Margie Carter); (4) "Teachers Talking to Each Other: The Pasadena Partnership Project" (Elizabeth Jones, Joyce Robinson, Diedra Miler, Richard Cohen, and Gretchen Reynolds); (5) "Change Making in a Primary School: Soledad, California" (Jane Meade-Roberts, Elizabeth Jones, and Joan Hillard); (6) "Co-Creating Primary Curriculum: Boulder Valley Schools" (Maja Apelman); (7) "Teachers as Observers of Play: Involving Teachers in Action Research" (Barbara Creaser); (8) "I'll Visit Your Class, You Visit Mine: Experienced Teachers as Mentors" (Lisa Poelle); and (9) "Looking Back: What We've Learned about Partnerships" (Elizabeth Jones). (HTH)… (more)