Developing Learning Communities Through Teacher Expertise

By Giselle O. Martin-Kniep, Giselle O Martin-Kniep, Giselle O Martin-Kniep

Book Overview

"No book I have read in the past ten years has made clearer to me the difference between what I am doing as a professional developer and what I should be doing. It is so unremittingly honest about the difficulty of our work, and yet so rich in practical examples that I cannot help but feel inspired to move forward and change the way I teach and learn with teachers."

Richard W. Strong, Vice President
Silver Strong & Associates, LLC

"There are many books on the market covering school improvement and teachers as experts as well as staff development; however, this book is concise, provides excellent templates, and is backed by real experiences and expertise."

Suzanne C. Fonoti, Principal
Flagstaff Arizona Unified School District

Forget expensive consultants--use the expertise within your own school for quality professional development

Martin-Kniep offers practical methods for developing a reflective, collaborative environment where teachers and administrators work together to enhance teachers′ practices, increase student learning, and produce valuable school processes. Developing Learning Communities Through Teacher Expertise includes frameworks, templates, and examples that can be employed to determine the value and implications surrounding the use of teacher-designed standards-based curriculum and assessment, data-driven inquiry, and professional portfolios.

Based on work completed at the nonprofit Center for the Study of Expertise in Teaching and Learning, this innovative volume includes:

Examples of teachers′ reflections, portfolio artifacts, and student work Sample standards-based curriculum units for different content areas and grade levels Discussion questions and recommended readings Sample worksheets and self-assessments Standards-based curriculum and assessment design tools Sample rubrics for student and teacher development

Developing Learning Communities Through Teacher Expertise

offers step-by-step instructions for developing an action plan for incorporating learning communities into a school. Providing numerous real-life examples, Martin-Kniep includes three specific teaching units and supporting material, which illustrate how to identify and capitalize on teachers′ existing expertise.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761946179
• ISBN13: 9780761946175
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Corwin Publishers
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.5" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

A very good overview

This book is a great overview of what you need for school improvement and staff development. The author describes what a learning community is, how to develop one, and what problems you might have to overcome. The book gives professional standards to use as guidelines and shows you how to create an action plan for developing a learning community. The book gives you rubrics for professional presentation and self-assessmet. It promotes data-driven inquiry and action research to assess what needs to be done to develop or improve an existing learning community. The author describes how to turn events into reflective and evaluative opportunities. The author also suggests books to go to for more information on a topic. The only reason I'm giving this book 4 stars is because its usefulness depends on how much information you already know about learning communities. The good thing about this book is it covers a lot of information that you would otherwise have to read several books to get; the drawback to this book is that it gives only a limited amount of information on each topic. However, the author anticipated the need for more information by recommending books for further reading at the end of each chapter. Therefore, you can pinpoint your exact needs before you have to search through a lot of books and/or buy a lot of books you don't really need. I don't know of any other book of this type that does that. So, even if you already know about learning communities, this could still be a resource for you. You could use it to go to another book with more information on a particular topic.