Designing Professional Development for Change: A Guide for Improving Classroom Instruction

This compact resource highlights the essential role of professional development in bringing about systemic change that benefits student achievement. The book offers practical methods for designing, promoting, and assessing change and stresses the important role that learning transfer plays in academic improvement and lifelong learning. The new features in this substantially updated revision include:

• A focus on the site-based professional developer's role as a champion for change in a student-centered learning community
• A framework that guides professional developers through three stages of implementation
• Attention on assessing low-performing students' learning needs as the starting point for creating sustainable change that improves academic achievement schoolwide
• Emphasis on mediated learning experiences and skillful coaching for adult learners as they gather information and implement new approaches

James Bellanca founded SkyLight Professional Development in 1982. As its president, he mentored more than a dozen author-consultants as he led SkyLight in pioneering the use of strategic teaching and comprehensive professional development. Prior to meta-analyses that marked the effectiveness of cooperative learning, graphic organizers, and other cognitive strategies on student achievement, Bellanca coauthored more than a dozen texts that advocated the application of these tools across the curriculum, with the theme, "not just for the test but for a lifetime of learning." Currently, Bellanca is building on the theories of cognitive psychologist Reuven Feuerstein to develop more effective responses to the learning needs of low-performing students whose academic achievement continues to lag behind those who have greater learning advantages.