Curriculum
Focus on Learning
Critical Content
- Understand how people learn.
- Understand high quality teaching and learning, including specific aspects of student engagement and learning assessment.
- Understand current instructional frameworks.
- How to lead the implementation of high quality teaching and learning.
Expected Outcomes
- Participants will understand the foundational components of powerful teaching and learning based upon research-based studies of best practices, case studies of other districts, and by experience through participation in the seminar sessions.
- Participants will make progress on a plan for creating, enhancing or sustaining a shared vision of powerful teaching and learning
- Participants will make progress on implementing the vision of powerful teaching and learning in every classroom.
- Participants will see the importance of planning and executing all meetings as models of effective instructional practices and transfer those practices back to their home districts.
- Participants will also have the opportunity to present their work back to colleagues in the Academy, both as a means of sharing new learning and as a way to hold each other accountable for the work that is going on back home.
Strand Texts
- Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Eds). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Introduction). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6160 also available as a podcast)
- Haycock, K. Education Trust (1998, Summer). Good Teaching Matters: How Well-Qualified Teachers Can Close the Gap. Thinking K-16, 3(2). Washington, DC: Education Trust. (http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/0279CB4F-B729-4260-AB6E-359FD3C374A7/0/k16_summer98.pdf)
- Newmann, F.M., King, M.B., & Carmichael, D.L. (2007). Authentic Instruction and Assessment: Common Standards for Rigor and Relevance in Teaching Academic Subjects. Des Moines, IA: Iowa Department of Education.
Available at http://www.thedlcteam.com/DLC/Welcome.html.
- Leithwood, K., Seashore Louis, K., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How Leadership Influences Student Learning. New York: Wallace Foundation.
(http://www.wallacefoundation.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/WF/Knowledge%20Center/Attachments/
PDF/ReviewofResearch-LearningFromLeadership.pdf)
- DuFour, R. (2007, November). In praise of top down leadership. School Administrator, X(X), Washington, D.C.: American Association of School Administrators. (http://www.aasa.org/publications/saarticledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=9540&snItemNumber=950)
- Resnick, L., & Fink, E. (2001). Developing Principals as Instructional Leaders. Phi Delta Kappan X(X), p. 598-606.
(Five-page article republished: http://www.ncsl.org.uk/media-f7b-94-randd-engaged-fink-2.pdf. 28-page article: http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/Publications/FinkResnick.PDF)