Professional Development

Teaching in PreK-12 classrooms requires not only pedagogical knowledge and field-related skill, but also creativity, flexibility, and responsiveness. Teachers, as lifelong learners and as leaders in education, must make sense of curricula, policies, research, and evidence in order to guide and shape their practices in unique and diverse contexts. How teachers make use of these “best practice” guides varies — there is no one-size-fits-all program or method that can be picked up and applied without classroom teachers’ localized and reflective contextualization. Designed for use by preservice teachers, experienced educators, mentors and coaches, school leaders, and teacher preparation faculty, Recognizing “Best Practices” as Locally Situated calls teachers into their power to disrupt, transform, and lead towards change in PreK-12 schools. This volume makes visible the critical work teachers engage in daily as they evaluate, interpret, implement, and assess the impact of particular strategies, resources, and approaches in their classrooms. Teachers must iterate on their teaching practice in cycles of continuous learning and reflection toward educational equity and social justice. Recognizing “Best Practices” as Locally Situated celebrates the voices, power, and pedagogical practices of teachers across a variety of content areas and settings, ranging from early childhood to adolescence and from transnational contexts, including multilingual classrooms in the U.S., Lebanon, and Ukraine, along with teacher preparation programs in the U.S. and Europe. Through vignettes, analysis, reflective prompts, lesson plans, resources, and activities, the authors make clear that teachers are agentic, innovative, and adaptive practitioners who translate evidence-based “best practices” into context-specific, responsive, and learner-centered pedagogical moves that build upon the assets of their students to support learning. They invite readers into their (trans)local worlds as readers’ shape and reconfigure their own (trans)local classrooms, schools, and educational ecosystems. Recognizing “Best Practices” as Locally Situated aims to bring together the voices of practitioners across K-12 education to examine their situated and expert testing, adaptation, and refusal of “best practices” within their classrooms and communities. The authors explore a best practice, as housed in this partially archived version of the U.S. Department of Education's Best Practices Clearinghouse or as explicitly named in research or practitioner literature. They explain the ways they have tested, accepted, rejected, modified, or otherwise adapted and contextualized that “best practice” within their own teaching context and with equity, inclusion, diversity, belonging, and social justice in mind. Recognizing “Best Practices” as Locally Situated provides an important overview and critique of currently circulating “best practices” for both novice and experienced educators. It provides classroom-tested pedagogical modes and resources with methodologies for engaging critically with “evidence,” including through generation of new evidence and knowledge bases situated within particular communities, times, places, and policy contexts. As part of Dr. Linsay DeMartino and Dr. Lisa Fetman's book series Demystifying Social Justice Education: Moving from Trendy to Transformative Equity and Justice Practices in Schools, this book aligns through its focus on equity and justice and the dismantling of taken-for-granted or “trendy” practices and policies in education. The collection of texts draws upon the lived experiences of educators, education researchers, community program leaders, and students and families to provide new evidence and as contributions to the literature centering around what is possible in equitable, responsive, belonging, and socially-just education.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment in Diverse Classrooms; Introduction to Educating For Equity And Social Justice; Cultivating Culturally Responsive Classrooms; Critically Reflective Teaching; Adolescent Identities, Literacies, and Communities; Integrated Content and Language Learning (TESOL/TEFL/Bilingual Ed); Literacy Methods in Multilingual Classrooms; Resisting and Transforming the Purpose of Education: Education for Freedom; Professional Development and Leadership; Inquiry-Based Professional Learning; Introduction to Teacher Leadership And School Improvement

According to the American Psychological Association (APA, 2015), trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event, which can lead to difficulties with emotional regulation, social relationships, and the development of physical symptoms. Traumatic experiences may include physical or sexual abuse, neglect, experiencing or witnessing violence, war, suicides, and disasters. Because of the prevalence of students with traumatic experiences in K-12 schools, development and use of trauma-informed practices (TIP) is currently increasing in educational spaces across the United States as educators and others who work with children become more aware of how socio-emotional development and exposure to trauma places children on a pathway through adulthood. Because of growth in these areas, it is important for educators and others who work with children to have a resource to consult. Children and Trauma: Critical Perspectives for Meeting the Needs of Diverse Educational Communities provides teachers, administrators, and others involved in education with an understanding of trauma-informed practices and explains how they can be used in the classroom. Additionally, school districts could utilize this text to implement professional development, particularly if they are considering creating a districtwide trauma-informed system.Perfect for courses such as: Trauma-Informed Educational Practice | Psychology | Educational Psychology | Foundations of Education | Pedagogy | Methods of Emotional or Behavioral Disorders | Teaching Methods | Diversity in Education | Social Work | Human Development

For the past 35 years, Scott Mandel has been teaching students in an urban Los Angeles school district. In addition, he instructs teachers in professional development courses. In those classes, he’s known for telling stories—stories gleaned from his time spent in the classroom. Classrooms in the Real World is a collection of many of those stories, presented as a set of teachable moments—a practical how-to book for new teachers, one based on interacting with kids on a daily basis. Rather than providing educational theories about what should be, Mandel shares real-life stories of how to relate to your students, administrators and parents, along with his thoughts on how to deal with the multiple curricular and classroom challenges that all teachers face in the real world. Chapters such as "Kids Don't Care How Much You Know As Long As They Know You Care," "Take Curricular Chances," "Administrators Want You To Succeed," "Keeping My Sanity All These Years," and “What Have I Learned” will give you the reader practical ideas, philosophies and encouragement from a long-time classroom teacher, someone still in the classroom sharing the lived experience of teaching in today’s school environment.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Teaching | Classroom Management | Student Teaching

Studies of teacher leadership have proliferated over the past fifty years. Earlier work tended to focus exclusively on the link between teacher leadership and school improvement. Now, however, cross-cultural research on the relationship between teacher leadership and power, agency and school culture has the potential to contribute to a deeper understanding of the teaching profession in diverse geographical and social contexts. A Cross-Cultural Consideration of Teacher Leaders’ Narratives of Power, Agency and School Culture presents groundbreaking work that expands discussions of teachers’ work to highlight the struggles of a profession in three different countries: England, Jamaica and the United States. This research provides examples of teacher leaders’ narratives about power, agency and school culture, presenting the voices of teacher leaders across diverse contexts. It identifies the “lessons” that transcend culture and speaks to the importance of understanding how teachers’ work (and teacher leadership) functions within complex school cultures. This work has profound implications for teaching, learning and leading in a 21st century global economy.Perfect for courses such as:Teacher Leadership | Educational Leadership and Management | Teaching and Teaching Methods | Action Research/Applied Research