Belinda Gimbert

Developing New Understandings of PDS Work: Better Problems, Better Questions

Abstract Through sharing examples, the authors demonstrate how the analysis of long-term Professional Development School (PDS) problems and their evolution can serve as one indicator of growth in the PDS. Three persistent problem areas are identified: (a) building trust and relationships between university and school personnel, (b) reconceptualizing existing coursework to fit in the PDS context, and (3) making inquiry a central feature of the PDS. The historical evolution of these problem areas is traced through three phases of PDS development over a six-year period, including PDS Planning, PDS Pilot Year, and PDS Institutionalization. The authors conclude that, through careful analysis, PDS problems can be celebrated and utilized as one measurement of growth in PDS work rather than bemoaned and utilized to characterize PDS work as unstable and fragile. Finally, the authors call for other PDS practitioners across the nation to share their PDS problems publicly, beginning a national dialogue about the ways in which PDS problems lead to new and better PDS work.

Mastery of teaching in a school-university partnership: a model of context-appropriation theory

Abstract This study explored the experiences of six pre-service teachers who participated as intern teachers in a professional development school program between a research university and a public school district in Northeastern United States. This research offers a substantive-level theory of learning to teach in the context of a schooluniversity partnership. The research question driving this study was: How do intern teachers experience learning to teach in the context of a professional development school? Congruent with the qualitative methodology of grounded theory, a model of context-appropriation theory is presented, that was generated from the findings of this study. Two central categories are illustrated – learning about teaching and how to teach, and learning how to be a teacher. Additionally, strategies and states of intern development are described with examples of evidence, happenings, and instances. Five assertions were amassed from this model of learning about teaching and how to teach, and learning about how to be a teacher, and correlated with the literature on learning to teach and pre-service teacher development.