Deliberate investigation into practice is an essential of the National Association for Professional Development Schools' defining elements of a Professional Development School (PDS). This article reports on the pilot efforts of one PDS as it initiated deliberate investigation through action research with a small group of teacher candidates.…

In 1989, the Watson College of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington started the Model Clinical Teaching Project and the Consortium for the Advancement of Public Education's School Reform Initiative (CAPE). Since that time, the partnership system has grown to include 146 schools across twelve traditional school districts…

Recent reports call for a structural transformation of teacher preparation programs with increased attention to quality field-based learning experiences for pre-service teachers. Ideally, this occurs in the context of robust university-school partnerships. The challenges lie in identifying such school sites and building meaningful, reciprocal…

Campus Mentors is a unique new partnership between a school district and a local university created to benefit both pre-service teachers and students at risk. The model is an on-campus alternative school targeting youth at risk. It is effective, cost-efficient, and mutually beneficial. Data collected over three years indicate a positive impact on…

This school-university partnership research explored how multicultural literature read-alouds impacted the pedagogical understandings of elementary pre-service teachers. The study explores the intersection of multicultural education, Professional Development School standards, and the achievement gaps of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD)…

Preparing in-service and pre-service teachers to effectively work with culturally diverse students is an ongoing challenge for schools and universities alike. This article reports on a University-Professional Development School (PDS) initiative designed to enhance an awareness of culturally responsive pedagogy. This article describes a yearlong…

Co-teaching in teacher preparation is viewed as a promising practice for fostering collaborative skills, increasing student participation, improving classroom instruction, and professional growth for all participants. Using focus group interviews as a unit of analysis, this article explores pre-service teachers' perceptions of co-teaching…

In this article we detail ongoing work designed to understand and improve our practice and that of the future teachers with whom we work. This work centers on helping elementary teacher candidates learn to implement instruction that supports student learning. We have developed and implemented a model--the "Supported, Collaborative Teaching…

This article reports the research findings of a qualitative study that employs case study research methods to examine a newly-formed university-district-teacher union partnership. Examination of the question ''How do we better prepare teachers'' led to the formation of a university-district-association (teacher union)…

This study examined the influence of a semester-long seminar on student teachers' perceptions of their preparedness for student teaching. Eighteen pre-service teachers in elementary (grades K-6) and middle grades (grades 6-8) participated in the seminar. Seventeen pre-service teachers from the same programs were used as a matched comparison group.…

The partnership between Kennesaw State University and Marietta Middle School, a 2012 recipient of the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) "Award for Exemplary Professional Development School Achievement," began as a year-long internship (YLI) program for teacher candidates in middle grades education at KSU. During the…

This paper examines how Lesson Study (Lewis, 2002) was used in an elementary mathematics methods course held at a Professional Development School and intended to support pre-service teachers to become reflective practitioners while working alongside clinical faculty. Attention is given to detailing the features of Lesson Study that situates the…

This qualitative study addresses the question "Does the use of storytelling motivate English language learners to engage in literacy practices more, or in a better way, and if so, how?". Storytelling of cultural tales related to fifth grade students' home cultures was introduced to provide a prompt for resultant student discussion and writing. All…

The purpose of this study was to develop a model for evaluating a professional development school program to enact an evidence-based model for a continuous cycle of program improvement. Guided by the logic model for program evaluation, we developed three survey instruments based on the professional development school standards of the National…

The purpose of this article is to review a partnership between a teacher education department and a dropout prevention program. The partnership developed from a variety of communities' needs, no less of which was that of reconnecting marginalized youth at a local dropout prevention school with their community through cultural and civic…