Teacher Professional Learning

Research in Teacher Professional Learning

After decades of standards-based reform, schools, policy makers, education professionals and other stakeholders are recognizing that in order to effectively deliver the rigorous standards required to succeed in the 21st century, it is essential to strengthen the capacity of teachers.

If students are to acquire critical thinking skills, we need teachers capable of teaching those skills. The ERC is involved with several teacher professional learning projects designed to recruit and train educators who possess critical teaching skills and deep content knowledge. One best practice used to accomplish this goal is building professional learning communities among: 

• Teachers,
• Administrators,
• Content experts, and
• Teacher educators.

Examples of professional learning projects and communities are the STEM and TAMU Collaboratives.