San Francisco Field Site

Current Research Collaborations

• How do schools build a model for the productive use of common planning time that strengthens professional learning communities and develops meaningful system of accountability?

  This research partnership with Everett Middle School and University of California, Berkeley is building both the research base and practical knowledge pertaining to the productive use of common planning time (CPT) focused on supporting literacy development in English-language arts and science classrooms.

  Timeline: January 2009 to present

  District Collaborators:
  Richard Curci, Principal, Everett Middle School
  Jeanne D’Arcy, Supervisor, Mathematics and Science
  Deb Farkas, Content Specialist, Middle School Science
  Science teachers at Everett Middle School (2008-09)
  English-language arts teachers at Everett Middle School (2009-10)
  Assistant Principal and Instructional Reform Facilitator at Everett M.S.
  

  Researchers:
  David Pearson, Dean of the College of Education, UC Berkeley
  Rick Mintrop, Associate Professor of Education, UC Berkeley
  Jessica Koistenin, Graduate Student, UC Berkeley
  Morgan Marchbanks, Graduate Student, UC Berkeley
  Elaine Mo, Graduate Student, UC Berkeley and Harvard University

  While the research team supports the school's initiatives and responds to its needs, it is simultaneously developing designs (i.e. tools, strategies, protocols, learning formats and the like) that can travel from one subject-matter department to another and from Everett Middle School to other schools. University-based researchers and teacher co-developers take teachers’ specific concerns in the area of literacy as their common point of departure. The work of the researchers is embedded in Everett’s improvement initiatives, but the researchers add an element of procedural formality, precision, and formative evaluation to teachers’ common planning time. The goal is to strengthen teacher work groups during common planning time so that they can evolve into self-directed learning communities that together (1) develop ideas about student work quality, student engagement, and instructional strategies; (2) build motivation, a sense of shared responsibility, and internal accountability; (3) cultivate norms and procedures of evidence-based learning about focal instructional practices; and (4) share good practices that have proven useful in the classroom and are validated by research.

  The success of the work at Everett Middle School will be measured in terms of both 1) teacher learning of new discipline-specific literacy practices and 2) the ability of the work group to use learning community routines independently of the design team.