Professional Development in Relational Learning Communities: Teachers in Connection

In this book, Raider-Roth offers an innovative approach to teacher professional development that builds on the intellectual strength and practical wisdom of practitioners. Focusing on nurturing relationships between and among participants, facilitators, subject matter, texts, and the school environment, this book helps educators create a repertoire of teaching approaches founded on sustained, deep, democratic, local, and active learning. The author demonstrates that, within the context of trustworthy relationships, teachers can better connect with all that they know about teaching, learning, and their own identities. This, in turn, enables them to act on what they know in the best interest of their students and leads to the kinds of lasting change and commitment that can move the teaching profession beyond training for a particular skill set.

Book Features:

• Examples showing how the work of relational learning communities can improve teachers’ practice.
• A focus on the cultural dimension in professional development for teachers.
• A view of teaching and learning as deeply relational and transformative.
• Strategies to help facilitators and participants create processes to best support a fertile learning environment.

“An effective and powerful antidote to the usual models of PD, Professional Development in Relational Learning Communities is a thoughtful and engaging text that takes seriously the intellectual work of teachers and the importance of relationships in teacher learning.”
—Curt Dudley-Marling, professor emeritus, Boston College