Editorial: Editors' introduction

Citation

Morrison, J.D., Currin, E. and Knotts, S. (2023), "Editorial: Editors' introduction", PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 73-74. https://doi.org/10.1108/PDSP-08-2023-027

Welcome to this special issue of PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice (PDSP). As we indicated in the previous issue, the publications affiliated with the National Association of Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) have transformed in the past year with the shift to a new publisher and new editorial teams, and the identity of the organization itself continues to evolve with a name change on the horizon. Before plunging forward into subsequent shifts in vision and practice, the NAPDS executive director and PDSP’s editors envisioned this special issue as a means of consolidating articles that illuminate the organization’s Nine Essentials – the cornerstone of high-quality professional development schools and effective school–university partnerships. On a pragmatic level, this consolidation brings together policy statements and manuscripts previously published across multiple PDSP issues and other platforms, enhancing their accessibility. On a more reflexive level, this point of change opens opportunities for organizational introspection to consider where we have been and who we are in ways that can inform future directions. As Shandomo (2010) noted, “Critical reflection facilitates introspective learning from values, beliefs, knowledge, and experiences that contribute to perspectives of one’s self, other people, and the world” (p. 103). This principle is true for organizations as well as individuals. With NAPDS at a crossroads, members’ critical reflection on our core beliefs, values and collective knowledge can help us think deeper about what defines us as an organization. In doing so, we can avoid the pitfalls of “simplistic solutions to complex problems and generaliz[ing] inaccurately based on limited data” (Ash & Clayton, 2009, p. 26) often associated with relying on experiential learning alone.

The issue begins with a special contribution from NAPDS Executive Director Michael Cosenza, recounting the initial creation and later revisiting of the Nine Essentials. This piece is followed by a policy statement, “What It Means to be a Professional Development School: The Nine Essentials,” which the organization issued in 2021 “to assert the essentials, or fundamental qualities, of a PDS” (NAPDS, this issue). The next nine articles, written by the K–12 and university-level educators who served on the Nine Essentials Committee, enunciate the particular nuances of each essential.

With critical reflection in mind, we invite you to (re)read these reprinted articles. More specifically, we encourage you to consider what is at the heart of our organization and how “we can collectively fulfill the vision of this remarkable and distinct partnership we call PDS” (NAPDS, this issue). As always, we welcome contributions to PDSP that embody the Nine Essentials and illustrate their value across diverse teaching and learning contexts.