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Purpose – This chapter discusses the application of the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) to school change and the learning of groups of leaders, teachers, and students. Specifically, the authors describe the Seven Levels to Success, a model for school change that supports teachers in building their school’s own staircase (coherent) curriculum in literacy. The authors discuss the effectiveness of this model for capacity building – giving schools a “deep bench” of leaders and teachers who can sustain improved student achievement over a period of years.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The theoretical underpinning of this research is provided by the Vygotsky Space, a construct that shows how learning may be understood in terms of the intersections of collective and individual actions, and public and private settings. This construct allows us to understand what drives a school’s advancement through the Seven Levels and how that advancement can be restarted after it has been slowed or interrupted. The authors report findings about school change from 20 years of work in 264 elementary and secondary schools, reflecting a wide range of students and communities across the United States.

Findings – While schools’ typical advancement in the Seven-Level model is neither steady nor linear, it adheres to an overall pattern: Leaders must take ownership first, followed by teachers and then students. To build their school’s staircase curriculum, teachers must see themselves as creators rather than consumers of curriculum. Teachers who see themselves as creators take ownership of their curriculum. Their deep understanding of the curriculum promotes continuous improvements and related success in improving their students’ literacy learning. Four case examples illustrate change in a variety of school settings, providing existence proofs of how the Seven-Level model functions to improve students’ literacy learning.

Research Limitations/Implications – The authors highlight the importance of the school as the unit of analysis in change efforts, and of understanding a school’s progress over time. The authors emphasize considering the role of multiple constituencies, beginning with school leaders and encompassing teachers, students, and families. One implication of this study is that more attention should be paid to the role of school leaders – administrators, curriculum coordinators, and teacher leaders – in setting the stage for sustainable improvement.

Practical Implications – The authors provide guidance to practitioners working on school change within the framework of the Seven Levels to Success and other social constructivist models. Specifically, the authors give examples of relevant actions external consultants and school leaders take at critical junctures in a school’s progress.

Originality/Value of Paper – This chapter breaks new ground in applying the GRR model and the Vygotsky Space to the area of school change in literacy. Summarizing 20 years of work with the Seven-Level model demonstrates potential of teacher-developed curricula for the sustainable improvement of students’ literacy learning.

Global focus on reforming teachers has resulted in the inclusion of multiple survey questions about teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies. A cross-national analysis of these survey data will likely enhance our understanding and inform the future direction regarding teacher professional development policy and practice. Yet we do not know whether these surveys measure the key features and their contextual factors of teachers’ professional learning activities to allow a systematic cross-national analysis. Based on international and U.S. literature, I develop a conceptual model of teachers’ professional learning activities in global context and analyze relevant survey items used in three major international studies – TIMSS, PIRLS, and TALIS. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the coverage of these survey items and a direction for improving data collections of teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies.

The growing knowledge society has caused a change in the meaning of knowledge and learning. In Dutch schools, this creates a demand for evidence-based innovation and school development and a need for working with data. This chapter focuses on leadership in changing schools including the difference between management (organizing, structuring, and budgeting things that already work); leadership (adapting things that do not run smoothly, stimulating, motivating and empowering people, and communicating vision); and relationship with interactional and transformational leadership. Consequently, inquiry-based leadership is becoming the center of interest internationally (Geijsel, Krüger, & Sleegers, 2010; Luo, 2008). The author presents a conceptual framework for deeper understanding of school leadership in the 21st century – that to be effective in their roles, they must learn how to create inquiry-based cultures in their schools and to continuously learn from data. Finally, the author identifies some challenges for school leaders in coming years and proposes ways that help strengthen their leadership including the professionalization for all leaders oriented to instructional leadership, inquiry-based leadership, higher order thinking and distributed leadership.

In this chapter, we trace the emergence of a particular type of teacher subject, the subject-area counsellor, who became a key player during different phases of the recent curriculum reform in the Republic of Cyprus (2004–2017).The understanding of teachers as subjects is theoretically informed by the Foucauldian notion of discursive power that helps understand how individuals are constituted (subjectivated) and governed (subjected) through language in power relations that permeate social institutions. This type of teacher was constitutedas a hybrid expert-subject by embodying academic expertise and teaching/practical experience in classrooms. We utilize data from individual, semi-structured interviews conductedwith subject-area counsellors and elementary schoolpractising teachers during the introduction and implementation of new curricula (2011-2014), to argue that this particular type of teacher subject emerged as a meaningful and dynamic meso-level. As counsellors moved in between the Ministry of Education and Culture/Pedagogical Institute (macro-level) and schools/teachers (micro-level), it was possible to observe that multiple curriculum makings were taking place, given that subject-area counsellors sometimes opened up spaces and further possibilities of curriculum-making with teachers; but, at others, those spaces were rendered impossible when teachers expected to receive teaching materials from them, thus reinstating pyramidal traditional hierarchical-administrative roles for both.

This chapter addresses the outcomes of a six-year school–university partnership between a public liberal arts college and a large urban school district. It explores ways that partnerships can support teachers and communities to confront assumptions and take ownership of learning. This paper traces the trajectory of teachers and professors engaged in a longitudinal ongoing professional development initiative focused on “Meeting the Needs of Urban Learners” to identify practices that supported the collaboration, and the outcomes of the school–university partnership.

This chapter describes a cyclical mentoring model that is designed to scaffold the use of video in a graduate literacy practicum for in-service teachers.

This chapter is organized by (1) an overview of the Literacy Practicum course and the three learning phases and activities within each phase; (2) a description of the mentoring process/procedures during each of the phases, and examples of their impact on teachers’ learning and practice; and (3) a discussion of implications for practice.

Drawing upon recent work in teacher inquiry and reflection, this model provides opportunities for teachers to take increasing ownership of their own professional growth.

The examples in this chapter are anecdotal. But they help to illustrate the processes and procedures in this model, which is described with great detail in order to be useful for pre- and in-service teachers, as well as school-based professional development programs.

The model can be effectively incorporated into both pre-service clinical settings as well as professional development with in-service teachers.

As a potential high impact tool, video analysis of teaching must not be viewed as an incidental approach; rather it must be an integral part of a learning cycle which is committed to student ownership and voice, social engagement, critical inquiry, reflection and integrative learning.

School leaders often feel compelled to safeguard, manage and promote the mission and vision of the school in order to keep staff on task and on track. An alternative approach is to do just the opposite. This chapter examines school leadership at an innovative charter school that believes that the mission and vision of the school belongs to the school community, is organic and needs to evolve over time. Teachers have created the framework and design for the curriculum, have planned and implemented professional development to support the design, and essentially have re-shaped the structure and format of instruction, leading to a stronger sense of ownership and increased engagement within the school community.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore an application of the gradual release of responsibility (GRR) to the reading comprehension of students in kindergarten to grade five.

Findings – In this chapter, the author provides a brief review of think-alouds as a way for proficient readers to model the comprehension strategies that they apply to a text. The author introduces a three-step process in which students gradually take ownership for such strategies through think-alouds, think-alongs, and think alones. The author demonstrates that when students in kindergarten through grade five have strong models of comprehension through think-alouds, they are able to apply these strategies to their own independent reading. Though a case study of one English language arts teacher, the author shows how the teacher released responsibility to students through think-alouds.

Research limitations/implications – The examples within this chapter are from a second-grade classroom in an urban charter school.

Practical implications – This three-step process is applicable to all content areas as well as text genre and reading levels. This approach is a valuable model for teachers to understand how to gradually release comprehension strategies to students across grade levels.

Originality/value of paper – This chapter provides research-based examples of using the GRR model to build students’ ability to inference. Additionally, the chapter provides “I” language and sentence starters to help students internalize comprehension strategies and apply them to independent reading.