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The MOFET Institution, which began under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, is Israel’s national center for research and professional development on teacher education. It consists of three communities: (1) the Writing Channel; (2) the Study Channel; and (3) the Research Channel. MOFET additionally has an Academic Committee that assists the aforementioned communities in their deliberations if needed. Although the MOFET Institute deals with multiple and sometimes conflicting agendas (i.e., Ministry of Education, participating teacher education colleges, the institute’s own goals), it remains one of the most unique and powerful ways to nationally address teacher education research and dissemination and the development of teacher educators in the world.

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.

During a site-based certification program in a large county school district in the southeastern United States, 14 educators took 7 graduate courses on teaching emergent bilinguals. These educators made a shift in their practices and perceived a corresponding shift in their teaching efficacy. Ten years after the onset of this program, researchers returned to the site and conducted a mixed-methods study. The first purpose of this study was to explore educators’ perceptions regarding instructional practices for teaching emergent bilinguals after a decade had passed. The second purpose was to identify course features perceived by educators as having been most instrumental in fostering a long-term transformation in their teaching practices. Data were collected from a survey and interviews with the 14 educators (13 teachers and a program specialist) who had completed this certification program. Results indicated changes in their teaching methods and interactions with parents as well as heightened confidence for taking on leadership roles. Study participants identified professional learning communities, cyclical reflective activities, and action research projects as the course features that had been instrumental in transforming their practices for working with emergent bilinguals. Findings suggest that this site-based certification program was a catalyst for generating individual change that continued beyond program completion. By exploring this decade-long transformation, the current study provides implications for designing and implementing graduate certification courses that prepare in-service teachers to work effectively with emergent bilinguals.

The chapters in this volume focus on how university partnerships for pre-service and teacher development apply novel ideas to improve teacher quality in global communities. The purpose of these programs is to improve education systems for all participants. Case studies in this volume present a broad and in-depth review of partnerships that apply novel ideas to transform organizations. This chapter provides an overview to this volume by discussing important elements of teacher quality by defining teacher quality characteristics, shared collaboration, and providing ideas for professional development agendas.

This chapter synthesizes Chapters 13–17. After distinguishing teacher leaders as individuals who enact various functions of teacher leadership in today’s schools, the chapter describes three themes related to teacher leader preparation and development in professional development schools (PDSs): (1) teacher leaders are made not born, (2) school–university partnerships create the conditions for developing high-quality teacher leaders, and (3) PDSs have the potential to develop teacher leaders as teacher educators. The chapter concludes with recommendations on how teacher leadership in PDSs can be strengthened.

In every decade, there tends to be a major economic crisis affecting the entire world. Recent decades have seen the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s and the global financial crisis in the 2000s. Also, natural disasters and pandemics frequently impact the socioeconomic conditions of the people. The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is one such crisis. In such situations, the socially disadvantaged are usually the worst hit, marginalizing the disadvantaged even further. Zygmunt Bauman describes this as “collateral damage.” In schooling, as well, such collateral damage is observed across countries. The aim of this chapter is to investigate responses by one secondary school leader in Bangkok, Thailand, to COVID-19 in order to minimize the collateral damage to the students. For this aim, self-study was employed as a research method. In the midst of great confusion, a caring mind and heart for students in difficulty was at the heart of strategies that encouraged them to remain constant with respect to the world of learning.

This chapter briefly reviews the research related to the construct of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) over the past 25 years. Despite the remarkable implications of the PCK conceptualization, questions remain concerning the vagueness of the construct and the studies conducted on the PCK research line, questions which may lead to new developments in defining the nature of the conceptualization, its validity, and its utility. However, agreement exists concerning the need to portray specific cases of PCK of successful teaching. The work argues for a need to develop models of teacher learning and professional development that are subject matter specific. The chapter ends with a call for basing professional development on the conceptualization of PCK.

Our purpose is to examine the outcomes of using video as a reflection tool in peer-to-peer coaching with rural teachers as part of a literacy coaching professional development project.

This qualitative case study presents findings from a professional development project serving rural educators interested in becoming literacy coaches. Using a peer coaching model, literacy coaching participants video recorded two literacy coaching cycles capturing pre-conferencing, lesson modeling, and post-conferencing. Reflection was facilitated through face-to-face discussion and online technologies (discussion forums and e-mail).

Face-to-face sessions were integral in fostering participant reflection. Technology challenges impacted the extent to which participants engaged in and valued video as a reflection tool. Participants repurposed video reflection for self-identified professional and pedagogical purposes.

Video reflection can be used as a part of multimodal set of tools to collaborate with teachers. Face-to-face interaction is important in supporting rural teachers’ use of video reflection. Teacher educators generally need more on-site authentic involvement to gain emic perspectives when working with the rural sites in order for the video tasks to be more effective and meaningful for the teachers. Repurposing video reflection can be an expression of agency in meeting teacher needs.

This narrative inquiry centers on teachers' longitudinal experiences of policy-related reforms systematically introduced to T. P. Yaeger Middle School, a campus located in the fourth largest, second most diverse city in America. The embedded research study, with roots tracing back to 1997, uses five interpretive tools to capture six mandated changes in the form of a story serial. Special research attention is afforded pay-for-performance, the sixth reform in the series. The deeply lived consequence of receiving bonuses for his teaching performance prompted Daryl Wilson, Yaeger's long-term literacy department chair, to proclaim “data is [G]od.” Wilson's emergent, inventive metaphor aptly portrays the perplexing conditions under which his career ended, and how my long-term research project likewise concluded.

Staff turnover may have important consequences for the development of collective social resources based on trust, shared norms, and support among school professionals. We outline the theoretical role-specific consequences of principal and teacher turnover for features of principal leadership and teacher community, and we test these ideas in repeated teacher survey data from a sample of 73 Los Angeles elementary schools. We find evidence that principal turnover fundamentally disrupts but does not systematically decrease relational qualities of principal leadership; negative changes for initially high social resource schools offset positive changes for initially low social resource schools, suggesting that relational instability “resets” the resources that develop in the relationships between leadership and teachers. Greater consistency in measures of teacher community in the face of teacher turnover implies that the social resources inhering in the relationships among teachers are more robust to instability.