Printer-friendly versionThe Noyce Foundation and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching are helping classroom teachers learn about the key strategies and teaching practices from Noyce's "Every Child a Reader and Writer" (ECRW) initiative through a new multimedia website. Created to strengthen literacy achievement in K-5 students, the site offers professional development for elementary grade teachers.
From 2000 through 2007, ECRW worked to improve the teaching of writing and to bring intensive early literacy professional development to teachers, schools and districts through a writing workshop approach. Over the past year, teachers who participated in an ECRW unit design seminar on narrative writing worked with the Carnegie Foundation to document their teaching practice. Since 1998, the Carnegie Foundation has led an effort to capture the dynamics of teachers' practice through the use of new technologies. Using Carnegie's expertise in technology and the work of ECRW teachers, the two organizations have made professional development more accessible.
The website offers concrete examples of instructional strategies for teaching the significance of narrative writing through resource materials, examples of student work, and video clips of the participating teachers working with their linguistically diverse classrooms in kindergarten, second and fifth grades.
"Teachers are hungry for different educators' approaches to the teaching of writing," says Noyce Foundation Executive Director Ron Ottinger. "This website allows teachers, literacy coaches, principals and curriculum directors far beyond the ECRW implementation sites access to online multimedia professional learning opportunities. Educators at all levels who want to teach writing effectively can now see the practices of the writing workshop."
"This online teaching tool is extremely significant in that it expands from watching a particular teacher to examining effective practices across grade levels and in multiple settings," says Ann Lieberman, Carnegie senior scholar and co-director of the Goldman-Carnegie Quest Program that advances similar work. "Contrary to professional development models predicated on 'best practices,' this project rests on the assertion that there can be multiple ways to translate strong ideas about literacy teaching."
The foundations' joint efforts are part of the burgeoning movement to reframe professional development, moving teacher learning and teacher knowledge from margin to center in the advancement of the profession.
"To learn from the expertise in their ranks, teachers must make their inquiry into their teaching practices public, invite others to provide critique, and then build upon their own and others' work to elevate the knowledge base of teaching professionals," says Lieberman. "If we offer supports that will encourage these learning communities to grow, in the process we will create the conditions for more open and collaborative school cultures."
To access the website go to www.insidewritingworkshop.org.
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Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center with the primary mission "to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education." The improvement of teaching and learning is central to all of the Foundation's work. The Foundation is located in Stanford, Calif.
The Noyce Foundation is dedicated to stimulating ideas and supporting initiatives designed to produce significant improvement in teaching and learning in mathematics, science and literacy in grades K-12. More information may be found on the website at www.noycefdn.org.
