Transforming Teaching Into a Collaborative Culture: An Attempt to Create a Professional Development School-University Partnership

Abstract

A Professional Development School (PDS) serves as a quality-teaching model. It is a vehicle that generates professional understanding through conversations among university professors, teachers, and teacher candidates. The author illustrates a pilot PDS program that exemplifies the many benefits of transforming the teaching model into a successful collaboration and the lessons learned by PDS participants. The partnership explores classroom culture, collaboration agendas, and quality efforts for building a conceptual framework for mathematics and science teaching and learning with fifth graders.

Key words:

• collaboration
• elementary education
• mathematics
• Professional Development School (PDS)
• science instruction
• teacher education/certification
• transformative teaching models