Abdal-Haqq PDS, Student Learning, and Inquiry

Abdal-Haqq, I. (1998). Professional development schools: Weighing the evidence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Chapter 2: Student Learning and Inquiry

• "Children are captives of the schools society creates; they are the trust of educators, policymakers, legislators, and funders whose moral obligation as stewards requires that they deploy scarce resources in ways that promote and secure the well-being of children (p. 31)."
• "The bulk of mainstream PDS literature focuses on preservice and inservice teacher development and the processes and results of collaboration, with limited attention given to student learning (p. 32)." (My thoughts: or to supervisor development or for professional growth for those parties!!!) Here is a gap in the literature and a space for my research!
• Student Learning
  • Conceptual Framework
    • PDS literature is lacking research in the areas of impacting student learning and teaching practices.

• Recent Research
  • The Professional Development School Standards Project
  • Texas A&M University
  • The Houston Consortium of Urban Professional Development and Technology Centers (HCUPDTC)
    • "Without carefully designed evaluation mechanisms, it is often extremely difficult to isolate the impact of a single activity or set of activities when they occur in a setting awash with multiple initiatives (p. 39)."
  • The Benedum Collaborative
  • Research about the impact of PDS often is published in subject-specific outlets and is not indexed to include the PDS context even though the work took place there.

• Inquiry in PDS Settings
  • Fugitive literature suggests that PDSs are:
    • "Engaging in action research and other forms of inquiry
    • Achieving positive results
    • Using their findings to inform their practice (p. 43)."

• But there are significant gaps in the mainstream literature regarding these results.