Professional Development News in Brief

Harvard Network to Tackle Teaching-Quality ‘Nonsystem’

By Stephen Sawchuk — October 13, 2015 1 min read
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A new Harvard University initiative, Transforming Teaching, will oversee projects to boost the coherence of the nation’s systems for scaling up great teaching.

The impetus behind the network is what a white paper, released by the group last week, calls the United States’ “nonsystem” for supporting high-quality teaching. It argues, for instance, that there is virtually no coherent research-and-development system for studying teaching and learning, and that there’s a drastic mismatch between what teachers learn in their preparation programs and in subsequent professional development.

Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers and Steven Farr of Teach For America are among the many who have signed on to the effort.

A version of this article appeared in the October 14, 2015 edition of Education Week as Harvard Network to Tackle Teaching-Quality ‘Nonsystem’

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