Performance based assessments : shifting the secondary teacher's focus from content to process

As the fiscal restraints facing school districts continues to mount and the needs of our student population seems to increase, there is even a greater need for districts to spend their limited funds on teacher professional development that is effective. More and more there is a move away from bringing in the outside expert and instead trying to create site based collaborative learning teams. This paper examines the model of a collaborative learning community in an effort to distill what aspects of it actually helped content area teachers to incorporate increased instructional time on literary processes. This model is examined in relation to research on effective teacher professional development. The key questions addressed in this paper are aimed at identifying the big ideas behind positive changes in classroom practice with an attempt to analyze what, in terms of collaborative professional development, fosters these changes in classroom practiceEducation, Faculty ofLanguage and Literacy Education (LLED), Department ofUnreviewedGraduat