Transforming professional development to professional learning

This article reviews teacher professional development norms as they are shifting toward collaborative practice. It is posed that passive and individual practices are inadequate to prepare teachers to integrate the academic skills that learners need for both workforce and college readiness. Promising practices in professional development are identified. Specifically, learning in a professional community is considered to be more effective than traditional professional development methods. This paper discusses aspects of professional learning communities that could be incorporated into Adult Basic Education programs to improve teaching and learning