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November 13-14,
Washington, DC
Providing opportunities for better reading
instruction for all children was the theme for the
National Invitational Conference on Improving Reading
Achievement through Professional Development, held on
November 13 and 14 in Washington, DC. Rutgers
University, the Carnegie Corporation in
New York, and
the Laboratory for Student Success (LSS) at Temple
University sponsored the conference, which aimed to
consider and discuss current research on what teachers
need to know and do to improve literacy instruction to
students of all levels, and to share strategies to
increase professional development for teachers. As an
additional resource for teachers and administrators,
there will be a follow-up book based on the discussions
of the conference and the papers presented.
With the changes in educational accountability created
by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it is necessary for
school administrators to focus on improving teacher
quality, particularly in the area of literacy. To do
this, new professional development programs must be
developed that will train existing teachers to help
students meet new standards of literacy. The developers
of the conference, Dorothy Strickland, Michael Kamil,
Herbert Walberg, and JoAnn Manning, gathered the best
thinkers to discuss and develop strategies in
professional development with the goal of improving
literacy instruction.
Several papers about this subject were discussed at the
conference, and these papers will make up the chapters
in the follow-up book. These papers included “Spitting
into the Wind: Arguing for Mindful Teachers in the Face
of a Trend to Minimize Teacher Development,” by Gerald
G. Duffy; “Sources of Standards for Teacher
Preparation,” by Cathy M. Roller and James V. Hoffman;
“Establishing the Basis for Improved Reading
Achievement,” by M. Susan Burns and Robert A. Stechuk;
Professional Development for K-3 Teachers: Content and
Process,” by Janice A. Dole and Jean Osborn; “What
Teachers at the Later Elementary Grades Need to Know,”
by Kathy Ganske and Joanne K. Monroe; and “Salient
Content for the Professional Development of Reading
Educators at the Middle/High School Levels,” by Donna E.
Alvermann and Allison Nealy. The conference also
discussed papers by Cynthia L. Greenleaf and Ruth
Schoenbach; Susan Florio-Ruane, Taffy E. Raphael, Kathy
Highfield, and Jennifer Berne; Elizabeth S. Pang and
Michael Kamil; Gay Su Pinnell and Emily M. Rodgers; and
Michael Aaron Copland.
The conference also featured a number of plenary
sessions and small work groups, and ended with a
discussion on future steps to further strengthen teacher
training and increase students’ literary abilities. |
