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Grooming Great Urban Teachers

August 29, 2005

Professional development programs enhance learning when they provide teachers with sustained opportunities to experiment with and receive feedback on innovative practices, to collaborate with peers in and out of school, and to interact with external researchers. UW-Madison education professor Jeffrey Lewis studies the effectiveness of the program Learning Through Teaching in an After-School Pedagogical Laboratory (L-TAPL).  The students of participating teachers demonstrate significant learning gains in reading, math, and writing on the basis of pre-tests and post-tests. L-TAPL students also outperformed a matched district sample of students in reading and math on the Terra Nova, a district-administered test. L-TAPL offers a pedagogical laboratory and professional development site for inexperienced teachers; links inexperienced teachers with effective, experienced teachers of poor urban students; documents and examines the process of student learning; and documents the processes by which inexperienced teachers learn to teach.