What are Professional Develoment School?

Professional development schools (PDSs) are innovative institutions formed through partnerships between professional education programs and P–12 schools. PDS partnerships have a four-fold mission:

• the preparation of new teachers,
• faculty development,
• inquiry directed at the improvement of practice, and
• enhanced student achievement.

PDSs improve both the quality of teaching and student learning.

PDSs are often compared to teaching hospitals, which are also hybrid institutions created in the early twentieth century. As practicing professions, both teaching and medicine require a sound academic program and intense clinical preparation. The teaching hospital was designed to provide such clinical preparation for medical students and interns; PDSs serve the same function for teacher candidates and in-service faculty. Both settings provide support for professional learning in a real-world setting in which practice takes place.                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                                                                                   NCATE

What are the Defining Characteristics of PDS?

Standard I : Learning Community—Addresses the unique environment created in a PDS partnership that supports both professional and children's learning.

Standard II: Accountability and Quality Assurance—Addresses the responsibility of a PDS partnership to uphold professional standards for teaching and learning.

Standard III: Collaboration—Addresses the development and implementation of a unique university/school community which shares responsibility across institutional boundaries.

Standard IV: Equity and Diversity— Addresses the responsibility of the PDS partnership to prepare professionals to meet the needs of diverse learners

Standard V: Structures, Resources and Roles—Addresses the infrastructure that a PDS partnerships uses and/or creates to support its work.

                                                                                                                      NCATE

How is PDS Beneficial to Our Students?

Placing students' needs at the center of PDS work is critical to achieving the integration of professional and student learning. PDS partners and candidates focus on identifying and meeting students' diverse learning needs by drawing on academic and practitioner knowledge. Just as the patient provides the curriculum for medical students, residents, and staff physicians in a teaching hospital, the P–12 students provide the focus for candidate learning and faculty development in a PDS setting. The curriculum for candidates or for professional development for teachers does not come from outside the school. Rather, it is generated from the needs of students in the ESU PDS students and Resica students.

In the end, our student ultimately benefit as our PDS students often return to their host teacher for a portion of their student teaching experience.  Through this process our students are receiving additional instruction, instruction presented in a different manner and the benefit of another adult who is familiar with each student's diverse needs. 

Once the student teacher graduates, he or she has a more diverse scope of knowledge and strategies for teaching.  He or she has already dealt with many of the challenges that new teachers are often faced with, therefore, he or she is able to enter his or her first professional teaching assignment with more confidence, professionalism, and an awareness of the diverse needs of students and how to effectively address these needs.