This paper reports on the first in a series of studies aimed at describing the process through which innovations developed as part of a district-university partnership are taken over by the district in order to be sustained and scaled to an increasing number of classrooms. This study looks at the transition process by which the district is assuming control over summer institutes and Saturday workshops that support teachers enacting inquiry-rich science units. Over the past six years, the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) and the University of Michigan's Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education (hi-ce) have collaborated through the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS) to support systemic reform of middle grade science in the district's schools (Blumenfeld et al., 2000). Our reforms include the development and implementation of curricula that foster student inquiry and use of technology as well as a design model for professional development that seeks to link professional development activities with student learning (Singer et al., 2000; Kubitskey et al., 2002). In order to continue working toward our goal of bringing about systemic change, the LeTUS partners are trying to develop strategies to sustain and scale-up successful interventions as we simultaneously turn our attention to developing new innovations. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the process of shifting responsibility for a maturing innovation within a district-university partnership by describing how DPS teachers assumed control of the LeTUS Summer Institute from hi-ce curriculum developers. We start by describing what we know about successful partnerships, and how responsibilities are shared within these partnerships. After briefly describing the innovations impacted ...

To meet the recent demand for reform in science education (NRC, 1996; AAAS, 1993), the Center for Highly Interactive Classrooms, Curricula, Computing in Education (hi-ce) at the University of Michigan has created inquiry-based, technology-infused curriculum

One of the most difficult challenges in research on teacher learning is identifying and documenting linkages between teacher learning, classroom practice, and student learning (Loucks-Horsley & Matsumoto, 1999; Wilson & Berne, 1999). Demonstrating convincing evidence of this proposed linkage is important, especially in a policy climate that emphasizes accountability in terms of student test performance (e.g., U.S. Department of Education, 2001). The development of rigorous academic standards (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993) and an increased emphasis on systemic reform (Smith & O'Day, 1991) as a means of fostering educational change pre-date the current accountability emphasis, but operate in combination with accountability to create a greater demand for high-quality teachers of science. Professional development is frequently cited as the cornerstone of any reform effort that hopes to create systemic changes leading to improved student performance on academic standards (Committee on Science and Mathematics Teacher Preparation, 2001), and many recent funding efforts have sought to focus attention on teacher learning and its role in fostering improved student learning. Though it has long been assumed that improving teachers ’ knowledge leads to

The past decade has seen great strides in the design of new learning technologies that support learning aligned with standards-based constructivist and inquiry teaching practices. Though there is considerable evidence that these technologies can help students learn when used appropriately, they are rarely employed beyond the small-scale settings in which they were designed and nurtured. Therefore, they have had only limited impact on K-12 education. This paper argues that a major reason current learning technologies are not being used broadly in schools is that there are incompatibilities between the demands of the innovations being introduced by the research community and the extant culture, capability, and management structures of schools. There are many plausible reasons; we suggest that a primary one is the nature of current research on learning technologies. We propose that research on technology for learning should give expanded attention to a broad range of factors in school set...

this paper we use variations of our design approach for professional development as a template to examine professional development and the resulting learning, examining its usefulness both as an evaluative as well as a diagnostic tool in professional development design. We evaluate professional development through analyzing the workshop enactments and post-workshop interviews with teachers to identify the content and strategies used and the expressed impact on the teacher learning. Next we apply our design approach to professional development to two different classroom investigations. Through these case analyses we demonstrate both the diagnostic and evaluative nature of our design cycle for professional development. Our investigation examines teachers' "knowing that," as measured through teachers' expressed learning from professional development, and "knowing how," as witnessed in classroom observations. As Ryle (1949) has suggested, "knowing that" and "knowing how" are not only different, but distinct ways of knowing. Teachers' "knowing how" manifests itself in action which we observe and we measure the professional development's success or failure by investigating resulting student achievement. However, investigating the "knowing how" aspect of teacher learning is time consuming and labor intensive. By analyzing the workshops and teachers reported learning from the workshops "know that", we create a sketch of the professional development activities and what the teachers believe they learned. By applying our design approach to professional development 2 we add color and life to the picture through illustrative examples of teacher learning examined at a finer grain. The combination of methods we employ in this approach creates a mosaic that has both form and substance ...

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