Teaching Quality

Excited conversations filled the Intellectual House at the University of Washington until the side doors of the gathering hall had to be propped open to make room for the heat and energy.

UW College of Education students and faculty gathered the evening of August 10 for a joint showcase of teacher candidates’ culminating projects for their course “Understanding Tribal Perspectives: Implications for Teaching and Learning” and the first graduates of the UW’s Native Education Certificate Program.

For teachers, professional development is too often an exercise of sitting, listening and taking in information from an expert—though rarely another classroom teacher.

Teachers from several Puget Sound elementary schools, however, are working to create a new model in which they take charge of their own professional learning. This July, a group of approximately 20 teacher fellows came together to explore how project-based learning can transform the classroom and plan how they’ll build their practice around student inquiry throughout the coming school year.

Learning opportunities are everywhere!

Max Silverman, a nationally recognized leader with expertise in improving instructional leadership systems focused on equitable outcomes for students, has been named executive director of the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership.

Silverman, who will assume his duties on July 1, has served in a variety of leadership positions throughout his career including school principal, central office leader, and most recently as deputy director of the Center for Educational Leadership.

Diana Hess (PhD '98), a scholar renowned for her work advancing civic education, has received the University of Washington College of Education’s 2018 Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Hess, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holder the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education, is winner of two of the most prestigious awards in education research: the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award (2016) and the Grawemeyer Award in Education (2017).

University of Washington College of Education Professor James Mazza, a former president of the American Association of Suicidology, recently answered questions about youth suicide, mental health issues and the role of educators during a Facebook Live chat.

Tleena Ives grew up immersed in the language and culture of her Native people, the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe—knowledge gleaned from her extended family and her early education.

"My memories from my early experience in education included learning to speak in S'Klallam, learning our traditional songs and dances, and being instilled with a great sense of cultural identity," Ives said.

So when it came to the education of her own four children, she worked ardently as a parent volunteer to help shape the tribe's early learning curriculum to reflect this important heritage.

A three-year, teacher-researcher partnership focused on the implementation of Next Generation Science Standards in an urban kindergarten classroom highlights how a designed learning environment can support the learning of emergent bilingual students.

Examples of sustained instructional improvement across an entire school district are rare, but a five-year research-practice partnership between the University of Washington College of Education and a mid-sized urban district highlights the power of networked educators.

Learning how to use evidence in making an argument is a critical skill for students to build, yet difficulties frequently arise when discipline-based learning goals conflict with schooling tasks.

University of Washington College of Education researchers took on that challenge by partnering with teachers of a project-based AP Environmental Science course to develop and revise design principles for creating "material tools" that can adequately scaffold disciplinary practice and support formative assessment, while also helping students' create better arguments.