David E. Lynch

This book is full of vignettes illustrating how professional learning can be integrated into the day-to-day work of schools and, in doing so, focus on continuous improvement, enhancing teaching quality and raising student achievement. In presenting best practice exemplars to illustrate how professional learning can positively impact teaching quality and school improvement, this book will inspire each classroom teacher and school leader. It will support them in creating and sustaining a strong performance culture.

From three of Australia's leading teaching and teacher education researchers comes a book about creating the outstanding school. Lynch, Madden and Doe provide an easy to read text that is all about ensuring every student gets a quality education. Each chapter explains, in easy to read terms, a set of ideas and research-based strategies that schools and their teachers can employ to reform their school. The book identifies for the reader and then explains the key research-based elements that lie at the heart of creating the outstanding school. The book features the Collaborative Teacher Learning Model and the elements of 'teaching,' 'leadership', 'coaching', 'mentoring', 'feedback', 'data driven decision-making', 'high impact instruction' and the idea of 'teachers as researchers' as the embodiment of a school-based strategy for creating the outstanding school. This book is compulsive reading for teachers and school leaders and those who care about our children's education future.

What does it mean to be a 'teacher researcher'? This book explores this question by showcasing examples of what teachers are doing when they act as a teacher researcher. While classroom teachers have always collected information and read to improve their teaching knowledge the concept of 'teacher as researcher', in the traditional researcher sense, is a relatively new concept in schools and classrooms. This book showcases how teachers from across the globe are contributing to the field of educational knowledge by acting as a 'teacher researcher'. The central premise of this book is that when teachers act as a teacher researcher they engage in a powerful professional development strategy: one that increases their individual and collective teaching capacities, which in turn, engages them in school reforms and innovations which enable teachers to deal with short and long term educational challenges.