about the program

Today's educators are expected to help the most diverse student population in United States history meet the highest education standards ever set. WestEd's Teacher Professional Development (TPD) Program helps classroom practitioners and education leaders meet that challenge.

The program's work is characterized by the recognition that teaching is a complex, non-routine, and responsive endeavor. To that end, TPD tailors its services to address all aspects of teacher development, from preservice education through teacher leadership, and the construction of school contexts that support the development of all educators.

Over the past decade and more, the Teacher Professional Development Program has continued to pursue two enduring challenges in secondary schools and community colleges across the country: how to work with English language learners and their teachers; and how to improve literacy in content area classes generally, and for struggling readers in particular. Two TPD projects are addressing these core education issues with research, professional development, and the development of instructional materials.

The program's Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) project has been working in the urban school districts of New York City, San Diego, and Austin, as well as in smaller and rural districts across the country, to help teachers understand and use QTEL principles and approaches. These practices, based in sociocultural learning theory and anchored with model curriculum, lead to improved motivation and performance for middle school and high school students who are English language learners, whether in mainstream or English as a second language classes. Teachers find the QTEL approach coherent and practical.

The Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI), through its network of the nearly 100,000 teachers who have taken up SLI practices, has made its signature Reading Apprenticeship program widely familiar in high school settings and, increasingly, in community colleges. In Reading Apprenticeship professional development, teachers learn generative strategies for making core content more accessible and engaging. Another focus of SLI professional development is the intensive reading and thinking course, Academic Literacy, a two-semester class that SLI developed for high school students reading one or two years below grade level.

Both QTEL and SLI also continue to add to the research base of how teachers and students learn and the conditions that lead to student growth in academic identity, motivation and stamina, and achievement.