May 27, 2025

Released on May 23, 2025, three new books written by WestEd authors are available to support educators and school leaders with elevating their instructional and leadership practices. Published by Teachers College Press, the books provide research-based approaches to designing supportive environments for productive teaching and learning.

Building VITAL Collaboration™ for School Leaders and Educators

VITAL (Visibly Improving Teaching and Learning) Collaboration™ is WestEd’s research-based professional learning communities (PLCs) framework to help teachers and school leaders grow and improve together through collaborative instructional inquiry. Unlike other approaches, the VITAL model uses concrete evidence from teacher practice and student learning to create clear goals and pathways for instructional improvement.

Using this framework, A School Leader’s Guide to VITAL Collaboration: Building and Sustaining PLC Systems That Improve Teaching and Learning offers school leaders a research-based and evidence-driven approach to fostering collaborative inquiry that improves collective teacher effectiveness. The book includes field-tested strategies, practical tools and guidance, and actionable steps for implementation.

The companion text, A Teacher’s Guide to VITAL Collaboration: Facilitating Evidence-Driven Inquiry in PLCs to Improve Teaching and Learning, provides K–12 educators with powerful tools and facilitation techniques to enhance both teaching and professional growth through collaborative work in teacher teams.

“Our goal is to move professional learning communities beyond just a process or a routine,” said Kevin Perks, author of the VITAL guides and senior managing director of WestEd’s Quality Schools and Districts team.

“We want to help educators and school leaders engage in collaborative and meaningful conversations that transform teaching and learning. The VITAL framework and the field-tested strategies in the guides go a long way in helping achieve that goal.”

Supporting Multilingual Learners

English and Multilingual Learners can engage in challenging dialogue and texts even as they develop English. Amplifying the Curriculum: Designing Quality Learning Opportunities for Multilingual Learners (Second Edition) starts with this premise and argues for instruction that amplifies—rather than simplifies—expectations, concepts, and text understanding of discipline-specific practices for English and Multilingual Learners.

Expanded and revised from the first edition published in 2019, this volume includes four new chapters that build on the original text. It explores ways educators can design high-quality, challenging, and supportive learning opportunities for English and Multilingual Learners, including a chapter in Spanish with proposals for elementary and secondary teachers.

“My coauthors and I wanted to update the book to provide teachers with an ambitious vision of quality and rigor for English Learners and all other students, as well as tool them with the pedagogy to accomplish the vision,” said Aída Walqui, coauthor of the book and director and principal investigator of the National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners housed at WestEd.

Through this text, Walqui and her coauthors, George C. Bunch and Peggy Mueller, guide teachers through the coherent design of units, lessons, and tasks that invite all students to engage in deep, meaningful interactions as they develop their knowledge and skills.

Add These Books to Your Toolkit

To learn more about these texts and purchase them for your collection visit the following links

• A School Leader’s Guide to VITAL Collaboration: Building and Sustaining PLC Systems That Improve Teaching and Learning
• A Teacher’s Guide to VITAL Collaboration: Facilitating Evidence-Driven Inquiry in PLCs to Improve Teaching and Learning
• Amplifying the Curriculum: Designing Quality Learning Opportunities for Multilingual Learners (Second Edition)