The Teachers Institute Approach

Teachers Institutes are educational partnerships between universities and school districts designed to strengthen teaching and learning in a community's high-need public schools. Evaluations have shown that the Institute Approach exemplifies the characteristics of high-quality teacher professional development, enhances teacher quality in ways known to improve student achievement, and encourages participants to remain in teaching in their schools.

Teachers Institutes focus on the academic preparation of school teachers and on their application in their own classrooms of what they study in the Institute. By linking institutions of higher education with urban or rural school districts where the students are mainly from low-income communities, Institutes strengthen teaching and learning in public schools and also benefit the institutions whose faculty members serve as seminar leaders.

A Teachers Institute places equal emphasis on teachers increasing their knowledge of a subject and on their developing teaching strategies that will be effective with their students. At the core of its program is a series of collaborative seminars on subjects in the humanities and sciences. Topics are requested by the teachers based on what they think could enrich their classroom instruction. In the seminars, the university or college faculty members contribute their knowledge of a subject, while the school teachers contribute their expertise in elementary and secondary school pedagogy, their understanding of the students they teach, and their grasp of what works in the crucible of the classroom. Successful completion of a seminar requires that the teachers, with guidance from a faculty member, write an original curriculum unit to be used in their own classroom and to be shared with others in the same school and other schools through both print and online publication.

Throughout the process the seminar leader and teachers are colleagues. Unlike conventional university or professional development courses, Institute seminars involve at their very center a collegial exchange of ideas among school teachers and university or college faculty members. The teachers admitted to seminars, however, are not a highly selective group, but rather a cross-section of those in the system, many of whom, like their counterparts across the country, did not major in one or more of the subjects they teach. By including teachers of kindergarten through twelfth grade, the Institute promotes articulation of curriculum throughout a school system, as well as interdisciplinary teaching and curriculum, in which teachers of the earlier grades can assist teachers in the later grades who have tended to specialize in one or two subjects. The Institute Approach assumes that urban or rural public school teachers can engage in serious study of the field and can devise appropriate and effective curricula based on this study.

Articles of Understanding have been developed to provide the constitutional grounding for Teachers Institutes that adopt this model. Although listed as separate Articles, they are interrelated elements of an organically unified approach. Each is accompanied by Procedures for its implementation. The Understandings and Procedures define the Teachers Institute Approach and distinguish it both from conventional professional development offerings of school districts and from traditional continuing education and outreach programs of colleges and universities.