Designing Powerful Professional Development for Teachers and Principals

By Dennis Sparks Dennis Sparks has assembled in one place his ideas for connecting the quality of teaching and leadership to the improvement of schools. In this 14-chapter book, Sparks makes his case for powerful professional learning and then demonstrates to readers how their schools and school systems can provide that learning for their teachers and principals.

As NSDC's executive director for 16 years, Sparks has been a leader in shaping the field's new vision of professional learning. As evidence of that, NSDC has chosen to publish his new book online as a way to quickly spread his ideas to the widest possible audience.

This book is available here as Adobe Acrobat PDF files. If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer, click here to download that software at no charge.

You have several choices for downloading this book. See the complete table of contents below. You may take the entire book, parts that include several related chapters, or individual chapters. In order to create additional copies of this book, you will need to download the cover and the copyright notice page.

Download the Book
(free but registration required)

This book is free. Before you download the book, you are required fill out a simple form giving us your name, email address, organization, and intended use of this book. Your information will not be shared outside of the NSDC staff.

Designing Powerful Professional Development for Teachers and Principals is now available in printed form! Visit the NSDC Bookstore to order your hard copy. Or, you may still download the entire book for free. Users are invited to download and print out individual chapters or the entire book. We recommend using a three-ring binder that includes a clear, front pocket for inserting a book cover. We have also created a spine insert with the title for this purpose.

We are anxious to learn how you use this book and invite your email responses regarding this. Please send email to Dennis Sparks (dennis.sparks@nsdc.org), author and Executive Director of NSDC, and Joan Richardson (joan.richardson@nsdc.org), Director of Publications.

When you use the link above to register and download the book, you will see the following options. Headings in bold indicate different chapters or sections that you will be able to download as PDF files.

Entire book

Cover and copyright notice page

Spine for a notebook

Table of contents

Introduction

Part I: Set the stage for powerful professional learning

Chapter 1
The Case for Powerful Professional Learning
Chapter 2
Stretch Goals, Deep Change, and a Compelling Vision
Chapter 3
A Compelling vision for Professional Learning

Part II: Provide a context for professional learning

Chapter 4
Develop the System to Improve Learning
Chapter 5
School System Responsibilities
Chapter 6
A Goal for District Action: All Schools as Professional Learning Communities

Part III: Develop school leaders

Chapter 7
School Leadership
Chapter 8
The Development of Principals and Teacher Leaders

Part IV: Develop teachers

Chapter 9
Focus Teacher Development on Student Learning
Chapter 10
Continuous Improvement of Teaching and Learning

Part V: Get to the heart of the matter

Chapter 11
Look for Root Causes
Chapter 12
Lead for a Transformation in Professional Learning
Chapter 13
The Power of What We Think
Chapter 14
Create Schools in Which Everyone's Job is To Learn