Powerful Teacher Learning

What the Theatre Arts Teach about Collaboration

This book offers an innovative approach to understanding and supporting teacher inquiry groups, Critical Friends Groups, “PLCs,” and other vehicles for the school-wide professional learning community. It takes the reader outside traditional sites of professional development for teachers and into the black box theatres and rehearsal studios of contemporary theatre companies. It investigates the methods and specific tools these theatre artists use to collectively create new works for performance. Drawing on these methods and tools, it provides a model for understanding and improving the practices of teacher learning groups, one that highlights the means, materials, and modes of engagement of a group’s activity.

Applying the model to elementary and high school teacher learning groups, it demonstrates how teachers, coaches, and administrators can use it to foster meaningful professional learning and instructional improvement. The book provides not only new ways of thinking about teacher learning in schools, but also frameworks and specific tools to bring teacher learning as collective creation to life.