Teacher Leadership Development: Building Bridges not Borders between Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Educators

Teacher leadership development receives considerable attention in many educational reforms across the globe. This article reports on a unique partnership in Jerusalem that brings Israeli and Palestinian educators together to cultivate teacher leaders who facilitate professional communities and support continual improvement in teaching and learning. The research design involves participatory action research and draws on theoretical frameworks of democratic education, productive professional discourse, and authentic intellectual work. Findings focus on the enhancement of multicultural training, increased depth of pedagogical discussions, and improvement in leading teacher learning communities. The conclusions consider the ways in which a few bridges are overcoming both real and perceived borders in a region of persisting cultural tension and conflict, as the teacher leaders and co-authors developed an emerging common understanding of a shared conception of professional practice across three languages, and a growing mutual respect for the ‘other’.

Assessing Authentic Intellectual Work in Mathematics Tasks

This paper reports an analysis of the tasks included in the Mathematical Challenges book. The analysis was based on the proposals of the Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW). The purpose of the study focuses on assessing the potential of the mathematical challenges to promote in-depth and meaningful learning through the connection with different contexts, and other features including purpose, multiple-solution pathways, construction of knowledge and higher order thinking. Participants in this study were 3 elementary school teachers, 2 mathematics specialists and the authors of this paper; they assessed the Mathematical Challenges through a questionnaire based on specific rubrics. The study used a mixed methods approach. The analysis produced two main findings. First, challenges vary in their connections to students' lives according to the context they come from. Second, almost all mathematical challenges are related to the highest levels of others AIW criteria.

Writing the Book…Literally: The Convergence of Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) and Project-Based Learning (PBL)

Using the Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) models, we sought to create coursework that had value beyond the classroom. Refinements in the self-publishing book industry provide the opportunity to present student work to a larger audience and in a different, more engaging format. With the help of free software, our classes were able to publish professionally-finished books for sale on Amazon.com. This article shows how we designed, implemented, assessed and evaluated a book-writing project for graduate (leadership studies) and undergraduate (science education) students who wrote, edited, designed, and published it at the end of the course.