What Is Teacher Peer Assistance and Review? Ten Essential Questions Before You Begin Criteria, Standards and Data Defining the Roles, Relationships and Responsibilities of Key Players Reporting and Using the Results Best Practices
This book is about developing a Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) programme, where teacher partnership through joint responsibility improves the quality of teaching, strengthens teacher professionalism, and ultimately, enhances student learning. Peer assistance helps both new and veteran teachers improve and update their knowledge and skills by linking them with "consulting teachers" who provide support through observation, modeling, and sharing of information. Chapters 1 through 4 clearly define teacher peer assistance and review and why it is such a valuable tool for both teachers and administrators. The chapters guide us through the key concepts and major components of the programme, the good decision-making skills needed and asks many of the questions that must be answered in order to successfully implement this programme. Key players, their roles and responsibilities, methods, standards and criteria are also discussed at length. These concepts are skillfully drawn and will help all teachers and administrators from the most novice to the most senior raise the standards of their knowledge while improving the quality of learning for all students. Useful Web sites, sample forms, job descriptions, and applications, and an example of an educational policy trust agreement offer practical how-to help. Both administrators and teachers interested in understanding and incorporating a Peer Assistance and Review program will find this book an essential guide.
Lorin W. Anderson is Carolina Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of South Carolina, where he has served on the faculty for 27 years. He researches and publishes in the areas of classroom instruction and school learning, effective programs and practices for economically disadvantaged children and youth, the allocation and use of school time, and effective assessment. Leonard O. Pellicer is Dean of the School of Education and Organizational Leadership at the University of La Verne and Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the University of South Carolina. He has served in a number of teaching and leadership roles over the past thirty-five years. He served as the first director of the South Carolina Educational Policy Center, at the University of South Carolina, and was also the director of the African American Professors Program, a program designed to address the problem of a shortage of African American professors at predominantly white higher-education institutions. His experiences prior to joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina include service as a high school and middle school teacher, high school assistant principal, high school principal, and director of a teacher education center that provided staff development opportunities for teachers and administrators in five Florida school districts. In 1986 to 1987, he was a Fullbright Scholar in Southeast Asia. During this period, he taught graduate classes at the University of the Philippines and used his expertise in school leadership to assist in developing programs to train school leaders in the region. From 1992 to 195, he spent a good deal of time in the Republic of South Africa as a member of a team that developed a field-based training program for black principals in the "new South Africa." He holds a bachelor's degree in English education and master's and doctoral degrees in educational administration from the University of Florida in Gainesville. For more than twenty-five years, he has written, consulted, and spoken extensively in the areas of school leadership, instructional leadership, and educational programs for disadvantaged students. He has coauthored two other books with Lorin Anderson for Corwin Press, including A Handbook for Teacher Leaders (1995 and Teacher Peer Assistance and Review: A Practical Guide for Teachers and Administrators (2001).