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Research Methods and Issues

• Changing the way we do our business: One department's story of collaboration with public schools.
  This article describes the efforts of the University of South Florida's Department of Special Education to change its approach to educating special education teachers, by making a total commitment to align its work with public schools in developing a network of Professional Development Schools to reflect a collaborative model of training and research.
• Contradictions in Collaboration: New Thinking on School/University Partnerships
  This book is based on a 6-year longitudinal study of collaboration in a professional development school (PDS) project involving 45 educators. Teachers and principals from the schools and faculty and doctoral students from the university work together to plan, implement, and evaluate a Master's of Education program.
• Enabling school-university collaborative research: Lessons learned in professional development schools
  Examines events that facilitated collaborative school-university research within a Professional Development School (PDS). Analysis of observation notes from school visits, records of schools' work with university liaisons, and surveys of PDS and school faculty indicated that PDS teachers highly valued sharing knowledge with colleagues.
• Learning to Co-Construct Critical Processes in an Urban School-University Partnership.
  Content Abstract: This article tells the story of how university and school personnel collaborated to revise a fifth grade writing program. The project was named Rethink/Rewrite because it focused on having students consider contrasting portrayals of people and events in the social studies textbooks and in alternative materials about the same historical periods by African Americans and Native Peoples.
• PDS Partnerships Come of Age
  Describes professional-development schools, partnerships between university teacher-education programs and schools, involving professors, teachers, and teacher interns. Tells how mutual respect and collaborative innovation developed in one such professional-development school in Camden, New Jersey.
• Research from professional development schools: Can we live up to the potential?
  Examines findings of Professional Development School (PDS) researchers on the potential of PDSs to change and improve the quality of education, discussing Holmes Group research, describing barriers that have limited the contribution from PDS research, and arguing for greater focus on professional development, leadership, and policy if the PDS movement is to fulfill its potential.
• School-university partnerships
  Examines the preservice teacher education role of professional development schools in the context of school-university partnerships. The necessary joining of K-12 and university cultures raises numerous problems, including dealing with cultural clash and schools of education, sustaining leadership and commitment, providing adequate resources, modeling authentic collaboration, and avoiding the quick-fix syndrome.
• Seeing Schools Through New Lenses: A Qualitative Approach to Observing in Schools
  This paper reports the development and evaluation of an observation guide that draws on qualitative techniques of participant observation and semistructured interviewing to help anyone interested in visiting and understanding schools to develop a ”big picture” profile quickly and efficiently.
• Seeing Schools Through New Lenses: A Qualitative Approach to Observing in Schools
  This paper reports the development and evaluation of an observation guide that draws on qualitative techniques of participant observation and semistructured interviewing to help anyone interested in visiting and understanding schools to develop a ”big picture” profile quickly and efficiently. The guide reflects the philosophy of E.
• The collaboration process in professional development schools: Results of a meta-ethnography, 1990-1998.
  Examined the characteristics of the college-school collaboration process in Professional Development Schools (PDSs), using meta-ethnography to analyze 20 case studies about the PDS collaboration process. Results yielded 12 themes about the collaboration process (e.g., unwillingness to work with others, prior relationships, sustained funding, miscommunication, strains in intra-organizational relations, and conflicting organizational goals).