Topic: Distributed Expertise

This organizer breaks down aspects of how teachers experience their roles, starting with workday, collaboration, and duties. These aspects are the result of decisions about school system elements, or “levers.” This framing allows teachers and leaders to discuss how those decisions about school levers create aspects of the teacher experience that are enabling or constraining.

Residencies are backed by a strong evidence base across a range of outcomes (Azar, Grossman, Lozier & Scheib, 2021). This resource proposes new opportunities to better support teacher residents through

This protocol helps educators make strategic decisions around how to best leverage the distributed expertise of team members. Additionally, it can help to identify other educators who may need to join the team and in what capacities.

Interest-based student groupings are groupings driven by student voice and choice. This planning protocol is an opportunity for team members to explore ways to leverage your team of educators to provide student voice and choice within a lesson or across a unit. In it, you’ll identify a lesson or unit appropriate for interest-based student groupings, draft student choices and work together to plan team deployment.

Skills-based student groupings are groupings based on formative student learning data. This planning protocol is an opportunity for team members to explore how you might leverage your team of educators to differentiate instruction for learners. In it, you’ll identify the objective(s) of your choice, draft a check for understanding and work together to plan team deployment for skills-based student groupings.

Hear from Stevenson Elementary School principal Krista Adams about educator teams’ dynamic approach to supporting students.

Mountain View School kindergarten lead teacher Danielle Ashenbrener describes how a team-based approach has helped her to get to know her students better and to target student learning to meet individual students’ needs.

hat’s normal in education is broken. Nationally, teacher preparation programs have long seen declining enrollment. Teachers switch careers or retire early. They receive less pay and enjoy less social status than many other professionals. The job is hard in specific ways that inhibit success. That’s not good for educators. It’s not good for learners. And it’s not good for communities. In collaboration with school and community partners, Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College is working to change that. 

SPARK School at Kyrene de las Manitas has shifted from teacher-owned conferences to a student-led approach. This change supports the educator team’s goal of creating a student-centered learning environment in which learners own their progress and goals. This resource guides educator teams through steps critical to adopting student-led conferences.

In an effort to shift the ownership of learning from educator to student, SPARK School at Kyrene de las Manitas has implemented a system for students to reflect on their learning and progress, identify the academic support they need and schedule time to meet with the appropriate educator(s). This resource guides educator teams through steps to implementing student-selected support.

The educator team at Kyrene de las Manitas Innovation Academy co-plans project-based units that support deeper learning. The 10 tips appearing in this document are drawn from their approach to planning. To get started, consider how your team might implement these tips.

Next Education Workforce team-based structures can strengthen the project-based learning instructional approach. This unit planning template takes educators through the steps of designing a PBL unit, while also planning for how to maximize distributed expertise.

The Creighton Academy in Phoenix, Arizona serves about 300 students in grades K–6. Every student is a member of a covey: a multi-age group of 55–60 students. Students work with educators specific to their coveys and educators who work across coveys. Here, you’ll learn how they’re implementing a team-based model.

At Sousa Elementary School in Mesa, Arizona, an educator team consisting of one lead teacher, three certified teachers, one special educator and three MLFTC residents supports a multi-age group of

Hear from MLFTC Dean Carole Basile about the relationship between deeper and personalized learning and teams of educators with distributed expertise.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.

In this resource, you’ll find several recommendations for how all-remote teams might deploy their educators to best meet the needs of students.

Dive deeper into one of the big ideas highlighted in the Elements of the Next Education Workforce: teams of educators with distributed expertise. This brief asks three questions: “What does

This clip features four educators from SPARK School. In it, they describe the impact of teaming with distributed expertise on both educators and students.

Several times a week, for a 20-minute period, SPARK students engage in Student-Selected Mindfulness Time. In this clip, a fourth-grade SPARK student and an MLFTC teacher candidate describe the activities students engage in and how they make their choices.