Chapter 8: Shared Inquiry: The Professional Development School as a Laboratory of Practice for Preparing the Next Generation of Teacher Educators

The Professional Development School (PDS) is the ideal laboratory of practice for bringing together and scrutinizing visions of teaching and learning. The PDS provides a living laboratory where the tensions and debates surrounding best practices are enacted day-to-day and moment-to-moment. The PDS is a setting that enables respectful and productive relationships to form around the pursuit of answers to the persistent questions and complex problems of schooling. Within the PDS, shared inquiry is the engine that drives the learning community and affords opportunities for forming the next generation of teacher educators. This chapter illustrates how a school and university partnership in the form of a PDS provides an excellent venue for marrying the wisdom of practice with the wisdom of practitioners. Here we provide a model for sustained, job-embedded professional growth for teachers and professors at all stages of their careers. We believe this environment to be most authentic for pre paring the next generation of teacher educators and, therefore, an ideal setting in which to situate a doctoral program.