8th Teachers' Conference Day 1

Keynote 1 - Louis Stoll

1. Confident teachers - collaborative
2. Willingness to innovate
3. School leader who create the conditions for 1 and 2

Teacher professionalism
- knowledge base, autonomy, creativity, adaptability

Professional learning community
- culture of teachers working together, feeling a sense of responsibility, de-privatization of classroom teaching
- learning from, learning on behalf of
- purposeful to make a positive difference to students' learning experiences and outcome

Questions to ask about our collaboration
1. Are our collaboration effective? - Spiral of Inquiry, collaboration bringing about deepening of practice and not just moved from one person or place to another
2. Do your forms of collaboration stimulate your creativity and promote (sensible) risk taking?
3.
4. What support is there to develop and ensure sustainability?
Do you see yourself as a catalyst of change?

Levels of Depth of teachers' interactions in PLCs (Coburn & Russell, 2008a, p. 230).

Level of Depth	Definition
Low	Talk related to one or more of the following: how to use materials; how to coordinate the text, standards, assessments, and pacing guides; how to organize the classroom; sharing materials or activities; general discussions of how a lesson went or whether students were getting it
Medium	Talk related to one or more of the following: discussions of how lessons went, including a discussion of why; detailed planning for lessons, including a discussion of why; specific and detailed discussion of whether students were learning (but not how students learn); discussion of instructional strategies in the context of observations; doing mathematics problems together with discussion
High	Talk related to one or more of the following: pedagogical principles underlying instructional approaches; how students learn, or the nature of students' mathematical thinking; mathematical principles or concepts