Building Capacity to Transform Literacy Learning

The National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) supports teams of educators in collaborative, inquirybased professional learning. Effective collaborative inquiry teams build sustainable capacity in schools by giving teachers skills, structures, and support systems to continually learn from and refine their shared practice. Both empirical research and international comparisons tell us that investments in this kind of adult learning lead to powerful changes in student learning. Research also provides clear evidence about the specific characteristics that make collaborative inquiry teams effective. NCLE’s portfolio of supports for collaborative inquiry teams will be closely guided by a framework derived from this research. This document briefly summarizes literature on the impact of teacher collaboration on student learning and the specific characteristics that make teams effective.