PDS Partnership Goals

Aligning with National Standards

The Professional Development System is designed to align with National NCATE PDS standards and critical organizational resources of the university and P-12 partnership schools around the following PDS goals:

To improve the lives, learning and opportunities of all students.

To enhance the curriculum, structures, school culture and community ties for P-12 school and UNCW staff and faculty

To prepare new teachers and administrators in a professional, collegial environment through experiences that they will likely face in the early years of their new roles

To research, assess, reflect upon and/or disseminate the results of partnership work

These goals reflect our understanding that concurrent reforms in teacher preparation and school transformation can best be brought about when schools and universities work together in partnerships. Based on this knowledge, PDS goals focus on redesigning and integrating roles, aligning resources, and establishing collaborative structures for solving problems in the university and partnership schools.

Unlike some professional development school initiatives detailed in the literature which may impact a single school and a narrow subset of teachers, students, and university faculty, the Watson College’s PDS represents a more comprehensive approach to partnership. It has become broad based and powerful enough to include the entire teacher education faculty, representatives from departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, over 1700 trained partners, and more than 500 public school educators each year from over 125 partnership schools.