COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

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Program Description

The Communities of Practice program provides ongoing professional development opportunities for teaching artists who work with students with disabilities. VSA arts has developed this professional learning community by drawing from the fields of teacher professional development, evaluation-research, and business management.

The core purpose of this VSA arts program is to cultivate meaningful professional discussion about student learning, universally designed curriculum, differentiated instruction, and assessment for students with disabilities. This discussion is grounded in reviews of curriculum documents and student learning evidence in relation to learning outcomes.

In the Communities of Practice, participants generate, evaluate, and share valuable curriculum knowledge with their colleagues. Expert instructional coaches and participants exchange feedback on their curriculum, assessment tools, and student work samples using a range of online and tele-conferencing tools. The Communities of Practice is meant to be an enhancement of existing professional development for teaching artists in the VSA arts U.S. domestic affiliate network. This year (fall 2008-spring 2009), teams from our Teaching Artist Fellowships and affiliates in Florida, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Texas participated.

Program Outcomes

The aim of the program is to support Teaching Artists in the VSA arts domestic affiliate residency programs to design high quality arts learning opportunities for students with disabilities. The program will support participants to:

Design engaging and meaningful standards-based arts curriculum.
Design valid assessment tools to inform differentiated instruction.
Collect and document student learning evidence.
Share insights into student learning and useful instructional strategies.

Outcomes

Activities

Data Source

Output

Teaching Artists will be able to:

Design engaging and meaningful standards-based arts curriculum.
Design valid assessment tools to inform differentiated instruction.
Collect and document student learning evidence.

VSA arts and Coaches will support Teaching Artists in using on-line tools and tele-conference calls to:

Map and evaluate curriculum design.
Design and validate assessments to plan for
Share insights into student learning and useful inclusive instructional strategies (UDL, DI) differentiated instruction.

Pre-survey
Curriculum maps
Curriculum documents (e.g., lesson plans).
Assessment tools (e.g., tasks, checklists, rubrics).
Student work samples.
Post-survey

Annotated student work samples.
Student learning summaries.*
Instructional narratives.*

* Output for Writing Honorariums (Spring 2009).

Communities of Practice Program Logic Model