The Knowledge Loom: The Practices

Overview

Using The Knowledge Loom: Ideas and Tools for Collaborative Professional 
Development provides a how-to resource for getting started with a 
collaborative process of professional development that includes selecting 
best practices and identifying ways to put them into action. While completing 
the activities in the Guidebook, you will be using The Knowledge Loom: What 
Works in Teaching and Learning Web site (http://knowledgeloom.org) as a 
content resource. The loom as a metaphor suggests a work in progress, a 
workspace where selected and varied threads are drawn together to craft a 
cohesive, unique, and useful fabric. Think about this Guidebook as a 
professional development resource loom where some threads have been 
collected for you, and others can be discovered and selected by you as your 
professional development process develops.

Some professional development facilitators and education leaders will find 
that following all the steps and activities in the Guidebook fits just right with 
their school improvement planning needs. Others will find that many of the 
activities can be modified and integrated into already-existing workshops 
and planned group interactions. As any team of educators uses The 
Knowledge Loom's content and the Guidebook's activities to move forward 
with a collaborative process of decision-making and benchmarking, other 
appropriate and related activities will most likely emerge. These can be 
integrated into the activities this Guidebook presents and be inserted into its 
binder.

Whether you add activities to those presented in the Guidebook or extract 
activities from the Guidebook to add to your own programs, The Knowledge 
Loom's content and the Guidebook's procedures can be powerful tools for 
planning effective professional development.
 
The Knowledge Loom and this Guidebook are not the only tools you will need 
to institute positive changes in teaching and learning. Some schools will need 
supplementary resources to help analyze data to pinpoint areas in need of 
improvement. Others will have already-existing school improvement activities 
in place and find that this Guidebook leads them to best practice resources, 
and more specifically, to a way of thinking about professional development 
initiatives and programs as ongoing, collaborative, and reflective.

School improvement is a process that does not end after an action plan for 
one or two goals has been set. It requires acting on your plan, systematically 
revisiting and monitoring results, and returning to The Knowledge Loom and 
other similar quality resources for information and inspiration as new needs 
arise.

Using The Knowledge Loom: Ideas and Tools for Collaborative Professional 
Development is designed as a model for planning school improvement 
through collaborative inquiry, using the proven practices presented on The 
Knowledge Loom: What Works in Teaching and Learning Web site to 
influence choices and actions.

Think of this Guidebook and its binder as your loom for collecting materials to 
influence exemplary teaching and learning.