Great Expectations: Emergent Professional Development Schools

Of all the reform efforts in teacher education, the professional development school (PDS) shows the greatest promise, because its aim is to tie reforms in teacher education to reforms in schools. We describe an evolving partnership between the University of Utah and the Salt Lake City School District to create professional development schools, and we discuss several dilemmas confronted in the process: didactic versus constructivist views of teaching and learning, replicative versus reflective orientations, basic versus applied research, program continuity versus equity in faculty loads, coherence versus democracy, and collaboration versus academic freedom.