The Aspen Institute

For students to become powerful learners, their teachers must engage in powerful learning themselves. Yet the professional learning many teachers experience is often disconnected from the curriculum, disconnected from specific students and their learning needs, and disconnected from their daily work. What’s needed is a tightly connected systems focus on continually increasing the knowledge and skills of teachers in their context, with their colleagues, as central to improving student learning. At its heart this is an equity issue, ensuring that all students in a system have equal access to rich, high-quality learning.