Teachers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC)
With a one-year planning grant from the AT&T Foundation and two years of pilot funding from the Microsoft Partners in Learning (PiL) MidTier Project, NCTAF developed the Teachers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC) project. Utilizing a common platform, Tapped In (www.tappedin.org), to support the work of three partner sites, K-16 educators are able to develop and support a variety of online learning communities to enhance the progression of teacher learning from preservice, through induction and early teaching, and beyond. A grant award from the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) will fund the project’s continued growth and implementation in the partner sites for three years, through the fall of 2010.
NCTAF’s TLINC program is a significant innovation because it represents a major change from the standard practice of preparing teachers in isolation from the schools where they will serve, and then placing them as stand-alone teachers in self-contained classrooms. TLINC provides a professional learning community that expands and enhances face-to-face mentoring with online coaching and opportunities for facilitated reflection and peer collaboration to improve teaching quality and student achievement. TLINC gives teacher candidates and novice teachers the support of an interactive network composed of their preparation faculty, their peers and colleagues, and accomplished teachers who are only a click away when they need help with student learning, classroom management, or a curriculum design problem.
The TLINC project seeks to achieve the five following outcomes in its three project sites:
- Improved teacher retention;
- Accelerated proficiency for new teachers;
- Opportunities for all teachers, administrators, and university faculty to become engaged in a learning community that continues to evolve;
- Establishment of partnership capacity-building structures and processes that assure sustainability;
- Identification of the elements of TLINC that are the source of its power, to identify the essentials for replication and scaling.
In March, 2009 NCTAF entered into a partnership with Pearson, a leading education company with a deep commitment to learning communities, to explore ways that the TLINC model can be expanded and enhanced. Read the press release for more information.
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For more information on the TLINC project, please contact:
Kathleen Fulton Hanna Doerr
Director for Reinventing Schools Program Manager
for the 21st Century hdoerr@nctaf.org
kfulton@nctaf.org
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