School-wide professional community and international assessment: Seeking a deeper understanding beyond the east-west comparison

This session focuses on school-wide and learning-centered professional community and its role in improving student learning. We engage researchers from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the U.S. to discuss collaborative research efforts that compliment international assessment results with qualitative probing into malleable in-school conditions. Leveraging results from PISA 2009, we present how professional community are interpreted and implemented in specific national contexts from the perspectives of policy researchers and principals of top-performing public schools.