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Lucent Technologies Peer Collaboration Initiative
 TPI has worked for the last six years with the Lucent Technologies Foundation to design, implement and administer the Lucent Peer Collaboration Initiative, a multi-million dollar, multi-year initiative aimed at creating a new model for fostering collaboration between teachers with the ultimate goal of improving the learning environment for students. What began in four pilot districts across the country in 1999, has grown to a focused three New Jersey school districts.
The formative Lucent Peer Collaboration Initiative was built on research that suggests that schools with collaborative cultures, where teachers are encouraged to learn from each other, may be better equipped to help students achieve their full potential. Yet, the average school day affords little opportunity for teachers to interact let alone observe, confer and learn from each other in their classrooms.
The design and implementation of the initiative has undergone many years of documented reflection, leading to a current New Jersey effort that focuses on three districts supporting their efforts to transform their professional development in ways that truly address relevant and contextual needs of students, teachers and administrators. Through the initiative teachers are offered training in cross project groups and hands-on assistance in their schools to help them create "teaching and learning communities" that encourage professional growth and strategic leadership planning. This helps to organize the school systems into ones that supports cultures of systemic and sustained learning.
The original pilot districts in the Lucent Peer Collaboration Initiative were closely studied by researchers at the National Center for Restructuring Education Schools and Teaching (NCREST) and the National Coalition for Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF). The results of this examination and documentation will be published in a forth coming book by SUNY Press in 2007. The Lucent Technologies Foundation continues to invest in this extensive project now supporting the documentation of the district work in New Jesrsey. This effort is being lead by a team of researches from the Collaboratory Inquiry and Development Group at the University of Southern Maine. The project is receiving significant interest from the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association. There are plans in the works to bring the wisdom and experience gained from the efforts of these three districts, to the vision for professional development in the state of New Jersey.
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