this reminds again of The Teaching Gap research. 
The Japanese model highlighted in the book emphasized the lesson/technique/approach NOT the instructor. The line of questioning in the teaching team (required in public school settings) is How can we change the activity to better help these students learn? (not what did I do wrong?)

A tweaking process similar to what you describe occurs on-going. This back-to-the-drawing-board method allows varied learning strategies within a group of students. I recommend some time reading the study.
Joanne

Joanne Hala
Literacy Services
Jointure for Community Adult Education, Inc.
Raritan, NJ



In the Adult Multiple Intelligences study we used the descriptive review
process with the 10 teacher researcher partners. It's a protocol by
which a group of practitioners focuses on one teacher's work at a time
using multiple rounds of comments. There are variations on the protocol
but here's how we implemented it: The teacher presents her question or a
dilemma, usually with sample student work or sample of her teacher
research data as well as some context for her class and program. In the
first round, the other participants can ask clarifying questions only. A
clarifying question involves factual information only, no opinions or
judgements.  In the next round, the participants offer suggestions and
recommendations using phases like, "I wonder what would happen if. . ."
rather than, for example, "You should . . ." Each person can make only
one suggestion at a time or they can pass.  It usually takes at least
two rounds for all the comments to come out. The presenting teacher does
not respond to them until the end. This ensures that the feedback does
not become a dialogue between two people.  The facilitator ensures that
the feedback does not make the presenting teacher vulnerable and also
summarizes the comments at the end of each round.  The process worked
well because it was so focused and engaged everyone in considering one
person's work at a time.  Some of the comments and suggestions  gave us
ideas for other types of sharing and PD activities that we did later
with the same teachers.
Silja


 


 


Joanne Hala
Literacy Services Coordinator
Jointure for Community Adult Education, Inc
(908) 872-9573
(908) 359-7744 fax

 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Silja Kallenbach <skallenbach at worlded.org>
To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov
Sent: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 9:10 am
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1375]   Re: descriptive review










In the Adult Multiple Intelligences study we used the descriptive review
process with the 10 teacher researcher partners. It's a protocol by
which a group of practitioners focuses on one teacher's work at a time
using multiple rounds of comments. There are variations on the protocol
but here's how we implemented it: The teacher presents her question or a
dilemma, usually with sample student work or sample of her teacher
research data as well as some context for her class and program. In the
first round, the other participants can ask clarifying questions only. A
clarifying question involves factual information only, no opinions or
judgements.  In the next round, the participants offer suggestions and
recommendations using phases like, "I wonder what would happen if. . ."
rather than, for example, "You should . . ." Each person can make only
one suggestion at a time or they can pass.  It usually takes at least
two rounds for all the comments to come out. The presenting teacher does
not respond to them until the end. This ensures that the feedback does
not become a dialogue between two people.  The facilitator ensures that
the feedback does not make the presenting teacher vulnerable and also
summarizes the comments at the end of each round.  The process worked
well because it was so focused and engaged everyone in considering one
person's work at a time.  Some of the comments and suggestions  gave us
ideas for other types of sharing and PD activities that we did later
with the same teachers.
Silja

*********************************************
Silja Kallenbach, Director
New England Literacy Resource Center
World Education
44 Farnsworth Street
Boston, MA 02210
tel. 617-482-9485
fax. 617-482-0617
skallenbach at worlded.org
www.nelrc.org

Get free resources about ABE/ESOL-to-college transitions at
www.collegetransition.org 
Teach critical thinking  with The Change Agent, a social justice
publication for the adult education community, available at
www.nelrc.org/changeagent

>>> "Cristine Smith" <cristinesmith at comcast.net> 7/10/2007 3:22 PM >>>

Ira:  I haven't heard about Descriptive Review; could you tell us
something
about it?  (Meanwhile, I'll go Google it!)  Thanks.  Best...Cris

Cristine Smith
Assistant Professor
Center for International Education
University of Massachusetts
285 Hills House South
Amherst, MA 01003
413-545-2731
cristine at educ.umass.edu 
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov 
[mailto:professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Yankwitt
Ira
(79K755)
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 2:57 PM
To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov 
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1366] Re: ProfessionalDevelopment
Digest,Vol 22, Issue 10

Hi Cris,

I am one of those practitioners who would be very grateful if you
developed that guidebook!  I recently took on a new position overseeing
professional development in a program that has over 400 teachers,
working in 150 different sites throughout New York City.  While some of
our teachers work in large learning centers, where up to two dozen
classes take place at any given time, others work in church basements or
CBOs, where they may be the sole instructor.  What every one of the
teachers I've spoken to has said is that they want more opportunities to
share questions and ideas with their colleagues.  I think that having a
tool and a structure to guide that process would be invaluable.

I'm wondering if you, or anyone else on the list, has seen the K12
literature on Descriptive Review?  I am only familiar with it from
discussion with friends who work in elementary education, but I'm
curious if it may be an approach that could guide the kind of embedded,
practitioner-led PD that you've described.  Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Ira


Ira Yankwitt
Director of Program Initiatives
Office of Adult and Continuing Education
NYC Department of Education

-----
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:06:32 -0400
From: "Cristine Smith" <cristinesmith at comcast.net>
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1362] Re: from Cris,  job-embedded
    professional development
To: "'The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List'"
    <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Message-ID: <002a01c7c314$aaabda60$bc797780 at provost.ads.umass.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Susan:  Great questions!  Job-embedded PD is a little different than the
practicum idea, I think, because job-embedded PD assumes a group of
teachers
working together; the facilitator's job is not to know anything
necessarily
about the content but just to set up the group's activities ("OK, now
let's
share artifacts.what if we now work on a new lesson plan", etc.)  Having
said that, while mentoring or coaching is usually one-to-one, NCSALL
experimented with a model of PD called "mentor teacher groups", where
one
experienced teacher was trained to be a "mentor" to five teachers, and
the
teachers all met BOTH with each other in a group and one-on-one with the
mentor.  If you want more information about this type of PD, see the
Mentor
Teacher Group guide at:  http://www.ncsall.net/?id=1015 

As for your questions, here are some of my thoughts:

 
o        How would the mentor/coaching teachers be chosen? K-12 seems to
just assume that more experienced teachers will mentor newer ones.

In my experience, there has to be an affinity between the two
participants
(practitioner and mentor or coach).  Assigning people has its dangers
because what if you just don't respect the person who has been
"allocated"
as your mentor or coach?  The best way, I think, is to let teachers
choose
who they want to mentor and coach them.  However, this isn't always
possible
because of funding and job constraints.  The best we can do sometimes is
to
give people some choice either to be mentored or coached by a particular
person.or not.  But for job-embedded PD, the group of teachers can
choose
themselves whether they want someone from their midst to facilitate
(hence,
the need for a guidebook for job-embedded PD facilitators.I really do
need
to write this, I think!), or whether they want to ask someone from the
state
or district or program PD system to help them.  But again, the
facilitator
of job-embedded PD is not supposed to have all the "content" answers but
rather a facilitator of the group to work together to figure out itself
what
it wants to do
 

o        How would we keep supervision and evaluation out of
mentoring/coaching? Barkley had really solid ideas about what language
to
use to distinguish the two, but some of the program directors I've
spoken
with want it to serve both purposes.

Partly, I think we just need to say over and over again that PD is PD
and it
is NOT supervision and evaluation.  It can NEVER be both at the same
time
because the nature of PD itself (at least GOOD PD) is such that a
teacher
has to feel free to express their needs, areas of difficulty, etc., and
that
is the antithesis of what teachers want to do when evaluated.  Keeping
PD
(whether it is mentoring, coaching, job-embedded, workshops, whatever)
separate from supervision really hinges, I think, on the mechanism and
activities of the PD.  For example, peer coaching has a particular
protocol
for observation and feedback.  The coach or observer doesn't just come
in to
your classroom, sit in the back and watch for any little thing you do
wrong
or right (that IS supervision).  Peer observation requires that the
coach
and teacher meet beforehand, and that the TEACHER gets to tell the
coach/observer what particular feature of teaching or learning s/he
wants
the coach to observe and collect data on.  Then, there has to be actual
data
collected, not just subjective opinions.  So, for example, a teacher
might
ask a coach, before the observation, to count the number of times that
the
students ask to have the instructions repeated (to gauge how well the
teacher is delivering instructions).  Or a coach might count the number
of
minutes that particular students are waiting for the teacher to come
around
and correct their work.  Then, after the observation, the coach and
teacher
sit down and the coach describes the data s/he collected about THAT
particular question, and the teacher and coach analyze it, debrief,
think of
options for new strategies for improvement, etc.  The one thing the
coach
does NOT do is just say any old thing s/he thinks she saw in the
person's
teaching.  In this way, teachers know what is being observed, they
define
the problem or issue, they get real data (not just opinions) about what
happened in the class, and they get help thinking of alternative
strategies.
It also goes without saying that no report or official documentation is
written for inclusion in someone's personnel file (another difference
between mentoring/coaching and evaluation).

 
o        How might this work in a community college setting where there
is
little tradition of mentoring teachers?

I haven't ever worked in a community college setting, so I'm not sure
about
this, but I would guess that there's as little tradition in
community-based
or LEA adult ed programs for mentoring OR job-embedded PD as there is in
any
community college.  The answer is that the program/school/college
leadership
has to be supportive to alternative PD, and figure out how to change
structures so that teachers can meet with each other and in groups.


o        Has anyone had experience with paying coaches and coachees?

Like all PD, both the coach and the "coachee"/participant should be paid
for
their time, by getting paid PD release time.  It's no different than any
other PD:  teachers should be paid for their time,
facilitators/trainers/mentors/coaches should be paid for their time,
including prep time to organize and plan the PD.  I can't imagine that
there
would be any reason why coaching or mentoring should be any different
than
what we advocate for any other PD.  (Easier said than done, but we have
to
keep pushing on this until all policymakers "get it").  

Hope this helps.  Best.Cris

Cristine Smith
Assistant Professor
Center for International Education
University of Massachusetts
285 Hills House South
Amherst, MA 01003
413-545-2731
cristine at educ.umass.edu 

 

----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Adult Literacy Professional Development mailing list
ProfessionalDevelopment at nifl.gov 

To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/professionaldevelopment 
Email delivered to cristinesmith at comcast.net 

Adult Literacy Professional Development List - Topic-of-the-Month
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Topic-of-the-Month 

Research on Professional Development and Teacher Change - Guest
Discussion
Archives
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Research_on_Professional_Development_

and_Teacher_Change 

Professional Development section of the Adult Literacy Education Wiki 
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Adult_Literacy_Professional_Developme

nt

----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Adult Literacy Professional Development mailing list
ProfessionalDevelopment at nifl.gov 

To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/professionaldevelopment 
Email delivered to skallenbach at worlded.org 

Adult Literacy Professional Development List - Topic-of-the-Month
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Topic-of-the-Month 

Research on Professional Development and Teacher Change - Guest
Discussion Archives
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Research_on_Professional_Development_and_Teacher_Change


Professional Development section of the Adult Literacy Education Wiki 
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Adult_Literacy_Professional_Development

----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Adult Literacy Professional Development mailing list
ProfessionalDevelopment at nifl.gov

To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to 
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/professionaldevelopment
Email delivered to jhalaesl at aol.com 

Adult Literacy Professional Development List - Topic-of-the-Month
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Topic-of-the-Month

Research on Professional Development and Teacher Change - Guest Discussion 
Archives
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Research_on_Professional_Development_and_Teacher_Change 


Professional Development section of the Adult Literacy Education Wiki 
http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Adult_Literacy_Professional_Development



 


________________________________________________________________________
AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20070711/21673f32/attachment.html