A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Systemic Reform in the Professionalism of Educators - September 1995

F. Summary Review of Literature

To a large extent, professional development in education is still thought of in terms of inservice training for practicing educators. If the objective is systemic reform of the entire educational system, then distinctions between preservice training and inservice training are artificial. Judge (1988) contends that teacher education and the configuration of teachers’ careers and responsibilities are the two major determinants of the professional culture of schools. Professional development should focus on the career-long professional learning of all educators (including university faculty), which requires much greater coherence between preservice and inservice training, as well as substantial changes in the structure of schooling to make continuous learning an integral part of every educator’s world of work.

Research on professional development in the last decade has greatly enhanced our understanding of effective practices. Learning theorists have demonstrated that people learn best through active involvement and by thinking about and articulating what they have learned (Resnick, 1989; Vygotsky, 1978). The wide array of learning opportunities that are advocated for students -- learning activities that engage students in experiencing, creating, and working with others on solving real problems -- are rarely the kinds of rich learning experiences available to teachers (Lieberman, 1995). The old "training model" for teachers’ development of short-term workshops with little follow-up is still the dominant mode (Little, 1993; McLaughlin, 1991; Miller & Lord, 1994). Historically the old training model has been ineffective because it lacks focus, intensity, follow-up, and coherence with district goals for student performance (Corcoran, 1995; Joyce & Showers, 1988). The inadequacy of the old model is even more apparent today with the ambitious visions of schooling in current reform initiatives. Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin (1995) capture the scope of the challenge confronting educators today:

The vision of practice that underlies the nation’s reform agenda requires most teachers to rethink their own practice, to construct new classroom roles and expectations for student outcomes, and to teach in ways they have never taught before -- and probably never experienced as students. The success of this agenda ultimately turns on teachers’ success in accomplishing the serious and difficult tasks of learning the skills and perspectives assumed by new visions of practice and unlearning the practices and beliefs about students and instruction that have dominated their professional lives to date. (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995, p. 597, emphasis in original.)

Growing understanding of the learning process, especially adult learning, has produced a substantial consensus about the critical attributes that constitute effective professional development practices. A synthesis of several recommended guidelines produced the following list of essential characteristics:

It must engage educators in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment,observation, and reflection to understand the processes of learning.
It must support teacher initiatives within a context of school and district initiatives.
It must be collaborative, engaging colleagues in sharing knowledge and providing opportunities to draw on the expertise of others in the professional community.
It must be grounded in knowledge about teaching and learning.
It must be grounded in inquiry, reflection, and experimentation. Educators need opportunities to explore, question, and debate ideas before they can reach a comfort level required to implement them in their classrooms.
It must be sustained, ongoing, intensive, and supported by modeling, coaching, and collective problem solving to develop a strong sense of efficacy.
It must provide for sufficient time and follow-up and practice to assimilate new learnings.
It must be content- and context-specific: it must take into account the skills, understandings, knowledge, and attitudes of the learner.
It must incorporate knowledge of the change process.
It must be supported by school and district leadership, establishing professional growth and problem solving as a priority supported by rewards and incentives.¹

These attributes represent a significant paradigm shift for professional development, one that has growing recognition but is not yet common practice. A few new models for effective professional development have emerged in recent years that incorporate many of these essential characteristics. They respect the expertise of accomplished teachers and build teacher development activities around notions of colleagueship and disciplined inquiry in the context of professional learning communities.

Professional Networks

Professional networks are gatherings of educators for the purpose of colleagueship and professional growth through shared experiences, discourse, and experimentation. Networks may be organized around subject matter, teaching methods, or school improvement and restructuring efforts. Whether communication is maintained through newsletters, face-to-face meetings, or electronic communications, professional networks share four common features (Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992). (1) Networks have a clear focus and target a specific component of the professional community. (2) Networks also offer a variety of activities and learning opportunities, which give educators flexibility and choice. (3) Networks create a discourse community where educators acquire awareness of policy debates, broad and deep understanding of subject matter, and knowledge of the professional community (Lichtenstein, McLaughlin, & Knudsen, 1991). (4) Finally, networks contribute to the development of leadership skills.

These networks provide "critical friends" to examine and reflect on teaching, and provide opportunities to share experiences about teachers’ efforts to develop new practices. McLaughlin’s (1994) research on professional learning in secondary schools found that teachers who report a high sense of efficacy, who feel successful with today’s students, also share one characteristic: membership in some kind of strong professional community. These teachers singled out their professional discourse community as the reason that they have been successful in adapting to today’s students, the source of their professional motivation and support, and the reason they did not burn out in the face of exceedingly demanding teaching situations.

New Teacher Leadership Roles

Reform strategies that attempt to empower teachers through increased participation in decisionmaking rarely affect the teaching and learning process in schools (Fullan, 1995). In contrast, Lichtenstein et al. (1991) found that once teachers were provided with opportunities to develop professionally relevant knowledge, teachers’ interests emerged idiosyncratically. Teachers who participated in collaborative networks demonstrated the important ways in which the self-esteem and sense of efficacy that motivates classroom practice also extends beyond the classroom to the broader educational community. The authors conclude, empowerment does involve altered power arrangements, but it denotes power and occupational self-direction quite differently than reformers or policymakers usually consider them. Empowerment depends upon teachers’ enhanced sense of efficacy and competence in the various domains of their profession, which includes the classroom, as well as policy arenas. (p.20)

Meaningful leadership opportunities have also emerged as teachers assume the roles of mentors, university adjuncts, researchers, and teacher leaders within various restructuring efforts and professional organizations.

National Certification

Wise (1994) contends that an important trend supporting the professionalization of teaching is the nationalization of education policy. Goals 2000 places a strong emphasis on professional development, maintaining that high standards for teachers can be a powerful means to achieve goals for students.

Three organizations are leading the effort to professionalize teaching by strengthening its quality-assurance mechanisms (Wise & Leibrand, 1993). They are the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE); the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), through its task force on licensing standards, the Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC); and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which is developing advanced standards for teacher performance. Three policy mechanisms being pursued in concert are accreditation, licensing, and advanced certification. The CCSSO has developed a flowchart that begins with the adoption of standards and leads to assessment in three areas: (1) preparation, (2) induction/support, and (3) professional development. Acknowledging induction as a phase of teacher preparation demonstrates a recognition that all beginning teachers need support and that teacher preparation is ongoing and must be connected to practice. The impact of these standards will depend on how states implement them.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has worked with teachers and national teacher organizations to develop standards and assessment procedures for recognition of exemplary teachers. Hopefully this voluntary certification will reward master teachers for their expertise and help promote these teachers to positions of greater responsibility. Teachers who have engaged in this intense teacher assessment process claim that they learned more by going through the process than by partaking in any other professional development activity in their entire career, because it requires them to document their practice and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses (Bradley, 1994).

Collaborations between Schools and Universities

The one institution that has the most influential interaction with the K - 12 school system is higher education. Colleges and universities provide initial preparation and much of the advanced training for teachers and administrators. Sarason (1993) admonishes that to deal with the two systems as if they were separate, not interacting systems -- as if you can change one without changing the other -- "should be considered impossible, or at least off limits." (p. 88)

School-university partnerships such as professional development schools provide new models for the teacher education continuum, serving as exemplars of practice and builders of knowledge. School-university collaborations include work in curriculum development, change efforts, and research. Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin (1995) note that when such relationships emerge as true partnerships, they can create new and more powerful kinds of knowledge about teaching and schooling. The integration of theory and practice has the potential to produce more practical, contextualized theory and more theoretically grounded, broadly informed practice. The importance of reciprocal learning within such arrangements is not always recognized by university teacher educators. The public schools provide critical learning opportunities for university faculty to become reacquainted with, and develop a deeper understanding of, the realities of contemporary classrooms.

Professional Development Schools

Darling-Hammond (1994) describes Professional Development Schools (PDS) as a special case of school restructuring that simultaneously restructure school and teacher education programs, and redefine teaching and learning for all members of the profession and the school community. PDSs create settings in which novices enter professional practice by working with expert practitioners, while veteran teachers engage in their own professional development, assuming roles as mentors, university adjuncts, and teacher leaders (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995). Fullan (1995) argues that if collaborative skills and continuous learning are essential for teachers, they must be fostered from the beginning in teacher preparation programs explicitly designed for that purpose. Similarly, Goodlad (1994) calls for the use of cohort groups to socialize future teachers into the practices of lifelong learning in collaboration with colleagues. Future teachers need to be guided into the trade journals and professional organizations that support ongoing learning. In addition, Goodlad notes that preparation for students entering the profession should include attention to theory and research on change, with particular attention to the teacher’s role as steward of schools. PDSs, or other school-university arrangements, offer potential settings for the integration of preservice and inservice learning to occur.

Organizational Changes Needed to Support Continuous Learning

Professional development requires resources for training, equipment, and most of all time -- time to learn. Building in time for educators to work and learn together requires rethinking schedules and staffing patterns (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995). For continuous learning to become routine practice, it must be embedded into the teachers’ workplace, providing time for colleagues to share, discuss, and reflect on their practice (Corcoran, 1995; Lieberman. 1995). McLaughlin (1993) found that among secondary schools, the paramount difference between schools was not in faculty talent or professionalism, but in the school-level structures set up to foster planning and problem solving and the consequent development of a supportive school-level professional community and opportunities for reflection.

The accumulative lessons learned about effective professional development strategies indicate that organizational structures need to be flexible and dynamic, responding to the changing needs of teachers and the profession. Professional development opportunities must be able to start where educators are now and build on their knowledge and skills. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will meet the needs.

Networks, coalitions, and partnerships provide opportunities for educators to commit themselves to topics that are of intrinsic interest to them or that develop out of their work (Lieberman, 1995). Partnership arrangements also provide an opportunity for cross-role participation that stimulates shared understandings and capitalizes on the combined expertise of teachers, principals, counselors, and university faculty, as well as provide essential professional socialization for preservice teachers as they enter the profession.

Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin (1995) recommend that policymakers focus on the richness and overall "menu" of opportunities for professional learning. What is needed is an extensive infrastructure of professional development opportunities that provides multiple and ongoing occasions for critical reflection and that involves educators in designing coherent learning experiences.

¹ This list represents a synthesis of several authors: Corcoran, 1995; Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995; Lieberman, A., 1995; Lieberman & Miller, 1992; Loucks-Horsley, S., et al., 1987; and McLaughlin, 1991.
-###-

[Executive Summary]

[Background of the Study: Study Aims and Research Questions]