Darling-Hammond, L., & McLaughlin, M. W. (1995). Policies That Support Professional Development in an Era of Reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 76(8), 642-645
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 about student outcomes, and to teach in ways they have never taught
before--and probably never experienced as students.(FN1) 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. Yet few occasions and
little support for such professional development exist in teachers' environments.
Because teaching for understanding relies on teachers' abilities to see complex
subject matter from the perspectives of diverse students, the know-how necessary
to make this vision of practice a reality cannot be prepackaged or conveyed
by means of traditional top-down "teacher training" strategies. The
policy problem for professional development in this era of reform extends beyond
mere support for teachers' acquisition of new skills or knowledge. Professional
development today also means providing occasions for teachers to reflect critically
on their practice and to fashion new knowledge and beliefs about content, pedagogy,
and learners.(FN2)
Beginning with preservice education and continuing throughout a teacher's career,
teacher development must focus on deepening teachers' understanding of the processes
of teaching and learning and of the students they teach. Effective professional
development involves teachers both as learners and as teachers and allows them
to struggle with the uncertainties that accompany each role. It has a number
of characteristics.
* It must engage teachers in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment, observation,
and reflection that illuminate the processes of learning and development.
* It must be grounded in inquiry, reflection, and experimentation that are participant-driven.
* It must be collaborative, involving a sharing of knowledge among educators
and a focus on teachers' communities of practice rather than on individual teachers.
* It must be connected to and derived from teachers' work with their students.
* It must be sustained, ongoing, intensive, and supported by modeling, coaching,
and the collective solving of specific problems of practice.
* It must be connected to other aspects of school change.
Professional development of this kind signals a departure from old norms and
models of "preservice" or "inservice" training. It creates
new images of what, when, and how teachers learn, and these new images require
a corresponding shift from policies that seek to control or direct the work
of teachers to strategies intended to develop schools' and teachers' capacity
to be responsible for student learning. Capacity-building policies view knowledge
as constructed by and with practitioners for use in their own contexts, rather
than as something conveyed by policy makers as a single solution for top-down
implementation.
Though the outlines of a new paradigm for professional development policy are
emerging,(FN3) the hard work of developing concrete exemplars of the policies
and practices that model "top-down support for bottom-up reform" has
only just begun. The changed curriculum and pedagogy of professional development
will require new policies that foster new structures and institutional arrangements
for teachers' learning. At the same time, we will need to undertake a strategic
assessment of existing policies to determine to what degree they are compatible
with a vision of learning as constructed by teachers and students and with a
vision of professional development as a lifelong, inquiry-based, and collegial
activity.(FN4)
Both broad policy responses are essential. New approaches to the professional
education of teachers are needed, and they require new structures and supports.
New initiatives cannot by themselves promote meaningful or long-term change
in teachers' practices if they are embedded in a policy structure that is at
odds with the visions of student and teacher learning that reforms seek to bring
alive. In other words, both new wine and old wine need new bottles, or else
incentives and supports for teacher development will be counterproductive or
nonexistent.
In this article we look first at the new institutional forms that support teachers'
professional growth in ways consistent with conceptions of teaching and learning
for understanding. We then look at the ways in which existing arrangements can
be rethought or redesigned to support both reformers' visions of practice and
teachers' professional growth. Finally, we consider aspects of the larger education
policy context that foster or impede teachers' incentives and ability to acquire
new knowledge, skills, and conceptions of practice.
New Structures and Institutional Arrangements
Efforts to redesign education ultimately require rethinking teachers' preparation
and professional development. New course mandates, curriculum guidelines, tests,
or texts cannot produce greater student learning and understanding without investments
in opportunities that give teachers access to knowledge about the nature of
learning, development, and performance in different domains. In addition, teachers
need firsthand opportunities to integrate theory with classroom practice.
Teachers learn by doing, reading, and reflecting (just as students do); by collaborating
with other teachers; by looking closely at students and their work; and by sharing
what they see. This kind of learning enables teachers to make the leap from
theory to accomplished practice. In addition to a powerful base of theoretical
knowledge, such learning requires settings that support teacher inquiry and
collaboration and strategies grounded in teachers' questions and concerns. To
understand deeply, teachers must learn about, see, and experience successful
learning-centered and learner-centered teaching practices.
Sustained change in teachers' learning opportunities and practices will require
sustained investment in the infrastructure of reform. This means investment
in the development of the institutions and environmental supports that will
promote the spread of ideas and shared learning about how change can be attempted
and sustained.
New forms for teacher preparation. A growing number of teacher education programs
are inventing new structures for preservice teacher education that bring together
all of the learning strands described above into new institutional arrangements
called the Professional Development School (PDS).(FN5) Since the late 1980s,
more than 200 PDSs have been created through the collaborative efforts that
simultaneously restructure schools and colleges of education. The most forward-looking
of these PDSs are preparing prospective and beginning teachers in settings connected
to major school reform networks, such as the Coalition of Essential Schools
and the Comer School Development Program. Those networks engage the schools
and teachers in inquiry that supports their work and learning.
PDSs create settings in which novices enter professional practice by working
with expert practitioners while veteran teachers renew their own professional
development as they assume roles as mentors, university adjuncts, and teacher
leaders. Professional development schools also provide serious venues for developing
teaching knowledge by enabling practice-based and practice-sensitive research
to be carried out collaboratively by teach-ers, teacher educators, and researchers.(FN6)
PDSs enable teachers to become sources of knowledge for one another and to learn
the important roles of "colleague" and "learner."
Some reform models, such as those proposed by the Holmes Group, the Carnegie
Forum on Education and the Economy, and the National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards, call for all prospective teachers to do their student teaching
and a more intensive internship in a PDS.(FN7) Ideally, many of these schools
would be located in central cities where the demand for teachers is high and
the need for reinvented schools is great. In these locales they would serve
two purposes: offering excellent education for central-city students and providing
opportunities for prospective teachers to learn to teach diverse learners effectively.
Despite the prestigious support for PDSs, significant policy supports and changes
will be required if PDSs are to take root. States must acknowledge that PDSs
are part of the infrastructure of a strong education system, and funding for
PDSs must be provided through basic aid allocations, just as teaching hospitals
receive formula adjustments to acknowledge the special mission they perform.
The concept of the PDS will also have to become part of the licensing structure
for entry into teaching and be taken into account in the accreditation of teacher
education institutions. These policy changes are under discussion, as states
increasingly envision internships as part of teacher preparation and as the
National Council on Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) develops standards
for the clinical preparation of teachers. Some states, including Minnesota and
Michigan, are already considering ways to incorporate PDS-based internships
in the initial preparation and licensing of teachers and have even funded pilot
programs. However, states undertaking such a reexamination of credentialing
and preparation structures are still in the minority, and PDSs remain outside
the mainstream teacher education policy structure.
Teachers prepared in PDSs will have a learner-centered foundation on which to
build their subsequent practice. They will also have an appreciation for the
fact that learning about teaching is a lifelong process. However, sustaining
these attitudes, roles, and practices in the classroom will require other structures
and supports, both outside and inside school.
New institutional arrangements for professional development. To create new structures
for individual and organizational learning, the usual notions of inservice training
or dissemination must be replaced by possibilities for knowledge-sharing anchored
in problems of practice. To serve teachers' needs, professional development
must embrace a range of opportunities that allow teachers to share what they
know and what they want to learn and to connect their learning to the contexts
of their teaching. Professional development activities must allow teachers to
engage actively in cooperative experiences that are sustained over time and
to reflect on the process as well as on the content of what they are learning.
Structures that break down isolation, that empower teachers with professional
tasks, and that provide arenas for thinking through standards of practice are
central to this kind of professional growth. Opportunities for teachers' learning
exist inside and outside schools. They range from professional organizations
and standards boards that have more formal roles in the policy structure, to
"critical friend" relationships, to many forms of more collaborative
professional relationships both outside and within schools.
New structures and opportunities outside school. A powerful form of teacher
learning comes from belonging to professional communities that extend beyond
classrooms and school buildings.(FN8) These communities can be organized across
subject-matter lines, around significant pedagogical issues, or in support of
particular school reforms. They legitimate dialogue and support the risk-taking
that is part of any process of significant change. Examples of such communities
include the following.
* School/university collaborations engaged in curriculum development, change
efforts, or research. When such relationships emerge as true partnerships, they
can create new, more powerful kinds of knowledge about teaching and schooling,
as the "rub between theory and practice" produces more practical,
contextualized theory and more theoretically grounded, broadly informed practice.(FN9)
* Teacher-to-teacher and school-to-school networks. These networks provide "critical
friends" to examine and reflect on teaching and opportunities to share
experiences associated with efforts to develop new practices or structures.(FN10)
Such networks demonstrate that help helps. They are powerful learning tools
because they engage people in collective work on authentic problems that emerge
out of their own efforts, allowing them to get beyond the dynamics of their
own schools and classrooms and to come face to face with other people and other
possibilities.(FN11)
* Partnerships with neighborhood-based youth organizations. These include club
programs, theater groups, literacy projects, museums, or sports groups that
provide teachers with important information about their students' homes and
neighborhoods, insight into students' nonschool interests and accomplishments,
and opportunities for coordination between school and youth organization activities.(FN12)
* Teacher involvement in district, regional, or national activities. These activities
include task forces, study groups, and standard-setting bodies engaged in revising
curriculum frameworks, assessing teaching or school practices, or developing
standards. Among the more prominent examples are the School Quality Review being
piloted in New York and California and the work on curriculum and teaching standards
being conducted by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Such activities
create new lenses for examining practice, while building the norms of the profession.
Similarly, teachers who have engaged in powerful forms of teacher assessment,
such as the yearlong reflection and documentation it takes to build a portfolio
for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, claim that they
have learned more through this process than in any other staff development activity
during their entire careers.(FN13)
These strategies create new communities of practice within and across levels
of the policy system. At the same time they involve new actors and new agencies
in teachers' learning and growth. They also depart from traditional notions
of "institutionalization" and institutional relationships that assume
teaching is shaped and structured primarily by school systems. These extra-school
structures and supports more broadly represent the profession and suggest the
kind of partnerships that are possible on behalf of children.
Policies that support extra-school learning communities. While some of the structures
we have been discussing take on institutional forms--such as the Center for
the Development of Teaching or collaborations developed by schools and universities(FN14)--others
are more fluid and informal. But all must be flexible and dynamic and responsive
to the specific and changing needs of teachers and the profession. They must
start where teachers are and build on their knowledge and skills. A network
or resource effective in one community or in one school will probably operate
differently in another. Or the collaborative relationship that was successful
last year in supporting teachers' learning may fall short this year.
For example, a highly successful mathematics collaborative in one urban district
disintegrated after five years of operation. Organizers worried that this signified
failure, but a closer look at participants' responses suggested that it came
to an inevitable end because it had accomplished its objectives and was no longer
useful as it existed. Other networks have evolved, changed focus, and reconsidered
relationships as the needs of their participants have shifted over time. Such
networks are best managed through "systematic ad-hocism"--a process
of moving toward shared goals with enormous flexibility in strategy.(FN15)
Policies that support teachers' learning communities allow such structures and
extra-school arrangements to come and go and change and evolve as necessary,
rather than insist on permanent plans or promises. What does need to be a permanent
addition to the policy landscape is an infrastructure or "web" of
professional development opportunities that provides multiple and ongoing occasions
for critical reflection and that involves teachers with challenging content.
The components of this infrastructure include professional associations working
on curriculum standards and related professional development; professional standards
boards developing standards and assessments for teacher licensing and advanced
certification, in which teachers themselves are integrally involved; networks
devoted to school change and the improvement of practice; peer-review structures;
and professional tasks managed by teachers, such as ongoing development and
scoring of student portfolios and other assessments.
The policy implications of sustaining healthy extra-school opportunities for
professional collaboration and growth are threefold. First, policy must create
significant professional roles for teachers in many areas of practice--e.g.,
developing curriculum and assessment, setting standards, and evaluating practice--that
have previously been managed by others. These roles carry powerful, authentic
opportunities for teachers to learn from others, to reexamine their practice,
and to acquire new knowledge.
Second, funding must be directed to those components of a professional infrastructure
that support teacher participation and learning. A climate rich in sustained
and relevant opportunities for teachers' learning resembles a web, in which
networks, seminars, meetings, and focus groups intersect to provide an array
of opportunities for teachers. Occasions and opportunities for the intellectual
renewal of teachers must be multiple and diverse rather than generic and discrete
if they are to be responsive to specific content-based or learner-based concerns.
Third, policy supports must focus on stimulating the environment that nurtures
high-quality learning communities of teachers, rather than on particular institutional
forms or promises of permanence. Effective professional development activities
are fluid and have various "life cycles." Policy makers should focus
on the richness and relevance of the overall "menu" of opportunities
for teachers to learn. In some cases, demands for rigid "institutionalization"
can lead to meaningless activities and out-of-date structures down the road.
Opportunities for professional development within schools. Habits and cultures
inside schools must foster critical inquiry into teaching practices and student
outcomes. They must be conducive to the formation of communities of practice
that enable teachers to meet together to solve problems, consider new ideas,
evaluate alternatives, and frame schoolwide goals.(FN16)
Opportunities for such learning and reflection already exist in many aspects
of school-day routines. It can be argued that everything that goes on in school
presents an opportunity for professional development. Department meetings, for
example, can be an administrative bore, or they can operate as "mini-seminars,"
engaging faculty members in examination of materials, student work, and curriculum
plans.(FN17) Student teachers can be viewed as a professional responsibility
or as an opportunity for learning and reflection.(FN18) Serving on a committee
to develop instructional plans or to review assessments can be regarded as "hardship
duty" or as an opportunity to reexamine practice.(FN19) Even usually mundane
or tedious tasks, such as student assignments or the creation of a master schedule,
contain opportunities to reflect on norms, assumptions about practice, and organizational
goals.
Activities new to the traditional role of teacher can also stimulate learning
and growth. For example, the concept of the teacher as researcher puts teachers
in charge of inquiry about and analysis of their workplace. School-based research
and inquiry occur not only in professional development schools but also in many
restructuring efforts. Some states (e.g., Iowa and Maine) support such research
as part of restructuring efforts.
To take another example of roles new to teachers, peer reviews of practice afford
occasions for deliberation about teaching and learning and can occur in many
forms. During such reviews faculty members collectively examine aspects of the
curriculum; look at particular practices, problems, or concerns within the school;
develop and participate in peer evaluation and peer coaching; and participate
in the assessment of students. Indeed, teacher-driven assessments of teaching
and learning are proving to be powerful tools for learning. Looking closely
at one's own or someone else's authentic work stimulates tremendous growth.(FN20)
Questions at the heart of such inquiries about school effectiveness and student
learning constitute the basis for transformative learning--learning that enables
teachers to change their models for what schools and teaching might look like
and accomplish.
Policy supports for professional development within schools. Organizational
structures must be redesigned so that they actively foster learning and collaboration
about serious problems of practice. This requires rethinking schedules, staffing
patterns, and grouping arrangements to create blocks of time for teachers to
work and learn together. In addition, schools must be organized around small,
cohesive units that structure ongoing collaboration among groups of adults and
students (e.g., teaching teams or clusters, houses, and advisory groups) so
that teachers have shared access to students and shared responsibilities for
designing their work. Many restructured schools have created smaller-scale workplaces
in a variety of ways, ranging from block scheduling of students and teachers
to reallocation of staff.(FN21)
Teachers individually cannot reconceive their practice and the culture of their
workplace. Yet almost everything about school is oriented toward going it alone
professionally. While it may be possible for teachers to learn some things on
their own, rethinking old norms requires a supportive community of practice.
The traditional school organization separates staff members from one another
and from the external environment. Inside school, teachers are inclined to think
in terms of "my classroom," "my subject," or "my kids."
Few schools are structured to allow teachers to think in terms of shared problems
or broader organizational goals. A collaborative culture of problem solving
and learning must be created to challenge these norms and habits of mind; collegiality
must be valued as a professional asset.(FN22)
New structures for teaching may not include supervision as usually defined in
bureaucratic organizations: a one-to-one relationship between a worker and his
or her presumably more expert superordinate. Instead, organizational strategies
for team planning, sharing, evaluating, and learning may create methods for
peer review of practice that--like those used in other professional organizations
and restructured businesses--may better fill the needs for feedback, oversight,
and evaluation.
These same needs for collaborative inquiry and learning exist for other educators,
including school leaders (principals, teacher directors, and other emerging
leaders), and for support staff, from school psychologists and counselors to
teachers' aides. They should also be included in these efforts and activities
to examine teaching practice and learner outcomes.
Indeed, cross-role participation in professional development activities stimulates
shared understandings of school goals and new approaches more effectively than
activities that treat teachers, principals, counselors, and others as separate
groups for whom different conversations and topics are deemed relevant.(FN23)
For example, extended institutes for school-based teams of teachers, administrators,
and parents have proved to be critical for launching school reforms in such
cities as Hammond, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky.(FN24) In addition to the
participation of teachers and principals, the participation of counselors, school
psychologists, and parents in shared development activities is central to the
work of such successful initiatives as James Comer's School Development Program,
Henry Levin's Accelerated Schools, and Theodore Sizer's Coalition of Essential
Schools. Such collaborative efforts contribute to a common sense of purpose
and practice among all members of the school community.
District policies directly affect the creation of learning communities and the
development of learning opportunities for teachers.(FN25) As is true at the
building lev-el, perspective and priorities are crucial. Policies consistent
with the notions of teachers' learning outlined above assume that the professional
development of teachers is integral to the school workplace. A major task for
district leadership is to encourage and sustain reflective communities of practice
both within and among schools and to make resources available for teachers to
use according to their needs and preferences.
The Policy Context in Support Of Professional Development
The policy environment in which teachers work sends a myriad of often conflicting
signals about how schools are expected to do business and about what behaviors
and skills are valued and rewarded. Messages about more- or less-preferred teaching
practices and learner outcomes issue from all of the major education policy
domains, including those that shape curriculum, assessment, teacher and administrator
licensing and evaluation, and accountability. Existing policies and practices
must be assessed in terms of their compatibility with two cornerstones of the
reform agenda: a learner-centered view of teaching and a careerlong conception
of teachers' learning.
Does a new curriculum framework stress "implementation of texts,"
there-by espousing passive teacher and student roles? Or are teachers assumed
to participate in the construction of practices that begin with students' experiences
and needs and aim to reach challenging student outcomes? Does an assessment
system evaluate student understanding, or does it test for rote recall of facts?
Do teacher evaluation systems look for teaching behaviors aimed at keeping students
quiet or for practices that engage students actively in their learning? Do administrator
licensing standards require that principals know how students learn and how
teachers teach for understanding, or do they stress noninstructional matters?
Do school accountability requirements enforce current, highly fragmented bureaucratic
structures and uses of time, or do they allow for more integrated and student-centered
forms of allocating staff and funds?
Schools and teachers aiming to adopt new practices must contend with the "geological
dig" of previous policies that send contradictory signals and prevent a
complete transformation of practice.(FN26) Some of these are familiar, such
as state policies on standardized testing that continue to deflect time and
attention from extended writing and discourse and other more challenging forms
of learning.(FN27) These tests, along with mandated textbooks and basal readers,
prescriptive curriculum guides, and "old paradigm" teacher evaluation
measures, create incentives to continue traditional forms of teaching that emphasize
superficial understanding and rote learning rather than higher-order thinking
and performance skills.
Both the content and the form of curriculum policy must change, so that what
is required is compatible with teaching for understanding and provides reasons
for teachers to rethink their approach to teaching and learning. Likewise, in
those few key areas in which state regulation of curriculum and testing is deemed
necessary--e.g., in curriculum frameworks and periodic student assessments for
monitor-ing purposes--policy should encourage in-depth learning focused on powerful
concepts and ideas. States and districts should explicitly evaluate their current
policies on curriculum and testing to remove prescriptions that conflict with
one another or that are grounded in misunderstandings about how students learn
and how good teaching happens.
Teacher education institutions--both as purveyors of teacher education and as
determinants of what "counts" as knowledge, expertise, and successful
performance--figure prominently in the policy context that surrounds professional
development. It is increasingly important that policies provide clear guidance
for schools of education regarding the demands of teaching for understanding,
along with supports and incentives that enable schools of education to meet
new standards. For the most part, current policies governing teacher education,
especially the content of teacher licensing and testing requirements, fail to
fully incorporate the kinds of teacher knowledge and understanding that we have
alluded to above.
Likewise, the licensing, testing, and evaluation of teachers must be grounded
in new understandings about student learning and effective teaching, and they
need to be connected to other professional standards for teaching. For example,
the curriculum standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
and by other professional associations center on teaching for understanding,
an emphasis that has now been adopted by the new National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in its formulation of standards and assessments for
accomplished practice. The model standards for licensing beginning teachers
that have been developed by the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support
Consortium also reflect this orientation, as do the accreditation requirements
of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).
Policies that provide incentives for teachers to become certified by the NBPTS,
for states to enact compatible licensing standards and assessments as well as
standards for approving teacher education programs, and for schools of education
to become NCATE-accredited could help create a coherent approach to preparing
teachers to teach for understanding. Thus some of the disjunctures between existing
teacher development policies and current reforms of curriculum could be eliminated.
Similarly, the policies that govern the ongoing evaluation of teachers must
also support teaching for understanding and teacher learning. In most teachers'
workplaces, teacher evaluation activities act as powerful disincentives to problem
solving, learning, or an honest examination of practice. "Needs improvement,"
after all, is about the lowest grade a teacher can be given on most evaluations.
Yet ongoing improvement and critical inquiry are fundamental to learning and
change. In addition, many evaluation forms and processes continue to be based
on a conception of teaching as the implementation of routines that can be observed
and checked off in a brief inspection system. The type of teaching anticipated
by evaluation forms is teaching for transmission rather than teaching for understanding,
and the assumption undergirding the desired teaching behaviors is that students
are passive, standardized participants in classroom activities.(FN28)
To support teaching for understanding and the professional development it requires,
new forms of teacher evaluation will need to emphasize the appropriateness of
teaching decisions to the goals and contexts of instruction and the needs of
students. No longer is it sufficient to focus on teachers' adherence to prescribed
routines. Evaluation must be conceived not as a discrete annual event consisting
of brief visits by supervisors bearing checklists, but as a constant feature
of organizational and classroom life for practitioners.
An emphasis on the appropriateness of teaching decisions would mean that the
leadership roles of administrators in schools structured to support teacher
learning and student understanding would also change. District guidelines for
evaluating building-level administrators have typically ignored the question
of whether those administrators have been effective in establishing and supporting
a culture of learning and inquiry at their schools.(FN29) Yet a critical role
for administrative leadership is to create and sustain settings in which teachers
feel safe to admit mistakes, to try (and possibly fail), and to disclose aspects
of their teaching.
To fulfill these new roles and expectations for leadership, however, administrators
need to understand what the conceptions of teaching and learning that motivate
the nation's reform agenda look like in classrooms and how these visions of
practice relate to teachers' opportunities to learn. Administrators, no less
than teachers, urgently need the chance to rethink practice and to learn the
new perspectives and skills that are consistent with reformers' visions of teaching
and learning for understanding.(FN30)
All these objectives require time for teachers to undertake professional development
as part of their normal responsibilities. And time for teachers can only be
bought by rethinking the ways in which schools are staffed, funded, and managed.
Compared to other countries, the U.S. has invested in a smaller number of lower-paid
teachers who are directed, supervised, and supplemented by larger numbers of
administrative staff members and nonteaching specialists, populating several
layers of bureaucratic structures. In 1986 U.S. school systems employed approximately
one administrative staff person for every 21/2 teachers and spent only 38% of
their funds on teacher salaries and less than 1% on professional development.(FN31)
After several decades in which the number of administrative staff increased
at twice the rate of the teaching staff, by 1991 only half of those who worked
in U.S. education were classroom teachers.(FN32) This staffing pattern stands
in stark contrast to that of many European and Asian countries in which teachers
constitute 80% or more of the education work force.(FN33) Additional investment
in teachers seems to be an irreducible element of an agenda to enact reformers'
visions of teaching and learning.
Finally, through waivers, incentives, grants, and changed formula allocations,
policy makers can redistribute existing resources to encourage school restructuring
that provides time for teachers' collegial work and learning, that enables teachers
to participate in the development and reform of curriculum and assessment, and
that anticipates teachers' needs for collegial learning through strong communities
of practice. Policies that anticipate these needs will move away from traditional
credit-for-seat-time staff development and toward professional development that
involves teachers in networks, professional assessments, and peer review.
Policies consistent with this view of professional development would encourage
site-level integration of the various bundles of categorical resources flowing
from state or national programs. Current categorical boundaries and accounting
lines discourage teachers from addressing schoolwide goals or the needs of the
whole child. Instead, accounting requirements for special projects foster a
problem-focused strategy of allocation, which fragments a school faculty and
fails to meet the needs of individual children--an approach inconsistent with
teachers' learning to work successfully with all learners who fill contemporary
American classrooms.
Policy Guidelines for Professional Development
Reformers of all stripes press for an agenda of fundamental change in the ways
teachers teach and students learn. They envision schools in which students learn
to think creatively and deeply, in which teachers' ongoing learning forms the
core of professional activities, and in which students and teachers alike value
knowing why and how to learn.(FN34)
These visions and expectations for practice assume fundamental changes in education
policies in order to enable teachers to make the challenging and sometimes painful
changes required of them. Yet these necessary shifts in policy have only begun.
Recognition of the embeddedness of education policy domains must precede the
creation of a new model for professional development. The significant interdependencies
between the expectations for change in teachers and teaching and the various
domains of education policy have obvious implications for teachers' ability
and willingness to change. Supports for professional development cannot be understood
separately from this broader context.
The success of changes in the policy environment will necessarily depend on
locally constructed responses to specific teacher and learner needs. Detailed
solutions imported from afar or mandated from above predictably will disappoint;
effective practices evolve from and respond to specific instructional settings.
The situation-specific nature of the kind of teaching and learning envisioned
by reformers is the key challenge for teachers' professional development, and
it is the chief obstacle to policy makers' efforts to engender systemic reform.
But the situational character of effective practice does not mean that local
change must be uninformed by experience elsewhere. Experience with successful
professional development efforts suggests a number of design principles to guide
national and state officials struggling to devise "top-down support for
bottom-up change" and to guide local actors who are rethinking their policies.
Each proposed and existing policy can be "interviewed"--that is, subjected
to a number of questions--to determine how well it corresponds with key factors
related to teachers' learning and change. For example:
* Does the policy reduce the isolation of teachers, or does it perpetuate the
experience of working alone?
* Does the policy encourage teachers to assume the role of learner, or does
it reward traditional "teacher as expert" approaches to teacher/student
relations?
* Does the policy provide a rich, diverse menu of opportunities for teachers
to learn, or does it focus primarily on episodic, narrow "training"
activities?
* Does the policy link professional development opportunities to meaningful
content and change efforts, or does it construct generic inservice occasions?
* Does the policy establish an environment of professional trust and encourage
problem solving, or does it exacerbate the risks involved in serious reflection
and change and thus encourage problem hiding?
* Does the policy provide opportunities for everyone involved with schools to
understand new visions of teaching and learning, or does it focus only on teachers?
* Does the policy make possible the restructuring of time, space, and scale
within schools, or does it expect new forms of teaching and learning to emerge
within conventional structures?
* Does the policy focus on learner-centered outcomes that give priority to learning
how and why, or does it emphasize the memorization of facts and the acquisition
of rote skills?
Other "interview questions" will doubtless emerge as educators gain
experience with policies and practices aimed at developing the capacity of schools
and teachers to create effective learning environments. The challenge for policy
makers and educators is to realign the existing system of signals and incentives
that shape school organizations, teachers' practices, role expectations, and
assumptions so that they support student and teacher learning.
ADDED MATERIAL
LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND is William F. Russell Professor of Education at Teachers
College, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., and co-director of the National
Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching. MILBREY W. McLAUGHLIN
is a professor of education and public policy at Stanford University, Stanford,
Calif., and director of the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching.
Footnotes
1. Barbara Scott Nelson and James M. Hammerman, "Reconceptualizing Teaching:
The Teaching and Research Program of the Center for the Development of Teaching,
Education Development Center," in Milbrey W. McLaughlin and Ida Oberman,
Professional Development in the Reform Era (New York: Teachers College Press,
forthcoming).
2. Ibid.; and Richard Prawat, "Teachers' Beliefs About Teaching and Learning:
A Constructivist Perspective," American Journal of Education, vol. 100,
1992, pp. 354-95.
3. David K. Cohen, Milbrey W. McLaughlin, and Joan E. Talbert, Teaching for
Understanding: Challenges for Policy and Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1993); and Linda Darling-Hammond, "Reframing the School Reform Agenda:
Developing Capacity for School Transformation," Phi Delta Kappan, June
1993, pp. 752-61.
4. Ann Lieberman, "Practices That Support Teacher Development: Transforming
Conceptions of Professional Learning," Phi Delta Kappan, April 1995, pp.
591-96.
5. Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller, "Teacher Development in Professional
Practice Schools," Teachers College Record, vol. 92, 1990, pp. 105-22;
Lin-da Darling-Hammond, Professional Development Schools: Schools for Developing
a Profession (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994); and Gary Sykes, "Teacher
Education in the United States," in Burton R. Clark, ed., The School and
the University (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 264-89.
6. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle, "Communities for Teacher Research:
Fringe or Forefront?," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
7. Tomorrow's Teachers (East Lansing, Mich.: Holmes Group, 1986); Task Force
on Teaching as a Profession, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century
(New York: Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986); and Toward High
and Rigorous Standards for the Teaching Profession, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.:
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 1991).
8. Joan E. Talbert and Milbrey W. McLaughlin, "Teacher Professionalism
in Local School Contexts," American Journal of Education, vol. 102, 1994,
pp. 123-53; and Ann Lieberman, ed., The Work of Restructuring Schools (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1994).
9. Lynne Miller and Cynthia O'Shea, "Partnership: Getting Broader, Getting
Deeper," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.; and Stephanie Dalton and
Ellen Moir, "Symbiotic Support and Program Evaluation: Text and Context
for Professional Development of New Bilingual Teachers," in McLaughlin
and Oberman, op. cit.
10. Kate Jamentz, "Assessment as a Heuristic for Professional Practice,"
in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.; and Margaret Szabo, "Rethinking Restructuring:
Building Habits of Effective Inquiry," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
11. Ann Lieberman and Milbrey McLaughlin, "Networks for Educational Change:
Powerful and Problematic," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
12. Shirley Brice Heath and Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin, "The Best of Both
Worlds: Connecting Schools and Community Youth Organizations for All-Day, All-Year
Learning," Educational Administration Quarterly, vol. 30, 1994, pp. 278-300;
and Kip Tellez and Myrna D. Cohen, "Preparing Teachers for Multicultural
Inner-City Classrooms: Grinding New Lenses," in McLaughlin and Oberman,
op. cit.
13. Toward High and Rigorous Standards.
14. Nelson and Hammerman, op. cit.; and Miller and O'Shea, op. cit.
15. Miller and O'Shea, op. cit.
16. Szabo, op. cit.
17. Pamela L. Grossman, "Of Regularities and Reform: Navigating the Subject-Specific
Territory of High Schools," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
18. Edith S. Tatel, "Improving Classroom Practice: Ways Experienced Teachers
Change After Supervising Student Teachers," in McLaughlin and Oberman,
op. cit.
19. Jamentz, op. cit.
20. Ibid.; and Linda Darling-Hammond and Jacqueline Ancess, Authentic Assessment
and School Development (New York: National Center for Restructuring Education,
Schools, and Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1994).
21. Linda Darling-Hammond, Jacqueline Ancess, and Beverly Falk, Authentic Assessment
in Action: Studies of Schools and Students at Work (New York: Teachers College
Press, forthcoming).
22. Szabo, op. cit.
23. Michael Fullan, The New Meaning of Educational Change (New York: Teachers
College Press, 1991).
24. Lieberman, ed., op. cit.
25. Talbert and McLaughlin, op. cit.
26. Linda Darling-Hammond, "Instructional Policy into Practice: The Power
of the Bottom over the Top," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,
vol. 12, 1990, pp. 233-41.
27. George Madaus, The Influence of Testing on Teaching Math and Science in
Grades 4-12: Executive Summary (Boston: Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation,
and Educational Policy, Boston College, 1993).
28. Linda Darling-Hammond with Eileen Sclan, "Policy and Supervision,"
in Carl D. Glickman, ed., Supervision in Transition (Alexandria, Va.: Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1992).
29. Milbrey W. McLaughlin, "How District Communities Do and Do Not Foster
Teacher Pride," Educational Leadership, September 1992, pp. 33-35.
30. Edwin M. Bridges and Philip Hallinger, "Problem-Based Learning: A Promising
Approach to Professional Development," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
31. U.S. Department of Labor, Current Population Survey, unpublished data, 1986-1987;
and C. Emily Feistritzer, The Condition of Teaching: A State-by-State Analysis
(New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1983).
32. National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education 1993
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1993).
33. Teacher Demand and Supply: The Labor Market for Teachers (Paris: Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1990).
34. Nelson and Hammerman, op. cit.; Beverly Falk, "Teaching the Way Children
Learn," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.; and Martin G. Brooks and Jacqueline
Grennon Brooks, "Constructivism and School Reform," in McLaughlin
and Oberman, op. cit.
WBN: 9509101226005