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

Professional Development Principles and Practices

Alternatives to the training model

Teacher collaboratives and other networks. Subject-specific teacher collaboratives in mathematics, science, and the humanities have grown in size, visibility, and influence over the past decade. Lord (1991) locates the subject collaboratives within an alternative paradigm of professional development in which the vision of teachers' professional development encompasses: " (a) teachers' knowledge of academic content, instruction, and student learning, (b) teachers' access to a broader network of professional relationships, and (c) teacher leadership in the reform of systemwide structures" (p. 3; see also Lieberman and McLaughlin, 1992).

Two accounts suggest how subject collaboratives equip teachers individually and collectively to deepen their subject knowledge and to assume a more assertive role in the reform of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. The first is an account of Philadelphia's humanities collaborative (PATHS); the second centers on the mathematics collaborative +PLUS+, one of several subject matter collaboratives organized under the sponsorship of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership.

PATHS (Philadelphia Alliance for Teaching Humanities in the Schools) engages teachers directly in the modes of inquiry related to the various humanities disciplines. The project's aim to provide urban students a genuine curriculum in the humanities not watered down, dumbed down, or packaged required a parallel experience for teachers. The former project director traces this decision about teachers' professional development in part to the general absence of humanities background in teachers' preservice preparation or subsequent studies: "[M]ost teachers hold degrees in education, psychology and related technical fields; few have been trained as historians, scientists, philosophers. Even those who do hold liberal arts and science undergraduate degrees rarely continued their pursuit of these subjects as graduate students. Advancement in teaching depends on certifications and supervisory credentials, not on learning more about arts and science subjects " (Hodgson, 1986, p. 29).

The specific program formats employed by PATHS all place teachers in direct contact with the city's rich humanities collections and with the curators and other experts who acquire, maintain, and interpret them. Minigrants were organized to give greater incentives to collaborative work and to engage teachers with a broader array of material and human resources. "We stacked the deck quite unashamedly" teachers could receive up to $300 for an individual classroom project, but up to $3000 for collaborative work with other teachers, university people, museums, or libraries (p. 31). One example of a minigrant product is a slide show and teachers' guide on the Ars Medica exhibit for art, science and social studies teachers: "all areas that can benefit from the show on the artistic images of disease and the medical arts through the centuries" (p. 31). An outgrowth of the minigrant program is the two-week summer institute "Good Books for Great Kids," designed to "enlarge teachers' visions about literature to a much broader range of genres and subjects, and to teach them how to do a search of the literature in a variety of fields that would take them beyond whatever the salesmen from textbook publishers left on their desks" (Renyi, 1992). Using the children's literature collections in the Rare Book Room of the Philadelphia Free Library and in other similar collections, the teachers "did research in these collections and were trained to seek out books in their subject areas by children's librarians, children's literature specialists and special collections experts." At the end of two weeks, each teacher presented an oral defense of an annotated book list comprising trade books, library books, and special collections books; after the defense, the teacher received $500 to spend on trade books in the list and on trips to bring children to the special collections.

Colloquia sponsored by PATHS meet monthly throughout the year. In one, teachers working in Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum and Library concentrated on manuscripts detailing how 20th century writers revised their work. This arrangement with the Rosenbach permits up to 25 teachers per month to study some aspect of the manuscript collection. The colloquia are oversubscribed, although they offer neither credit nor stipends. Summer institutes in literature, history, and languages (which do offer graduate credit) also are conducted on-site where relevant collections are held. These institutes, like the colloquia, entail an altered set of relations between the schools and other institutions (museums, libraries) and between teachers and other experts. Through activities organized by PATHS, teachers were able to see how curators conducted their own work with primary materials, and to work with those materials themselves. They got "behind the scenes" in museums, libraries, and other archival collections. They came to know not only the materials, but the people who worked with (and interpreted) them. They were able to examine (and sometimes contest ) one another's interpretations.

Hodgson remarks: "[Teachers] have been starved (a metaphor teachers themselves use) for serious stimuli, and they are immensely enthusiastic patrons of museum and library collections" (p. 32). When her account is read in juxtaposition with rather common accounts of "unmotivated," "reluctant," or "resistant" teachers, one is struck by marvelously contradictory images of teachers as intellectual beings. In PATHS, we have an oversubscribed colloquium series and avid participants in archival research, while in much of the professional development literature we find a portrait of teacher as troglodyte. Surely there is a lesson here.

In a second example, the Urban Mathematics Collaboratives in more than fifteen major cities engage teachers with mathematicians in industry and higher education, with the combined aims of strengthening the caliber of math teaching and deepening teachers' commitment to all students (equity). The Urban Math Collaboratives have positioned themselves in support of the NCTM standards, though not without substantial discussion and debate, and have issued policy statements regarding equity, student assessment, and teacher professionalism (for example, Urban Mathematics Collaboratives, n.d.).

In Los Angeles, the mathematics collaborative (PLUS) retains structural independence from the participating districts but secures a foothold in the school workplace by inviting departments rather than individual teachers to join. Observers highlight six aspects of the collaborative's strength: (1) a capacity for teacher support in subject matter teaching that exceeds that of the district or university; (2) a norm of informed and steady experimentation in mathematics teaching; (3) a system of mutual aid that compensates for uneven subject matter preparation among the district's secondary math teachers; (4) sustained involvement with a professional community of mathematicians and mathematics educators; (5) a connection to the classroom that is sustained by teachers' control over the content and format of the collaborative's activity; (6) a broadened conception of professional knowledge and involvement that engages teachers in incorporate debates over the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching, and also engages them in policy deliberations surrounding math teaching at the local, state, and national levels (Little and McLaughlin, 1991).

Both of these collaboratives, together with various models based on the Bay Area Writing Project, underscore teachers' involvement in the construction and not mere consumption of subject matter teaching knowledge. They constitute a challenge to intellectual and collegial passivity. Further, they prepare teachers to make informed responses to reforms in subject matter teaching and student assessment without being linked narrowly to specific reform proposals.

Subject matter associations. The place of teachers' professional associations remains nearly invisible in the mainstream professional development literature. We know little about the role played by the largest and most prominent subject matter associations (NCTE, NCTM, NSTA, and others) in the professional lives of teachers or in shaping teachers' disposition toward particular reforms. Although it is clear that the subject associations are exerting an increasingly powerful influence in the articulation of subject curriculum and assessment standards, we have virtually no record of the specific nature or extent of discussion and debate over subject matter reform. In what ways is the ordinary classroom teacher touched by an association's involvement in state and national debate over "standards?" If we were to examine the agendas for state, regional, and national conferences held by these associations, what traces of "reform" would we encounter? How do elementary and secondary teachers experience the demands associated with subject-specific reforms? In what ways are the various subject matter reforms congruent or in conflict? (The Alliance for Curriculum Reform, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, has begun to work with the major subject matter associations to trace the commonalities and differences in the reforms targeted at subject paradigms, subject-related pedagogies, curriculum policy, and assessment.)

Smaller, more informal regional associations have attracted even less policy research attention, yet may prove crucial in shaping teachers' responses to specific reform initiatives. The Curriculum Study Commission (CSC), a long-standing group of English educators spanning elementary, secondary, and higher education, provides a forum for pursuing a wide range of teaching interests linked to the subject discipline. Although the CSC gives serious attention to any reform with crucial implications for teachers' work, it reserves its support for those reforms shaped fundamentally by teachers as some of the new frameworks, standards, and assessments have been (Wagner, 1991; see also Ellwood, 1992).

In each of these examples the NCTM and the CSC we find an instance of teachers' professional community that extends well beyond the school walls, fundamentally independent of the employing organization, but positioned to exert considerable influence on teachers' dispositions toward reform proposals. To the extent that an association's most active members also occupy leadership roles within their schools, districts, or collective bargaining units, the association's effect is multiplied.

Collaborations targeted at school reform. Professional development is one integral feature of some collaborations targeted to school reform. School-university collaborations exhibit something of a rocky history. As instruments of reform, and as sites for professional development, they have had difficulty overcoming long-standing asymmetries in status, power, and resources. As partnerships have evolved, they have moved toward greater parity in obligations, opportunities, and rewards. The Coalition of Essential Schools offers the image of the school "friend," the insider/outsider (generally affiliated with a university) who remains attached to the school to provide support and critique of school progress. The friend, in principle, is a resource to the collective, a way of expanding access to information and other resources. In the Stanford/Schools Collaborative, certain structural mechanisms help to introduce and sustain reciprocity. Governance arrangements achieve parity not only by formal provisions for equal representation, but also by operations that ensure widespread availability of important information (especially information about resources) and provisions for exercising influence in the distribution of resources. Separate planning committees for key program components or events expand representation in decision-making. The committees are a distance-closing device that is particularly crucial to the school-based participants (who have greater numbers), reducing the organizational distance from any one teacher or administrator to a node in the decision making net. To the extent that the structure of leadership spans groups and institutions, it helps to permeate organizational boundaries. Organizational boundaries are further blurred by the development of cross- institutional roles (for example, research activities designed and led jointly by teachers and professors, Professor in Residence in Schools opportunities, and the incorporation of classroom teachers as lecturers in the teacher education programs.) However, these cross- institutional roles are still small in number, low in visibility, modest in institutional salience, and perhaps too dependent on individual will.

Various other partnerships employ new conceptions of the university-school relation in the service of particular reform agendas. Faculty from National-Louis University have entered into a partnership with the Chicago schools in support of various subject matter reforms. They express the basic problem this way: "For most elementary school teachers, a very different type of instruction is described in the [Mathematics] Standards than they experienced as students...." In mathematics, for example, "The professional development programs that our Best Practice leaders provide require teachers to become actively engaged in doing mathematics" (Chicago Project on Learning and Teaching, 1992, p. 6). The idea is to promote and provoke conceptual breakthroughs in conceptual understanding for the teachers by facilitating mathematical experiences rather than by teaching the teachers mathematical content or methods. A similar investigatory stance toward curriculum and instruction also distinguishes a partnership described by Marilyn Cochran-Smith and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. University faculty, experienced and prospective teachers, and secondary school students in Philadelphia join in research into aspects of a multicultural society (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992). In this instance, teachers' professional development is intricately interwoven with the daily life of the classroom for example, as English teacher Bob Fecho (1992) engages his students in research into the relations between language and power.

Whether broadly conceived or more closely focused, these partnerships invite a reexamination of the traditionally privileged position of the university in relation to schools, and of the asymmetries in the relations between professors and schoolteachers.

Special institutes and centers. Among the accounts that teachers offer when they are asked to describe "favorable" professional development experiences, certain stories stand out. They are those that describe participation in special institutes or centers summer institutes sponsored by NSF, for example, where teachers enjoy sustained work with ideas, materials, and colleagues, or centers such as the University of California's Lawrence Hall of Science where every activity expresses a commitment to make math and science more accessible, rich, and engaging for students, parents, and teachers. Judging by teachers' accounts, such institutes and centers offer substantive depth and focus; adequate time to grapple with ideas and materials; the sense of doing real work rather than being "talked at;" and an opportunity to consult with colleagues and experts. Some are grounded in a conception of systemic reform, their influence magnified by mechanisms that sustain connections among participants (electronic networks) and by explicit attention to the local and state contexts surrounding subject matter reforms.

By comparison to the volume of studies directed at district-sponsored training or school improvement projects, there is virtually no body of work directed toward these institutes and centers as a vehicle for teachers' professional growth and colleagueship. On the basis of anecdotal evidence, two policy issues stand out. The first is one of scale. Special institutes and centers concentrate resources, representing a greater cost per participant and a more restricted access than more modest local ventures. A note on the cost issue appears below. The second and related matter is scope or purpose in a climate of reform, how might participation by a relative few achieve a ripple effect among a larger number in local schools and districts? Some institute sponsors more than others extend their agendas to in ways that address the realities of reform; they understand the problem of knowledge use in context. The relevant contexts include states, where graduation standards are set and curriculum frameworks promulgated. They include districts, where curriculum policy is specified and local priorities are expressed. And, most centrally, they include schools. It is a commonplace of the school workplace literature that schools are generally not organized to exert much influence on teaching practice, that collegial norms do not admit special claims to expertise, and that the social organization of daily work offers scant reason or opportunity for teachers to take much account of one another's interest in new ideas, materials, or methods (Bird and Little, 1986; Huberman, 1993). Some schools stand out as dramatic exceptions. They have been built through acts of leadership and organization, not legislated, mandated, regulated or coerced. The policy challenge is to enlarge their number.

Six principles for professional development

1. Professional development offers meaningful intellectual, social, and emotional engagement with ideas, with materials, and with colleagues both in and out of teaching. This is an alternative to the shallow, fragmented content and passive teacher roles observable in much "implementation training." Teachers do not assume an active professional role simply by participating in a "hands-on" activity as part of a scripted workshop. This principle also acknowledges teachers' limited access to the intellectual resources of a community or a subject field. Thus, the subject matter collaboratives engage teachers in the study and doing of mathematics, enlarge teachers access to mathematicians and mathematical ideas in university or industry settings, and establish mechanisms of consultation and support among teachers.

2. Professional development takes explicit account of the contexts of teaching and the experience of teachers. Focused study groups, teacher collaboratives, long-term partnerships, and similar modes of professional development afford teachers a means of locating new ideas in relation to their individual and institutional histories, practices, and circumstances. This principle thus challenges the context-independent or "one size fits all" mode of formal staff development which introduces largely standardized content to individuals whose teaching experience, expertise, and settings vary widely. The training and coaching model, which by its nature tends to assume the importance of its training content, grants only residual status to questions regarding the fit between new ideas and old habits, or between new ideas and present circumstances.

3. Professional development offers support for informed dissent. In the pursuit of good schools, consensus may prove to be an overstated virtue. Admittedly, deeply felt differences in value and belief can make agreements both difficult to achieve and unstable over time. At its extreme, dissent may engender a certain micropolitical paralysis (see Ball, 1987), while shared commitments may enable people to take bold action. To permit or even foster principled dissent (for example, by structuring devil s advocate roles and arguments) nonetheless places a premium on the evaluation of alternatives and the close scrutiny of underlying assumptions. To do so may alter that dynamic by which dissenters come quickly to be labeled as resisters. Although specific examples do not abound, one might expect that close collaborations and long-term inquiry-oriented partnerships provide more opportunity than do training experiences for the kind of principled and well-informed dissent that strengthens both group decisions and individual choices (e.g., Nemeth, 1989).

4. Professional development places classroom practice in the larger contexts of school practice and the educational careers of children. It is grounded in a "big picture" perspective on the purposes and practices of schooling, providing teachers a means of seeing and acting upon the connections among students' experiences, teachers' classroom practice, and school-wide structures and cultures. This is a challenge to a narrowly "technological" view of curriculum reform that depends heavily on the accumulation of specific technical skills, and to the tendency to treat teachers nearly exclusively as classroom decision makers independent of larger patterns of practice. It recalls Fullan's (1991) argument that reforms or innovations are simultaneously technical and social, and underscores the balance of obligations and opportunities in teachers' professional development. Partnerships and collaboratives to a large extent engage these multiple levels and aspects of reform; special institutes do so to some extent when they help prepare teachers to assume leadership or assistance roles in their schools or districts.

5. Professional development prepares teachers (as well as students and their parents) to employ the techniques and perspectives of inquiry. Without denying that there are times when technical skill training is indeed appropriate, this principle anticipates a model based more persuasively on the pursuit of knowledge. It provides the possibility for teachers and others to interrogate their individual beliefs and the institutional patterns of practice. It acknowledges that the existing "knowledge base" is relatively slim, and that our strength may derive less from teachers' willingness to consume research knowledge than from their capacity to generate knowledge and to assess the knowledge claimed by others. Those teacher consortia and partnerships centered most directly on teachers research come closest to embodying this principle.

6. The governance of professional development ensures bureaucratic restraint and a balance between the interests of individuals and the interests of institutions. Despite some well- publicized exceptions such as the various subject matter collaboratives, the field is dominated by a district-subsidized marketplace of formal programs over which teachers exert little influence or in which they play few leadership roles. Further, few states or districts have any mechanism for evaluating the criteria on which resources are allocated; few have examined the ways in which the entire configuration of professional development obligations and opportunities communicate a view of schools, teachers, teaching, and teacher development. Evaluation and research, to the extent that they exist at all, tend to center on individual projects rather than on the policy import of whole patterns of resource allocation (for exceptions, see Moore and Hyde, 1981; Schlechty et al., 1982; Little et al., 1987). A principled view of resource allocation might more readily balance support for institutional initiatives, with those initiated by teachers individually and collectively.

Comparison of the training model with various alternatives suggests that there are precedents worth preserving and dilemmas worth revealing. To start, it seems we must be willing to ask : Among the formal activities or agreements that make up the most common approaches to professional development, where does one find the most ambitious reflection of the six principles? Even among the alternatives described here, some principles are more clearly evident than others. Principles 3 ( informed dissent ) and 4 (the big picture or systemic view) prove most difficult to locate, though they are arguably central to professional development that is at once intellectually rigorous and socially responsible. What are the most challenging issues?

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[The Policy Dilemma]

[IV. Emerging issues]