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Increasingly the Consortium has recognized the professional development value of providing teachers with opportunities to talk to other teachers, to share personal experiences with change and new instructional practices. To promote this kind of interaction, the Consortium has tried to highlight "best practices" at workshops and conferences in a less formal setting. The Consortium has also sponsored a Mini-Projects program to encourage collaborative projects across organizations within the partnership. The criteria for awarding funding required that the project support teacher development and school improvement, and that they involve people from at least two Consortium partners.
An outgrowth of the Learning Consortium’s successes and growing reputation has provided an opportunity for establishing linkages with other groups outside of their member organizations. They have cosponsored with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation a Stay in School Project, and the International Conference on Evaluation brought exposure to researchers from all over the world. The "UNITE" project, a foundation-funded collaborative effort to develop teacher preparation programs for urban schools, has brought the Consortium in contact with eight other university teacher education development efforts in the United States and Canada.
Additional connections with outside groups have developed within individual boards. Durham has developed a cottage industry that provides training in cooperative learning and classroom management. They have developed cooperative arrangements with educators in Vermont, Holland, and elsewhere. For example, in Vermont, Durham provided classroom management & Cooperative Learning training, and they learned about portfolio assessment from educators in Vermont.
The four Consortium boards have always provided extensive professional development activities, but economic constraints in recent years have reduced the amount of training they are able to provide. Consequently, the Consortium members are now exploring ways of providing cost-effective staff development. Among the schools visited, no structural changes had been introduced to build professional learning into the regular school day. In a few schools, however, a culture had developed where they utilized team meetings, planning time, and staff meetings for sharing and discussing new ideas to learn from one another.
The impact of the norms of collaboration and critical reflection developed in the SMP have produced strong collaborative cultures in individual schools. At the end of each day at White Rock School, teachers open up the movable walls of their classrooms and talk about lessons they are working on, concerns about individual students, and problems they are trying to solve. During the day, extensive team teaching occurs across the school. At New Suncook School, a student intern observed that teachers never complain in the staff room. If a problem has developed, the conversation is always focused on how to solve it.
The Southern Maine Partnership provided important opportunities for university faculty to learn as well. Because of the close ties with schools and districts, the university teacher educators share in many of the same learning opportunities with their school-based counterparts. The university ETEP coordinators noted how much they have learned from the regular interactions with teachers in their classrooms. Within the college itself, few opportunities have been developed to address faculty development.
Money has been critical to the reform effort in West Virginia because it bought time to work that was not part of educators’ regular job. The symbolic value was often more important than the material value. Usually university and school faculty invested much more time than they were compensated for, but the stipend was an acknowledgment that their work was valued. The problem is that there have been no organizational changes to institutionalize these learning opportunities. For example, Morgantown High School created a novel idea, calling two "Snow Days" in September. They obtained district approval to declare a snow day and let the students stay home. The day was then spent on staff-designed professional development. These, however, were special events, requiring additional resources. The schools have not developed ways to build these activities into their "regular" work, utilizing their own expertise within existing budgets. However, teachers have found ways to build on professional development experiences supported by external funds. One summer a dozen teachers learned LINKWAY, a multimedia computer program, and this group became the core resource for teaching their colleagues during lunch hours and after school throughout the school year. The use of technology has been embedded in courses across the curriculum.
The development of PDSs has significantly improved the learning opportunities for student teachers during field placements. In these schools, student teachers use technology, participate in professional development activities and restructuring efforts, and learn innovative teaching practices that are not part of their university education. The types of learning opportunities for kids that student teachers are exposed to in these schools provide powerful lessons. One student teacher said he learned that not everyone learns in the same way, and that you have to try multiple methods to reach all the kids. He hadn’t realized this before. He also said that he had learned that kids were capable of a lot more than he thought. He hadn’t given students enough credit. He wanted to be sure to give all students a chance to experience success, but now he tried to challenge them more than he did before. He found he could often move faster than he had planned.
In all three sites, the influence of the university has contributed to a deeper understanding and appreciation for research. School-based educators are becoming critical consumers, and in some cases, participants in research. Habits of inquiry are less pervasive, with the exception of Southern Maine. Asking critical questions of self-reflection is still unusual, especially at the university level. Only the small elementary pilot preservice program incorporates demanding content and fosters collaboration and reflection, while modeling exemplary instructional practices. A continual challenge remains in all three sites to upgrade the content and methods of instruction in preservice teacher education.
What the Learning Consortium has provided the FEUT faculty is access to schools. There has been some teaming with schools on joint research projects. The FEUT coordinator has introduced substantial inquiry/reflection into the elementary preservice option. The program requirements structure activities that socialize students into the norms of collaboration. For example, student portfolios must cover three general areas: pragmatic, theoretical, and experiential. In addition, students are required to share their reflective writing with others -- colleagues, associate teachers, or university instructors -- and to get feedback in writing on their ideas. This has proved an effective vehicle for stimulating dialogue and identifying common areas of interest among colleagues. This is an example of the need for pressure and support in early implementation of change initiatives that Huberman & Miles (1982) described. Student teachers did not feel coerced, as they found the practices to be beneficial. In the new two-year program, there will be more opportunity to focus on the development of inquiry skills.
In the teacher preparation program, training in inquiry and action research is not rigorous and in many cases is completely absent. Where journals are required, they are a valuable tool for reflection, but they are used inconsistently from site to site. Some sites require them, some recommend them; when they are not required, students don’t do them. Student teacher portfolios are also a tool used to stimulate self-reflection to varying degrees, depending on the structure and intended purpose of the portfolio. Student teachers are also socialized into a culture of continuous learning through their immersion in schools where the practice is pervasive.
The tradition of self-reflection remains much stronger in the school and in their intersection with university faculty than within the college of education itself. According to student teachers, the quality of university course work is inconsistent and lacks rigor, and within the college faculty little basic empirical research is done. It is surprising how little documentation exists, given the ten-year history of this remarkably successful partnership in education reform.
In the current teacher education program, according to student teachers, the quality of university course work is inconsistent and lacks rigor. Preservice students described much of their university course work as "busy work" and "lacking challenge." "It wasn’t hands on, faculty didn’t model what they were teaching (with one exception). You don’t "do" things at the university, you only talk about it." Training in research and inquiry is largely absent. The design of the new program incorporates a number of new areas that are not currently part of the teacher education program, (e.g., inquiry and action research, multiculturalism, and the use of technology). Whether the new program significantly improves the learning experiences of student teachers is an open question -- it has yet to implemented.
At Morgantown High School, many individuals have become involved in researching new practices, changing their own, and evaluating the effects of those changes. Among those teachers who have been active participants in PDS activities, a commitment to continuous learning is evident. These developments, however, have not made widespread cultural change in the school. There is little discussion of curriculum or instructional strategies in either department meetings or in the faculty senate. The fact that there are two separate governance structures, a PDS steering committee and the faculty senate, indicates a lack of integration of the PDS concept as a learning organization into the school as a whole. As some reforms have become schoolwide efforts, gradually more faculty are getting involved, but in such a large school, changing the culture takes time. MHS has made a significant start.
In contrast, there has been a significant cultural change at East Dale Elementary. There, PDS involvement has changed the way teachers think about teaching. Teachers really read all the material and digest it before they come to a steering committee meeting so that they can use the time productively in the meeting. They are excited about learning new ways to provide meaningful learning opportunities for their students. It is a school where almost everyone participates. Participation in the Benedum Project is such a dominant focus in the school that one teacher commented that "the attitude is so pervasive now that if someone is not ‘on board’ that person will feel pretty left out, and will either join in or leave."
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[Cross-Site Analysis: Descriptive Findings (part 4 of 4)]