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Two-way communication about innovations that are being attempted is a requirement of success. Fullan and Steigelbauer (1991) contend that, "to the extent that the information flow is accurate, the problems of implementation get identified. This means that each individual’s personal perceptions and concerns -- the core of change -- get aired" (p.199). Assurances that everyone’s voice is heard and that information is shared widely are critical, as information is the essential ingredient in the learning process (Robinson & Darling-Hammond, 1994).
In all three sites, the importance of communication is most evident when there are breakdowns. A lack of communication across organizations resulted in inconsistent quality of university courses, dissatisfaction with school-university relations, and frustration with direction and pace of progress with the reform initiative.
The physical distance between the member organizations also makes face-to-face communication more difficult. It can take two hours to drive from one end of the Consortium to the other -- and that’s when there is no traffic! Electronic linkages are developing, but are incomplete at this point. Within individual organizations, communication is quite strong, but it remains a challenge in the large boards. Central office staff take responsibility for disseminating Learning Consortium news to the school, and they make an effort to stay informed of developments in individual schools.
Although within each ETEP site there is strong communication among coordinators, cooperating teachers, and student teachers, within the College of Education there is little communication between ETEP sites. There is little awareness of other sites’ programs, as few courses are actually taught at the university. There is little quality control across the program.
Within the Teacher Education Centers, the communication between the school and the preservice program is very strong. Each of the schools has ownership of the program and is committed to maintaining strong coordination. In other schools, where there is no site-based coordinator, communication is often lacking. The College relies to a significant extent on graduate students to do much of the supervision and evaluation in the field. The perspective of both student teachers and cooperating teachers is that those infrequent contacts have not been meaningful.
Within the College itself, the lack of communication has been a constant problem. Those actively involved in committee work and planning are informed, but few of the others are. As the project’s activities expanded beyond the planning stages, the tasks became more dispersed, with various groups working on different parts of the project. When this happened, the ongoing management and planning of the project was largely handled by the project staff. Lack of communication about long-range planning resulted in frustration and dissatisfaction with the pace of progress, particularly within HR&E. There is no strong sense of direction within the College, and a lack of communication about decisions made within college have contributed to frustrations and dissatisfaction with the administration of the reform agenda. Many of the faculty have expressed uncertainty about what their role would be in the new program.
Thinking of professional development as a problem of enabling teachers’ learning and continued professional vitality focuses attention on the organizational conditions of individual development and the critical consequences of school-level choices -- site-level strategies to engage teachers in learning and development in the context of their particular classroom settings. These site-level strategies are reinforced and enhanced by district-level or teacher-based policies that acknowledge the need for site- or teacher-specific professional development opportunities, convey high expectations and support for teachers’ professionalism, and exploit the strengths of teachers’ networks and professional affiliations. (McLaughlin, 1991)
Aligning organizations to support professional development requires both structural and cultural changes. The partnership ethic must be encultured at both individual and organizational levels (Sirotnik, 1991).
The cultural changes that promote mutual learning, questioning, and critical reflection in Southern Maine have pushed the development of organizational changes to support ongoing learning. In Toronto and West Virginia, where cultural changes are developing at the school level, professional development remains largely additional work, outside the boundaries of educators’ regular job. Some organizational changes have emerged (e.g., realigning the board’s structure in Toronto) to support professional development in individual schools.
Halton had already engaged in a strategic planning process from 1986 - 88 prior to the establishment of the Learning Consortium. Halton began with the Effective Schools movement, which examined the school growth process. Before the Consortium, the Board had always had a focus on leadership development, shared decision making, and teacher development, and the Consortium idea came about at a critical time. In 1989, Halton was looking for a strategy to focus the school growth plans. The LC’s focus on cooperative learning, emphasizing instructional strategies and classroom improvement, was the piece that had been missing.
North York developed its strategic plan in 1991 to focus on student outcomes in math and literacy. To support the board’s focus, staff developers introduced content-specific, cooperative-learning training to integrate the Consortium initiative.
Similarly, with the appointment of a new director in 1989, Durham identified five strategic areas for their system plan. As a result of an external review in 1992, several recommendations were made to reorganize the structure of the board to provide more direct support to teachers and students in schools. Based on the belief that students need to be actively involved in learning, the Board’s strategic plan emphasized instruction and school-based instructional leadership. Cooperative small-group learning became the core of Durham’s efforts to expand the repertoire of instructional strategies of teachers.
The Consortium itself is looking at its evolving role to respond to changing needs of its members. Economic hard times have severely cut back the resources available for professional development in the boards. The Consortium recognizes the need to reconceptualize professional development, and the development of delivery methods that are cost-effective.
Within FEUT, the emphasis on the development of partnerships with schools, and the increased expectations of faculty in terms of research and fieldwork have challenged the traditional reward structure of the university. Some progress has been made in looking at new definitions of "scholarship," but the system is still fairly traditional.
Although the field-focused doctorate OISE established in Educational Administration never really got off the ground, its objective was to create a cohort of students who cultivated a research perspective while remaining focused on their practice in the boards. One faculty member thought that the experiment may have helped to loosen some of his OISE colleague’s views about the structure of doctoral programs. For the first time, OISE now has a part-time administrative Ed.D program, making it more accessible to school-based educators.
These organizations are still evolving, but have made some important structural and cultural changes to support teacher learning through collaborations. While each organization has developed its own priorities, substantial alignment of these developments have occurred to support development at the school level. The common thread across the various organizations is the shared belief in the potential of teacher development.
An emphasis on student outcomes became focused around Maine’s "Common Core of Learning," developed collaboratively by cross-role committees across the state. It outlines flexible guidelines for what students should know and be able to do by the time they graduate from high school. Conversations about student outcomes were stimulated by the leadership and funding provided by the SMP, and district restructuring efforts: ATLAS in Gorham (Authentic Teaching, Learning, and Assessment for all Students) and ARISE in Fryeburg (Assessing, Reflecting, Integrating for School-Based Excellence). In Gorham, these efforts were further supported by district leadership that promoted teacher-scholar positions, summer curriculum work, and teacher-led staff development.
In Gorham, the K - 12 outcomes are being developed through a cycle of experimentation, reflection, feedback, and revision by teachers working together throughout the school year and during summer institutes. The ATLAS initiative has become a coordinating mechanism for engaging people in discussions about just what is the job of a teacher. Internal committees and external interactions through various national networks (NASDC, Goodlad’s Network, Foxfire) are working in tandem to engage the staff, student teachers, and parents in various aspects of this work. A portfolio system is being designed to provide meaningful documentation of student progress toward meeting the district outcomes. Portfolios provide the foundation for conversations between the child, parent, and teacher around the quality of student work. This year Gorham instituted 30-minute parent-teacher conferences at all grade levels during which the student presents his or her portfolio collection.
The districts and schools are participating in a number of national networks to design teacher outcomes that are connected to student outcomes. A number of experienced teachers are developing professional portfolios to be used in teacher evaluation, as well as to stimulate reflection and professional growth.
The emphasis on student outcomes is consistent with the emphasis on outcomes in the ETEP program. Parallel performance standards have been developed for the ETEP program, outlining what a student teacher should know and be able to do, based on the INTASC (Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) standards. The outcomes are used to evaluate student teachers throughout the year in an ongoing dialogue between cooperating teachers, site coordinators, and student interns about the intern’s development as a teacher. Advisers and mentor (cooperating) teachers use the outcomes as a guide for providing feedback. The standards are also the criteria used to certify satisfactory completion of the preparation program. Many cooperating teachers indicated that one real strength of the program is the set of clearly defined learning outcomes. The cumulative nature of the assessment process supports progressive development, with all parties contributing to the identification of strengths, as well as areas in need of development.
ETEP has also instituted portfolios as the foundation of their assessment program for student interns. The portfolios are a compilation of evidence documenting the student’s growth and attainment and mastery of the outcomes. As a process, it is designed to stimulate self-reflection and professional development for the student intern. Student teachers agreed that developing the portfolio was a valuable self-reflection tool.
Another significant example of the systemic impact that has been achieved through Gorham’s K - 12 district curriculum articulation efforts is the curriculum planning template. During the ATLAS Summer Institute in 1994, 40 teachers (mostly elementary) developed a tool to assist teachers in planning curriculum units, and to facilitate the district’s K - 12 curriculum articulation. Student teachers were introduced to the tool both through ETEP classes and via their cooperating teachers.
Early in the year the ETEP students attended joint workshops with district teachers to learn about the templates and scoring rubrics. It was also reinforced by a lot of teachers who were using it in their curriculum planning. The interns, seeing it widely used in the schools, found it was a useful tool for communicating with cooperating teachers. One of the student teachers relayed the following observations about the introduction and implementation of this and other innovations in the district:
Teachers were overwhelmed at the beginning of the year with all the ATLAS changes. There was a meeting in the beginning of the year where they were introduced to exhibitions and benchmarks, and the curriculum planning template, and the writing process rubrics, etc. In some cases, I think teachers felt that a lot was being forced on them all at once. There was, however, a lot of support for teachers to learn these new things within the district, and their own buildings, with help from the on-site ATLAS developer. There was sort of a sense that teachers were willing to do a lot of this because they were so focused on kids. If it was good for kids, they would do it.
Simultaneously, extensive efforts were invested in the redesign of teacher education. Ad hoc committees of Education, Arts & Science, and school-based faculty worked together to redesign teacher education at WVU. This was a three- to four-year process, which in many ways was more of a traditional university approach to reform (characterized by Whitford (1994) as the "ready, ready, ready" approach). The process was inclusive, with each of the ad hoc committees composed of Education, Arts & Science and school-based faculty. Evaluations of the process indicated that participants felt that their opinions were respected, and that the process was truly collaborative (Hoffman et al, 1994). The program design was approved by the college and the university, to be implemented in the Fall of 1995. There have been a few attempts to pilot some of the ideas embedded in the new program, but there has been relatively little experimentation or evaluation of these efforts to inform broad-based implementation that is planned.
While the alignment between the school-based and college-based reform efforts remains problematic, the college is attempting to address some major bureaucratic obstacles to the redesign of teacher education. The teacher education faculty is to be composed of faculty that cross department, college, and institutional boundaries. The goal is for courses to have college identification rather than department, which raises turf issues about how to assign FTE (Full Time Equivalents) credit for funding purposes within the university, as well as challenging traditional faculty autonomy in determining course content. The problem is that there are no institutional mechanisms for cooperation across departments and colleges. One faculty member noted that cross-college appointments have not been successful historically -- "usually for somewhat petty reasons like issues of parking."
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[Assessment of Outcomes: Overview of General Findings: Professionalism and Institutionalization]