You raise a most interesting and bothersome issue.
It's amazing to me that people expect a single workshop or even several
days of intensive in-service to fundmentally alter years or even decades
of daily practice. We find that even providing several hundred contact
hours over two years or so, including guided instruction and assistance
with in-classroom implementation, is sometimes barely sufficient. And
this is in the context of teachers working with their colleagues and
administrators as a whole school -- it must be much more difficult for an
individual teacher without such support. And working with individual
teachers will virtually never change the culture of a school; that requires
a concerted, systemic effort. And without such change to whole
schyool cultures, children's educations will not be fundamentally
improved.
So my question is: Why do professional developers continue to pursue
and use models that are demonstably ineffective? Is it because changing
what they offer is too difficult? Is it because of a lack of demand? Why
isn't there a general ground swell of demnad on the part of teachers for
services that will provide them with what they need? Is this something of
a vicious circle where teachers percieve neither the depth of their needs
nor the solution, and therefore raise no demand for improved practices,
therefore professional developers don't offer these more difficult,
time-consuming, intensive services.
How can such a circle be broken? It seems to me that a first step is to
broaden the awareness of the scope and seriousness of the problem.
The recent report: What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future can
be most helpful in this matter. This report lays out, in clear and dramatic
ways, just how the underpreparedness of teachers damages us all. And
it identifies the various levels on which changes must be made:
pre-service education, selection processes, early career support,
ongoing professional development.
After raising the conciousness of the problem, we still must find the
courage, effort, and support to go about helping schools to change their
culutres for the better. And that ties us right back into the issues of
scaling up.
Anyhow, just a few initial thoughts sparked by your recent posting.
Ethan Allen
Associate Director, Policy & Planning
Teachers Academy for Mathematics and Science
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