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The Role of Teaching and Learning in Systemic Reform:
Susan Loucks-Horsley
National Institute for Science Education,
Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education, and
WestEd
Annual Forum of the National Institute for Science Education
Washington DC, February 1997
The purpose of systemic reform is to improve student learning, which cannot be accomplished without excellent teaching. It is not a surprise, then, that professional development plays a critical role in the success of systemic reform, as it directly influences the quality of teaching and learning in science and mathematics classrooms. This paper draws on my experiences in designing and conducting evaluations of professional development in the context of systemic initiatives at local and state levels, in providing technical assistance to professional developers, and in capturing the experiences of seasoned professional developers in a book on best practice. In the paper I sketch briefly:
1. It is a long distance from the policy level to the student, and professional development is on the way.
In my new role as Director of Professional Development and Outreach for K-12, at the National Research Council's Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education, I have the task of overseeing the Center's efforts to "disseminate" the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996). It is a constant source of amazement how many people think that you can literally give the book to teachers and expect them to use the Standards in their teaching. These standards are a product of a national consensus; the many sets of standards developed at other levels of the system (e.g., by states and districts) similarly result from broad consensus. Their intention has never been to be "implemented" directly, but to guide a system's design for what educators expect of and how they work with students.
Bybee (1996) describes a schema for system change that applies equally well for mathematics reform as it does for science reform; it includes changes in purpose, policies, programs, and practices. According to this schema, purposes relate to the general agreement on the need for science and mathematics literacy for all; standards are the policies that guide education towards those purposes. But in order to move to students, programs need to influence practice , which is the only way that students will have different and better opportunities to learn. This is where professional development enters the picture. Professional development is one of the critical links in this chain, one that can take purposes and policies and influence student learning through its impact on teaching.
We have learned that there is a great distance between systems and students. Although there are many routes that may be chosen (e.g., through new assessment, curriculum, or instructional programs ), professional development is a required stop along the route. For students to reach the goals to which the system aspires, teacher learning and change are essential.
2. Investment in people as the primary agents of change is critical. Many proponents of systemic reform concentrate on the need to change policies at the state and local levels. Their vision came in part from the California experience of the 1980s and early 1990s, when the state began to enact a vision that put into place the critical elements of state frameworks, assessments, curriculum adoption criteria, and professional development (Honig, 1990). As other states enact this policy-level focus, they would do well to examine the California situation carefully, as it has evolved. At this point, many of these critical elements are either lost (i.e., the state assessment) or being threatened (e.g., some of the state frameworks). Policies are as good as the politics that helps them get established -- they may have a shelf-life only as long as a current administration.
What is encouraging in California is that the teachers and other educators who have "grown" this reform, not as much from the grassroots but from the developing infrastructure, are keeping the reform alive and well in many locations. The infrastructures are the statewide professional development networks, two of which have been supported through the NSF statewide systemic initiative, the Mathematics Renaissance and the California Science Implementation Network, and others as well, such as the California Subject Matter Projects. The investment in people through professional development that has been made by these projects has created a strong fabric that is resistant to change, people whose teaching can never return to pre-reform practices, and who can articulate what is important and why. In evaluating the California statewide systemic initiative, we have seen what we call "inside-out" systemic reform, i.e., changes in the system that result because people are changing and are influencing the structures, procedures, and, in some cases, the policies, that guide teaching and learning (Aquarelli & Mumme, 1996). Of the several hundred schools and thousands of teachers who have been touched by the two SSI networks, we have hundreds of examples of network teachers and administrators taking on new leadership roles within buildings and districts (e.g., teachers becoming principals and curriculum supervisors, principals and teacher leaders becoming assistant superintendents), in their local and state professional associations, and as members of state and local committees whose role it is to make curriculum, assessment, and instructional decisions. We have documented dozens of instances of these mathematics and science initiatives influencing changes in other content areas in schools and districts, the nature of professional development offered by county offices and higher education institutions, and teacher preparation programs, both on campus and in clinical settings. Most interesting, perhaps, is the statewide influence of these professional development networks on assessment and standards development. For example, when CLAS, the new performance assessment system, was canceled by the governor in 1995, a collaborative of districts facilitated by science professional developers was determined to have the kinds of testing program for students that CLAS had offered. Through their collaboration, the CLAS test was revised for use in districts and schools last fall and an NSF-funded project begun at the same time to develop similar tests for the state and other interested systemic initiatives. Another example is the writing of state-mandated science standards, taken on voluntarily by the coalition of state professional development projects, once again determined not to lose the essence of the reforms for which they had worked so hard.
Fullan (1993) emphasizes the importance of all educators being change agents, that it takes people to make change. In a newer article (1996) he "turns systemic reform on its head", arguing for the very people-driven networks that we are seeing stay the course of reform in California. California serves as a warning to those systemic initiatives who have relied heavily on their policy initiatives and neglected the building of strong networks dedicated to professional learning at the individual and school level. They say that it takes a village to raise a child; it takes the people in it to educate the child. As California may have been seen early as a prototype for systemic reform, it may also be a proving ground for how to sustain reform when there is turbulence in the system. That people and their traditional strategies last tenaciously through policy changes has been a curse of many reform initiatives. That people, once changed, can in fact remain changed, may turn this curse into a blessing. Professional development may sustain systemic reform when change at the system level fails.
3. The professional development needed by systemic reform is not the same kind as supported change initiatives in the past. The new paradigm for professional development that Dennis Sparks first called to our attention in 1994 is not about one-time, one-teacher-at-a-time, expert-driven workshops or institutes, held for teacher far from their schools and classrooms. Professional development for systemic reform is larger in:
4. A strong infrastructure and deliberately developed capacity for change are needed to support the people and change the paradigm. For educators in large numbers to learn about, try out, and maintain changes in their practice requires a support system with a shared vision of teaching and learning, such as those visions articulated for mathematics and science in the national standards (NCTM, 1989; NRC, 1996), but with greater attention to creating shared images of what the vision looks like in practice -- in the classroom interactions of teachers and students, in instructional materials, in student work and assessments. The support system is staffed by people whose job it is to introduce, facilitate, and support change in the direction of the vision. These people have demonstrated skill in teaching young people as well as the abilities to address the learning needs of adults and build professional networks, both inside and outside of schools, to support ongoing learning (Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992). They have a keen knowledge of the change process and how to work with people at different stages of change (Hall & Hord, 1987); skills in communication, problem solving, decision making, team building, and time and task management (Fullan, 1991); and the ability to use pressure and support appropriately (Louis & Miles, 1989).
Effective infrastructures build capacity for ongoing change at the local level through design and use of a variety of professional development strategies that help teachers change their practice, through support of collaborative work inside of schools to support individual change and design and implement programs of study, and through building capacity for leadership in various members of the school and community (Friel & Bright, 1997).
5. Professional development must pay careful attention to content knowledge. With a renewed focus on concept development as a valued outcome of science and mathematics education, teachers are no longer able to "cover" for lack of preparation in the area they teach (which assignment is usually not their choice). Shulman's (1987) work in defining and explicating the term "pedagogical content knowledge" has added a new and critical dimension to professional development. Whereas generic professional development (e.g., learning generic teaching skills such as cooperative learning, effective instruction, and questioning techniques), was a hallmark of the 1980s, we have learned the keen importance of teachers knowing how to teach particular content -- understanding the conceptions students are likely to hold about certain mathematics and science concepts, what students of a certain age are developmentally able to learn, and what examples, analogies, and representations help them learn it. Such knowledge is difficult to learn in preservice education, and is often the province of the experienced expert teacher (Shulman, 1987). This need for learning from a master teacher underlies the use and success of mentor and advising teacher programs (Shulman & Colbert, 1990).
6. Instructional materials can play a critical role in teacher as well as curriculum change. Most educators think of teaching and curriculum as two different components of the system, but we are quickly learning the power of materials to help teachers learn (Loucks-Horsley et al., in press; Friel & Bright, 1997). Materials developed to teach students important concepts and skills represented in national standards, with teaching strategies that address a constructivist view of learning, help teachers try out new behaviors and experience for themselves what new forms of teaching look and feel like. In particular, teachers can see how these approaches work with students. Two professional development strategies use curriculum materials to support teacher learning (Loucks-Horsley et al., in press). The first is curriculum implementation, in which a set of instructional materials is selected, teachers learn how to use them, try out the materials, reflect on their experiences, and are supported over time to refine their use. The second is curriculum replacement (Burns, 1995), in which teachers try out a unit that embodies new teaching perspectives and strategies, and document and discuss their experiences in order to "try on" new ways of helping students learn. Both strategies promise to influence both how teachers teach and the materials they use to do so.
7. Professional development and organizational development must be inseparable. The largest professional association devoted to staff development, the National Staff Development Council, defines professional development as involving both individual and organizational development. This is because we know that individuals are unlikely to sustain what they learn when their organization does not support them to do so. It is one reason why the "last wave of reform" in science education, which provided opportunities for individual teachers to attend summer institutes away from their schools and districts, fell far short of its potential to change teaching and learning in substantial ways. For teachers to change what they do with their students, the organizations within which they work must change, in two ways. First, their schools and districts must support teachers' changes (e.g., provide materials support and time for collaborative planning and reflection; focus teacher evaluations on the changes). Second, the organizations must themselves become learning organizations, valuing experimentation and collaboration, encouraging deep examination and analysis of teaching and learning, and creating opportunities for extending and enhancing practice (Senge, 1990; Shanker, 1990). Such schools, described by Rosenholtz (1989) as "learning enriched" are characterized by high levels of student as well as adult learning. Without organization development, individual teachers are unlikely to sustain their learning; with it, not only do teachers learn, but their students do so as well.
What We Need to Know
Professional development is a field in which "definitive research" on what is effective does not exist (Frechling et al., 1995). Like teaching, it is too complex to understand by asking simple questions, it is highly influenced by factors out of control of either the professional developer or the researcher, and its success depends greatly upon the goals and context, which are idiosyncratic to a given situation. The ideas discussed above capture what I believe we know; they have come from a combination of research, literature, and the "wisdom of practice". In each case, we have some evidence, but we need closer study, some more existence proofs (i.e., examples of where and how these things work) to increase our certainty. As works-in-progress, professional development efforts lend themselves to examination. While much can be learned from them to further the education community's understanding of how different factors interact, including the people, the context, and the passage of time, they themselves can benefit from ongoing reflection and feedback. Such examination holds great promise for increasing our understanding of the role of professional development in systemic reform.
As we examine current initiatives, here are some questions I think are important to ask:
1. How can we move from understanding how individual teachers learn and how to help them, to how to support the growth of millions of teachers? Mathematics educators, in particular, have become very expert at understanding how teachers learn and what can help them (Ball, 1996). Science educators, on the other hand, have increased our understanding about what system components are needed to improve the potential of success for change (St. John et al., 1994). The issue of scaling up, however, is still perplexing, as articulated well by Elmore (1996). We need to learn from the many systemic efforts currently underway, what mechanisms, strategies, and system elements make learning possible for such magnitude as all teachers in the nation.
2. What are some ways of using scarce resources well, so that teachers have equitable access and opportunity to learn? It is widely acknowledged that, for teachers to make the changes envisioned in national and state standards, many hours, and so, resources, must be devoted to their learning. Yet by any metric, there are not enough resources available to provide every teacher in this country the opportunities they need. Professional development initiatives could benefit from understanding the effects and trade-offs involved in selecting different strategies, such as teacher leadership cadres, demonstration sites, and regional professional development centers. What resources actually go to professional development and in what various ways have they been focused? What are some examples of leveraging resources and how might they work in different settings? What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of large-scale, less intense strategies, and those that go deep with fewer people? How can leadership development, assessments, and instructional materials broaden the reach and impact of professional development?
3. How do professional developers select among different strategies, what combinations seem to work in what situations, and are particular strategies more useful for particular purposes? In our current book, we have identified 16 strategies and suggested that they can serve different purposes (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1997). Are there guides to selecting and combining various professional learning strategies?
4. What outcomes can be expected to result from professional development programs, and how can they best be assessed? This relatively straight-forward question is fraught with pitfalls and subject to a multitude of responses. The demand on educators for accountability dictates that professional development must have something to show for itself beyond participant satisfaction. Yet there are many well regarded arguments for why professional development cannot and should not be examined for its impact on some critical outcomes, e.g., student learning (Hein, 1997). Is this a political question, or can researchers shed some light on the plausibility of drawing relationships between a professional development opportunity and such variables as student learning or teacher behavior change?
5. How can professional development contribute to greater coherence in the educational system? The recent and ongoing releases of data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study point to the critical importance of coherence in our approaches and support for teaching and learning. With either no helm or too many, teachers are forced to teach too many things superficially, with minimal time for reflection and improvement of their approaches to help students think and learn more deeply. How can professional development help not only teachers, but educators with broader decision-making responsibilities, focus and make critical choices that will ultimately benefit students?
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