Back to professional development resources
Policies that support professional development
in an era of reform
Phi Delta KAPPAN
April 1995
By Linda Darling-Hammond and Milbrey W. McLaughlin
The situation-specific nature of the kind of teaching and learning envisioned
by school reformers is the key challenge for teachers' professional development,
and it is the chief obstacle to policy makers' efforts to engender systemic
reform, according to the authors, who suggest some design principles to
guide those who are struggling with this issue.
The vision of practice that underlies the nation's reform agenda requires
most teachers to rethink their own practice, to construct new classroom
roles and expectations about student outcomes, and to teach in ways they
have never taught before - and probably never experienced as students.(1)
The success of this agenda ultimately turns on teachers' success in accomplishing
the serious and difficult tasks of learning the skills and perspectives
assumed by new visions of practice and unlearning the practices and beliefs
about students and instruction that have dominated their professional lives
to date. Yet few occasions and little support for such professional development
exist in teachers' environments.
Because teaching for understanding relies on teachers' abilities to see
complex subject matter from the perspectives of diverse students, the know-how
necessary to make this vision of practice a reality cannot be prepackaged
or conveyed by means of traditional top-down "teacher training"
strategies. The policy problem for professional development in this era
of reform extends beyond mere support for teachers' acquisition of new skills
or knowledge. Professional development today also means providing occasions
for teachers to reflect critically on their practice and to fashion new
knowledge and beliefs about content, pedagogy, and learners.(2)
Beginning with preservice education and continuing throughout a teacher's
career, teacher development must focus on deepening teachers' understanding
of the processes of teaching and learning and of the students they teach.
Effective professional development involves teachers both as learners and
as teachers and allows them to struggle with the uncertainties that accompany
each role. It has a number of characteristics.
* It must engage teachers in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment, observation,
and reflection that illuminate the processes of learning and development.
* It must be grounded in inquiry, reflection, and experimentation that
are participant-driven.
* It must be collaborative, involving a sharing of knowledge among educators
and a focus on teachers' communities of practice rather than on individual
teachers.
* It must be connected to and derived from teachers' work with their students.
* It must be sustained, ongoing, intensive, and supported by modeling,
coaching, and the collective solving of specific problems of practice.
* It must be connected to other aspects of school change.
Professional development of this kind signals a departure from old norms
and models of "preservice" or "inservice" training.
It creates new images of what, when, and how teachers learn, and these new
images require a corresponding shift from policies that seek to control
or direct the work of teachers to strategies intended to develop schools'
and teachers' capacity to be responsible for student learning. Capacity-building
policies view knowledge as constructed by and with practitioners for use
in their own contexts, rather than as something conveyed by policy makers
as a single solution for top-down implementation.
Though the outlines of a new paradigm for professional development policy
are emerging,(3) the hard work of developing concrete exemplars of the policies
and practices that model "top-down support for bottom-up reform"
has only just begun. The changed curriculum and pedagogy of professional
development will require new policies that foster new structures and institutional
arrangements for teachers' learning. At the same time, we will need to undertake
a strategic assessment of existing policies to determine to what degree
they are compatible with a vision of learning as constructed by teachers
and students and with a vision of professional development as a lifelong,
inquiry-based, and collegial activity.(4)
Both broad policy responses are essential. New approaches to the professional
education of teachers are needed, and they require new structures and supports.
New initiatives cannot by themselves promote meaningful or long-term change
in teachers' practices if they are embedded in a policy structure that is
at odds with the visions of student and teacher learning that reforms seek
to bring alive. In other words, both new wine and old wine need new bottles,
or else incentives and supports for teacher development will be counterproductive
or nonexistent.
In this article we look first at the new institutional forms that support
teachers' professional growth in ways consistent with conceptions of teaching
and learning for understanding. We then look at the ways in which existing
arrangements can be rethought or redesigned to support both reformers' visions
of practice and teachers' professional growth. Finally, we consider aspects
of the larger education policy context that foster or impede teachers' incentives
and ability to acquire new knowledge, skills, and conceptions of practice.
New Structures and Institutional Arrangements
Efforts to redesign education ultimately require rethinking teachers' preparation
and professional development. New course mandates, curriculum guidelines,
tests, or texts cannot produce greater student learning and understanding
without investments in opportunities that give teachers access to knowledge
about the nature of learning, development, and performance in different
domains. In addition, teachers need firsthand opportunities to integrate
theory with classroom practice.
Teachers learn by doing, reading, and reflecting (just as students do);
by collaborating with other teachers; by looking closely at students and
their work; and by sharing what they see. This kind of learning enables
teachers to make the leap from theory to accomplished practice. In addition
to a powerful base of theoretical knowledge, such learning requires settings
that support teacher inquiry and collaboration and strategies grounded in
teachers' questions and concerns. To understand deeply, teachers must learn
about, see, and experience successful learning-centered and learner-centered
teaching practices.
Sustained change in teachers' learning opportunities and practices will
require sustained investment in the infrastructure of reform. This means
investment in the development of the institutions and environmental supports
that will promote the spread of ideas and shared learning about how change
can be attempted and sustained.
New forms for teacher preparation. A growing number of teacher education
programs are inventing new structures for preservice teacher education that
bring together all of the learning strands described above into new institutional
arrangements called the Professional Development School (PDS).(5) Since
the late 1980s, more than 200 PDSs have been created through the collaborative
efforts that simultaneously restructure schools and colleges of education.
The most forward-looking of these PDSs are preparing prospective and beginning
teachers in settings connected to major school reform networks, such as
the Coalition of Essential Schools and the Comer School Development Program.
Those networks engage the schools and teachers in inquiry that supports
their work and learning.
PDSs create settings in which novices enter professional practice by working
with expert practitioners while veteran teachers renew their own professional
development as they assume roles as mentors, university adjuncts, and teacher
leaders. Professional development schools also provide serious venues for
developing teaching knowledge by enabling practice-based and practice-sensitive
research to be carried out collaboratively by teachers, teacher educators,
and researchers.(6) PDSs enable teachers to become sources of knowledge
for one another and to learn the important roles of "colleague"
and "learner."
Some reform models, such as those proposed by the Holmes Group, the Carnegie
Forum on Education and the Economy, and the National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards, call for all prospective teachers to do their student
teaching and a more intensive internship in a PDS.(7) Ideally, many of these
schools would be located in central cities where the demand for teachers
is high and the need for reinvented schools is great. In these locales they
would serve two purposes: offering excellent education for central-city
students and providing opportunities for prospective teachers to learn to
teach diverse learners effectively.
Despite the prestigious support for PDSs, significant policy supports and
changes will be required if PDSs are to take root. States must acknowledge
that PDSs are part of the infrastructure of a strong education system, and
funding for PDSs must be provided through basic aid allocations, just as
teaching hospitals receive formula adjustments to acknowledge the special
mission they perform.
The concept of the PDS will also have to become part of the licensing structure
for entry into teaching and be taken into account in the accreditation of
teacher education institutions. These policy changes are under discussion,
as states increasingly envision internships as part of teacher preparation
and as the National Council on Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)
develops standards for the clinical preparation of teachers. Some states,
including Minnesota and Michigan, are already considering ways to incorporate
PDS-based internships in the initial preparation and licensing of teachers
and have even funded pilot programs. However, states undertaking such a
reexamination of credentialing and preparation structures are still in the
minority, and PDSs remain outside the mainstream teacher education policy
structure.
Teachers prepared in PDSs will have a learner-centered foundation on which
to build their subsequent practice. They will also have an appreciation
for the fact that learning about teaching is a lifelong process. However,
sustaining these attitudes, roles, and practices in the classroom will require
other structures and supports, both outside and inside school.
New institutional arrangements for professional development. To create
new structures for individual and organizational learning, the usual notions
of inservice training or dissemination must be raplaced by possibilities
for knowledge-sharing anchored in problems of practice. To serve teachers'
needs, professional development must embrace a range of opportunities that
allow teachers to share what they know and what they want to learn and to
connect their learning to the contexts of their teaching. Professional development
activities must allow teachers to engage actively in cooperative experiences
that are sustained over time and to reflect on the process as well as on
the content of what they are learning.
Structures that break down isolation, that empower teachers with professional
tasks, and that provide arenas for thinking through standards of practice
are central to this kind of professional growth. Opportunities for teachers'
learning exist inside and outside schools. They range from professional
organizations and standards boards that have more formal roles in the policy
structure, to "critical friend" relationships, to many forms of
more collaborative professional relationships both outside and within schools.
New structures and opportunities outside school. A powerful form of teacher
learning comes from belonging to professional communities that extend beyond
classrooms and school buildings.(8) These communities can be organized across
subject-matter lines, around significant pedagogical issues, or in support
of particular school reforms. They legitimate dialogue and support the risk-taking
that is part of any process of significant change. Examples of such communities
include the following.
* School/university collaborations engaged in curriculum development, change
efforts, or research. When such relationships emerge as true partnerships,
they can create new, more powerful kinds of knowledge about teaching and
schooling, as the "rub between theory and practice" produces more
practical, contextualized theory and more theoretically grounded, broadly
informed practice.(9)
* Teacher-to-teacher and school-to-school networks. These networks provide
"critical friends" to examine and reflect on teaching and opportunities
to share experiences associated with efforts to develop new practices or
structures.(10) Such networks demonstrate that help helps. They are powerful
learning tools because they engage people in collective work on authentic
problems that emerge out of their own efforts, allowing them to get beyond
the dynamics of their own schools and classrooms and to come face to face
with other people and other possibilities.(11)
* Partnerships with neighborhood-based youth organizations. These include
club programs, theater groups, literacy projects, museums, or sports groups
that provide teachers with important information about their students' homes
and neighborhoods, insight into students' nonschool interests and accomplishments,
and opportunities for coordination between school and youth organization
activities.(12)
* Teacher involvement in district, regional, or national activities. These
activities include task forces, study groups, and standard-setting bodies
engaged in revising curriculum frameworks, assessing teaching or school
practices, or developing standards. Among the more prominent examples are
the School Quality Review being piloted in New York and California and the
work on curriculum and teaching standards being conducted by the National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Such activities create new lenses for
examining practice, while building the norms of the profession. Similarly,
teachers who have engaged in powerful forms of teacher assessment, such
as the year-long reflection and documentation it takes to build a portfolio
for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, claim that they
have learned more through this process than in any other staff development
activity during their entire careers.(13)
These strategies create new communities of practice within and across levels
of the policy system. At the same time they involve new actors and new agencies
in teachers' learning and growth. They also depart from traditional notions
of "institutionalization" and institutional relationships that
assume teaching is shaped and structured primarily by school systems. These
extra-school structures and supports more broadly represent the profession
and suggest the kind of partnerships that are possible on behalf of children.
Policies that support extra-school learning communities. While some of
the structures we have been discussing take on institutional forms - such
as the Center for the Development of Teaching or collaborations developed
by schools and universities(14) - others are more fluid and informal. But
all must be flexible and dynamic and responsive to the specific and changing
needs of teachers and the profession. They must start where teachers are
and build on their knowledge and skills. A network or resource effective
in one community or in one school will probably operate differently in another.
Or the collaborative relationship that was successful last year in supporting
teachers' learning may fall short this year.
For example, a highly successful mathematics collaborative in one urban
district disintegrated after five years of operation. Organizers worried
that this signified failure, but a closer look at participants' responses
suggested that it came to an inevitable end because it had accomplished
its objectives and was no longer useful as it existed. Other networks have
evolved, changed focus, and reconsidered relationships as the needs of their
participants have shifted over time. Such networks are best managed through
"systematic ad-hocism" - a process of moving toward shared goals
with enormous flexibility in strategy.(15)
Policies that support teachers' learning communities allow such structures
and extra-school arrangements to come and go and change and evolve as necessary,
rather than insist on permanent plans or promises. What does need to be
a permanent addition to the policy landscape is an infrastructure or "web"
of professional development opportunities that provides multiple and ongoing
occasions for critical reflection and that involves teachers with challenging
content.
The components of this infrastructure include professional associations
working on curriculum standards and related professional development; professional
standards boards developing standards and assessments for teacher licensing
and advanced certification, in which teachers themselves are integrally
involved; networks devoted to school change and the improvement of practice;
peer-review structures; and professional tasks managed by teachers, such
as ongoing development and scoring of student portfolios and other assessments.
The policy implications of sustaining healthy extra-school opportunities
for professional collaboration and growth are threefold. First, policy must
create significant professional roles for teachers in many areas of practice
- e.g., developing curriculum and assessment, setting standards, and evaluating
practice - that have previously been managed by others. These roles carry
powerful, authentic opportunities for teachers to learn from others, to
reexamine their practice, and to acquire new knowledge.
Second, funding must be directed to those components of a professional
infrastructure that support teacher participation and learning. A climate
rich in sustained and relevant opportunities for teachers' learning resembles
a web, in which networks, seminars, meetings, and focus groups intersect
to provide an array of opportunities for teachers. Occasions and opportunities
for the intellectual renewal of teachers must be multiple and diverse rather
than generic and discrete if they are to be responsive to specific content-based
or learner-based concerns.
Third, policy supports must focus on stimulating the environment that nurtures
high-quality learning communities of teachers, rather than on particular
institutional forms or promises of permanence. Effective professional development
activities are fluid and have various "life cycles." Policy makers
should focus on the richness and relevance of the overall "menu"
of opportunities for teachers to leam. In some cases, demands for rigid
"institutionalization" can lead to meaningless activities and
out-of-date structures down the road.
Opportunities for professional development within schools. Habits and cultures
inside schools must foster critical inquiry into teaching practices and
student outcomes. They must be conducive to the formation of communities
of practice that enable teachers to meet together to solve problems, consider
new ideas, evaluate alternatives, and frame schoolwide goals.(16)
Opportunities for such learning and reflection already exist in many aspects
of school-day routines. It can be argued that everything that goes on in
school presents an opportunity for professional development. Department
meetings, for example, can be an administrative bore, or they can operate
as "mini-seminars," engaging faculty members in examination of
materials, student work, and curriculum plans.(17) Student teachers can
be viewed as a professional responsibility or as an opportunity for learning
and reflection.(18) Serving on a committee to develop instructional plans
or to review assessments can be regarded as "hardship duty" or
as an opportunity to reexamine practice.(19) Even usually mundane or tedious
tasks, such as student assignments or the creation of a master schedule,
contain opportunities to reflect on norms, assumptions about practice, and
organizational goals.
Activities new to the traditional role of teacher can also stimulate learning
and growth. For example, the concept of the teacher as researcher puts teachers
in charge of inquiry about and analysis of their workplace. School-based
research and inquiry occur not only in professional development schools
but also in many restructuring efforts. Some states (e.g., Iowa and Maine)
support such research as part of restructuring efforts.
To take another example of roles new to teachers, peer reviews of practice
afford occasions for deliberation about teaching and learning and can occur
in many forms. During such reviews faculty members collectively examine
aspects of the curriculum; look at particular practices, problems, or concerns
within the school; develop and participate in peer evaluation and peer coaching;
and participate in the assessment of students. Indeed, teacher-driven assessments
of teaching and learning are proving to be powerful tools for learning.
Looking closely at one's own or someone else's authentic work stimulates
tremendous growth.(20) Questions at the heart of such inquiries about school
effectiveness and student learning constitute the basis for transformative
learning - learning that enables teachers to change their models for what
schools and teaching might look like and accomplish.
Policy supports for professional development within schools. Organizational
structures must be redesigned so that they actively foster learning and
collaboration about serious problems of practice. This requires rethinking
schedules, staffing patterns, and grouping arrangements to create blocks
of time for teachers to work and learn together. In addition, schools must
be organized around small, cohesive units that structure ongoing collaboration
among groups of adults and students (e.g., teaching teams or clusters, houses,
and advisory groups) so that teachers have shared access to students and
shared responsibilities for designing their work. Many restructured schools
have created smaller-scale workplaces in a variety of ways, ranging from
block scheduling of students and teachers to reallocation of staff.(21)
Teachers individually cannot reconceive their practice and the culture
of their workplace. Yet almost everything about school is oriented toward
going it alone professionally. While it may be possible for teachers to
learn some things on their own, rethinking old norms requires a supportive
community of practice. The traditional school organization separates staff
members from one another and from the external environment. Inside school,
teachers are inclined to think in terms of "my classroom," "my
subject," or "my kids." Few schools are structured to allow
teachers to think in terms of shared problems or broader organizational
goals. A collaborative culture of problem solving and learning must be created
to challenge these norms and habits of mind; collegiality must be valued
as a professional asset.(22)
New structures for teaching may not include supervision as usually defined
in bureaucratic organizations: a one-to-one relationship between a worker
and his or her presumably more expert superordinate. Instead, organizational
strategies for team planning, sharing, evaluating, and learning may create
methods for peer review of practice that - like those used in other professional
organizations and restructured businesses - may better fill the needs for
feedback, oversight, and evaluation.
These same needs for collaborative inquiry and learning exist for other
educators, including school leaders (principals, teacher directors, and
other emerging leaders), and for support staff, from school psychologists
and counselors to teachers' aides. They should also be included in these
efforts and activities to examine teaching practice and learner outcomes.
Indeed, cross-role participation in professional development activities
stimulates shared understandings of school goals and new approaches more
effectively than activities that treat teachers, principals, counselors,
and others as separate groups for whom different conversations and topics
are deemed relevant.(23) For example, extended institutes for school-based
teams of teachers, administrators, and parents have proved to be critical
for launching school reforms in such cities as Hammond, Indiana, and Louisville,
Kentucky.(24) In addition to the participation of teachers and principals,
the participation of counselors, school psychologists, and parents in shared
development activities is central to the work of such successful initiatives
as James Comer's School Development Program, Henry Levin's Accelerated Schools,
and Theodore Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools. Such collaborative
efforts contribute to a common sense of purpose and practice among all members
of the school community.
District policies directly affect the creation of learning communities
and the development of learning opportunities for teachers.(25) As is true
at the building level, perspective and priorities are crucial. Policies
consistent with the notions of teachers' learning outlined above assume
that the professional development of teachers is integral to the school
workplace. A major task for district leadership is to encourage and sustain
reflective communities of practice both within and among schools and to
make resources available for teachers to use according to their needs and
preferences.
The Policy Context in Support Of Professional Development
The policy environment in which teachers work sends a myriad of often conflicting
signals about how schools are expected to do business and about what behaviors
and skills are valued and rewarded. Messages about more- or less-preferred
teaching practices and learner outcomes issue from all of the major education
policy domains, including those that shape curriculum, assessment, teacher
and administrator licensing and evaluation, and accountability. Existing
policies and practices must be assessed in terms of their compatibility
with two cornerstones of the reform agenda: a learner-centered view of teaching
and a career-long conception of teachers' learning.
Does a new curriculum framework stress "implementation of texts,"
thereby espousing passive teacher and student roles? Or are teachers assumed
to participate in the construction of practices that begin with students'
experiences and needs and aim to reach challenging student outcomes? Does
an assessment system evaluate student understanding, or does it test for
rote recall of facts? Do teacher evaluation systems look for teaching behaviors
aimed at keeping students quiet or for practices that engage students actively
in their learning? Do administrator licensing standards require that principals
know how students learn and how teachers teach for understanding, or do
they stress noninstructional matters? Do school accountability requirements
enforce current, highly fragmented bureaucratic structures and uses of time,
or do they allow for more integrated and student-centered forms of allocating
staff and funds?
Schools and teachers aiming to adopt new practices must contend with the
"geological dig" of previous policies that send contradictory
signals and prevent a complete transformation of practice.(26) Some of these
are familiar, such as state policies on standardized testing that continue
to deflect time and attention from extended writing and discourse and other
more challenging forms of learning.(27) These tests, along with mandated
textbooks and basal readers, prescriptive curriculum guides, and "old
paradigm" teacher evaluation measures, create incentives to continue
traditional forms of teaching that emphasize superficial understanding and
rote learning rather than higher-order thinking and performance skills.
Both the content and the form of curriculum policy must change, so that
what is required is compatible with teaching for understanding and provides
reasons for teachers to rethink their approach to teaching and learning.
Likewise, in those few key areas in which state regulation of curriculum
and testing is deemed necessary - e.g., in curriculum frameworks and periodic
student assessments for monitoring purposes - policy should encourage in-depth
learning focused on powerful concepts and ideas. States and districts should
explicitly evaluate their current policies on curriculum and testing to
remove prescriptions that conflict with one another or that are grounded
in misunderstandings about how students learn and how good teaching happens.
Teacher education institutions - both as purveyors of teacher education
and as determinants of what "counts" as knowledge, expertise,
and successful performance - figure prominently in the policy context that
surrounds professional development. It is increasingly important that policies
provide clear guidance for schools of education regarding the demands of
teaching for understanding, along with supports and incentives that enable
schools of education to meet new standards. For the most part, current policies
governing teacher education, especially the content of teacher licensing
and testing requirements, fail to fully incorporate the kinds of teacher
knowledge and understanding that we have alluded to above.
Likewise, the licensing, testing, and evaluation of teachers must be grounded
in new understandings about student learning and effective teaching, and
they need to be connected to other professional standards for teaching.
For example, the curriculum standards developed by the National Council
of Teachers of Mathematics and by other professional associations center
on teaching for understanding, an emphasis that has now been adopted by
the new National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in its
formulation of standards and assessments for accomplished practice. The
model standards for licensing beginning teachers that have been developed
by the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium also reflect
this orientation, as do the accreditation requirements of the National Council
for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).
Policies that provide incentives for teachers to become certified by the
NBPTS, for states to enact compatible licensing standards and assessments
as well as standards for approving teacher education programs, and for schools
of education to become NCATE-accredited could help create a coherent approach
to preparing teachers to teach for understanding. Thus some of the disjunctures
between existing teacher development policies and current reforms of curriculum
could be eliminated.
Similarly, the policies that govern the ongoing evaluation of teachers
must also support teaching for understanding and teacher learning. In most
teachers' workplaces, teacher evaluation activities act as powerful disincentives
to problem solving, learning, or an honest examination of practice. "Needs
improvement," after all, is about the lowest grade a teacher can be
given on most evaluations. Yet ongoing improvement and critical inquiry
are fundamental to learning and change. In addition, many evaluation forms
and processes continue to be based on a conception of teaching as the implementation
of routines that can be observed and checked off in a brief inspection system.
The type of teaching anticipated by evaluation forms is teaching for transmission
rather than teaching for understanding, and the assumption undergirding
the desired teaching behaviors is that students are passive, standardized
participants in classroom activities.(28)
To support teaching for understanding and the professional development
it requires, new forms of teacher evaluation will need to emphasize the
appropriateness of teaching decisions to the goals and contexts of instruction
and the needs of students. No longer is it sufficient to focus on teachers'
adherence to prescribed routines. Evaluation must be conceived not as a
discrete annual event consisting of brief visits by supervisors bearing
checklists, but as a constant feature of organizational and classroom life
for practitioners.
An emphasis on the appropriateness of teaching decisions would mean that
the leadership roles of administrators in schools structured to support
teacher learning and student understanding would also change. District guidelines
for evaluating building-level administrators have typically ignored the
question of whether those administrators have been effective in establishing
and supporting a culture of learning and inquiry at their schools.(29) Yet
a critical role for administrative leadership is to create and sustain settings
in which teachers feel safe to admit mistakes, to try (and possibly fail),
and to disclose aspects of their teaching.
To fulfill these new roles and expectations for leadership, however, administrators
need to understand what the conceptions of teaching and learning that motivate
the nation's reform agenda look like in classrooms and how these visions
of practice relate to teachers' opportunities to learn. Administrators,
no less than teachers, urgently need the chance to rethink practice and
to learn the new perspectives and skills that are consistent with reformers'
visions of teaching and learning for understanding.(30)
All these objectives require time for teachers to undertake professional
development as part of their normal responsibilities. And time for teachers
can only be bought by rethinking the ways in which schools are staffed,
funded, and managed.
Compared to other countries, the U.S. has invested in a smaller number
of lower-paid teachers who are directed, supervised, and supplemented by
larger numbers of administrative staff members and nonteaching specialists,
populating several layers of bureaucratic structures. In 1986 U.S. school
systems employed approximately one administrative staff person for every
2 1/2 teachers and spent only 38% of their funds on teacher salaries and
less than 1% on professional development.(31) After several decades in which
the number of administrative staff increased at twice the rate of the teaching
staff, by 1991 only half of those who worked in U.S. education were classroom
teachers.(32) This staffing pattern stands in stark contrast to that of
many European and Asian countries in which teachers constitute 80% or more
of the education work force.(33) Additional investment in teachers seems
to be an irreducible element of an agenda to enact reformers' visions of
teaching and learning.
Finally, through waivers, incentives, grants, and changed formula allocations,
policy makers can redistribute existing resources to encourage school restructuring
that provides time for teachers' collegial work and learning, that enables
teachers to participate in the development and reform of curriculum and
assessment, and that anticipates teachers' needs for collegial learning
through strong communities of practice. Policies that anticipate these needs
will move away from traditional credit-for-seat-time staff development and
toward professional development that involves teachers in networks, professional
assessments, and peer review.
Policies consistent with this view of professional development would encourage
site-level integration of the various bundles of categorical resources flowing
from state or national programs. Current categorical boundaries and accounting
lines discourage teachers from addressing school-wide goals or the needs
of the whole child. Instead, accounting requirements for special projects
foster a problem-focused strategy of allocation, which fragments a school
faculty and fails to meet the needs of individual children - an approach
inconsistent with teachers' learning to work successfully with all learners
who fill contemporary American classrooms.
Policy Guidelines for Professional Development
Reformers of all stripes press for an agenda of fundamental change in the
ways teachers teach and students learn. They envision schools in which students
learn to think creatively and deeply, in which teachers' ongoing learning
forms the core of professional activities, and in which students and teachers
alike value knowing why and how to learn.(34)
These visions and expectations for practice assume fundamental changes
in education policies in order to enable teachers to make the challenging
and sometimes painful changes required of them. Yet these necessary shifts
in policy have only begun.
Recognition of the embeddedness of education policy domains must precede
the creation of a new model for professional development. The significant
interdependencies between the expectations for change in teachers and teaching
and the various domains of education policy have obvious implications for
teachers' ability and willingness to change. Supports for professional development
cannot be understood separately from this broader context.
The success of changes in the policy environment will necessarily depend
on locally constructed responses to specific teacher and learner needs.
Detailed solutions imported from afar or mandated from above predictably
will disappoint; effective practices evolve from and respond to specific
instructional settings. The situation-specific nature of the kind of teaching
and learning envisioned by reformers is the key challenge for teachers'
professional development, and it is the chief obstacle to policy makers'
efforts to engender systemic reform. But the situational character of effective
practice does not mean that local change must be uninformed by experience
elsewhere. Experience with successful professional development efforts suggests
a number of design principles to guide national and state officials struggling
to devise "top-down support for bottom-up change" and to guide
local actors who are rethinking their policies.
Each proposed and existing policy can be "interviewed" - that
is, subjected to a number of questions - to determine how well it corresponds
with key factors related to teachers' learning and change. For example:
* Does the policy reduce the isolation of teachers, or does it perpetuate
the experience of working alone?
* Does the policy encourage teachers to assume the role of learner, or
does it reward traditional "teacher as expert" approaches to teacher/student
relations?
* Does the policy provide a rich, diverse menu of opportunities for teachers
to learn, or does it focus primarily on episodic, narrow "training"
activities?
* Does the policy link professional development opportunities to meaningful
content and change efforts, or does it construct generic inservice occasions?
* Does the policy establish an environment of professional trust and encourage
problem solving, or does it exacerbate the risks involved in serious reflection
and change and thus encourage problem hiding?
* Does the policy provide opportunities for everyone involved with schools
to understand new visions of teaching and learning, or does it focus only
on teachers?
* Does the policy make possible the restructuring of time, space, and scale
within schools, or does it expect new forms of teaching and learning to
emerge within conventional structures?
* Does the policy focus on learner-centered outcomes that give priority
to learning how and why, or does it emphasize the memorization of facts
and the acquisition of rote skills?
Other "interview questions" will doubtless emerge as educators
gain experience with policies and practices aimed at developing the capacity
of schools and teachers to create effective learning environments. The challenge
for policy makers and educators is to realign the existing system of signals
and incentives that shape school organizations, teachers' practices, role
expectations, and assumptions so that they support student and teacher learning.
1. Barbara Scott Nelson and James M. Hammerman, "Reconceptualizing
Teaching: The Teaching and Research Program of the Center for the Development
of Teaching, Education Development Center," in Milbrey W. McLaughlin
and Ida Oberman, Professional Development in the Reform Era (New York: Teachers
College Press, forthcoming).
2. Ibid.; and Richard Prawat, "Teachers' Beliefs About Teaching and
Learning: A Constructivist Perspective," American Journal of Education,
vol. 100, 1992, pp. 354-95.
3. David K. Cohen, Milbrey W. McLaughlin, and Joan E. Talbert, Teaching
for Understanding: Challenges for Policy and Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1993); and Linda Darling-Hammond, "Reframing the School Reform Agenda:
Developing Capacity for School Transformation," Phi Delta Kappan, June
1993, pp. 752-61.
4. Ann Lieberman, "Practices that Support Teacher Development: Transforming
Conceptions of Professional Learning," Phi Delta Kappan, April 1995,
pp. 591-96.
5. Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller, "Teacher Development in Professional
Practice Schools," Teachers College Record, vol, 92, 1990, pp. 105-22;
Linda Darling-Hammond, Professional Development Schools: Schools for Developing
a Profession (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994); and Gary Sykes, "Teacher
Education in the United States," in Burton R. Clark, ed., The School
and the University (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp.
264-89.
6. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle, "Communities for Teacher
Research: Fringe or Forefront?," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
7. Tomorrow's Teachers (East Lansing, Mich.: Holmes Group, 1986); Task
Force on Teaching as a Profession, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st
Century (New York: Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986); and
Toward High and Rigorous Standards for the Teaching Profession, 3rd ed.
(Washington. D.C.: National Board for Professional Teachlug Standards, 1991).
8. Joan E. Talbert and Milbrey W. McLaughlin, "Teacher Professionalism
in Local School Contexts," American Journal of Education, vol. 102,
1994, pp. 123-53; and Ann Lieberman, ed., The Work of Restructuring Schools
(New York: Teachers College Press, 1994).
9. Lynne Miller and Cynthia O'Shea, "Partnership: Getting Broader,
Getting Deeper," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.; and Stephanie
Dalton and Ellen Moir, "Symbiotic Support and Program Evaluation: Text
and Context for Professional Development of New Bilingual Teachers,"
in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
10. Kate Jamentz, "Assessment as a Heuristic for Professional Practice,"
in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.; and Margaret Szabo, "Rethinking
Restructuring: Building Habits of Effective Inquiry," in McLaughlin
and Oberman, op. cit.
11. Ann Lieberman and Milbrey McLaughlin, "Networks for Educational
Change: Powerful and Problematic," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.
12. Shirley Brice Heath and Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin, "The Best of
Both Worlds: Connecting Schools and Community Youth Organizations for All-Day,
All-Year Learning," Educational Administration Quarterly, vol. 30,
1994, pp. 278-300; and Kip Tellez and Myrna D. Cohen, "Preparing Teachers
for Multicultural Inner-City Classrooms: Grinding New Lenses," in McLaughlin
and Oberman, op. cit.
13. Toward High and Rigorous Standards.
14. Nelson and Hammerman, op. cit.; and Miller and O'Shea, op. cit.
15. Miller and O'Shea, op. cit.
16. Szabo, op. cit.
17. Pamela L. Grossman, "Of Regularities and Reform: Navigating the
Subject-Specific Territory of High Schools," in McLaughlin and Oberman,
op. cit.
18. Edith S. Tatel, "Improving Classroom Practice: Ways Experienced
Teachers Change After Supervising Student Teachers," in McLaughlin
and Oberman, op. cit.
19. Jamentz, op. cit.
20. Ibid.; and Linda Darling-Hammond and Jacqueline Ancess, Authentic Assessment
and School Development (New York: National Center for Restructuring Education,
Schools, and Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1994).
21. Linda Darling-Hammond, Jacqueline Ancess, and Beverly Falk, Authentic
Assessment in Action: Studies of Schools and Students at Work (New York:
Teachers College Press, forthcoming).
22. Szabo, op. cit.
23. Michael Fullan, The New Meaning of Educational Change (New York: Teachers
College Press, 1991).
24. Lieberman, ed., op. cit.
25. Talbert and McLaughlin, op. cit.
26. Linda Darling-Hammond, "Instructional Policy into Practice: The
Power of the Bottom over the Top," Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis, vol. 12, 1990, pp. 233-41.
27. George Madaus, The Influence of Testing on Teaching Math and Science
in Grades 4-12: Executive Summary (Boston: Center for the Study of Testing,
Evaluation, and Educational Policy, Boston College, 1993).
28. Linda Darling-Hammond with Eileen Sclan, "Policy and Supervision,"
in Carl D. Glickman, ed., Supervision in Transition (Alexandria, Va.: Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1992).
29. Milbrey W. McLaughlin, "How District Communities Do and Do Not
Foster Teacher Pride," Educational Leadership, September 1992, pp.
33-35.
30. Edwin M. Bridges and Philip Hallinger, "Problem-Based Learning:
A Promising Approach to Professional Development," in McLaughlin and
Oberman, op. cit.
31. U.S. Department of Labor, Current Population Survey, unpublished data,
1986-1987; and C. Emily Feistritzer, The Condition of Teaching: A State-by-State
Analysis (New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,
1983).
32. National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education
1993 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1993).
33. Teacher Demand and Supply: The Labor Market for Teachers (Paris: Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1990).
34. Nelson and Hammerman. op. cit.; Beverly Falk, "Teaching the Way
Children Learn," in McLaughlin and Oberman, op. cit.; and Martin G.
Brooks and Jacqueline Grennon Brooks, "Constructivism and School Reform,"
in McLaughlin and Oberman, op.
LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND is William F. Russell Professor of Education at Teachers
College, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., and co-director of the National
Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching.
MILBREY W. McLAUGHLIN is a professor of education and public policy at
Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., and director of the Center for Research
on the Context of Teaching.