Implications for Research and Practice within E2T2
In the E2T2 process it was felt that it was not necessary to have the “right” theory, but to have one that provided a roadmap for the program, highlights its essential components, and explains how the program is expected to achieve the desired outcomes. National Staff Development Council (NSDC) noted that “the problem is not that we don’t know what effective staff development is; it is that we don’t act on what we know.” (NSCD, 2002, p. 11) To act requires courage, commitment, and systemic support to implement the type of staff development that we know will make a difference for both educators and students. Guskey and Sparks (1996) proposed a student achievement model that depicts the complex relationship of multiple factors that influence student academic success. The model acknowledges that staff development, along with other systemic factors such as the quality of staff development, administrator support, school culture, teacher knowledge and practices, parent involvement, and parent knowledge and skills work together to impact student achievement.
Change theory underlying the design of the E2T2 process was based on the following assumptions: First, is the belief that schools are not businesses while recognizing that some change theories have focused on a business-mass production model. That is if you do “x” you will get “y”. According to Cuban, “The profound difference between businesses and schools in purposes, in deliberative decision making, and in accountability for outcomes mean that the core assumption of business inspired reformers is deeply flawed” (Cuban, 2005, p.157). The sheer complexity of the task of transforming schools, particularly classroom practices, in dramatically different settings has been lost in the rush to extract strong student performance on tests through consistency of teaching. Second, practitioners bring to their classrooms strong moral and service-oriented values inherent to teaching. These overlap with but nevertheless differ from the technical values of policy makers, corporate leaders, researchers, and administrators. Experienced and thoughtful practitioners accumulate detailed knowledge about students, broaden their repertoire of teaching skills, and gain deeper understanding of the content they teach; forms of expertise that few researchers, policymakers, or CEOs lacking classroom experience can fathom. From these teacher values and types of expertise emerge standards for judging success and failure that diverge considerably from those described above. (Cuban, 2005, p. 34-35). Third, teachers facing change need a certain amount of what Cuban called adaptiveness: whether and how they can put their personal signature on the mandated policy and make it work for their students. To most policymakers, business leaders, administrators, and researchers, however, teachers’ alterations of their design and variations in practice are signs of failed policies. (Cuban, 2005,p. 35) Fourth, there is the belief that while school buildings and districts should determine the focus of the reform, individual teachers working in professional learning communities with grade alike or content alike individuals connected by technology. In a learning community, members commit to ongoing learning and participate in learning experiences with a deliberate intent to transform teaching and learning at their school or within their district (NSDC, 2001; DuFour & Eaker, 1998).
Professional Development
It has also been found that learning communities of teachers are effective in promoting teacher professional development (Newmann & Wehlage, 1995; Bruce & Calhourn, 1996; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001; Bryk & Schneiger, 2002). Overall, theory suggest that building community is an effective strategy for enhancing educational outcomes for those involved. As Joyce and Showers (1995) observed, that the school building is an organizational unit most capable of facilitating student growth. However, in the E2T2 process our focus was not only on the building but also on creating professional learning communities of like subject/grade teachers beyond the building and district walls. It was felt that teachers learn from each other in the process of planning instruction, developing the materials to support it, watching each other work with students, developing collaborative communities and thinking together about the impact of their behavior on the learning of their students, particularly if the students were involved in the same subject /grade. The collaborative work of peer-coaching study teams was much broader than observations and conferences. According to Joyce and Showers, designing the workplace so that teachers can work together to implement changes (through peer coaching) is still the key to transferring the content of training into the repertoire of the classroom and school, whether the content is teaching and curriculum or processes for collegial action. (Joyce & Showers, 1995) This helps create for teachers an environment that facilitates reflection on practice and the conscious development of skills through personal inquiry. Effective staff development requires cooperative relationships that break down the isolation and increase the collective strength of the community of educators. This also addresses the issue that significant levels of innovation demand changes in the very culture of educators. The creation of a culture of educator-learners connected via technology is necessary if significant improvement is to be sustained and future innovations are to be permitted without monstrous effort.
In addition, faculties are not, for the most part, very well organized to study themselves and make decisions for collective action, nor does the structure of the school provide much time for collegial study and decision making. This recognition of the need for community building within a teacher education continuum is consistent with the argument developed by Renshaw (2002) who saw community building as an ongoing, evolving process that occurred over a long period of time and as having a profound impact on not just learning but on the quality of learning that could take place. Renshaw (2002) saw building a learning community as a way of networking social capital. The success of one member of the community is dependent on the success of other members. Promoting self-learning, and promoting the learning of others, becomes networked throughout the community. The result is that the community as a whole benefits, and individuals also benefit at an enhanced rate through mutual support. Consequently, membership in a learning community provides access to a variety of social capital (Renshaw, 2002). Such capital includes knowledge, skill and ‘know-how’. A purposeful dissemination and sharing of such capital can be a useful community-building tool with individuals recognizing their increased capital and actively enhancing the community learning process. The cycle of capital enhancement can be powerful in the social learning process, particularly when such processes are acknowledged as being complex and treated with the respect generally accorded such intricate social structures when they promote change.
Crowther (2001), like Renshaw (2002) conceptualized professional development (PD) as a change agent. Community building becomes a process that provides a supportive climate that is not only receptive to change and change initiative, but actively promotes an expectation of change as a consequence of teacher learning. The object is to design training so that people learn to become more effective learners. In this collaborative environment supported by technology, it was observed that continued technical assistance, whether provided by an outside PD or content expert or by peer experts, resulted in much greater classroom implementation than was achieved by teachers who shared in the initial training but did not have the long-term support of coaching or collaboration.
The Logic of Change
According to Cuban (2005), the overall causal chain of logic for current reform efforts included in NCLB is: 1) state-mandated curriculum standards will be implemented, 2) will steer teaching practices, which in turn will, 3) shape what students learn, as measured by the state tests, and 4) then will lead to success in college and the market place. The first two causal links require evidence that state policy has, indeed, been implemented and has guided classroom practices. The third causal link is the assumption that changed instructional practice will result in higher student achievement, and the fourth is that higher test scores predict future success in college and in the workplace.
The current program of research (ESETP) initiated in 2003 chose to focus only on the first three logical links identified by Cuban as the “NCLB logical sequence”. In our words, a systematic approach to large-scale change requires developing the capacities of teachers and administrators to use pedagogical practices with fidelity while adapting these practices to meet the demands of differentiated instruction. This means first benchmarking building strengths and weaknesses in terms of student achievement. The second step involves developing appropriate educational interventions at the building level based on findings from the benchmarking process. The third step is the determination of the effectiveness of the educational interventions by evaluating gains in student achievement in reading and mathematics at the building level.
Technology Integration Model
In a rural state trying to develop state-wide initiatives in reading and mathematics, time, geographical distance, and money are critical to the success of systematic change. This is where the use of technology in support of professional development becomes a critical systems element in promoting student achievement.
In Iowa, the intermediate education agency (Area Educational Agency) has the responsibility for providing professional development for state-wide initiatives. Thus, the Area Education Agency (AEA) provides professional development at the beginning of the school year and continued support throughout the year. While the initial professional development provided at the beginning of the school year is face-to-face, real time support is provided to the local schools via IP conferencing, web-sites, and electronic communication. Thus, the link between the initiators of professional development and the participating teachers is a technology infrastructure. The second technology component is the use of the aforementioned equipment by teachers to communicate among participating schools. Thus, the team building process is not only within a building but also among buildings within an AEA initiative.
This project recognizes that high quality staff development is a multi-step process to: 1) develop educators’ knowledge, attitudes, skills, aspirations, and behaviors, 2) apply what was learned in the staff development training experiences(s) to enhance classroom practice, and 3) anticipate increased student achievement and make plans to evaluate for program impact.
Staff development programs focusing only on developing teachers’ knowledge and skills are shortsighted because they rely on the following faulty assumption: “What is learned is used”. Exposure to new information does not automatically result in consistent and accurate implementation of the new learning or in changes in attitudes, skill, and behaviors. When staff development programs assume learning will be used, without appropriate practice of the behavior or strategy, the potential for the behavior or strategy and the potential for impact on student achievement is diminished.
