![A Focus on Student and Teacher Learning](images/heading-3.gif)
Much of the work has been doneon standards, assessments, professional
development, accountability, policy alignment, community, parent
involvement, technology, and moreand much of this work has been
driven by a growing consensus that school improvement must focus
on student learning and quality teaching. We have a better understanding
nationally of the educational issues and a more complete vision
of what effective schools look like. There is a growing consensus
that schools should function as professional learning communities
in order to promote student learning (DuFour & Eaker, 1998; Hord,
1997; and Little, 1997). More and more, teachers are seen as professionals
who need learning opportunities because it is important for them
to understand proposed changes in order to transform their practice.
The "growing pressure on teachers necessitates rethinking their
job description and what the teaching role entails" (Lieberman &
Miller, 2000, p. 51). People at all levels are beginning to look
at how to support quality teaching through redesign of teacher
education and induction, restructuring of professional development,
promotion of professional standards for teaching, changes in recruitment
and reward systems, and changes in the culture of schooling. There
is a general realization that teachers can't simply be recipients
of reform packages, but must be active partners in the process of
changing schools.
School improvement poses challenges for the teacher since it is
the teacher who must make the new ideas and policies real in the
classroom. That is, the teacher has to bring the components of the
systemcurriculum, instruction, assessment, external mandates, and
community contexttogether intentionally with a focus on student
learning to create a coherent practice that hangs together as a
meaningful learning experience for students. Elmore (1996) has argued
that reforms will have little impact on how and what children learn
unless there are also changes in the "core" of educational practice,
that is, in how teachers understand knowledge and learning and how
they operationalize their understandings. So, teacher understanding
becomes the critical piece in reform.
While policy can influence the nature of the work of teaching and
learning, teachers must construct their own understandings of the
policy from personal, political, professional, and social standpoints.
Coherence is not a matter of simply aligning everything, it is a
matter of teachers making sense of the instructional relationshipsinteractions
among teachers, students, knowledge, and materialsin ways that
impact the core of educational practice (Cohen & Ball, 1999). Therefore,
in much the same way that constructivism is used to understand and
improve classroom instruction for students, constructivism can also
be used to understand how teachers create coherent practice based
on the understandings of learning, learners, materials, and so on
that they have built.
This final section examines the recent approaches to school improvement
that might support teachers as they rethink their roles or positions
relative to six dimensions that we have identified as being important
in creating coherent teaching practice: knowledge, professionalism,
collaboration, instruction, agency, and authority (Finley, Marble,
Copeland, & Ferguson, 2000). In our work, we talk about conditions
that support teachers in developing a stance toward each of these
dimensions that is clearly focused on learning and the learner.
Stance can be thought of as a position one takes in relation to
something or someone (Cochran-Smith, 1994) or as an attitude toward
or relationship with something or someone (Marble, 1997). Other
researchers and policymakers are working along similar lines as
evidenced by research and policy work in each of these areas.
Teachers and Knowledge
A consistent theme of reform is that teachers must "be well educated,
especially in the subject matter content they teach, and that their
career-long professional education experiences must continue to
be grounded in the centrality of that content" (Shulman, 1999, p.
xiii). In order to be an instructional coach, it is important for
teachers to have a deeper understanding of subject matter. The teacher
must also "be a scholar, an intellectual, and a knowledge worker
oriented toward the interpretation, communication, and construction
of such knowledge in the interests of student learning" (Shulman,
p. xiii).
Reform efforts call for commitment to a vision that emphasizes
deep understanding and meaningful learning rather than transmission
and reproduction of declarative knowledge. This new focus applies
to classroom learning environments for students and to professional
learning for teachers. The "heart of the reforms" is that "in order
to learn the sorts of things envisioned by reformers, students must
think÷students do not get knowledge from teachers, or books, or
experience with hands-on materials. They make it by thinking, using
information and experience" (Thompson & Zeuli, 1999, p. 347). And
in order to understand how to support students' thinking, teachers
must also think because the reform calls "for very deep changeseven
a transformationin teachers' ideas about and understanding of subject
matter, teaching, and learning" (Thompson & Zeuli, p. 350).
So there has been a real paradigm shift on two levels. First, we
see a changing view of what counts as knowledge and how that knowledge
is generated. The shift from the view of knowledge as objective
and revealed to the view of knowledge as personally and socially
constructed has implications for how and what teachers teach and
students learn, as well as for how and what teachers learn. For
teachers who still think of knowledge as discrete bits of information
about a particular subject, student learning is the acquisition
of these pieces of information through repetition, memorization,
and testing of recall (Elmore, 1996). For teachers who have shifted
their view of knowledge, student learning has more to do with understanding
concepts and being able to use their understanding to solve problems.
Secondly, we see a shift from the view of the teacher as a technician
to the vision of the teacher as a learner, as a thoughtful practitioner,
as a creator of knowledge. This newer view is becoming part of the
national conversation about school improvement as educators consider
the nature of knowledge, of knowing, and of learning.
Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) discuss three conceptions of knowledge
and teacher learning that drive reform initiatives intended to promote
teacher learning. Each conception has specific assumptions and implications. Knowledge-for-practice assumes that university researchers
generate content and pedagogical knowledge for teachers to use.
A distinctive knowledge base is assumed to exist for teaching; teaching
is applying received knowledge in a classroom situation. "Teachers
are knowledge users, not generators" (p. 257). Many reforms use
this conception of knowledge, centering efforts on teachers learning
new content, strategies, or skills, often through direct instruction.
The following initiatives are based on knowledge-for-practice: evaluation
of teacher preparation programs by the National Council for the
Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE); professional development
initiatives based on teachers learning "best practices" from certified
trainers; and teacher certification examinations that assess subject
and pedagogical knowledge that are decontextualized from the contexts
of teaching.
Knowledge-in-practice assumes that practical teaching knowledge
comes through experience. Thus "teaching is a wise action in the
midst of uncertain and changing situations" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
1999, p. 266), and teaching expertise comes from the profession
itself. Research in this area describes craft knowledge and personal
practical knowledge. Teachers are understood to be the generators
of knowledge who mediate ideas, construct meaning, and take action
based on that knowledge. Reforms using this conception hinge on
teacher reflection and inquiry on practice, and utilize strategies
such as mentoring, coaching, study groups, and self-study. This
conception underlies the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards, which use journals, portfolios, and other means to assess
the professional knowledge and skill of experienced teachers.
Knowledge-of-practice assumes that teachers play a central
role in generating knowledge of practice by "making their classrooms
and schools sites for inquiry, connecting their work in schools
to larger issues, and taking a critical perspective on the theory
and research of others" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 273). The
teachers' relationship to knowledge is different from the previous
conceptions in that they become researchers, theorizers, activists,
and school leaders who generate knowledge for the profession and
they also become critical users of research. Reforms taking this
view focus on teacher research, action research, and inquiry communities.
Initiatives include preservice programs that prompt prospective
teacher to examine their autobiographies, write critical reflections,
or create ethnographies; self-study in higher education; professional
development schools; teacher networks such as the National Writing
Project; and funding and disseminating teacher research. From Cochran-Smith
and Lytle's work, it is clear that a changing or emerging view of
what counts as knowledge for teaching influences the way teacher
learning opportunities are conceived.
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