Ann Lieberman

Teacher Learning: The Key to Educational Reform

This letter to the next president of the United States recommends the transformation of teacher in-service learning as a powerful means of education reform. Too often, professional development is perceived by teachers as being idiosyncratic and irrelevant. The authors recommend a reconceptualization of professional learning for practicing teachers, in which educators are involved in learning communities, these communities evolve over time, and they revolve around norms of openness, scholarly rigor, and collaborative construction of professional knowledge. The authors describe three such environments of professional learning—the National Writing Project, the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and the Quest Project for Signature Pedagogies in Teacher Education—and recommend that the incoming chief executive should capitalize on the strengths of such programs and extend them to many more teachers nationwide.

Making Practice Public: Teacher Learning in the 21st Century

We propose that the advent and ubiquity of new media tools and social networking resources provide a means for professional, networked learning to “scale up.” We preface our discussion with a review of research that has led us to argue for professional learning communities, document the policies and practices of professional development in high-achieving countries internationally that have transformed the way teachers learn, and discuss online social networking as it is being used for teacher learning. Our 10-year experience at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching gave us an opportunity to learn to make multimedia representations of practice for use in both preservice and professional development. We believe that making practice public in this way can be transformative.

The Meaning of Scholarly Activity and the Building of Community

ver 30 years ago, I was a sixth-grade teacher in a fast-growing suburb of Los Angeles. The school was new; the district was building a new school every year. (It was a time when people could buy new houses for

The role of 'accomplished teachers' in professional learning communities: uncovering practice and enabling leadership

100 down.) Some students in my class had been to as many as 12 schools. Many came from poor families; some were students of the military; others had moved to Califorxadnia from the Midwest for the promise of a new life. Educaxadtional change was in the air; it was the era of individualizxading instruction and modern math. But there were 45 students in my class, and I was responsible for teaching more than 10 subject areas. I had a teaching credential from UCLA where I had parxadticipated in what was to be the last year of a teacher-preparation program based on the teachings of John Dewey. I had learned to teach by participating in the creation of all the materials and activities that I was to use as a teacher: for example, original songs and rhythms, books and artwork for a social-studies unit on Brazil. I felt well prepared and well qualified. I saw social studies as the core of the curriculum, and knowledge as more than the rote learning of discrete subjects, but rather as flowing from and integrated with the core. The role of the teacher was to create the conditions for students to engage actively in learning. I found out, when I began to teach, that creating these conxadditions was much more difficult than I had ever imagined. So I did what many other teachers before me had done: I tried to keep the students busy, tried to follow the curxadriculum, and most of all, tried to survive the isolation and loneliness and the fear of losing control. I stopped thinking about the ideas I had learned at UCLA. The questions that mattered most were: Were they learning anything? When would I stop having a stomachache? Should I become a social worker? One day the principal called us to a meeting at 3 oclock. We dragged ourselves to the teachers room to be met by a woman there who gave us a form to fill out concerning our principal and our school. I zipped through the questionnaire, finishing first, which allowed me time to talk to her. She told me that she was doing research, and that the questionnaire was attempting to get at the type of organization of this school, the style of the principal, and the influence that all this had on the teacher. I remember being fascinated by the idea that someone was studying ws. After all I was just a teacher. But could she possibly understand? Where in the questionnaire was the terror of losing control o 4f5 students? Or that what we had learned in preparing to teach had little to do with what we were actually doing? Or that we had no time to really reflect on our practice, and that we teachers rarely talked to each other about teaching? Did she know that the district curriculum people who were supposed to help were too distant from our problems to understand them and never asked us our opinion? Did she have any idea how wonderful and exhilarating it was to talk about intellectual ideas with another adult? It never occurred to me that before too long, I would be standing where she was. Indeed a few years later I went to graduate school and became involved in a research project that connected 18 schools in 18 different districts to UCLA—the League of Cooperating Schools. My job as research assistant (there were 12 of us: 11 men and 1 woman) was to go to assigned schools to encourage discussion and action to improve schools, while documenting the process (Goodlad, 1975). The idea of a partnership between university people and public schools to implement and study the change process Was a bold idea for its time. (Studying the change process in schools requires a long-term relationship, and there were few models.) We were exposing the schools to new ideas in curriculum, instruction, and school organization, observing the impact they had on the functioning of the principals and teachers. In my new role I found myself thinking: Why werent these teachers more willing to be open with each other? How come they dont read more? Was my principal so paternalistic? Was I this docile when I was a teacher? It is not surprising, then, that trying to understand and resolve the contradictions in my own professional life, and in the professional lives of educators as a group, has become one of th main thrusts of my work. It has taken a long time even to figure out the right questions to ask, let alone proxadvide the answers. Can we connect schools and universities, building community that provides for growth and change, and sharing responsibility for and involvement in practice and research? Can we develop frames of understanding that consider and give voice to the inner and observed lives of teachers and schools as partners, rather than solely as obxadjects of study? Is it possible to study schools, programs, and practices to enhance knowledge as well as aid in the improvexadment of practice?

Educational Reform Networks: Changes in the Forms of Reform

This paper describes the signature role played by accomplished, experienced teachers in professional learning communities, and the importance that these practitioners make their teaching public and shared. In so doing, the authors describe how accomplished practices can be shared between classrooms and between practitioners with varying levels of experience. The authors examine five different examples, three from programs developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and two studies done on and with the National Writing Project, and ask: how do teachers learn by uncovering their own teaching practices? What conditions support teacher learning? And lastly, how do teachers learn to lead in professional communities and contribute to educational reform? The authors conclude that robust, lasting professional development must begin with what teachers know and do, effecting educational reform from within the classroom.

“The Vision Thing”: Educational Research and AERA in the 21st Century Part 3: Perspectives on the Research–Practice Relationship

New professional learning “networks” are expanding which link people together for common purposes of learning. These networks typically involve a sense of shared purpose, psychological support, voluntary participation and a facilitator. A number of specific networks are described. Analysis shows that networks have great power, but they are also fragile, necessitating continuous negotiation of tensions.