Jason Margolis

Hybrid Teacher Leaders and the New Professional Development Ecology.

This two-year study examines an emergent model for promoting classroom change amidst systemic professional development efforts – the hybrid teacher leader (HTL). Utilizing ecological and teacher social network frameworks, the relative strengths and weaknesses of educators who both teach and lead teachers are explored. In-depth qualitative data from six HTLs across four Washington state school districts are examined to look at the ways that HTLs navigate and shape the change-oriented professional development environment, as well as the conditions under which the ‘teacher’ and the ‘leader’ are synergetic. Findings include that HTLs have a significant capacity to serve as a bridge between multiple subgroups within the larger educational system, making them an essential human resource within their environments. At the same time, role confusion, mismanagement of time and tenuous relationships across the sites reduced the impact of HTLs on colleagues’ professional learning – necessitating sharp intentions and boundaries to maximize efficiency.

The Fundamental Dilemma of Teacher Leader-Facilitated Professional Development: Do as I (Kind of) Say, Not as I (Sort of) Do

Purpose: This article focuses on a specific model of teacher leadership in schools—the studio classroom. In answering the call for more targeted studies of teacher leadership, the study is designed to assist educational leaders in putting in place the organizational and social structures that allow teacher leaders to have the most positive impact on teachers. Research questions focused on perceptions, enactment, and impact of the studio classroom. Research Methods: The research took place over a 2-year period (2008-2010), with six teacher leader-participants from four school districts. Data collection included individual and group interviews and extensive on site observation, as well as administrator interviews. Analytic procedures were qualitative, grounded in the teacher leadership literature and a sociocultural teacher learning framework. Findings and Implications: Across sites, a diminished understanding and appreciation for the teacher learning process left no sanctioned space to learn from mistakes. Thus, logistical, social, and cultural barriers overwhelmed any studio classroom implementation attempts—and teacher leaders ultimately failed to open up their classroom doors as intended. Practical implications include a need to reexamine the term modeling as exhibiting qualities that encourage reflection on teaching rather than replication of teaching. Similarly, to stimulate learning from actual classroom practice, a new vision of teacher leadership needs to focus on improving rather than proving. Additionally, research on teaching will need to more strongly make the case that authentic teacher inquiry more strongly correlates with teacher and student learning than the importation and transmitting of “best practices.”

National Assessments for Student Teachers: Documenting Teaching Readiness to the Tipping Point

To evaluate the impact of the emergent national teacher performance assessment (TPA) on student teachers, this study examined a pilot implementation at one university in Washington State during Spring 2011. The qualitative research focused on the lived experience of those directly affected by TPA implementation: student teachers, mentor teachers, and university supervisors. Findings include some potential benefits to the TPA, including student teachers reporting greater levels of reflection enabling them to better focus on student thinking, and university supervisors appreciating the shift in analysis of teaching episodes to the student teacher. However, there is also evidence that the TPA is trying to do too much too soon—with several aspects of the TPA being developmentally inappropriate and implausible within the context of student teaching. With too many requirements and not enough supports, student teachers are in danger of being positioned beyond “the tipping point.” Recommendations include piloting different versions of the TPA, highlighting varying levels of description, analysis, and reflection. Relatedly, portfolio processes must be analyzed to seek the optimum balance between documenting positive learning interactions with and allowing teachers with little experience to create, for the first time, those positive learning experiences.

The teacher educator’s role in promoting institutional versus individual teacher well-being

This article addresses the teacher educator’s role in defining and facilitating teacher well-being. It does so by first exploring the literature on teacher well-being, resilience, resistance, morality and professional dispositions. It then examines the policies and rhetoric of two countries, the USA and England, as examples of a global tilt towards the excessive promotion of institutional well-being at the expense of individual teachers. It concludes with specific recommendations at the university programme and teacher educator levels for bringing individual and institutional well-being into better balance. These include: innovating sustained and reciprocal university–school partnerships; helping new teachers become ‘mindful’ rather than solely resistant; analysing cases of teaching to become more aware of macro vs. micro influences; and facilitating skills in taking oppositional stances, including within the teacher educator’s own classroom.

The missing link in teacher professional development: student presence

With a continuing disconnect between structural changes to the work of teaching and the work of teachers engaged with students in classrooms, this paper addresses a growing need to attend to the way teacher professional development (TPD) is enacted in today’s schools. Specifically, drawing from theories of teacher learning and numerous models of TPD that have been implemented over the past 30 years, we argue that the physical presence of students is the missing variable in the majority of TPD efforts. To help organize and advance the latest in TPD research and practice, the purpose of this article is to provide a framework for administrators, teacher leaders, and teachers to either evaluate or initiate TPD in relation to levels of physical student presence. Ultimately, we argue that changes in TPD structures cannot be expected to yield changes in TPD culture. Likewise, changes in the culture surrounding TPD cannot be expected to lead to changes in TPD structures. Rather, changes in TPD structures and culture must occur simultaneously – and students’ physical presence is a potential organizing link between the two. Further, this notion is advanced through well-tested theories of learning inside and outside of Education.

Do Teachers Need Structure or Freedom to Effectively Teach Urban Students? A Review of the Educational Debate:

This article presents both sides of the debate as to whether urban teachers need structure or freedom, and then takes a stand on urban teaching in the current high-stakes assessment climate. First, we trace the 30-year development of American educational policy in the area of structuring teaching. Then, we present research from proponents of structuring the work of teaching, who argue that education, and particularly urban education, needs to be standardized and monitored. We then share literature from teacher freedom proponents who argue that educators need to adapt their curriculum and pedagogical approaches based on students’ needs and their own professional judgment. We conclude by arguing that urban teaching needs to be structured to promote freedom, in light of recent developments in the often-ignored fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology.

Teacher Leadership: Practices, Politics, and Persistence

In recent years, the federal role in educational reform and policy making has steadily increased, bringing with it new priorities, initiatives, and policies. Chief among them: districts, schools, and now individual educators are being held accountable for steadily improved student test scores. As the public stakes for schools have increased, however, so have the pressures on educators to perform with skill and confidence. Arguably, the corresponding increase in teacher-leader roles is a logical response to this shifting landscape. Instructional coaches and data specialists are being hired to support teams of teachers as they strive to better meet student academic and learning needs. New teacher mentors are charged with bringing novices up to speed on building-wide instructional programs, curricular resources, and behavior management systems. Grade level and department chairs are leading the development and implementation of common assessments, while school improvement chairs are planning professional development experiences and leading Professional Learning Community (PLC) meetings. As these examples illustrate, teachers are central to the instructional change process. As such, teacher leaders have become an integral part of many school-reform initiatives.

Self-Study Research as a Source of Professional Development and Learning Within a School of Education

This chapter explores the evolving place of self-study within schools of education. It is written by the department chair who oversaw the formation of the self-study group featured in this section and who found ways to support the group over time. First, the author revisits his experience as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, participating in a multi-tiered teacher education self-study (see Dinkelman T, Margolis J, Sikkenga K: Stud Teach Educ 2(1):5–23, 2006a; Dinkelman T, Margolis J, Sikkenga K: Stud Teach Educ 2(2):119–136, 2006b). Then, drawing from qualitative data sources (e.g., artifacts, emails, meeting minutes), he fast-forwards 15 years and reflects on being a department chair seeking to find a sanctioned space for self-study within the contemporary university landscape. Themes explored include (1) creating synergistic opportunities between teaching and research during a time when standards for faculty in both areas have increased; (2) facilitating authentic, dynamic program renewal; (3) finding opportunities to link self-study to mission; and (4) mining opportunities for community-building based on the lived experience of the work of teacher education rather than platitudes about collaboration. Additionally, this chapter explores the challenges and opportunities in creating a place for self-study research. Here, the processes of gaining institutional legitimacy, balancing insider vs. outsider expertise, and strategic budgeting will be analyzed.

Reply to Professors Day and Qing Gu

It seems that Professor Day and his colleague disagree with our critique of the rise of the concept of ‘teacher resilience’ within the academic community, and its seeping into educational policy and the practice of teacher educators. In responding only to the sections of our paper where they are mentioned, Day et al. argue that we have ‘seriously misrepresented’ their work to point that ‘intellectual integrity’ is at risk, and use several self-citations as evidence that we just do not understand what they have written. We will leave it to the readers of Day and Gu’s book, the larger teacher resilience literature, and of our JET article, to decide for themselves if there is now an overemphasis on teachers’ individual coping mechanisms rather than the need to change systems that require many teachers to have heroic levels of coping mechanisms. Nevertheless, we hold that: