Thomas H. Levine

Experienced teachers and school reform: Exploring how two different professional communities facilitated and complicated change

Scholars have proposed that ‘the path to change in the classroom lies within and through’ more collaborative professional communities among teachers (McLaughlin and Talbert, 1993: 18). How do different approaches to developing collaborative professional communities impact experienced teachers and their ability to change? This article identifies differences between ‘teacher professional communities’ and ‘professional learning communities’. It then presents two case studies to explore the implications of these differences for experienced teachers engaged in school reform. Interview and observational data from two sites suggest that schools which nurture collaborative ‘teacher professional communities’ over time can create resources that help experienced teachers to change aspects of their work. Such resources include: norms promoting innovation; widely shared objectives; trust; continuity with the past; respect for experienced teachers; and traditions promoting morale. Schools that rapidly engineer a ‘professional learning community’ may lack such resources, reducing experienced teachers’ willingness and ability to change.

What Research Tells Us About the Impact and Challenges of Smaller Learning Communities

In the United States, considerable financial and human resources have been devoted to breaking some large high schools into smaller learning communities (SLCs). This article reviews research that compares SLCs to comprehensive high schools on a variety of measures. Extant research neither supports nor refutes the promise of SLCs to improve academic achievement; however, research does suggest that SLCs can improve attendance, graduation rates, and students’ experience of high schools as supportive environments. The article also uses empirical research to identify three challenges SLCs must overcome if they are to improve academic achievement: focusing on instructional improvement, ensuring equity and rigor, and transcending school history.

Socializing Future Social Studies Teachers and K-12 Students: Whether, When, and Why.

When, if ever, should social studies teacher educators and K-12 teachers seek to inculcate specific values, attitudes, and beliefs in their students? To address this question, the author offers a case from his own practice as a social studies teacher educator, illustrating how he promoted critical and divergent thinking during the first half of one class session, and then pushed students toward a convergent set of beliefs during the second half. The author frames this case in terms of contradictory purposes that have been proposed for the social studies: socializing for shared values versus developing critical thinkers. Although there are compelling reasons to maximize critical thinking in social studies classrooms and in social studies teacher education, this article also identifies conditions that merit the use of socialization.

Knight at the Museum: Learning History with Museums.

This article presents an approach that teachers can use to strengthen students’ ability to make sense of the past at museums. Specifically, we propose a photography exercise to help students to learn from museums and to view museums critically, weighing both the objective realities and subjective interpretations offered by museums. To get the most from a lifetime of museum-going and history learning, students should learn to view museums as reflecting the kinds of perspectives, decision-making, and challenges that accompany any effort to make sense of the past.

Comparing approaches to converting large high schools into smaller units

Scholars and reformers in the United States have called for converting large high schools into smaller units to provide a more effective, personal, and culturally responsive education for all students. Current literature argues that such ‘conversion high schools’ should break into fully autonomous small schools rather than more interdependent smaller learning communities (SLCs). In contrast to existing recommendations, this comparative case study identifies four potential advantages of interdependent SLCs. A longitudinal study of teacher collaboration and teaching practices conducted over two years at two conversion high schools suggests that retaining a degree of interdependence among sub-units in conversion high schools may: support teaching and learning of specific academic subjects; promote more learning from other subunits on the campus of the high school; reduce the stress and chaos that accompany high school conversion; and offer more support for new teachers.

Learning to redesign teacher education: a conceptual framework to support program change

Abstract University-based teacher education faces intensifying pressure to prove its effectiveness. This has prompted renewed interest in program redesign. In this article, we argue that enacting meaningful redesign requires university-based teacher educators to learn new ways of thinking and acting not only with teacher candidates but also with their university and K-12 colleagues. Drawing on Engeström’s expansive learning theory and our own efforts to redesign our teacher education program along a practice-based teacher education model, we delineate a conceptual framework and illustrate how it supports the organizational learning necessary to enact change in university-based teacher education. The expansive learning redesign framework specifies conceptual tools and social practices to guide, enact, and sustain university-based teacher education redesign. It acknowledges the multi-organizational nature of university-based teacher education and provides tools for engaging K-12 educators in the redesign of teacher education.