Practices That Support Teacher Development.

Transforming Conceptions Of Professional Learning The conventional view of staff development as a transferable package of knowledge to be distributed to teachers in bite-sized pieces needs radical rethinking, according to Ms. Lieberman, who presents a new conception. The current effort to reform the nation's schools seeks to develop not only new (or re-framed) conceptions of teaching, learning, and schooling, but also a wide variety of practices that support teacher learning. These practices run counter to some deeply held notions about staff development and inservice education that have long influenced educators' and the public's views of teachers. Although sophistication about the process of restructuring schools and the problems of changing school cultures is growing, it is still widely accepted that staff learning takes place primarily at a series of workshops, at a conference, or with the help of a long-term consultant.(1) What everyone appears to want for students - a wide array of learning opportunities that engage students in experiencing, creating, and solving real problems, using their own experiences, and working with others - is for some reason denied to teachers when they are the learners. In the traditional view of staff development, workshops and conferences conducted outside the school count, but authentic opportunities to learn from and with colleagues inside the school do not. The conventional view of staff development as a transferable package of knowledge to be distributed to teachers in bite-sized pieces needs radical rethinking. It implies a limited conception of teacher learning that is out of step with current research and practice.(2) Learning from History: Questioning Assumptions In 1957 the National Society for the Study of Education published Inservice Education for Teachers, Supervisors, and Administrators.(3) The book was important not only because it was comprehensive, but also because it challenged the narrow assumptions about inservice education that had been dominant during the early 20th century. It proposed that schools and entire staffs should become collaborators in providing inservice education. This view was suggested by the growing knowledge of group dynamics that linked larger ideas of change to school problems.(4) Because the status of teachers was rising at the time, the idea that teachers should share the work of their own professional improvement gained credibility in education circles. The two conflicting assumptions about the best way for teachers to learn - either through direct instruction by outsiders or through their own involvement in defining and shaping the problems of practice - stem from deep-rooted philosophical notions about learning, competence, and trust, and these issues are again at the heart of discussions of professional development today.(5) Teachers have been told often enough (or it has been taken for granted) that other people's understandings of teaching and learning are more important than their own and that their knowledge - gained from the dailiness of work with students - is of far less value. Outside experts have often viewed teaching as technical, learning as packaged, and teachers as passive recipients of the findings of objective research. Because the contemporary school reform movement is concerned with such fundamental issues of schooling as conceptions of knowledge building and teacher learning, today's approach to professional development goes far beyond the technical tinkering that has often characterized inservice training.(6) The process of restructuring schools places demands on the whole organization that make it imperative that individuals redefine their work in relation to the way the entire school works. Transforming schools into learning organizations, in which people work together to solve problems collectively, is more than a question of inserting a new curriculum or a new program. …