 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||
 |
 |
|
|||
 |
|
||||
 |
|
||||
| |
|
|
|
||
| |
|
|
|
||
| |
|
||||
| |
|
|
|||
| |
|
||||
| |
|
||||
Professional Development School Partnerships:
A Place for Teacher Learning
This article is the evision of a lecture presented at the Advanced Training Program in Teacher Education Design in Colleges and Universities, Beijing Normal University, Beijing China, November 28 - December 1, 2005.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
As long as there have been formal teacher education programs, teacher education institutions have had some relationship with schools so that their student teachers could have places to practice their teaching skills. For many years, students would complete a teaching experience for a few weeks either in a campus laboratory school run by the teacher education institution or in a public/state school (Stallings & Kowalski, 1990). This student teaching experience would often come at the end of the preservice program and would usually be the first time that a prospective teacher would get a chance to practice his or her teaching skills with students. Today there are very few university laboratory schools remaining.
Over the years, structured field experiences in public schools have begun to play a much greater role in the teacher education curriculum. In many countries student teachers now complete a series of field experiences during their preparation, sometimes beginning at the onset of their program. Since about the mid 1980s in the United States and in many other countries at different times, teacher education programs began to change their practices in other substantive ways with regard to field experiences in addition to providing more and longer experiences.
Specifically teacher education institutions have responded to a call for the development of new partnerships with schools that include attention to both the preservice and inservice education of teachers including the induction of beginning teachers. These professional development school or partner school (e.g., Holmes Group, 1996; Osguthorpe, Harris, Harris, & Black, 1995) represent a commitment to the simultaneous renewal of teacher education programs and schools and to new kinds of relationships between professors and teachers in the initial and continuing education of teachers. These partnerships blur the boundaries that have traditionally existed between preservice, induction, and inservice teacher education and connect teacher education to school reform.
Here, I will discuss these professional development school partnerships as I see them evolving in the U.S. and consider how and why there has been an interest in breaking away from a traditional model of field experiences for prospective teachers and traditional ways of organizing professional development for new and experienced teachers. In doing so, I will draw on my experience since 1997 in directing a professional development school partnership that my university has with the local school district that involves 8 public schools. First I will briefly discuss the traditional model of field experiences and of school and university relationships that has been rejected by many teacher education institutions not only in the U.S. but throughout the world.
The Traditional Model of School and University Relationships
In the traditional relationship between teacher education institutions and schools there is an assumption that the expertise lies only among the faculty within the college or university and the role of the school is only to provide a place for student teachers to practice their craft, and to "consume" the professional development provided for school staff by university-based experts. Generally in this model there is a large disconnect between the curriculum of the teacher education program on the university campus and the student teachers' work in schools. The mentor teachers who supervise the work of the student teachers in their classrooms typically know very little about what takes place in the university classes; the university instructors typically know very little about what goes on in the student teachers' classrooms (Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; Zeichner, 1996).The mentor teachers who work with student teachers typically have little voice in running the overall teacher education program, and the university teacher educators make all of the important decisions. Research has clearly shown that this disconnect between the schools and the university in a traditional practicum, together with the uneven quality of student teacher mentoring and inadequate funding, undermines the quality of student teacher learning during the practicum (Boyle-Baise & McIntyre, in press; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985
University supervision of student teachers in a traditionally organized practicum is usually conducted either by a permanent or adjunct faculty members or in research universities by doctoral students who travel to a number of different schools to supervise students. In the traditional programs at my university for example, graduate student supervisors travel to up to 11 schools per semester and can only make a limited number of visits to each student teacher because of all of the time that they spend traveling from school to school. These supervisors are often unfamiliar with the mentor teachers and their classrooms and often work with a different group of mentor teachers each term. The result is a lower quality of supervision than is possible through a professional development school model where the university supervisors are more integrally connected to the schools where student teachers teach (Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; Zeichner, 1992; Zeichner & Miller, 1997).
With regard to teacher professional development, the traditional model of university sponsored professional development asks teachers to come to the university to participate in courses that the university has organized often without regard to the participants and their contexts. Research has shown that teachers do not value this dominant form of professional development that is disconnected from their professional workplaces and that does not often address their specific needs (Randi & Zeichner, 2004). With recent changes in teacher professional development policies in many parts of the U.S, teachers now have many choices of professional development providers other than the colleges and universities, and they are taking advantage of these choices.
The professional development school model rejects the top down view of transferring knowledge from university to schools, and integrates teacher professional development opportunities with student teacher learning opportunities and into the life of the schools (Darling Hammond, 1994). While there is an appreciation of the value that can be gained from university expertise, there is also a recognition of university teacher educators as learners and there is an attempt to take advantage of the knowledge and expertise that exists within schools as well as within the university. Rather than continuing on about the problems with the traditional models of organizing the teacher education practicum and teacher professional development, let me move to a discussion of an alternative model that has been developed.
The Professional Development School Model
Since the mid 1980s, teacher education institutions have been organizing new relationships with school districts for the initial and continuing education of teachers called professional development schools, partner schools, clinical schools or professional practice schools. This reform movement was influenced by medical education's use of teaching hospitals as clinical training sites for doctors. Currently there are over 1,000 professional development schools in the U.S. that are mostly public schools. These professional development schools. focus on several goals while connecting teacher education to school reform: the improvement of preservice teacher education; the improvement of professional development for existing staff (including university staff); and the establishment of closer connections between research and practice by fostering the development of an inquiry culture in schools. All of these goals are believed to contribute toward improving the quality of education for students who attend these schools.Different professional development schools (PDSs) emphasize these three goals in different ways. For example, many PDSs focus on improving preservice teacher education by more closely connecting the preparation of new teachers to real school contexts and by taking advantage of the expert knowledge among experienced teachers. At my university , we have used the PDS program to pilot many of the innovations that we have later introduced to all of our teacher education programs, such as our electronic portfolio project and community-based field experiences. In another high school PDS that I visited in Minneapolis, Minnesota the focus is almost entirely on the induction of new teachers and on helping experienced teachers achieve National Board Certification, which is a certificate documenting the achievement of advanced expertise as a teacher. [See http://www.nbpts.org] There is a very small preservice education component in this particular PDS.
Even within our program at the University of Wisconsin, there is a great deal of variation among the 8 PDSs in terms of which of the goals are emphasized beyond the concern of all of them with improving student learning. Some of the schools work with many student teachers and others do not. Some of the schools initiate new professional development opportunities for staff and others do less of this. Thus far in Madison, there has been some attention to the goal of building a culture of inquiry through PDS work such as the formation of school-based action research groups focusing on the teaching of English language learners, strategies for reducing the achievement gaps, and new ways to teach high school mathematics.
One characteristic feature of professional development schools is that they take advantage of the expertise of school staff in educating student teachers. Preservice teacher education seminars and courses typically held on the university campus are often moved to the professional development schools where school staff can participate as active teacher educators. In a video tape that I recently showed to my graduate class, a mentor teacher in one of Michigan State University's professional development schools worked with a group of student teachers placed at her school on the teaching of mathematics to elementary school pupils. (This work was in addition to the work that she did in mentoring the intern who was placed in her classroom for a full year.) The student teachers watched this cooperating teacher teach mathematics lessons everyday for a week, and met with her before and after the lessons to discuss her thinking about her teaching and the pupils' accomplishments. In one of the PDSs in my partnership in Wisconsin, we have offered a literacy methods course for several years now. The student teachers go into classrooms to watch teachers demonstrating particular teaching strategies, and teachers go into the methods class to talk about their teaching with the student teachers. This kind of arrangement does not typically go on in traditionally organized programs where it is assumed that the expertise lies with the university.
Taking advantage of the expertise of school staff in the education of teachers gives them a voice in the running of the entire teacher education program. They participate in staff meetings with their university partners as more equal colleagues. In our partnership, for example, the PDS coordinators in our secondary education program attend the monthly program meetings on campus and actively participate in discussions and decisions about admissions policies, curriculum, and program structure. Their presence adds an important perspective to the discussions that often is not felt in traditionally organized programs.
A second characteristic of these partnerships is the way in which field experiences for preservice teachers are organized. Instead of placing student teachers only in individual classrooms with a mentor teacher, they are placed in a school. In addition to the work they do in a classroom or with a team of teachers, they typically engage in a variety of activities designed to help them take advantage of the expertise that exist in particular schools. Any single mentor teacher, no matter how good he or she is as a teacher, has only a limited amount of expertise (Stones, 1984). In our partnership, student teachers have met with reading specialists, social workers who have knowledge about the diverse communities served by the schools, a teacher who runs a Saturday morning African American ethnic academy, and with specialists in teaching English language learners.
One characteristic feature of many professional development schools is the ways in which the supervision of student teachers has changed. Instead of the traveling university supervisors who drive from school to school making brief observational visits with student teachers, the supervision of student teachers in many PDSs involves embedding the university supervisor in the school so that they can get to know the classroom situations where their student teachers work and can more closely supervise their work.
In our PDS program, the university supervisors, who are in some cases joint employees of the university and school district, are based in some of the schools and provide seminars and classroom supervision to cohorts of student teachers who work in their schools over several semesters. Because they know the schools very well, they make classroom placements more strategically than is the case in a traditional model (Zeichner & Miller, 1997) and are able to spend much more time with the student teachers than is the case in our traditionally organized programs.
These supervisors hold weekly seminars in the schools where various staff and community members talk with the student teachers. Supervisors in the elementary PDSs work with cohorts of student teachers over a two year period rather than supervising a different group of teaching candidates each semester as is the case in the traditional elementary education program. Because of the trust that is built up between student teachers and supervisors over several semesters, they are able to deal with complex and sensitive issues that sometimes are not addressed in more conventional models of supervision.
Another key component of many PDS partnerships is the increased involvement for university faculty in the schools. At my university , each PDS has an experienced and tenured university faculty member who serves as the university liaison to that school. They work closely with the school PDS coordinators and supervisors both to coordinate work with student teachers, and to generate professional development activities for everyone in the school. Often these faculty members team teach the university seminars with a school-based teacher educator. Before I moved into an administrative role 6 years ago, I co-taught a PDS seminar every Friday with a school-based university supervisor who was a Madison teacher.
It is not an easy process to achieve a shift in professor-teacher relationships from being teacher and student to working together as equal colleagues. In my experience, this shift takes a lot of time to achieve but is absolutely necessary for the PDS model to be realized. Teachers are socialized to defer to the expertise of professors and professors are socialized to believe that they are the disseminators of knowledge to teachers. To achieve a situation where the expertise of both teachers and professors is acknowledged and where both parties also see themselves as learners is one of the key aspects that I have tried to build into our partnership.
The literature on PDSs discusses the different cultures that exist in schools and universities and the difficulties that teacher education institutions have sometimes faced in getting university professors to work in the schools especially in research intensive universities like my own (Stoddart, 1993; Labaree, 2004) Reward systems at universities focus on the publication of research in referred publications as the main basis for promotion, tenure and annual merit raises. I have labored for many years to get PDS work to count as part of a professor's teaching load, and unless this can happen there will be little involvement of university faculty. Similarly, school districts sometimes do not reward their staff for work in these partnerships.
In some cases university faculty have managed to connect their PDS work to their research agendas, but that is not always possible. A number of universities have created new clinical faculty positions for those teacher educators who work in PDSs to ease the pressure on them to write and publish for promotion. These clinical faculty are evaluated on the quality of the work they do in the PDSs.
PDSs also provide a new type of professional development to school staff. Instead of staff members just heading to the university or school district to participate in professional development courses, the PDS brings new professional development opportunities that are integrated into the life of the school. The goal is to embed a culture of inquiry into the school. In our PDSs, we have generated many professional development activities for staff that supplement what is already available. These activities are designed specifically for the given staff involved, and often involve teachers in leading the activities. Sometimes these activities provide university credit that count toward master's and doctoral degrees.
A wide variety of PD activities have been generated in our partnership since 1997. These have not just included faculty from the School of Education, but also from throughout the university. These activities include study groups, book groups, and action research groups on many different topics, and special seminars on mentoring for the classroom teachers who work with student teachers. [1] Recently I participated in a course in one of our PDS high schools on education in southern Africa that was initiated by a university faculty member in genetics. Other courses have focused on teaching English language learners (a growing segment of our local pupil population); the use of popular culture (e.g., hip hop) in the classroom to reach students who are not excited about being there; study groups in teaching mathematics and literacy where teachers bring pupil work from their classrooms to discuss with their colleagues; and courses where teachers are taught basic conversational Spanish by native Spanish speaking adults and pupils so that they can better communicate with the Spanish speaking families of their pupils. We also worked with one of our middle schools for several years with the help of a grant from Hewlett Packard to integrate the use of technology into the teaching of mathematics and science. Currently, with funds obtained from donors, we are initiating a series of activities to strengthen the connections between the PDSs and the parents and communities members they are supposed to serve. Sometimes in urban schools like those that are part of our PDS partnership, tensions are high between some of the minority parents and the predominately white and English speaking school staff. The partnership is currently funding several efforts by the PDSs to help the parents feel more a part of the school community and to help school staff be more sensitive to community needs.
One of the big issues that has emerged in PDSs is how to fund them. There is no question that organizing field experiences for student teachers and professional development for school staff in a PDS model is more expensive to run than doing these things the traditional ways. When this movement first emerged in the U.S. some of the partnerships were funded by external grants from foundations and states but when the grants expired, the institutions were left with the problem of how to support the PDS work. In my university I was determined from the very beginning that I wanted both my university administrators and school district officials to support the partnership work from their regular institutional budgets.
Luckily, I was able to put together funding from both the school district and university to enable us to engage in the kind of activities that we wanted student teachers and school staff to have available to them. So far this funding package has survived several budget cuts in both the school district and the university. The future of the program is not assured however, and a number of these partnerships across the U.S. are in serious trouble as funding in education continues to be cut by state and national governments.
Because of the high expense involved in running PDS partnerships, teacher education institutions are not always able to place all of their students in these schools for their field experiences. At my university, we place about 15 percent of our student teachers in PDSs. We have resisted expanding the number of PDSs in our partnership, because we do not want to dilute the quality of the program. In some parts of the U.S. such as Maryland all student teachers are required to work in professional development schools. Universities in states with such a requirement have formed partnerships with many schools.
Nationally there has been much concern over the actual quality of what teacher educators call professional development schools. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education has developed a set of standards for PDSs that seek to differentiate the work that goes on in such schools according to different quality indicators at different stages of partnership development (NCATE, 2001). Because professional development school partnerships are seen as an innovative teacher education practice, everyone wants to claim that they have some, and the nature and quality of these partnerships varies greatly (Whitford & Metcalf-Turner, 1999).
Another issue that has been debated with regard to professional development schools is what kind of schools should be selected for this work. One point of view holds that PDSs should be exemplary schools that model the cutting edge teaching practices that are taught in the universities and that are successful with students. Some universities have chosen this path and have established PDS partnerships with well resourced schools in wealthier districts. This choice has generated much criticism that PDSs do not contribute to the promotion of greater equity in schooling, nor do they contribute to the schools that most need help (e.g., Valli, Cooper, & Frankes, 1997).
Some universities, like my own, have chosen to establish partnerships in less well-funded schools serving students living in poverty that may be less likely overall to be current models of excellence. What is important to us in seeking potential partners, is both a commitment by most of the staff to work with student teachers in some way , and a commitment to question current practices and work to improve. Although there are some pockets of excellence in urban and remote rural schools across the country that have been successful in educating all of their students to the same high level, these schools are not the norm and it becomes necessary to go beyond these exemplary schools in making student teacher placements given the large numbers of new teachers needed each year.
We work very hard in our partnership to establish a culture of inquiry both within the PDSs and in the university portion of the teacher education program where everyone is constantly examining their practices and seeking to do their work better. Five of our eight PDSs have had school wide reform grants that have helped establish this climate in these schools. University faculty and graduate students frequently conduct research on their work or on the work of others in the partnership. For example, a doctoral student is currently studying the nature and impact of required community-based learning experiences for student teachers in two of the PDSs. In another example, a university supervisor in one of our PDS middle schools conducted a self-study of her work through the development of an electronic portfolio documenting the issues and tensions that she managed in her role as both student teacher supervisor and liaison with school staff for generating professional development activities.
What has Research Shown about the Value of PDS Partnerships?
In recent years, research focused on the efficacy of professional development schools has increased, thus taking our understanding beyond the descriptive work prevalent in the early years of development (c.f., Abdal-Haqq, 1998; Book, 1996; Clift & Brady, 2005; Teitel, 1997, 2004). The more recent research has sought to illuminate the consequences for student teachers, teachers, schools and pupils of participating in these partnerships, in some cases comparing the experiences of student teachers who have participated in PDSs with those who have not. While this research has begun to show some positive effects of PDS involvement for all role groups and the schools when compared to non PDS models, the research has not illuminated the particular aspects of professional development schools that are responsible for these effects, under what specific conditions they occur, and how long they persist.Despite the promising research that has appeared related to PDSs in recent years, many issues still need to be addressed to better understand their effects and to increase their effectiveness. Of primary concern is the application of the term professional development school by some teacher educators to describe situations where the only aspect present is the placement of groups of student teachers in schools. As I have tried to show here, there is much more involved in the concept of PDS than placing groups of student teachers in a school. Also of concern is the role of the community in these school and university partnerships. The concern is that the schools and universities not become more unresponsive to community needs as they are strengthened through their new alliances (Murrell, 1998).
Note
1 More specific information can be found at http://labweb.education.wisc.edu/pds This site includes a discussion of program activities since its beginning in 1997. The newsletters from 2004-2005 are in the process of being added to the site.
References
Abdal-Haqq, I. (1997). Professional development schools: weighing the evidence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Boyle-Baise, L. & McIntyre, J. (in press). What kind of experience? Preparing teachers in PDSs or community settings. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, & D.J. McIntyre (Eds.) Handbook of research on teacher education 3rd edition. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Book, C. (1996). Professional development schools. In J. Sikula (Ed.) Handbook of research on teacher education 2nd edition. (pp. 194-210). New York: Macmillan.
Clift, R. & Brady, P. (2005). Research on methods courses and field experiences. In M . Cochran-Smith & K. Zeichner (Eds.) Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. (pp. 309-424). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1994) (Ed.). Professional development schools: Schools for developing a profession. New York: Teachers College Press.
Feiman-Nemser, S. & Buchmann, M. (1985). Pitfalls of experience in teacher education. Teachers College Record, 87, 47-65.
Guyton, E. & McIntyre, J. (1990). Student teaching and school experiences. In W.R. Houston (Ed.) Handbook of research on teacher education. (pp. 514-534). New York: Macmillan.
Holmes Group (1996). Tomorrow's schools: Principles for the design of professional development schools. East Lansing MI: College of Education, Michigan State University.
Labaree, D. (2004). The trouble with Ed schools. New Haven: Yale University Press. Murrell, P. (1998). Like stone soup: The role of the professional development school in the renewal of urban schools. Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (2001). Standards for professional development schools. Retrieved from the web at http://www.ncate.org.
Osguthorpe, R.T.; Harris, C.R.; Harris, M.; & Black, S. (1995). Partner schools: Centers for educational renewal. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Randi, J. & Zeichner, K. (2004). New visions of teacher professional development. In M. Smylie & D. Miretszky (Eds.) Developing the teacher workforce. (pp. 180-227). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stallings, J. & Kowalski, T. (1990). Research on professional development schools. In W.R. Houston (Ed.) Handbook of research on teacher education. (pp. 251-266). New York: Macmillan.
Stoddart, T. (1993). The professional development school: Building bridges between cultures. Educational Policy, 7, 5-23.
Stones, E. (1984). Supervision in teacher education. London: Metheun. Teitel, L. (1997). Changing teacher education through professional development school partnerships: A five-year follow-up study. Teachers College Record, 99(2), 311-334.
Teitel, L. (February, 2004). How professional development schools make a difference: A review of the research. (2nd edition). Washington, DC: National Association for Accreditation of Teacher Education.
Valli, L. ; Cooper, D. & Frankes, L. (1997). Professional development schools and equity: A critical analysis of rhetoric and research. In M. Apple (Ed.) Review of Research in Education, 22.
Whitford, B.L. & Metcalf-Turner, P. (1999). Of promises and usolved puzzles: Reforming teacher education with professional development schools. In G. Griffin (Ed.) The education of teachers. (pp. 257-278). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zeichner, K. (1992). Rethinking the practicum in the professional development school partnership. Journal of Teacher Education, 43(4), 296-307.
Zeichner, K. (1996). Designing educative practicum experiences for prospective teachers. In K. Zeichner, S. Melnick & M. Gomez (Eds.) Currents of reform in preservice teacher education. (pp.215-234). New York: Teachers College Press.
Zeichner, K. & Miller, M. (1997). Learning to teach in a professional development school. In M. Levine & R. Trachtman (Eds.) Building professional development schools: Politics, practice, and policy. New York: Teachers College Press.
Ken Zeichner is Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Teacher Education and Associate Dean of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directs the Madison Professional Development School Partnership, a teacher education partnership involving eight school sin the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Ken Zeichner
Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Teacher Education
Associate Dean
University of Wisconsin-Madison
225 N. Mills St
Madison WI 53706
zeichner@facstaff.wisc.edu
©April 2006 New Horizons for Learning
This information is provided by:
Office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Special Education
P O Box 47200
Olympia, WA 98504-7200
(360) 725-6088
Fax (360)586-1631
E-mail: dgill@ospi.wednet.edu
You
are here: