Papers

Work Shopping the Right Way

(PDF Version, 94KB)

Dr. Beth Rodgers Coulter
Western Carolina University
College of Education and Allied Professions
July 2004

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly (Albert Einstein, http://pages.ivillage.com/janeand6/id8.html).

Most of us do not adopt new teaching strategies by simply being told about them. We need to experience being taught in these ways ourselves; we need to practice, get feedback, and receive continuous support from our colleagues as we implement the changes in our classrooms. Hence, workshops designed to help us reflect on and improve our teaching should actively involve us—much as good teaching practices require students to be actively engaged (McNeal, 1998).

Recently, the Adventure of the American Mind (AAM) program directors were faced with the “Workshop Challenge.” This group was tasked with developing relevant staff development workshops for in-service teachers. The workshops were to be based on best practices and focused on using Library of Congress (LOC) online primary sources in teaching and learning activities.

The AAM program, a federal appropriation, began in 1999 as a pilot program and was sponsored by North Carolina’s Congressman, Mr. Charles Taylor. AAM began in one private college and, within a year’s time, spread to include three additional private colleges and one public university. The pilot program became well-known and quickly migrated to other states. Currently, there are 23 AAM partners in seven states. Partners are defined as colleges, universities, school districts, and federations.

The original design, designated as Phase I, involved AAM partners working with two teachers in every school (private, public, and charter) within the college or university’s service area. Teachers selected to participate received a new laptop computer, Internet connectivity, and a graduate course designed to teach them how to access and use the LOC sources in their teaching and learning activities.

After four years of AAM Phase I (laptop computers and graduate classes), a second phase (Phase II) was identified as the next level of growth to expand the program for greater teacher involvement. It developed from the need to work with more teachers at a lower cost per teacher. Therefore, we faced the “workshop challenge.”

Educators have been mandated, in most cases, to endure countless numbers of workshops, more often than not, walking out of workshops feeling tired, frustrated, and confused. Tired because the information was a repeat of previously learned materials; frustrated because the skills taught could not be done without special equipment and technical infrastructure; confused because there was little or no relevance to practical teaching in the classroom and no available reinforcement of the skills when they returned to work. AAM partners did not want to be perceived as the “Ivory Tower” people who float from above only to descend and scatter great words of wisdom on the masses and just as quickly depart.

With the successes the AAM program had in Phase I, the partners wanted to make sure that Phase II was even more successful in helping teachers. In order for AAM to do “work-shopping: the right way” an understanding of why traditional workshops were missing the target with addressing teacher needs was critical.

Research on staff development shows that workshop developers often fail to address real issues, plan workshops that are not relevant or “doable” once teachers leave the workshop, and most importantly do not directly effect long-term improvement in teaching through workshops (Alber, 2002). Also, survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics indicated that in 2000, only 12 to 27 percent of teachers “felt their professional development activities significantly improved their teaching” (Education Week, 2004). Linda Darling-Hammond elaborates by theorizing that “until recently, ongoing professional development programs separated theory and application almost completely” (1997).

Teachers learn just as their students do: by studying, doing, and reflecting; by collaborating with other teachers; by looking closely at students and their work; and by sharing what they see. This kind of learning cannot occur solely in college classrooms divorced from engagement in practice or solely in school classrooms divorced from knowledge about how to interpret practice. Good settings for teacher learning, in both colleges of education and schools, provide lots of opportunities for research and inquiry, for trying and testing, for talking about and evaluating the results of learning and teaching” (Darling-Hammond, 1997).

With this knowledge and these challenges, the AAM partners began developing workshops that addressed the following areas:

1. Building on teachers’ previously learned knowledge and taking teachers from where they are to a higher level.
   
   Knowing that the culture and staffing in schools varies, the partners decided to develop an “a la carte” menu of workshops that would allow schools to pick and choose what the school and the schools’ teachers need. This customization would allow AAM partners to work with the school administrators and teachers to develop a specific program for each school that addressed the LOC online primary sources and focused on what teachers do, teach.

   Since AAM participants are in-service teachers who have been teaching for at least a year, and most 10-20 years, partners had to be careful to not “re-teach” what they had learned in their education programs. Instead, partners wanted to reinforce proven instructional technology theories that help students learn. Also, many in-service teachers who attended college in the 1970s and 1980s received little or no education in the field of instructional technology (with the exception of overhead projector operation, and video tape, slides, filmstrips, and 16mm film usage).

   Some schools began using personal computers in the 1980s; however, the majority started in the 1990s. Therefore, many teacher-education programs began teaching computer use in the classroom to their pre-service education students in the 1990s. In-service workshops sprang up during this period attempting to address the need for computer literacy among teachers.

   Linda Darling-Hammond states that in-service workshops and training programs were a place where “Large groups of teachers amassed in auditoriums after school had brief encounters with packaged prescriptions offered by outside consultants. Divorced from daily concerns and practice, these hit-and-run events were generally forgotten when the next day’s press of events set in. Difficult problems of teaching and learning … were never raised in these training contexts, much less explored and discussed” (1997).
   

2. Providing equipment and materials needed to implement new knowledge and practice.
   
   How many times have teachers attended workshops at universities or colleges and worked with state-of-the-art equipment, newly-released software, and high speed Internet connectivity only to return to their schools to find inadequate equipment or slow Internet connectivity speeds? Replicating workshop material was virtually impossible. Not only have teachers been faced with these issues, but the need for computer safety on the Internet for children has driven schools to guard their Internet access with firewalls and user-protection software that limits Internet travel to not only unsafe Web content – but in some cases, digitized resources at the LOC and other valuable databases. So, not only were school connections slow, often teachers could not visit Web sites designed expressly for use by educators and students.

   Phase I of the AAM program provided new laptop computers and software for teachers. Therefore, teachers had the proper tools needed to practice at school what was taught in the graduate classes. However, Internet connectivity varied by school, including some private schools having no Internet access. Therefore, AAM paid to have Internet connectivity established for one year while the teacher went through the program. Elementary schools often have the lowest connection speed while middle and high schools are provided with greater bandwidth. In order to work better with the teachers, AAM partners established collegial relationships with school systems and the personnel that held the “Internet keys” for the system. In most cases partners were successful in helping to open lines and make sure teachers had the connectivity and access needed to use the knowledge gained in the classes.

   Phase II presented a new challenge with regards to providing equipment, software, and connectivity. If AAM workshops were designed to be held in our colleges and universities, then workshop presenters were assured of having the right equipment, software, and Internet speed to instruct teachers in the use and integration of LOC online primary sources with teaching and learning activities; however, when teachers went back to their schools and did not have the equipment and connectivity to replicate what they learned in the workshops, then partners knew that frustrations would develop, workshop knowledge would fade, and the AAM workshops would be just another workshop.

   Since the AAM program in Phase II is no longer providing laptop computers, software, and Internet connectivity to teachers, partners needed to develop a plan to help the schools address equipment, software, and connectivity issues. The result was the development of a funding formula that provides monies to schools based on the number of teachers attending and the amount of time they attended workshops. The monies are then given to the schools for purchase of equipment and software that enable AAM-trained teachers to implement knowledge gained from the workshops. Internet accessibility, for some schools, is still an issue, but one that is not ignored by partners. Additionally, there are other federal and state initiatives addressing the need for higher speed Internet connectivity in schools.

3. Assisting in the provision of technical infrastructure and support needed to implement change in the teachers’ schools.
   
   Attending traditional teacher-education workshops in colleges and universities can be a wonderful experience because teachers have a technical infrastructure that is supported by the college or university and have accessibility to one-on-one assistance. However, once teachers return to their classrooms and try to replicate workshop activities, they very seldom have that level of assistance. Alber states: “…traditional staff development typically takes the form of brief lectures of workshops, with little or no support or follow-up, which may or may not address the individual needs of the teachers” (Alber, 2002).

   During Phase I courses, teachers often had one-on-one assistance during class and most of the time no greater than a 1-to-20 ratio of support. Once teachers returned to their classrooms, the AAM personnel would travel to schools to help them individually, when possible, or teachers would travel back to the college or university for one-on-one assistance.

   One very important success with Phase I was the personalized support provided to all participants. In order to extend that level of support during Phase II, continued work in the schools is critical. Partners realized the importance of becoming an invited part of the schools’ environment and working collaboratively to address many issues that have been traditional barriers to in-service teacher training. Additionally, AAM teachers from Phase I have been an asset with other teachers in their school. They are the mentors and “go-to” people for teachers during school hours – when they are most likely to encounter problems implementing activities.

   In support of teacher mentors and collaborative programs among schools and teacher-education programs, Darling-Hammond suggests the following:

“Many of these teacher-education programs have joined with local school districts to create professional development schools where novices’ clinical preparation can be more purposefully structured. Like teaching- hospitals in medicine, these schools are sites for state-of-the-art practice and are also organized to support the training of new professionals, extend the professional development of veteran teachers, and sponsor collaborative research and inquiry. Programs are jointly planned and taught by university-and school-based faculty. Cohorts of beginning teachers get a richer, more coherent learning experience when they are organized in teams to study and practice with these faculty and with one another. Senior teachers report that they deepen their knowledge by serving as mentors, adjunct faculty, co-researchers, and teacher leaders. Thus these schools help create the rub between theory and practice that teacher need in order to learn, and at the same time they create more professional roles for teachers and build teachers’ knowledge in ways that improve both practice and ongoing theory building” (1997).


4. Providing sound pedagogical teaching theories to make the new knowledge applicable to teaching and student learning.
   
   Learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation or a Web page can be fun and exciting; however, teacher-education programs have often not stressed the importance of how and when to use these technology tools. With the insurgence of world-connectivity and immediate accessibility to information, teachers are often given advice on how to teach, what to teach, and when to teach it. However, the essence of teaching does not lie in the content as much as it does the understanding of how people learn. It is this skill that stays with us long after the timelines disappear and the formulas fade.

   Ball and Cohen (in press) state:

   The kind of learning found in rich professional development settings has quite different features: it is centered around the critical activities of teaching and learning – planning lessons, evaluating student work, developing curriculum – rather than around abstractions and generalities; it grows from investigations of practice through cases, questions, analysis, and criticism; and it is built on substantial professional discourse that fosters analysis and communication about practices and values in ways that build collegiality and standards of practice (Darling-Hammond, 1997 – p. 323).

   There are two levels of educational experiences AAM partners wanted to share with teachers. One was the experience of designing activities that addressed their everyday teaching and learning activities (both required curriculums and discipline-specific needs) and two, developing technology skills to a level at which they would feel more at ease with using technology in teaching and learning activities.

   As described earlier, partners knew what happens when there are demonstrations on “how-to” without providing enough “hands-on” experiences for participants. Teachers needed to go beyond the basic workshop experience; they needed time, repetition, and encouragement to learn the technology to a level where they could accept it as a true educational tool – just like they have with paper, pencil, chalk, manipulatives, microscopes, etc.

   Partners also knew that teaching the technology without addressing methodology and pedagogical justification was providing skill without connection to what is important to teachers: teaching and learning. Therefore, workshops were developed that connected technology to teaching and learning, and built in ways for teachers to investigate how various technologies affect student learning and academic performance.

   Linda Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin (1997) states:
   
   “Professional development strategies that succeed in improving teaching share several features. They tend to be:

1. Experiential, engaging teachers in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment, and observation that illuminate the processes of learning and development
   
2. Grounded in participants’ questions, inquiry, and experimentation as well as profession wide research
   
3. Collaborative, involving a sharing of knowledge among educators
   
4. Connected to and derived from teachers’ work with their students as well as connected to examinations of subject matter and teaching methods
   
5. Sustained and intensive, supported by modeling, coaching, and problem solving around specific problems of practice
   
6. Connected to other aspects of school change.”

Therefore, AAM Phase II provides “work-shopping: the right way” which requires a sense of responsibility on the part of the provider. This responsibility includes treating teachers as the professionals they are; providing them with the tools they need; supporting their efforts in the work place; and giving them real-world experiences that enhance what they already know.

References:

Alber, S.R. (2002). Putting research in the collaborative hands of teachers and researchers: An alternative to traditional staff development. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 21(1).

Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn: A blueprint for creating schools that work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

McNeal, A.P. (1998). Death of the talking heads. College Teaching, 47(3), 90-92.

What I did on my summer vacation. (2004). Education Week, 23(32).

An Adventure of the American Mind is made available through a Library of Congress grant funded by the U.S. Congress. AAM is administered through the Education and Research Consortium of the Western Carolinas Inc.
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