In the past 10 years, the calls for a commitment to teacher learning have increased exponentially, most likely from a confluence of forces. The standards movement is one such force. Calls for higher standards for teachers inevitably erupted alongside calls for higher standards for students. If students needed their education served up differently in order to meet new assessments and standards, it followed that teachers would need something new as well (e.g., Cohen & Ball, 1990). Reformers began to note that changed curriculum and testing would not directly lead to changed teaching practices. New measures of student performance would entail new ways of teaching. Professional development was touted as the ticket to reform. Mounting efforts to increase the professionalization of teaching constitutes yet another force. Groups such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (1989, 1991), the National Council of Teachers of English (1996), the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (1989), and the Interstate Consortium of Chief State School Officers (Council of Chief State School Officers, n.d.-a, n.d.b) have authored mission statements and subsequent standards for professional teachers and teaching. Professional teachers require professional development. Concurrent with this call for more professional development has been a call for more research on teacher learning. Yet, what the field ' 'knows'' about teacher learning is rather puzzling. In part, this is due to the scattered and serendipitous nature of teachers' learning. Beginning teachers take methods and foundations courses in education departments and subject matter courses in discipline departments. Sometimes they work in the field, sometimes in the university. And every school experience, whether it be in elementary or middle or high school, in a college or university, has the potential for teaching them lessons about what school is, what teachers do, and how people learn. Lortie's [1975] characterization of this curriculum as the \"apprenticeship of observation\" has been a major

Chapter 6 : Teacher Learning and the Acquisition of Professional Knowledge: An Examination of Research on Contemporary Professlonal Development

Purpose: The leadership of the principal is known to be a key factor in supporting student achievement, but how that leadership is experienced and instructionally enacted by teachers is much less clear The purpose of this study was to examine various factors that are often present in principal—teacher interactions and teacher—teacher relationships to see how those may have an impact on teachers' classroom instructional practicesData Collection and Analysis:Data for this quantitative study are from a teacher survey developed for the national research project, Learning from Leadership, funded by the Wallace Foundation There are 4,165 completed surveys in the database, which reflects responses from teachers in grades K-12 in a sample of schools across the United States Using a conceptual framework based on various known components of effective schools today, a stepwise linear regression examined the relationships among practices such as shared leadership and professional community with contextual variabl

How Teachers Experience Principal Leadership: The Roles of Professional Community, Trust, Efficacy, and Shared Responsibility

https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/6466675/Kwakman03factors.pdf

Factors affecting teachers' participation in professional learning activities

This article uses two dominant traditions in the organizational study of schools—the neoinstitutional and faculty workplace approaches—to explain an urban elementary school’s response to the Texas Accountability System. The findings indicate that teachers, guided by an institutional logic, sought to create the appearance of test score improvement by using a constellation of “educational triage” practices. Educational triage was manifest in the diversion of resources to students believed to be on the threshold of passing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (“bubble kids”) and to “accountable” students (those affecting the school’s accountability rating). Teachers also attempted to remove any liabilities to the school’s rating by referring these students for special education. To explain why teachers participated in educational triage, the author shows how the equation of good teaching with high test scores by the institutional environment and the district reconstituted both teacher professional id...

Below the Bubble: “Educational Triage” and the Texas Accountability System

Influence of Teacher Empowerment on Teachers' Organizational Commitment, Professional Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Schools.

The push for more complex, intellectually demanding approaches to teaching suggests that teacher commitment will continue to be important for effective education. This article develops a framework for assessing how differential incentive policies affect teacher commitment. It identifies seven key workplace conditions that contribute to teacher commitment: job design characteristics, feedback, autonomy, participation, collaboration, learning opportunities, and resources. This framework is used to assess the effects of such differential incentive policies as merit pay and career ladders. The selection mechanisms in these two programs are found to reduce autonomy and collaboration, but the job enrichment aspects of career ladders are found to increase participation, collaboration, and resources. We recommend combining policies that increase participation, collaboration, and feedback rather than continuing to experiment with differential incentives.

Teacher Commitment, Working Conditions, and Differential Incentive Policies

Teacher networks are a recent innovation in professional development that are being used in California and Vermont to support state policy initiatives. Our analysis relies on interviews, observations, and document analysis to identify how teachers’ program experiences are affected by the fit between their backgrounds and program goals and methods. Drawing on insights from symbolic interactionist and social movements theory, we treat the teacher networks in these states as professional-area movement organizations sharing the common goal of changing instruction in a constructivist direction. First, we describe the common goals of the programs in both states. Then we describe key features of the network programs and their different policy environments. Finally, we identify how teachers’ beliefs, background experiences, social influences, and contextual circumstances can color their program experiences and willingness to make changes in classroom instruction.

Changing Classroom Practices through Teacher Networks: Matching Program Features with Teacher Characteristics and Circumstances

Using interviews with teachers, network staff, and state policymakers as well as direct observation, this article compares state-sponsored teacher networks from Vermont and California. We conclude that state-sponsored networks can improve teachers’ knowledge and motivation while empowering them. We offer three recommendations. First, networks should use a loosely coupled, capacity-building strategy to support reform. Second, extrinsic incentives such as policy-based pressure or financial rewards should reduce teachers’ costs of participation and help them take advantage of networks’ intrinsic incentives. Finally, networks ought to offer a mix of activities that vary in their emphasis on delivering knowledge to teachers or helping them to construct it.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1163358.pdf

Designing State-Sponsored Teacher Networks: A Comparison of Two Cases

State-supported teacher networks can be an extremely useful alternative to conventional inservice training programs. To prove this point, Mr. Pennell and Mr. Firestone describe the workings of such networks in California and Vermont. Educators have become increasingly disenchanted with the conventional training model for professional development - the model based on one-shot workshops in which experts tell teachers how to teach and then leave them to fend for themselves.(1) Recently, there has been a growing interest in networks in which teachers come together to address tough problems of teaching through an exchange among members. Teacher networks usually focus on particular subject areas, teaching methods, or approaches to reform that give members a common purpose; a significant part of the leadership for these efforts comes from teachers themselves.(2) Any veteran of previous efforts to improve professional development for teachers must ask whether the states can support such professional development without bureaucratizing the networks and undermining the teacher-to-teacher interaction that makes them so meaningful and helpful to teachers. In a recent study of state-sponsored teacher networks in California and Vermont, we discovered that the answer is yes - if such networks are properly designed and operated. Over a period of two years, we attended network meetings and institutes, visited teachers in their classrooms, and talked to network leaders and administrators, state officials, and school district administrators to get a broad overview of how these organizations operated and what teachers learned from them. Networks and the State Not all networks are connected to state government in the same way. The California Subject Matter Projects (CSMPs) are only loosely linked to the state department of education and to state reform initiatives. The primary mission of the CSMPs is to build teachers' instructional and leadership capacities throughout the state in all subject areas and grade levels. Project activities are generally consistent with the philosophy of California's curriculum frameworks. These frameworks, which lead the state's reform policy, broadly outline content themes and conceptual skills that reflect the latest thinking with regard to instruction in different subject areas. However, the CSMPs are not evaluated on how they help implement the frameworks or any other state policy instruments, such as assessments. Some projects provide copies of the frameworks to summer institute participants, but these are not a focus of network activities, nor are the state assessment systems. The CSMPs offer teachers a place to learn about innovative methods and materials, as well as about state programs and support services that can give them and their schools additional resources. Projects also provide leadership opportunities for teachers both within and outside the program. Teachers serve in every capacity in the projects, including executive director. The projects also recommend network participants to various groups and programs that seek teacher input at the regional and state level. Finally, schools and districts often turn to teachers in the projects to conduct inservice workshops. Unlike the CSMPs, Vermont's portfolio networks are tightly linked to the state's primary policy instrument, the portfolio assessments. Indeed, these networks were invented to support the portfolio assessments. When problems arose with scoring reliability or when changes were made in scoring criteria, the networks were the main source of information for teachers. As Vermont became aware of reliability problems in teachers' scoring of portfolios, most of the meeting time in the networks was committed to practice scoring. Matching Program Design To Audience and Purpose In both states, the networks succeed to the extent that they can match their activities to the needs of participating teachers. …

James R. Pennell

Papers

Teacher Commitment, Working Conditions, and Differential Incentive Policies

Changing Classroom Practices through Teacher Networks: Matching Program Features with Teacher Characteristics and Circumstances

Designing State-Sponsored Teacher Networks: A Comparison of Two Cases

Teacher-To-Teacher Professional Development Through State-Sponsored Networks.