This article describes a model of teacher change originally presented nearly two decades ago (Guskey, 1986) that began my long and warm friendship with Michael Huberman. The model portrays the temporal sequence of events from professional development experiences to enduring change in teachers' attitudes and perceptions. Research evidence supporting the model is summarized and the conditions under which change might be facilitated are described. The development and presentation of this model initiated a series of professional collaborations between Michael and myself, and led to the development of our co-edited book, Professional Development in Education: new paradigms and practices (Guskey & Huberman, 1995), which was named 'Book of the Year' by the National Staff Development Council in 1996.

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Professional Development and Teacher Change

Using the method of qualitative metasynthesis, this study analyzes 49 qualitative studies to interrogate how high-stakes testing affects curriculum, defined here as embodying content, knowledge form, and pedagogy. The findings from this study complicate the understanding of the relationship between high-stakes testing and classroom practice by identifying contradictory trends. The primary effect of high-stakes testing is that curricular content is narrowed to tested subjects, subject area knowledge is fragmented into test-related pieces, and teachers increase the use of teacher-centered pedagogies. However, this study also finds that, in a significant minority of cases, certain types of high-stakes tests have led to curricular content expansion, the integration of knowledge, and more student-centered, cooperative pedagogies. Thus the findings of the study suggest that the nature of high-stakes-test-induced curricular control is highly dependent on the structures of the tests themselves.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30137912.pdf

High-Stakes Testing and Curricular Control: A Qualitative Metasynthesis

The book Inequality by Christopher Jencks is in one sense an arid waste of somewhat confusing and misleading statistics between chapter one and chapter nine, and, in another sense, a destructive, unscientific critique of American education and families. Jencks' interpretation comes down hard on his basic feeling that "The crucial problem today is that relatively few people view income inequality as a serious problem; indeed the Nixon administration apparently convinced itself that income was too equally distributed in 1968 and that the rich needed additional incentives to get even richer . The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were only marginally better. Neither made any explicit effort to equalize incomes; the subject was hardly discussed. Instead reformers focused on equalizing opportunity." This view is probably correct but it is no excuse for an unscholarly, unscientific polemic against far from "peripheral institutions," which is Jencks' evaluation of the American schools. This book states

Inequality, A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America.

With a new approach and fortified by a wealth of experimental findings this book reverberates the hereditary-environment discussions of earlier decades. Little, if any, new data were obtained specifically for this research. Instead the author utilized available results from numerous longitudinal studies in a variety of disciplines. Testing the Overlap Hypothesis on these studies is the primary contribution of the book. The Overlap Hypothesis used here was formulated by J. E. Anderson who suggested that correlations between scores at two temporal points in longitudinal studies approximate the square root of the ratio obtained by dividing the mean of the first set of scores by the mean of the second. Hypothetical assumptions underlying this formulation are too involved to be included in a review; thus, it may suffice to say that this formula provides a method for comparing actual correlations with those expected on the basis of

Stability and Change in Human Characteristics.

Commitment and Control: Alternative Strategies for the Organizational Design of Schools

In response to 20 years of educational growth, shifts in the locus of school control, and politicization of educational decision making, new forms and uses of standardized testing have arisen. In particular, policy-oriented tests that are mandated and controlled by agencies external to the local school have become widely used to certify student and teacher competence. It is the use of such certification tests that is at the root of most current debate and controversy regarding educational testing. This article describes the social trends that have spawned the new testing programs. It considers the characteristics and the educational consequences of the new state-mandated tests. A set of propositions to guide understanding of testing debate and controversy is provided.

Peter W. Airasian

Papers

State Mandated Testing and Educational Reform: Context and Consequences