thesisthoughts

 I have learned a great deal from this book, I think the material is well organized, the case studies and vignettes are extremely effective. Here I am relating only to the points relevant to my thesis.

“Ample research from the last decade shows that staff development is both a crucial element in school reform and a catalyst for change in building a school culture that supports a high level of adult and student learning” (p. 57). Citing Daniels, Bizar, and Zemelman, 2001.

“…teachers’ groups, professional communities variously defined, offer the most effective unit of intervention and powerful opportunity for reform…The path to change in the classroom core lies within and through teachers’ professional communities; learning communities which generate knowledge, craft new norms of practice, and sustain participants in their efforts to reflect, examine, experiment, and change” (p. 57). Quoting McLaughlin and Talbert, 1993.

“Schools need to be considered as places for teachers to lead scholarly lives/ I can’t imagine providing quality education for students if schools don’t take the teaching of teachers seriously…” (Harwayne, 2001, as cited in NWP & Nagin, 2006, p. 59).

“We cannot build a nation of educated people who can communicate effectively without teachers and administrators who value, understand and practice writing themselves” (p. 60).

Lieberman and Wood (2002) discuss two central elements of the NWP structure of professional development: “…a distinctive set of social practices that motivate teachers, make learning accessible, and build an ongoing professional community; and networks that organize and sustain relationships among these communities and produce new and revitalizing forms of support, commitment, and leadership” (p. 65)

In NWP PD programs writing teachers are required to write. Teachers are expected to do what they ask their students to do.

In a case study (p. 66), Joe Check asked teachers in a PD to write a short memory based memoir. He added that the teachers were invited to write in whatever language they felt most comfortable using. Some of the bilingual teachers found this significant and were very grateful for the experience of writing on professional topics in their mother tongue.

National Writing Project, & Nagin, C. (2006). Because writing matters: Improving student writing in our schools (2^nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

In this personal narrative, the author presents her own difficulty in learning to write and in writing for publication. She connects these experiences to her teaching of writing.

“From my own writing journey, I have learned some lessons about teaching writing…The best advice comes from experience. I have since learned that taking writing to the nth degree can produce a feeling of accomplishment and appreciation for others for a job well done. But it also requires wrestling with doubt, facing truths perhaps long hidden, and feeling rejected, a lot. Writers need to face fears.

In the classrooms where I teach, I’ve seen lots of kids paralyzed by fear. Most of them know, perhaps better than their teachers who have never written, just how hard the act of writing can be” (p. 355).

Laverick Harrington, S. (1997/1998). One teacher’s writing journey: Hey, I’ve been there. The Reading Teacher, 51(4), 354-355. Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com  

Found this map on the “leadingfromtheheart” blog:

http://leadingfromtheheart.org/2008/03/31/constructivism-mind-map/

The content of this mind map is taken directly from Marcy Driscoll’s map, found on p. 384 of Psychology of learning for Instruction (2005).

 Jumping to the one of the questions in the diagram of the lit review…

When trying to answer what the political implications are in this topic I find myself facing questions relating to teacher professionalism.

Who decides what teachers need in their professional development?

Why are teachers often left out in discussions about the state of education and it’s future?  

Do teachers really have a say? Are they encouraged?

How is teacher knowledge valued and respected – in the academic community? among teachers themselves? in the wider community? This is about “seeing teachers as valuable producers of knowledge about teaching and learning” (Bulfin & Mathews, 2003, p. 48), ssing them as “legitimate knowledge producers”(Bulfin & Mathews, 2003, p. 49).  

Parr (2003) presents the writing of Apple (1995) which discusses the forces in action “deskilling” teachers through prescriptive PD programs.  Parr not only agrees with Apple, he concedes that these worrying changes are becoming more and more relevant.

Parr wrote:

“On a professional level, Lieberman and Miller (2001) see multiple voices seeking to deprofessionalize the profession by devaluing ‘teacher experience, discretion, and knowledge’” (p. 68). This quote appears on page viii in the introduction of the book.

The work of Stokes (2001) is also cited. Stokes claims that teachers are very seldomly encouraged to reflect on their work.

Parr concludes that there are factors preventing teacher professional learning in the field and that in addition, there are teachers who are unaware of the value of individual professional inquiry.

Parr, G. (2003). Teacher professional learning and transgression? Inquiry on the boundary. English in Australia, 138, 63-79. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au

Lieberman, A., & Miller, L. (2001) Introduction. In A. Lieberman, & L. Miller (Eds), Teachers caught in the action: Professional development that matters (pp. vii-x). New York: Teachers College Press.

Some of the points raised in this written professional conversation seem relevant to the things I have been reading, thinking, writing and learning about.

Bellis wrote:

“I have spent many, many hours with a couple of my colleagues reading and discussing student work, sharing ways to approach various texts, sharing ways to approach various texts, talking about our practices-what seemed to be working well, what wasn’t, what we think subject English is and should be…the list goes on. Even though I was the ‘newbie’, it wasn’t as if ‘the knowledge’ (whatever that means) was flowing in one direction-in the act of discussion we are required to question and reconsider what we think we know because we are attempting to articulate our understandings. It is impossible to equate the learning that transpires in  these sorts of professional relationships to one individual teacher”  (p. 41).

Bellis was lucky enough to not only find teachers who regularly engaged in professional dialogue, but for them to include her as an equal in those conversations. Unlike Bulfin and Mathews, Bellis felt from the beginning that she is an equal in the production of knowledge through dialogue with her peers.

The article emphasises the tension between the notion of teacher collaboration in learning and the present emphasis being placed on individual teacher performance. Parr discusses the need to concentrate on the quality of teaching rather than on the ability of individual teachers. I agree with his conclusion that it is impossible to assign credit to a single teacher working in an educational framework. Teachers interact with each other, and with students in so many different ways and it is impossible to determine what exactly contributes to any particular breakthrough.

 Bellis, N., & Parr, G. (2005). Responding to the forum: a professional conversation. Idiom, 41(2), 39-45. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au