Improving the Quality of Teaching through Teacher Learning

The current wave of school reform is thus focused on "improving the quality of teaching through, for example, better teacher preparation and higher quality, more relevant professional development" (Hirsch, Koppich, & Knapp, 1998, p. i). Changes in the views of how students construct knowledge have influenced the understanding of how teachers learn about teaching. The vision of schools as professional learning communities is also important in this context, and the social organization of instruction—collegiality and collaboration—is now more commonly described as an important element in building new capacity for school improvement (CPRE, 1996).

Much of the conversation and literature about school improvement places an emphasis on learning—student learning and teacher learning—as the focus or lens for decision-making about teaching practice. The view of learning that has been widely accepted by the educational research community in recent years is the constructivist view. Constructivism is a multifaceted theory that suggests that knowledge is personally and actively constructed by the individual through experience and language; the learner constructs meaning by making connections between previous experiences and conceptions and the new learning situation; and social interaction is essential for learning to take place as students discuss and test their ideas with other learners. Students are, thus, better able to construct meaning and to develop deep understanding when teachers create opportunities for students to have hands-on experiences, to go into depth on important topics, to work with other students in varied groupings, to make real-world connections, to purposefully access their own prior knowledge, and to integrate concepts across subjects.

This view of learning is a radical departure from the behaviorist view of learning that was prevalent when many of today's teachers were preservice students. Since a theory of learning essentially drives the development of teaching practice, understanding constructivist ideas requires teachers to engage with new ideas, reflect on their practice, and to deeply rethink teaching, learning, and the teacher's role in the classroom. In the past, teacher learning has been primarily additive learning that augments the teacher's repertoire with new skills. The kind of teacher learning that reformers are now talking about is quite different. It is "transformative" learning that produces changes in deeply held beliefs, knowledge, and habits of practice (Thomson & Zeuli, 1999). Cohen and Ball (1999) are describing this kind of learning when they said that if we can "enable teachers to change what they see in students' work" (italics added, p. 9), then we are likely to see distinctive changes in teaching practice and student learning. They talked about the connection between teacher learning and change in instruction this way.

Helping teachers hear and see more in student work, helping teachers learn to intervene artfully in student work and to motivate students, all affect what students can learn to do. The most effective teacher learning is likely to focus on instruction-as-interaction, rather than on isolated elements of instruction. (p. 28)

The new role of the teacher in reform and in classrooms is as a learner. New interventions "have been invented" that focus more clearly on providing meaningful learning experiences for teachers (Cohen & Ball, 1999, p. 1). Many of these interventions stress collegial relationships among teachers where teachers have opportunities to share ideas, discuss educational issues, and participate in collaborative planning, problem posing, and problem solving. There is, thus, an emergence of support for teacher study groups, book discussion groups, whole-faculty study, mentoring programs, induction programs, and numerous other teacher-directed, site-specific forms of professional development.

These learning experiences can be transformative for teachers. Thompson and Zeuli (1999) have described five characteristics for transformative professional development. Learning opportunities should

1. Create a sufficiently high level of cognitive dissonance to disturb the equilibrium between teachers' existing beliefs and practices on the one hand and their experience with subject matter, students' learning, and teaching on the other.

2. Provide time, contexts, and support for teachers to think—to work at resolving the dissonance through discussion, reading, writing, and other activities.

3. Ensure that the dissonance-creating and dissonance-resolving activities are connected to the teacher's own students and context, or something like them.

4. Provide a way for teachers to develop a repertoire for practice that is consistent with the new understanding that teachers are building.

5. Provide continuing help in a cycle of surfacing new issues and problems, deriving new understanding from them, translating these new understandings into performance, and recycling.

Some researchers are actively studying the connection between teacher learning and student learning. Preliminary results suggest that student performance increases when teachers have greater learning opportunities (Cohen & Hill, 1998). These authors said that

When educational improvement is focused on learning and teaching academic content, and when curriculum for improving teaching overlaps with curriculum and assessment for students, teaching practice and student performance are likely to improve. (p. 33)

If the reform utilizes constructivist learning theory to formulate student curriculum, for example, then the learning opportunities for teachers must also be designed around constructivist ideas. Further, these learning opportunities should be firmly grounded in developing deeper knowledge of the student curriculum, of the relationship of assessments to curricula, and of the relationship of both to pedagogy and student learning (Cohen & Hill).

Schools and districts have begun to engage in reform efforts that focus on teacher learning, and some of those that have been most successful in improving student achievement have been recognized by the U. S. Department of Education's National Award Program for Model Professional Development (Killion, 1999). In award winning schools, Killion found that teachers engage in diverse and extensive learning experiences that they, individually or as teams, have selected; time, resources, collaboration, focused goals, support structures, and leadership are in place to foster teacher learning; analysis of data keeps the school focused on results; and all teachers are responsible for contributing to successful professional development and are accountable for student success. These results again focus attention on the teacher as a learner and as an active and knowledgeable actor in the reform process.