Michael Fullan - Teacher Development And Educational Change

Teacher Development and
Educational Change

Teacher Development and
Educational Change

Edited by
Michael Fullan
Andy Hargreaves

First published 1992
RoutledgeFalmer

Published 2013 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Selection and editorial material copyright Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves 1992

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-750-70011-5 (pbk)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available on request

Jacket design by Caroline Archer

Typeset in 11/11 Berubo by
Graphicraft Typesetters Ltd., Hong Kong

We would like to thank the Faculty of Education, University of Toronto, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for supporting the Inter-national Conference on Teacher Development. This book was de-veloped as a result of the conference held in Toronto in February 1989.

Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves

For something as obvious as the need to relate teacher development and educational change, it is surprising how little systematic attention has been devoted to understanding the topic and taking appropriate action. In fact, the focus on the link between teacher development and educational change is barely fifteen years old. In this chapter we want to trace this development briefly, indicate the unfinished agenda, and illustrate how the chapters in this book contribute to what has only very recently become a rapidly growing knowledge base.

We divide the period of research on teacher development since 1975 into two broad phases. The first phase analyzed the relationship between teacher development and successful implementation of innovationwe call this the innovation-focused period. The second phase takes the matter more deeply by considering the total teacher and the total school.

In some ways the logic and evidence linking teacher development to successful implementation of innovations is relatively straightforward, although there are a number of subtleties and complexities in the process. In a review in 1977, Fullan and Pomfret marshalled considerable evidence that demonstrated how teacher development and successful implementation of innovations were related. We observed that effective implementation consists of alterations in curriculum materials, instructional practices and behaviour, and beliefs and understandings on the part of teachers involved in given innovations. Put more simply, successful change involves learning how to do something new. As such, the process of implementation is essentially a learning process. Thus, when it is linked to specific innovations, teacher development and implementation go hand in hand.

At the time we learned that teacher development should be innovation-related, continuous during the course of implementation, and involve a variety of formal (e.g. workshops) and informal (e.g. teacher-exchange) components. We also confirmed that most innovation attempts did not incorporate these characteristics.

Since 1977, significant advances have been made in spelling out the processes involved in these relationships. Huberman and Miles (1984) captured these processes in their twelve case studies of school districts.

Large-scale, change-bearing innovations lived or died by the amount and quality of assistance that their users received once the change process was under way The forms of assistance were various. The high-assistance sites set up external conferences, in-service training sessions, visits, committee structures, and team meetings. They also furnished a lot of ongoing assistance in the form of materials, peer consultation, access to external consultants, and rapid access to central office personnel Although strong assistance did not usually succeed in smoothing the way in early implementations, especially for the more demanding innovations, it paid handsome dividends later on by substantially increasing the levels of commitment and practice mastery, (p. 273)

Huberman and Miles, along with others, also contributed new insights into the process of teacher learning, which included: the universal presence of early implementation problems in all cases of success, the role of pressure and support, the way in which change in practice frequently preceded change in beliefs and understanding, and the time-line of two or more years of active assistance during implementation.

Stallings (1989) in a series of experimental studies also demonstrated how staff development was connected to change in teacher practice, and in turn to increases in student achievement. Stallings found that teachers are more likely to change their behaviour and continue to use new ideas under the following conditions:

They become aware of a need for improvement through their analysis of their own observation-profile.

They make a written commitment to try new ideas in their classroom the next day.

They modify the workshop ideas to work in their classroom and school.

They try the ideas and evaluate the effect.

They observe in each other's classrooms and analyze their own data.

They report their success or failure to their group.

They discuss problems and solutions regarding individual students and/or teaching subject matter.

They need a wide variety of approaches: modelling, simulations, observations, critiquing video tapes, presenting at professional meetings.

They learn in their own way continuity to set new goals for professional growth. (Stallings, 1989:34)

The corner-stones of the model, according to Stallings, are:

Learn by doingtry, evaluate, modify, try again.

Link prior knowledge to new information.

Learn by reflecting and solving problems.

Learn in a supportive environmentshare problems and successes. (p. 4)

Joyce and Showers (1988) in their well-known theory-demonstration-practice-feedback-coaching model have shown rather conclusively that staff development is central to instructional change involving teaching models. In a more thorough test of the approach in Richmond County, Georgia, Joyce et al