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2/16/05
Hi. Here at CALPRO we have begun to publish some research briefs and summaries. We currently have four ready, and what I would like to do is release them over this list one at a time. This will give people a chance to read and respond to the list in an organized fashion.
The first one is called “How Teachers Change” and it is based on the work of Cristine Smith, Judy Hofer and others at NCSALL.
Next in line are briefs about adult learning theory, learner persistence, and participatory education. Soon all four will be posted to the CALPRO homepage.
I think it would be helpful to both have comments about the actual research, and about how you might use this research brief for professional development. Does anything in the research strike you as interesting or surprising? What do you think is the most useful aspect of the study?
Please let me know if you cannot receive the attachment because of the way your email is set up, and I will try to get it to you in another fashion.
Erik Jacobson
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2/18/05
I read with interest "How Teachers Change" and printed out what to me was the most intersting section:
Conclusions and Recommendations. This is partly in preparation for the training in Study Circles I will attend March 7 ion Sacramento. I then went to "Focus On Basics" and would have printed out more articles except it has a lot of color background that overworks my printer. I find this research fascinating and would like to read it "away from my computer" without changing my color cartridge so often. I was unable to copy this article to change the format; could be my basic illiteracy with computers. How can we get hard copies? Perhaps this is answered somewhere, but I have lost the source.
The "change result" I experienced from reading this article is that I now understand better what Erik is asking of me in my report on Small Learning Groups, a request I had not fully comprehended previously. I need and want to tie my observations of the SLGs to my theory of/thinking on teaching and perception of student persisitance and change. Not sure how I will do that, but my comment on this insight is that I probably would not have made this "intellectual connection that will translate into practice" change had I not been involved in a practitioner project which requires a report, provides feedback from a professional developer and is of great interest to me. Being paid to participate in the project is icing on the cake. My passion for teaching and courage to look at my teaching methods and teacher persona have changed in a positive direction as a result of participation in the Northwest Practitioner Knowledge Institute, and I believe all these factors have been substantiated in the study "How Teachers Change". This was confirmation of my professional wisdom or intuition as the case may be. Thanks for making this availableto us.
Bonnita Solberg
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2/18/05
I think Bonnita raises a number of important points. In particular, I am interested in her comment that “I probably would not have made this "intellectual connection that will translate into practice" change had I not been involved in a practitioner project which requires a report, provides feedback from a professional developer and is of great interest to me. Being paid to participate in the project is icing on the cake.”
In the Fall Edition of the CALPROgress newsletter, I have a short piece on LearningCommunities and Collaboration (http://www.calpro-online.org/announce/docs/CalProgressFall2004.pdf), and we know from research (Sabatini, et. al, 2000) that teachers find collaborative team work to be the most useful form of professional development. Listservs (such as this one) were found to be not so helpful. One reason for this is that a virtual community cannot provide the same kind of resources that a real live physically co-located one can. Based on Bonnita’s comment, I wonder if one of the things that a virtual community cannot do is provide the kind of feedback we need to integrate what we are learning into our practice. Internet discussion groups provide a much different kind of dialogue than what one hears during group work. Internet discussion group interactions tend to be non-judgmental, and people often couch anything that looks like evaluation of another’s statement in polite language. Perhaps that is why teachers in the Sabatini study thought outside consultants were not as effective as team work – you won’t get the same kind of knowing and supportive feedback from somebody who only comes to your program for a short period of time.
Nobody likes having to write reports, but perhaps this type of focused and evaluated activity is crucial. When you are a member of a team, you have to keep up your end of the bargain. If you are a member of a discussion group, you can lurk to your heart’s content, and lurking is not sufficient for change. By saying this I am not casting aspersions at lurkers – I myself lurk on any number of discussion groups just to keep up with what people are saying. But I am sure any changes I undergo come from rolling up my sleeves, trying stuff out, and hearing back from other people how they think I did.
Erik
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2/19/05
Erik, I think we should test out your assertion that "virtual community cannot provide the same kind of resources that a real live physically co-located one can." While many people find that, for example, electronic lists do not provide the same depth -- and transformation -- as some face-to-face professional development teamwork, I am not sure that this is a limitation of the electronic media (e-lists, online courses, wikis, interactive telecasts and others,) but rather of how we are using them.
I have talked with graduate students taking online courses who say that the participant teamwork in the course is substantive and ongoing, sometimes more challenging and rewarding than face-to-face staff development. Online PD instructors and their enrolled teacher participants have told me that e-mail between them has sometimes been deep and involved, with much more self-examination than would have taken place in a graduate seminar. I have seen combinations of face-to-face and online communication in teacher projects where the online portion enhanced the commitment and responsibility people felt to each other and the project because they were in touch regularly between the face-to-face meetings, and had specific commitments to fulfill using the online medium.
Recently I have seen an enormous amount of commitment from a handful of people who have volunteered to build an online environment, the ALE Wiki, including you, Erik. And it makes me think that if there is a useful and engaging project that teachers care about, doing it together online is not that much different from doing it together in a room. The key question is how the online medium is structured. Is it it casual and informal, like many electronic list discussions? Or is it serious staff development teamwork or study, with expectations, roles, and commitment?
Some discussions on electronic lists, for example, integrating technology on NIFL-Technology now, or the discussion about online platforms on NIFL-AALPD last year, have been substantive and prolonged, and have involved the discussion of practice. What has made them different from the more typical casual exchanges on e-lists? Guest presenters? Structure? Preparation? Moderation? Topic? Some or all of these?
And, why are some face-to-face team staff development efforts more engaging and substantive than others? Is it the same list of variables in both the face-to-face and online environments?
David J. Rosen
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2/20/05
I would have to agree with Dave that it depends on the online community and the kind of face to face professional development. I know that the NIFL list has been a precious resource to me this year and participating in it and hearing other's ideas and interests has both enriched my own knowledge and also really improved the experience I had at the Meeting of the Minds Conference. Frankly, I wouldn't have attended the conference if I hadn't been curious about meeting and talking face to face with the people I had met on the email lists. The fact that people whose opinions and ideas I had come to respect over time were participating in the conference assured me that the conference itself would be worthwhile.
For me, the time I have to devote to my profession (and thus) to participate in face to face professional development is pretty limited. As a consequence I really like the online discussion and chat. For example, I know there is a group of adult school teachers that meets monthly in my area, and I would really like to go, but I just can't seem to squeeze it into my schedule. I only teach part time, but I still have young kids, and we homeschool. Also, sometimes face to face professional development is really pricey. The internet is free and it is open 24/7. I can go online on Sunday evening (like tonight) with no committment to having to spend a certain amount of time. If someone needs a bowl of cereal, I can interrupt what I'm doing and get up to get it.
Finally, doesn't it depend upon the learning style of the teacher involved and the thing to be learned? While collaborative learning is a current big fashion right now and I think it is valuable, I know that for me, it is not always the technique I need to learn best. Sometimes watching someone who knows what they are doing teach something gives you more insight into your own teaching than talking about teaching techniques with others. Sometimes reading a well written article or a discussion with a single person is a more valuable learning experience than working in a group of four or five people face to face.
Michele Craig
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2/22/05
Both David and Michele make good points. By no means was I dismissing the value of discussion lists or things like the wiki (or I wouldn't work on them), and I do recognize that a bad face-to-face meeting is less productive than a good discussion list thread. What I was trying to think about was why many practitioners do not see electronic media as particularly helpful.
I also agree that a limited potential for transformation is not an inherent feature of electronic media, and that it is a question of how are using them. So what is it to date about electronic media that have captured a certain segment of the populace, but left others cold? The responses David cited were from students who were engaged in on-line learning – I would like to see the data from teachers who are not. What is keeping them away? How much is an access issue and how much of it is a content issue? In the “How Teachers Change” study, one finding was that the perceived quality of the professional development was more important to the amount or type of teacher change than the model of professional development – this is interesting to think about in terms of on-line resources. How do *you* judge the quality of on-line professional development?
Two things come to mind, but these are only anecdotal. I have heard from a great number of practitioners who had been subscribed to on-line discussion groups who ended up unsubscribing. The two most common reasons I have heard are 1) “I just get so much stuff that I end up deleting most of it” and 2) “The same people post all the time and dominate the discussion.” Both of these things (being inundated with materials and feeling like a few people dominate the conversation) can also happen in a work or workshop setting, and you either fight for floor time, or walk out/zone out. In cyberspace it is much easier to just be quiet or walk away. At a certain point the cost-benefit ratio of being a lurker might cause somebody to disengage entirely.
David noted that “The key question is how the online medium is structured. Is it casual and informal, like many electronic list discussions? Or is it serious staff development teamwork or study, with expectations, roles, and commitment?” Since Michele was correct in pointing out that the learning style of a teacher is important to keep in mind, you could have transformation happen via both of those paths. But can a discussion list be both things at once – casual and informal (for teachers who want that) and serious study (for teachers who want that)?
From a related angle, can the notion of “stopping out” versus “dropping out” be applied to on-line professional development? If a teacher walks away for a while (to do self-study or what have you), how do we create structures that help them get back into an active and collaborative on-line community?
I also want to repeat David’s question: “Why are some face-to-face team staff development efforts more engaging and substantive than others? Is it the same list of variables in both the face-to-face and online environments?” How do we get more people involved in ways that they feel are transformative?
Erik
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2/22/05
I'm going to have to agree with Dave and Michele - I actually find my discussions such as the ones on the NIFL lists I participate in to be a very precious resource. I get a chance to hear and share ideas as well as ask questions about topics of varying degrees and it's in a far less threatening environment of the sometimes face to face professional development experiences.
The community college I work for up until recently has not been big on professional development and now that I along with another person are working to develop a professional development plan and program, it's still met with warmth from about half the instructors. It's actually met with resistance. We did a survey to find out what day would be best for instructors and found that the majority of intstructors that bothered to return the material preferred something as long as it wasn't on an "off" day - such as a Saturday while half said Saturday worked best. We sent out about 50-60 surveys for the Basic Skills Instructors which includes AHS, GED, CED, ESL and ABE personnel. Only 19 of them were returned.
Additionally, the work schedules of the Basic Skills Dept at my school is part time - with very little reward. For most, when their class ends, it's time for them to go. They don't want to spend time "collaborative" learning - and it's overall not encouraged. I actually enjoy "face to face" professional development - I enjoy getting away from my classroom and networking with my peers but sometimes, it's simply not possible for various reasons from time to finances. We have a huge Spring Conference coming up in March and the workshops are awesome but it's cost prohibitive to attend and there is no other way to get the information that will be presented. Look at the loss in a situation like that. For some of my colleagues at work, it's the same situation and for some, even an online discussion is out of the question for them because they may or may not have internet access at home.
Because of the work I'm doing with trying to develop a professional development program at my school, I'm learning that some teachers don't care about any kind of professional development. They don't think it's important or necessary and that philosophy has been allowed to grow and trying to change that is like trying to pull weeds out of an overgrown garden.
I think Michele is also right when she stated it depends on the learning style of the teacher as well as the material being learned or discussed is also important. Those variables will affect how a person chooses to learn. I also think personal choice is a variable. I think teachers have to know, understand, or respect the need for some kind of professional development; that to be the best adult educator, you sometimes have to learn or relearn things.
I hope this isn't too much of a ramble.
Regards Katrina Hinson
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2/22/05
Final thought related to the general thread here. Given the plurality of vehicles of communication for the exchange of ideas and for staff development, I don't find it surprising that some would prefer written forms of expression (whether lists, websites, weblogs, etc., or traditional print-based formats) and others would prefer face-to-face discussion. Many of us appreciate both. Many of us, too, are better consumers and producers of one or the other, but sometimes when we try new things, sometimes, just sometimes we open up taproots of new creativity in our experience.
One final thought on the lists. The value isn't only in the immediacy of the real-time discussions, though that's where the juice of the lists flow from. What is not, in my view sufficiently tapped are the archival depositories of the hundreds of threads of discourse going back in our field to 1995. The genius of the lists, in my view, is the format of the field speaking to itself over a very wide range of issues.
Following and analyzing threads, whether those current or those historical can illuminate a great deal of insight whether for research, staff development, curriculum development, but does require the hard work of moving into a research mode, however broadly one wants to define research. In this respect, the lists might be viewed as an incredible field-wide practitioner inquiry project. Perhaps 95% of the discourse is on the first level of immediate exchanges. To really take advantage of the tremendous resource of the created lists at least some of us are going to have to take the research to another level and create coherent and consumable products from the raw data. I think this is something of what Cochran-Smith and Lytle were getting at in their monumentally important Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge. There needs to be greater discipline and coherence in the very emergent field of teacher research, a move toward intellectual professionalization that keeps the practitioner voice prominent in which there becomes more exploration between academic and practitioner-based educational research in which the academics and practitioners are willing to experiment while working projects through to fruition.
I'm stopping now. The second to the last show of NYPD is about to start and I do not want to miss a moment.
GD
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2/23/05
Erik,
I was thinking of your reply in terms of the studies of adult learner persistence, because, after all professional development for teachers also falls into this category. What causes teachers to stick with it and complete professional training ? Sometimes they have to (to renew their credential or because their administrator sent them). Others are just piqued by curiousity and the desire to be better teachers .
One of the things I think is an assumption about professional development is the idea that all teachers have computers and know how to use them. With teachers over 40, I think this isn't really true. I know some teachers that are very uncomfortable using the internet mostly because 1) they don't really have good research skills outside of the internet (ie. these are not folks who use the university library or event he public library to look things up) and 2) because they are really unfamiliar with the media. These same teachers do not have access to computers at their own homes or classrooms. Or if they do, they don't rely on them, but rather rely on the way they have always done things. For example, the two classrooms adjacent to mine do not have working computers, but then the teachers in those classrooms have not asked for working computers. One of these teachers just got a computer in her home this Christmas. Consequently, there is a sort of culture of the internet that they don't know. They have never bought or sold anything on ebay, they don't know how to order things online from stores, they can't do a Google search, let alone an advanced search. They don't know how to find a lesson plan online or join an email group.
As for people who have quit online groups, I would have to say that many would see it as rude to leave a face to face professional training, although I have seen many come back late from lunch or not return after the lunch. So I wonder how much "drift" you have unaccounted for in face to face trainings. For example, I received my certificate that I had attended the Meeting of the MInds training with the binder I got when I walked in. How do you know I was there? You don't. I could have been sitting in the bar or sight seeing. So I wonder if we have good numbers about people who don't really participate (either by not really attending, or not really engaging their minds in the training).
I wonder too, if the reasons someone is taking the professional growth are taken into account? Noone would get hours towards renewal of their teaching credential or brownie-points from their adminstrator by helping create a wiki or by participating in an online group. Many of our adult school teachers participate only when ordered to by the powers-that-be or when trying to log hours for professional growth to renew their credentials. I can not tell you how many wierd looks I've received at professional training when I don't need college credits or an account of the hours I've attended (because I already have an advanced degree and have logged too many hours). The feeling I get is that they are wondering why I am even there.
I want to answer the other questions too, but mindful of dominating the discussion, and the need to go make dinner preclude this.
Michele
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2/23/05
I really liked George's emphasis on the idea that teachers who use the internet and list-serves (and even online classes) comfortably will tend to be fluent writers. Strangely enough, as a prolific writer, this had never even occurred to me. If writing is a struggle because you are a bad speller or can't put your thoughts down on paper, then probably you wil not choose this medium as a way of communicating with people.
Michele Craig
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2/23/05
Me too, Michele. I'm very comfortable with writing, but it didn't occur to me that maybe that's why I like the whole listserv thing until I read George's comment. So I had been imagining that others would feel the same way I did - not! A perfect example of not knowing what we don't know. I recently heard Wendell Berry read an essay about knowledge and ignorance, his point being that our ignorance is profound, but we rarely notice it because we have no idea of all the things we don't know.
Marian
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2/24/05
I hadn't thought about this either. Likewise, I write all the time both for work and for pleasure. It never occurred to me that that would be one of the reasons I enjoyed the list servs so much. I'm much more comfortable expressing my ideas on paper and often struggle trying to get them out when I'm in front of an overly large crowd. I like small, comfortable groups, like a round table discussion of 10-15 rather than a room full of people. An excellent point made by George and definitely something to think about.
Katrina
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2/24/05
Thanks Katrina (and Michele)
Ditto on comfort level with writing. I'm pretty decent verbally one-on-one and small groups. I can teach a class well, but I need a lot of prep and my scaffolding needs to be tightly in place. The very thought of large speaking engagements arouses the most intense of anxiety, which I would avoid like the plague. Consequently, I know in my bones what Howard Gardner means even if one takes his somewhat schematic definition of "intelligences" metaphorically.
George
