Boundaries of Teachers' Professional Communities in U.S. High Schools (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
This article challenges vague and underconceptualized notions of teacher professional community prevalent in both the theoretical and policy-oriented reform literatures. The findings from a close examination of two schools’teacher professional communities sug-gest that current models obscure significant differences in beliefs and practices. Whereas one school’s professional community emphasizes teachers ’ individual auton-omy, rights, and responsibilities to colleagues, the other’s is driven by a strong collective mission. A provisional model for examining teacher professional communities, which distinguishes between liberal and collective commitments, is presented. A high school principal whom I have known for many years recently asked the teachers at his school what aspect of teaching they would most like to change. A surprising number of them, he told me, said that teaching is too iso-lating. “Why is the work in our classrooms so secluded? ” one asked. “We see each other too seld...
American Journal of Education, 1998
A study examined the impact of school professional community on the intellectual quality of student achievement (authentic achievement) and the relationship of professional community to the technical and social organization of the classroom, including the mediating relationship of these classroom organizational features on authentic achievement. Professional community is a school organizational structure with an intellectually directed culture typified by shared values, focus on student learning, collaboration, deprivatized practice, and reflective dialogue. Data were collected as part of the School Restructuring Study of the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools. Eight elementary, eight middle, and eight high schools were selected. Surveys were completed by 910 teachers, and the instructional practices of 144 teachers were studied according to a view of authentic pedagogy. School professional community was found to be most characteristic of elementary schools and least characteristic of high schools. Findings strongly support the conceptual model posited, that the organization of teachers' work in ways that promote professional community has significant effects on the organization of classrooms for learning and the academic performance of students. Professional community among teachers was associated with both authentic pedagogy and social support for achievement among students. Appendixes discuss the construction of study variables and correlations among variables. (Contains 2 figures, 3 tables, and 75 references.) (SLD)
Teacher Learning, Professional Community, and Accountability in the Context of High School Reform
This report investigates professional knowledge and learning demands associated with high school reform initiatives, and corresponding opportunities for teacher development, emphasizing literacy and mathematics. It examines how teachers' learning in selected reform-specific areas is facilitated or impeded by internal school features and by the nature and extent of teachers' ties to external sources of expertise. The research uses intensive case studies of teachers' knowledge, practice, and learning in two comprehensive high schools. It includes existing case study data on restructuring high schools, supplemented by intensive multi-level case studies in new Sites. These sources provide three configurations of high school reform, professional development, and accountability, reflecting a range of school improvement conditions at a point in time and a trajectory of reform and policy conditions over the past decade. This report summarizes research completed in the first 2 years of a 3-year study of teacher learning in the context of high school reform. Section 1 locates new cases in a regional context of professional development and other forms of assistance. Section 2 introduces the two case study sites and summarizes preliminary findings. Section 3 comments on discoveries to date and priorities for subsequent analysis. (Contains 31 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
education policy analysis archives, 2011
The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of principal leadership and accountability policies on teachers’ sense of community. This study is situated within the research and policy/practice discourse over the importance of schools developing a professional community of teachers who share common values, cooperate in support of these values, and a have sense of mutual accountability as a means of improving student achievement. However, to date, few studies have examined the effect of leadership practices and accountability policies on teacher communities, and these studies do not conceptualize and measure teacher community in line with theories of community. Additionally, there is a pervasive and mostly untested belief by advocates of teacher professionalization that top-down management, standards, and accountability policies are antithetical to teacher communities. Data for this study come from the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Schools and Staffing Survey (1999-2000). A two-level multilevel regression analysis was used with a public school urban elementary (K-5) subset of the SASS data. Principal leadership has a very strong positive effect on teacher community—the strongest effect of any policy-amenable variable. Significant principal actions include: recognizing teacher effort and communicating expectations; and a principal’s direct efforts to build community among teachers. The effect of teacher classroom control and policy influence is significant, but reduced by measures of principal leadership. Teachers’ use of standards is associated with a sense of community, but a somewhat limited measure of school performance-based accountability has no association.
Tensions in Teacher Development and Community: Variations on a Recurring School Reform Theme
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2012
Background/ContextConducted in the fourth-largest urban center in the United States, this research depicts how different reform initiatives were introduced to one middle school context over the decade from 1999 to 2009.Purposes/Objectives/Research Question/Focus of StudyThe study focuses on teachers’ experiences of three reform endeavors and how tensions in teacher knowledge and community developed as a consequence of each. The study's overall purpose is to contribute the often-overlooked teacher perspective to the curriculum, teaching, and school reform literatures.SettingThe setting for the research is a middle school located in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States. The campus's social narrative history parallels the city's development. The school currently serves some of America's richest and poorest youth.Population/Participants/SubjectsNineteen educators, including several main teacher participants as well as some supporting teacher and admin...
1997
Attention to professional community has increased markedly over the last few years as part of both practitioner and scholarly efforts to promote improvements in student learning. Interest in this area joins two previously distinct literatures-one dealing with the benefits of communal school organization, another with enhanced teacher professionalism-to formulate a theoretical framework for a school-based professional community. Using data from a large urban school district, this paper empirically tests the impact of structural, human, and social factors on the emergence of school-based professional community and the extent to which such developments in turn promote more productive organizational functioning. Data were obtained from a survey of public school elementary teachers in Chicago administered during spring 1994 to 5,690 teachers in 248 elementary schools. Three core practices are found in a school-based professional community-reflective dialogue among teachers, deprivatized practice, and peer collaboration. The findings also underscore the importance for small school size as a key structural factor. Perhaps the most important and hopeful conclusion is that a professional community can exist in very ordinary urban schools. Moreover, positive teacher reports about professional community came from a wide cross-section of schools. One table is included. Appendices contain methodological notes. (Contains 60 references.) (LMI)