policies that support professional development in … that support professional development in an...

Policies That SupportProfessional Developmentin an Era of ReformPolicies must keep pace with new ideas about what, when, and howteachers learn and must focus on developing schools’ and teachers’capacities to be responsible for student learning.

By Linda Darling-Hammond and Milbrey W. McLaughlin

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LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND is the Charles Ducommun professor ofeducation and MILBREY W. McLAUGHLIN is the David Jacks professor of education emeritus, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.

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Deepen yourunderstanding ofthis article withquestions andactivities on pagePD 14 of thismonth’s KappanProfessionalDevelopmentDiscussion Guideby Lois BrownEaston, free tomembers in the digital edition atkappanmagazine.org.

This article was

originally pub-

lished as “Policies

That Support Pro-

fessional Develop-

ment in an Era of

Reform,”

by Linda Darling-

Hammond and

Milbrey W.

McLaughlin. Phi

Delta Kappan 76,

no. 8 (April 1995):

597-604.

KAPPAN digital edition exclusive

The vision of practice that underlies the nation’s reform agenda requiresmost teachers to rethink their own practice, to construct new classroom rolesand expectations about student outcomes, and to teach in ways they have nevertaught before — and probably never experienced as students (Nelson andHammerman 1996). The success of this agenda ultimately turns on teachers’success in accomplishing the serious and difficult tasks of learning the skillsand perspectives assumed by new visions of practice and unlearning the prac-tices and beliefs about students and instruction that have dominated their pro-fessional lives to date. Yet few occasions and little support for such professionaldevelopment exist in teachers’ environments.

Because teaching for understanding relies on teachers’ abilities to see com-plex subject matter from the perspectives of diverse students, the know-hownecessary to make this vision of practice a reality cannot be prepackaged orconveyed by means of traditional top-down “teacher training” strategies. The

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policy problem for professional development in thisera of reform extends beyond mere support forteachers’ acquisition of new skills or knowledge. Pro-fessional development today also means providingoccasions for teachers to reflect critically on theirpractice and to fashion new knowledge and beliefsabout content, pedagogy, and learners (Nelson andHammerman 1996; Prawat 1992).

Beginning with preservice education and contin-uing throughout a teacher’s career, teacher develop-ment must focus on deepening teachers’ understand-ing of the processes of teaching and learning and ofthe students they teach. Effective professional devel-opment involves teachers both as learners and asteachers and allows them to struggle with the uncer-tainties that accompany each role. It has a numberof characteristics.

• It must engage teachers in concrete tasks ofteaching, assessment, observation, andreflection that illuminate the processes oflearning and development.

• It must be grounded in inquiry, reflection, andexperimentation that are participant-driven.

• It must be collaborative, involving a sharing ofknowledge among educators and a focus onteachers’ communities of practice rather thanon individual teachers.

• It must be connected to and derived fromteachers’ work with their students.

• It must be sustained, ongoing, intensive, andsupported by modeling, coaching, and thecollective solving of specific problems ofpractice.

• It must be connected to other aspects ofschool change.

Professional development of this kind signals adeparture from old norms and models of “preser-vice” or “inservice” training. It creates new imagesof what, when, and how teachers learn, and these newimages require a corresponding shift from policiesthat seek to control or direct the work of teachers tostrategies intended to develop schools’ and teachers’ ca-pacity to be responsible for student learning. Capac-ity-building policies view knowledge as constructedby and with practitioners for use in their own con-texts, rather than as something conveyed by policymakers as a single solution for top-down implemen-tation.

Though the outlines of a new paradigm for pro-fessional development policy are emerging (Cohn,McLaughlin, and Talbert 1993; Darling-Hammond1993), the hard work of developing concrete exem-plars of the policies and practices that model “top-down support for bottom-up reform” has only justbegun. The changed curriculum and pedagogy ofprofessional development will require new policiesthat foster new structures and institutional arrange-ments for teachers’ learning. At the same time, wewill need to undertake a strategic assessment of ex-isting policies to determine to what degree they arecompatible with the vision of learning as constructedby teachers and students and with a vision of profes-sional development as a lifelong, inquiry-based, andcollegial activity (Lieberman 1995).

Both broad policy responses are essential. Newapproaches to the professional education of teachersare needed, and they require new structures and sup-ports. New initiatives cannot by themselves promotemeaningful or long-term change in teachers’ prac-tices if they are embedded in a policy structure thatis at odds with the visions of student and teacherlearning that reforms seek to bring alive. In other

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Effective professional development involves teachers both as learners and as teachers and allows

them to struggle with the uncertainties that accompany each role.

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words, both new wine and old wine need new bot-tles, or else incentives and supports for teacher de-velopment will be counterproductive or nonexistent.

In this article, we look first at the new institutionalforms that support teachers’ professional growth inways consistent with teaching and learning for un-derstanding. We then look at the ways in which ex-isting arrangements can be rethought or redesignedto support both reformers’ visions of practice andteachers’ professional growth. Finally, we consideraspects of the larger education policy context thatfoster or impede teachers’ incentives and ability toacquire new knowledge, skills, and conceptions ofpractice.

NEW STRUCTURES AND INSTITUTIONALARRANGEMENTS

Efforts to redesign education ultimately requirerethinking teachers’ preparation and professionaldevelopment. New course mandates, curriculumguidelines, tests, or texts cannot produce greater stu-dent learning and understanding without invest-ments in opportunities that give teachers access toknowledge about the nature of learning, develop-ment, and performance in different domains. In ad-dition, teachers need firsthand opportunities to in-tegrate theory with classroom practice.

Teachers learn by doing, reading, and reflecting(just as students do); by collaborating with otherteachers; by looking closely at students and theirwork; and by sharing what they see. This kind oflearning enables teachers to make the leap from the-ory to accomplished practice. In addition to a pow-erful base of theoretical knowledge, such learningrequires settings that support teacher inquiry andcollaboration and strategies grounded in teachers’questions and concerns. To understand deeply,teachers must learn about, see, and experience suc-cessful learning-centered and learner-centeredteaching practices.

Sustained change in teachers’ learning opportu-nities and practices will require sustained investmentin the infrastructure of reform. This means invest-ment in the development of the institutions and en-vironmental supports that will promote the spreadof ideas and shared learning about how change canbe attempted and sustained.

NEW FORMS FOR TEACHER PREPARATION

A growing number of teacher education programsare inventing new structures for preservice teachereducation that bring together all of the learningstrands described above into new institutionalarrangements called the Professional DevelopmentSchool (PDS) (Lieberman and Miller 1990; Darling-Hammond 1994; Sykes 1985). Since the late 1980s,

more than 200 PDSs have been created through thecollaborative efforts that simultaneously restructureschools and colleges of education. The most for-ward-looking of these PDSs are preparing prospec-tive and beginning teachers in settings connected tomajor school reform networks, such as the Coalitionof Essential Schools and the Comer School Devel-opment program. Those networks engage theschools and teachers in inquiry that supports theirwork and learning.

PDSs create settings in which novices enter pro-fessional practice by working with expert practition-ers while veteran teachers renew their own profes-sional development as they assume roles as mentors,university adjuncts, and teacher leaders. Professionaldevelopment schools also provide serious venues fordeveloping teaching knowledge by enabling prac-tice-based and practice-sensitive research to be car-ried out collaboratively by teachers, teacher educa-tors, and researchers (Cochran-Smith and Lytle1996). PDSs enable teachers to become sources ofknowledge for one another and to learn the impor-tant roles of “colleague” and “learner.”

Some reform models, such as those proposed bythe Holmes Group (1986), the Carnegie Forum onEducation and the Economy (Task Force 1986), andthe National Board for Professional Teaching Stan-dards (1991), call for all prospective teachers to dotheir student teaching and a more intensive intern-ship in a PDS. Ideally, many of these schools wouldbe located in central cities where the demand forteachers is high and the need for reinvented schoolsis great. In these locales they would serve two pur-poses: offering excellent education for central-citystudents and providing opportunities for prospectiveteachers to learn to teach diverse learners effectively.

Despite the prestigious support for PDSs, signif-icant policy supports and changes will be required ifPDSs are to take root. States must acknowledge thatPDSs are part of the infrastructure of a strong edu-cation system, and funding for PDSs must be pro-vided through basic aid allocations, just as teachinghospitals receive formula adjustments to acknowl-edge the special mission they perform.

The concept of the PDS will also have to becomepart of the licensing structure for entry into teach-ing and be taken into account in the accreditation of


Both new wine and old wine need newbottles, or else incentives and supports forteacher development will becounterproductive or nonexistent.

teacher education institutions. These policy changesare under discussion, as states increasingly envisioninternships as part of teacher preparation and as theNational Council on Accreditation of Teacher Edu-cation (NCATE) develops standards for the clinicalpreparation of teachers. Some states, including Min-nesota and Michigan, are already considering waysto incorporate PDS-based internships in the initialpreparation and licensing of teachers and have evenfunded pilot programs. However, states undertakingsuch a reexamination of credentialing and prepara-tion structures are still in the minority, and PDSs re-main outside the mainstream teacher education pol-icy structure.

Teachers prepared in PDSs will have a learner-centered foundation on which to build their subse-quent practice. They will also have an appreciationfor the fact that learning about teaching is a lifelongprocess. However, sustaining these attitudes, roles,

and practices in the classroom will require otherstructures and supports, both outside and insideschool.

NEW INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS FORPROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

To create new structures for individual and orga-nizational learning, the usual notions of inservicetraining or dissemination must be replaced by pos-sibilities for knowledge sharing anchored in prob-lems of practice. To serve teachers’ needs, profes-sional development must embrace a range of oppor-tunities that allow teachers to share what they knowand what they want to learn and to connect theirlearning to the contexts of their teaching. Profes-sional development activities must allow teachers toengage actively in cooperative experiences that aresustained over time and to reflect on the process aswell as on the content of what they are learning.

Structures that break down isolation, that em-power teachers with professional tasks, and that pro-vide arenas for thinking through standards of prac-tice are central to this kind of professional growth.Opportunities for teachers’ learning exist inside andoutside schools. They range from professional or-ganizations and standards boards that have more for-mal roles in the policy structure, to “critical friend”relationships, to many forms of more collaborativeprofessional relationships both outside and withinschools.

NEW STRUCTURES AND OPPORTUNITIESOUTSIDE SCHOOL

A powerful form of teacher learning comes frombelonging to professional communities that extendbeyond classrooms and school buildings (Talbert andMcLaughlin 1994; Lieberman 1994). These com-munities can be organized across subject-matterlines, around significant pedagogical issues, or insupport of particular school reforms. They legiti-mate dialogue and support the risk taking that is partof any process of significant change. Examples ofsuch communities include the following.

• School/university collaborations engaged in curricu-lum development, change efforts, or research. When suchrelationships emerge as true partnerships, they cancreate new, more powerful kinds of knowledge aboutteaching and schooling, as the “rub between theoryand practice” produces more practical, contextual-ized theory and more theoretically grounded,broadly informed practice (Miller and O’Shea 1996;Dalton and Moir 1996).

• Teacher-to-teacher and school-to-school networks.These networks provide “critical friends” to exam-


Teachers individually cannot reconceive theirpractice and the culture of their workplace.

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ine and reflect on teaching and opportunities to shareexperiences associated with efforts to develop newpractices or structures (Jamentz 1996; Szabo 1996).Such networks demonstrate that help helps. Theyare powerful learning tools because they engage peo-ple in collective work on authentic problems thatemerge out of their own efforts, allowing them toget beyond the dynamic of their own schools andclassrooms and to come face to face with other peo-ple and other possibilities (Lieberman andMcLaughlin 1996).

• Partnerships with neighborhood-based youth organ-izations. These include club programs, theatergroups, literacy projects, museums, or sports groupsthat provide teachers with important informationabout their students’ homes and neighborhoods, in-sight into students’ nonschool interests and accom-plishments, and opportunities for coordination be-tween school and youth organization activities(Heath and McLaughlin 1994; Tellez and Cohen1996).

• Teacher involvement in district, regional, or nationalactivities. These activities include task forces, studygroups, and standard-setting bodies engaged in re-vising curriculum frameworks, assessing teaching orschool practices, or developing standards. Amongthe more prominent examples are the School Qual-ity Review being piloted in New York and Califor-nia and the work on curriculum and teaching stan-dards being conducted by the National Council ofTeachers of Mathematics. Such activities create newlenses for examining practice while building thenorms of the profession. Similarly, teachers who haveengaged in powerful forms of teacher assessment,such as the yearlong reflection and documentationit takes to build a portfolio for the National Boardfor Professional Teaching Standards, claim that theyhave learned more through this process than in anyother staff development activity during their entirecareers (NBPTS 1991).

These strategies create new communities of prac-tice within and across levels of the policy system. Atthe same time they involve new actors and new agen-cies in teachers’ learning and growth. They also de-part from traditional notions of “institutionaliza-tion” and institutional relationships that assumeteaching is shaped and structured primarily by schoolsystems. These extra-school structures and supportsmore broadly represent the profession and suggestthe kind of partnerships that are possible on behalfof children.

Policies that support extra-school learning communi-ties. While some of the structures we have been dis-

cussing take on institutional forms — such as theCenter for Development of Teaching or collabora-tions developed by schools and universities (Nelsonand Hammerman 1996; Miller and O’Shea 1996) —others are more fluid and informal. But all must beflexible and dynamic and responsive to the specificand changing needs of teachers and the profession.They must start where teachers are and build on theirknowledge and skills. A network or resource effec-tive in one community or in one school will proba-bly operate differently in another. Or the collabora-tive relationship that was successful last year in sup-porting teachers’ learning may fall short this year.

For example, a highly successful mathematics col-laborative in one urban district disintegrated afterfive years of operation. Organizers worried that thissignified failure, but a closer look at participants’ re-sponses suggested that it came to an inevitable endbecause it had accomplished its objectives and wasno longer useful as it existed. Other networks haveevolved, changed focus, and reconsidered relation-ships as the needs of their participants have shifted

over time. Such networks are best managed through“systematic adhocism” — a process of moving to-ward shared goals with enormous flexibility in strat-egy (Miller and O’Shea 1996).

Policies that support teachers’ learning commu-nities allow such structures and extra-schoolarrangements to come and go and change and evolveas necessary, rather than insist on permanent plansor promises. What does need to be a permanent ad-dition to the policy landscape is an infrastructure or“web” of professional development opportunitiesthat provides multiple and ongoing occasions forcritical reflection and that involves teachers withchallenging content.

The components of this infrastructure includeprofessional associations working on curriculumstandards and related professional development;professional standards boards developing standardsand assessments for teacher licensing and advancedcertification, in which teachers themselves are inte-grally involved; networks devoted to school changeand the improvement of practice; peer-review struc-tures; and professional tasks managed by teachers,such as ongoing development and scoring of studentportfolios and other assessments.


District leaders must encourage and sustain reflectivecommunities of practice both within and among schoolsand make resources available for teachers to useaccording to their needs and preferences.

The policy implications of sustaining healthy ex-tra-school opportunities for professional collabora-tion and growth are threefold. First, policy must cre-ate significant professional roles for teachers in manyareas of practice — e.g., developing curriculum andassessment, setting standards, and evaluating prac-tice — that have previously been managed by oth-ers. These roles carry powerful, authentic opportu-nities for teachers to learn from others, to reexam-ine their practice, and to acquire new knowledge.

Second, funding must be directed to those com-ponents of a professional infrastructure that supportteacher participation and learning. A climate rich insustained and relevant opportunities for teachers’learning resembles a web, in which networks, semi-nars, meetings, and focus groups intersect to providean array of opportunities for teachers. Occasions andopportunities for the intellectual renewal of teach-ers must be multiple and diverse rather than genericand discrete if they are to be responsive to specificcontent-based or learner-based concerns.

Third, policy supports must focus on stimulatingthe environment that nurtures high-quality learningcommunities of teachers, rather than on particularinstitutional forms or promises of permanence. Ef-fective professional development activities are fluidand have various “life cycles.” Policy makers shouldfocus on the richness and relevance of the overall“menu” of opportunities for teachers to learn. Insome cases, demands for rigid “institutionalization”can lead to meaningless activities and out-of-datestructures down the road.

Opportunities for professional development withinschools. Habits and cultures inside schools must fos-ter critical inquiry into teaching practices and stu-dent outcomes. They must be conducive to the for-mation of communities of practice that enable teach-ers to meet together to solve problems, consider newideas, evaluate alternatives, and frame schoolwidegoals (Szabo 1996).

Opportunities for such learning and reflection al-ready exist in many aspects of school-day routines.It can be argued that everything that goes on inschool presents an opportunity for professional de-velopment. Department meetings, for example, canbe an administrative bore, or they can operate as“mini-seminars,” engaging faculty members in ex-amination of materials, student work, and curricu-

lum plans (Grossman 1996). Student teachers can beviewed as a professional responsibility or as an op-portunity for learning and reflection (Tatel 1996).Serving on a committee to develop instructionalplans or to review assessments can be regarded as“hardship duty” or as an opportunity to reexaminepractice (Jamentz 1996). Even usually mundane ortedious tasks, such as student assignments or the cre-ation of a master schedule, contain opportunities toreflect on norms, assumptions about practice, andorganizational goals.

Activities new to the traditional role of teachercan also stimulate learning and growth. For exam-ple, the concept of the teacher as researcher putsteachers in charge of inquiry about and analysis oftheir workplace. School-based research and inquiryoccur not only in professional development schools,but also in many restructuring efforts.

To take another example of roles new to teachers,peer reviews of practice afford occasions for delib-eration about teaching and learning and can occurin many forms. During such reviews, faculty mem-bers collectively examine aspects of the curriculum;look at particular practices, problems, or concernswithin the school; develop and participate in peerevaluation and peer coaching; and participate in theassessment of students. Indeed, teacher-driven as-sessments of teaching and learning are proving to bepowerful tools for learning. Looking closely at one’sown or someone else’s authentic work stimulatestremendous growth (Jamentz 1996; Darling-Ham-mond and Ancess 1994). Questions at the heart ofsuch inquiries about school effectiveness and studentlearning constitute the basis for transformativelearning — learning that enables teachers to changetheir models for what schools and teaching mightlook like and accomplish.

Policy supports for professional development withinschools. Organizational structures must be redesignedso that they actively foster learning and collabora-tion about serious problems of practice. This re-quires rethinking schedules, staffing patterns, andgrouping arrangements to create blocks of time forteachers to work and learn together. In addition,schools must be organized around small, cohesiveunits that structure ongoing collaboration amonggroups of adults and students (e.g., teaching teamsor clusters, houses, and advisory groups) so thatteachers have shared access to students and sharedresponsibilities for designing their work. Many re-structured schools have created smaller-scale work-places in a variety of ways, ranging from block sched-uling of students and teachers to reallocation of staff(Darling-Hammond, Ancess, and Falk 1995).

Teachers individually cannot reconceive theirpractice and the culture of their workplace. Yet al-


Assess whether policies and practices are compatiblewith a learner-centered view of teaching and a career-

long conception of teachers’ learning.

most everything about school is oriented toward go-ing it alone professionally. While it may be possiblefor teachers to learn some things on their own, re-thinking old norms requires a supportive commu-nity of practice. The traditional school organizationseparates staff members from one another and fromthe external environment. Inside school, teachers areinclined to think in terms of “my classroom,” “mysubject,” or “my kids.” Few schools are structured toallow teachers to think in terms of shared problemsor broader organizational goals. A collaborative cul-ture of problem solving and learning must be cre-ated to challenge these norms and habits of mind;collegiality must be valued as a professional asset(Szabo 1996).

New structures for teaching may not include su-pervision as usually defined in bureaucratic organi-zations: a one-to-one relationship between a workerand his or her presumably more expert superordi-nate. Instead, organizational strategies for teamplanning, sharing, evaluating, and learning may cre-ate methods for peer review of practice that — likethose used in other professional organizations andrestructured businesses — may better fill the needsfor feedback, oversight, and evaluation.

These same needs for collaborative inquiry andlearning exist for other educators, including schoolleaders (principals, teacher directors, and otheremerging leaders), and for support staff, from schoolpsychologists and counselors to teachers’ aides.They should also be included in these efforts and ac-tivities to examine teaching practice and learner out-comes.

Indeed, cross-role participation in professionaldevelopment activities stimulates shared under-standings of school goals and new approaches moreeffectively than activities that treat teachers, princi-pals, counselors, and others as separate groups forwhom different conversations and topics are deemedrelevant (Fullan 1991). For example, extended insti-tutes for school-based teams of teachers, administra-tors, and parents have proved to be critical forlaunching school reforms in such cities as Ham-mond, Ind., and Louisville, Ky. (Lieberman 1994).In addition to the participation of teachers and prin-cipals, the participation of counselors, school psy-chologists, and parents in shared development activ-ities is central to the work of such successful initia-tives as James Comer’s School Development Pro-gram, Henry Levin’s Accelerated Schools, andTheodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools.Such collaborative efforts contribute to a commonsense of purpose and practice among all members ofthe school community.

District policies directly affect the creation oflearning communities and the development of learn-

ing opportunities for teachers (Talbert andMcLaughlin 1994). As is true at the building level,perspective and priorities are crucial. Policies con-sistent with the notions of teachers’ learning out-lined above assume that the professional develop-ment of teachers is integral to the school workplace.A major task for district leadership is to encourageand sustain reflective communities of practice both

within and among schools and to make resourcesavailable for teachers to use according to their needsand preferences.

THE POLICY CONTEXT IN SUPPORT OFPROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The policy environment in which teachers worksends a myriad of often conflicting signals about howschools are expected to do business and about whatbehaviors and skills are valued and rewarded. Mes-sages about more- or less-preferred teaching prac-tices and learner outcomes issue from all of the ma-jor education policy domains, including those thatshape curriculum, assessment, teacher and adminis-trator licensing and evaluation, and accountability.Existing policies and practices must be assessed interms of their compatibility with two cornerstonesof the reform agenda: a learner-centered view ofteaching and a career-long conception of teachers’learning.

Does a new curriculum framework stress “imple-mentation of texts,” thereby espousing passiveteacher and student roles? Or are teachers assumedto participate in the construction of practices thatbegin with students’ experiences and needs and aimto reach challenging student outcomes? Does an as-sessment system evaluate student understanding, ordoes it test for rote recall of facts? Do teacher eval-uation systems look for teaching behaviors aimed atkeeping students quiet or for practices that engagestudents actively in their learning? Do administra-tor licensing standards require that principals knowhow students learn and how teachers teach for un-derstanding, or do they stress noninstructional mat-ters? Do school accountability requirements enforcecurrent, highly fragmented bureaucratic structuresand uses of time, or do they allow for more integratedand student-centered forms of allocating staff andfunds?

Schools and teachers aiming to adopt new prac-


Leaders must create and sustain settings in whichteachers feel safe to admit mistakes, to try (and possiblyfail), and to disclose aspects of their teaching.

tices must contend with the “geological dig” of pre-vious policies that send contradictory signals andprevent a complete transformation of practice (Dar-ling-Hammond 1990). Some of these are familiar,such as state policies on standardized testing thatcontinue to deflect time and attention from extendedwriting and discourse and other more challengingforms of learning (Madaus 1993). These tests, alongwith mandated textbooks and basal readers, prescrip-tive curriculum guides, and “old paradigm” teacherevaluation measures, create incentives to continuetraditional forms of teaching that emphasize super-ficial understanding and rote learning rather thanhigher-order thinking and performance skills.

Both the content and the form of curriculum pol-icy must change, so that what is required is compat-ible with teaching for understanding and providesreasons for teachers to rethink their approach toteaching and learning. Likewise, in those few key ar-eas in which state regulation of curriculum and test-ing is deemed necessary — e.g., in curriculum frame-works and periodic student assessments for monitor-ing purposes — policy should encourage in-depthlearning focused on powerful concepts and ideas.States and districts should explicitly evaluate theircurrent policies on curriculum and testing to removeprescriptions that conflict with one another or thatare grounded in misunderstandings about how stu-dents learn and how good teaching happens.

Teacher education institutions — both as purvey-ors of teacher education and as determinants of what“counts” as knowledge, expertise, and successful per-formance — figure prominently in the policy con-text that surrounds professional development. It isincreasingly important that policies provide clearguidance for schools of education regarding the de-mands of teaching for understanding, along withsupports and incentives that enable schools of edu-cation to meet new standards. For the most part, cur-rent policies governing teacher education, especiallythe content of teacher licensing and testing require-ments, fail to fully incorporate the kinds of teacherknowledge and understanding that we have alludedto above.

Likewise, the licensing, testing, and evaluation ofteachers must be grounded in new understandingsabout student learning and effective teaching, andthey need to be connected to other professional stan-dards for teaching. For example, the curriculumstandards developed by the National Council ofTeachers of Mathematics and by other professionalassociations center on teaching for understanding,an emphasis that has now been adopted by the newNational Board for Professional Teaching Standards(NBPTS) in its formulation of standards and assess-ments for accomplished practice. The model stan-dards for licensing beginning teachers that have beendeveloped by the Interstate New Teacher Assess-ment and Support Consortium also reflect this ori-entation, as do the accreditation requirements of theNational Council for Accreditation of Teacher Ed-ucation (NCATE).

Policies that provide incentives for teachers to be-come certified by the NBPTS, for states to enactcompatible licensing standards and assessments aswell as standards for approving teacher educationprograms, and for schools of education to becomeNCATE-accredited could help create a coherent ap-proach to preparing teachers to teach for under-standing. Thus, some of the disjunctures betweenexisting teacher development policies and currentreforms of curriculum could be eliminated.

Similarly, the policies that govern the ongoingevaluation of teachers must also support teaching forunderstanding and teacher learning. In most teach-ers’ workplaces, teacher evaluation activities act aspowerful disincentives to problem solving, learning,or an honest examination of practice. “Needs im-provement,” after all, is about the lowest grade ateacher can be given on most evaluations. Yet ongo-ing improvement and critical inquiry are fundamen-tal to learning and change. In addition, many evalu-ation forms and processes continue to be based on aconception of teaching as the implementation ofroutines that can be observed and checked off in a


Teachers learn by doing, reading, and reflecting(just as students do); by collaborating with other

teachers; by looking closely at students and theirwork; and by sharing what they see.

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brief inspection system. The type of teaching antic-ipated by evaluation forms is teaching for transmis-sion rather than teaching for understanding, and theassumption undergirding the desired teaching be-haviors is that students are passive, standardized par-ticipants in classroom activities (Darling-Hammondand Sclan 1992).

To support teaching for understanding and theprofessional development it requires, new forms ofteacher evaluation will need to emphasize the appro-priateness of teaching decisions to the goals and con-texts of instruction and the needs of students. Nolonger is it sufficient to focus on teachers’ adherenceto prescribed routines. Evaluation must be conceivednot as a discrete annual event consisting of brief vis-its by supervisors bearing checklists, but as a con-stant feature of organizational and classroom life forpractitioners.

An emphasis on the appropriateness of teachingdecisions would mean that the leadership roles of ad-ministrators in schools structured to support teacherlearning and student understanding would alsochange. District guidelines for evaluating building-level administrators have typically ignored the ques-tion of whether those administrators have been ef-fective in establishing and supporting a culture oflearning and inquiry at their schools (McLaughlin1992). Yet a critical role for administrative leader-ship is to create and sustain settings in which teach-ers feel safe to admit mistakes, to try (and possiblyfail), and to disclose aspects of their teaching.

To fulfill these new roles and expectations forleadership, however, administrators need to under-stand what the conceptions of teaching and learningthat motivate the nation’s reform agenda look like inclassrooms and how these visions of practice relateto teachers’ opportunities to learn. Administrators,no less than teachers, urgently need the chance torethink practice and to learn the new perspectivesand skills that are consistent with reformers’ visionsof teaching and learning for understanding (Bridgesand Hallinger 1996).

All these objectives require time for teachers toundertake professional development as part of theirnormal responsibilities. And time for teachers can be

bought only by rethinking the ways in which schoolsare staffed, funded, and managed.

Compared to other countries, the U.S. has in-vested in a smaller number of lower-paid teacherswho are directed, supervised, and supplemented bylarger numbers of administrative staff members andnonteaching specialists, populating several layers ofbureaucratic structures. In 1986 U.S. school systemsemployed approximately one administrative staffperson for every 21⁄2 teachers and spent only 38% oftheir funds on teacher salaries and less than 1% onprofessional development (U.S. Department of La-bor 1988; Feistritzer 1983). After several decades inwhich the number of administrative staff increasedat twice the rate of the teaching staff, by 1991 onlyhalf of those who worked in U.S. education wereclassroom teachers (NCES 1993). This staffing pat-tern stands in stark contrast to that of many Euro-pean and Asian countries in which teachers consti-tute 80% or more of the education workforce (OECD1990). Additional investment in teachers seems to bean irreducible element of an agenda to enact reform-ers’ visions of teaching and learning.

Finally, through waivers, incentives, grants, andchanged formula allocations, policy makers can re-distribute existing resources to encourage school re-structuring that provides time for teachers’ collegialwork and learning, that enables teachers to partici-pate in the development and reform of curriculumand assessment, and that anticipates teachers’ needsfor collegial learning through strong communitiesof practice. Policies that anticipate these needs willmove away from traditional credit-for-seat-timestaff development and toward professional develop-ment that involves teachers in networks, professionalassessments, and peer review.

Policies consistent with this view of professionaldevelopment would encourage site-level integrationof the various bundles of categorical resources flow-ing from state or national programs. Current cate-gorical boundaries and accounting lines discourageteachers from addressing schoolwide goals or theneeds of the whole child. Instead, accounting re-quirements for special projects foster a problem-fo-cused strategy of allocation, which fragments aschool faculty and fails to meet the needs of individ-ual children — an approach inconsistent with teach-ers’ learning to work successfully with all learnerswho fill contemporary American classrooms.

POLICY GUIDELINES FOR PROFESSIONALDEVELOPMENT

Reformers of all stripes press for an agenda of fun-damental change in the ways teachers teach and stu-dents learn. They envision schools in which studentslearn to think creatively and deeply, in which teach-


Professional development must allowteachers to share what they know andwhat they want to learn and to connecttheir learning to the contexts of theirteaching.

ers’ ongoing learning forms the core of professionalactivities, and in which students and teachers alikevalue knowing why and how to learn (Nelson andHammerman 1996; Falk 1996; Brooks and Brooks1996).

These visions and expectations for practice as-sume fundamental changes in education policies inorder to enable teachers to make the challenging andsometimes painful changes required of them. Yetthese necessary shifts in policy have only begun.

Recognition of the embeddedness of educationpolicy domains must precede the creation of a newmodel for professional development. The significantinterdependencies between the expectations forchange in teachers and teaching and the various do-mains of education policy have obvious implicationsfor teachers’ ability and willingness to change. Sup-ports for professional development cannot be under-stood separately from this broader context.

The success of changes in the policy environmentwill necessarily depend on locally constructed re-sponses to specific teacher and learner needs. De-tailed solutions imported from afar or mandatedfrom above predictably will disappoint; effectivepractices evolve from and respond to specific instruc-tional settings. The situation-specific nature of thekind of teaching and learning envisioned by reform-ers is the key challenge for teachers’ professional de-velopment, and it is the chief obstacle to policy mak-ers’ efforts to engender systemic reform. But the sit-uational character of effective practice does not meanthat local change must be uninformed by experienceelsewhere. Experience with successful professionaldevelopment effort suggests a number of designprinciples to guide national and state officials strug-gling to devise “top-down support for bottom-upchange” and to guide local actors who are rethink-ing their policies.

Each proposed and existing policy can be “inter-viewed” — that is, subjected to a number of ques-tions — to determine how well it corresponds withkey factors related to teachers’ learning and change.For example:

• Does the policy reduce the isolation ofteachers, or does it perpetuate the experienceof working alone?

• Does the policy encourage teachers to assumethe role of learner, or does it rewardtraditional “teacher as expert” approaches toteacher/student relations?

• Does the policy provide a rich, diverse menuof opportunities for teachers to learn, or doesit focus primarily on episodic, narrow“training” activities?

• Does the policy link professional development

opportunities to meaningful content andchange efforts, or does it construct genericinservice occasions?

• Does the policy establish an environment ofprofessional trust and encourage problemsolving, or does it exacerbate the risks involvedin serious reflection and change and thusencourage problem hiding?

• Does the policy provide opportunities foreveryone involved with schools to understandnew visions of teaching and learning, or doesit focus only on teachers?

• Does the policy provide for everyone involvedwith schools to understand new visions ofteaching and learning, or does it focus only onteachers?

• Does the policy make possible therestructuring of time, space, and scale withinschools, or does it expect new forms ofteaching and learning to emerge withinconventional structures?

• Does the policy focus on learner-centeredoutcomes that give priority to learning howand why, or does it emphasize thememorization of facts and the acquisition ofrote skills?

Other “interview questions” will doubtless emergeas educators gain experience with policies and prac-tices aimed at developing the capacity of schools andteachers to create effective learning environments.The challenge for policy makers and educators is torealign the existing system of signals and incentivesthat shape school organizations, teachers’ practices,role expectations, and assumptions so that they sup-port student and teacher learning. K

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