the national network for educational renewal

8
The National Network for Educational Renewal Author(s): John I. Goodlad Source: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 75, No. 8 (Apr., 1994), pp. 632-638 Published by: Phi Delta Kappa International Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405188 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 10:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Phi Delta Kappa International is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Phi Delta Kappan. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.220.202.49 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:05:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: The National Network for Educational Renewal

The National Network for Educational RenewalAuthor(s): John I. GoodladSource: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 75, No. 8 (Apr., 1994), pp. 632-638Published by: Phi Delta Kappa InternationalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405188 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 10:05

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Phi Delta Kappa International is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The PhiDelta Kappan.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.220.202.49 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:05:42 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: The National Network for Educational Renewal

The National Network~~~~~~O

ForEdctoaRewl

44 ~~~~~~~~~~- 5

Mr. Goodlad describes the genesis and structure of a network dedicated to the simultaneous renewal of schooling and of the education of educators. He also discusses the theories and models that drive the network, which are quite different from those that have typically guided school refonn.

BY JOHN I. GOODLAD

T HHE AGENDA of the Nation al Network for Educational Renewal (NNER) focuses on renewing the initial prepara tion programs for profession

al service in schools and simultaneously focuses on renewing schools. "Simultane

ously" is redundant, because the renew al of teacher education requires the avail ability of schools that are in the process of renewing. Schools that are renewing are as indispensable to good teacher edu cation as teaching hospitals are to good

medical education. In each teacher educa

tion program there must be enough part ner schools to accommodate each succes sive cohort of apprentice teachers.

Since there are currently not enough of these exemplary schools around, each teacher-preparation setting must cultivate schools that have the potential for renew al. The members of the NNER are com

mitted to this delicate process of cultiva tion and to connecting all the essential components of a healthy teacher educa tion enterprise: the partner schools (fre

quently referred to as clinical or profes

JOHN I. GOODLAD is a professor of edu cation and director of the Center for Educa tional Renewal at the University of Washing ton and president of the Institute for Educa tional Inquiry, Seattle.

632 PHI DELTA KAPPAN Illustration by Mario Noche

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Page 3: The National Network for Educational Renewal

sional development schools); the subject specializations of the university arts and sciences departments; and that part of the professional preparation of teachers that is commonly provided by schools, col leges, or departments of education. The renewal of any one of these three cul tures is complex and difficult. The NNER agenda calls for blending the renewal of all three in pursuit of a common mission. I have described elsewhere in consider able detail the concept of a new setting - a center of pedagogy - as the ap propriate institutional design for such a task. 1

During the past hundred years or so of focusing on school reform, very little at tention has been paid to the role of re forming teacher education. Similarly, lit tle attention has been paid to the schools - let alone to school reform - in the

much fewer proposals for the reform of teacher education. This chronic lack of connection between the demands that schools place on teachers and the prepa ration that teachers receive led Seymour Sarason and his colleagues to label teach er education an unstudied problem.2

If schools are to be good, the general and professional education of those who teach in them must also be good. If teach er education is to be good, the schools in which future teachers receive a signifi cant part of their preparation must also be good. The NNER seeks to engender and sustain the process of simultaneous renewal.

"Renewal" is not the same thing as "re form" or "restructuring." The latter terms connote replacement and intervention. Re newal connotes evolution to healthier lev els of functioning. Reform and restruc turing suggest acting on a displeasing or somehow inadequate object. Renewal sug gests that object and subject are one; an entity renews for its own sake, not at the behest of others. This does not eliminate the need to shed dysfunctional baggage, nor does it ignore the importance of a

supporting context or the power of in

spiration from without. There is proba bly no such thing as pure self-renewal.

Whoever says "I did it all by myself' is an egotistical fool.

The concept of renewal also includes a sense of a guiding ideal, of a mission that motivates and energizes. It may come from without, but it must then be inter nalized so as to seem virtually self-gen

erated. The renewal agenda adopted may come from without, but it must be simi larly internalized. The more the mission and its accompanying agenda invite inter pretation and reinterpretation, the greater the motivation to keep striving. In the ab sence of an agenda that continues to moti vate and satisfy, the mission fades, and renewal comes to a halt. External con demnations or rewards have little success in getting the process going again.

The theories and models of renewal that drive the NNER are quite different from the reform models that have typi cally guided school reform. I will com pare them later. First, we need to take a look at the genesis and structure of the

NNER, the vehicle that carries this na tionwide initiative for the simultaneous renewal of schooling and the education of educators.

GENESIS OF THE NETWORK

The National Network for Educational Renewal was born in 1986 and reborn in 1991. Its 10 initial members were school/ university partnerships committed to the very general mission of the Center for Educational Renewal (CER), which was founded at the University of Washington in 1985 by Kenneth Sirotnik, Roger So

der, and me. The mission can be simply stated as the simultaneous renewal of schooling and of the education of educa tors. In the reports of our work we af firmed and reaffirmed this simple mis sion and our intention of working for as long as it would take to fulfill the agenda.

"Simple"? Did I write that the mission was "simple"? We all carry an incredible load of experience and perceptual bag gage into every situation. We read into the circumstances what we want or do not

want to see, we add what appears to be missing, and we often carry away with certainty what others will deny was ever present. I am reminded of the time a small group of us were returning in an automobile from a production of the mu sical Hair. One member of the group asked, "How did they get those chickens to stroll across the stage like that - and for so long?" Four of us chimed in with explanations. A fifth asked, "What chick ens?" Conversation turned to the nude scene. Came the query from another of us, "What nude scene?"

That "simple" statement of mission -

the simultaneous renewal of schooling and of the education of educators - suf fered a somewhat similar fate. Many of those who had joined us in commitment to the mission missed "simultaneous" en tirely. The self-renewing role of the uni versity partners was perceived by few. Renewing schooling emerged as the whole of the effort; renewing the education of

educators was pushed into the shadows. There appears to be at least a partial

ly logical explanation. Our ongoing re search at the time was revealing the omis sion of teacher education reform from the agenda of school reform and of school reform from the agenda of teacher edu cation reform. A colleague, Pamela Keat ing, put the matter this way: "Come now, John, here we are adding the idea of re form in teacher education when people are just beginning to address school re form." (This was in the aftermath of A

Nation at Risk.) The need for connect ing renewal on the university side with renewal on the school side had not sunk in.

In retrospect, I believe that the major cause of this shortcoming was too much network building and too little elaborat ing of the mission and the agenda. The idea of simultaneously renewing schools and the education of educators is more useful for designing strategies than for arousing passion and commitment to an ideal. As a mission, it permits too many diverse interpretations (including the omissions described above) and provides too little inspiration. As an agenda, it lacks detail. The completion of our com prehensive inquiry into the education of educators and the publication of the tril ogy of books based on it pointed to the necessary remedies and the need for a re born NNER.

The mission that emerged from that rebirth fused elements from the schools and from teacher education so as to make them inseparable components of any agen da of renewal. The moral grounding of this mission in the norms of a democrat ic society infused the inspirational qual ity that is required to induce commit

ment and arouse passion. The 19 postu lates put forward in Teachers for Our Na tion's Schools,3 although initially greet ed as applicable only to the reform of teacher education, were quite specific in their inclusion of schools in the proposed agenda of educational renewal.

APRIL 1994 633

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Page 4: The National Network for Educational Renewal

There is a

conceptual contra

diction in the CER's

dual role of advocate

and critic. Loss of

the critical in sym

biotic relationships leads to parasitism.

The members of the NNER were in

formed of the implications of these elabo rations and of the need to rethink their commitment to a mission and an agenda calling, not for changes in course, but for attention to the balance previously lack ing. Perhaps, we thought, greater clarifi cation of what had seemed obscure and ambiguous would lead members to de cide not to stay on for the pending re

birth. Or perhaps it would lead them to

await developments before making a de

cision. In almost all the school/university part

nerships constituting the NNER at that time, the participating universities were

major, research-oriented institutions. At a press conference in November 1990, the Center for Educational Renewal (CER) announced interest in opening its mem bership to the half-dozen or so different types of teacher-preparing colleges and universities in the United States. During subsequent months, approximately 280 di verse teacher-preparation settings made serious inquiries about the CER, and more than 50 of them chose to complete the re

quired application process by 15 April 1991. The CER completed site visits to a preliminary selection of applicants and, by early summer, had offered member ship to eight. The process of rebirth con tinued through the rest of that year. By the end of 1991 the reborn NNER com prised 15 members, seven from the earlier cadre of school/university partnerships. Today, there are 16.4

There was an unexpected downside to this evolution, however. The initiative

went from being perceived as exclusive ly a school reform program (and being so listed in directories) to being perceived as exclusively a teacher education pro gram without any connection to schools. How difficult it is for all of us to break loose from ossified categories! Elemen tary and secondary schools constitute schooling, it seems; teacher education is part of higher education. And never the twain shall meet.

Yes, the NNER is one of the nation's largest, most comprehensive initiatives in the renewal of teacher education. And, yes, it is also a very large initiative in the renewal of schools - some 275 of them at latest count (and the number continues to grow). But its essence is in the simul taneous renewal of both. Properly joined to a college or university, partner schools can influence teacher education even as they are engaged in their own renewal. Properly joined to partner schools, a col lege or university can influence school re form even as it is engaged in its own.

This is the symbiosis assumed and sought by the agenda of the NNER. The work has advanced far beyond classification as a pilot, experimental, or boutique proj ect.

ORGANIZATION OF THE NNER

Successful networks must have a nerve center. The mission and the agenda to

which members of the NNER are com mitted were generated by the Center for Educational Renewal at the University of

Washington. Serving as nerve center or hub of the network, the CER seeks to ad vance the agenda as advocate, cheerlead er, source of technical help, convener of

meetings, and friend. It would be inap propriate - and probably counterproduc tive - for the CER also to be an NNER

setting engaged in the simultaneous re newal process and part of the friend ly competition that usually characterizes functioning networks. The CER's work undoubtedly would be looked to as a mod el to emulate. But the proper role of the CER is to help each of the NNER set tings develop a sense of identity and prof it from networking with the other mem bers. Each must advance the NNER agen da in its own way.

The settings provide partial, not whole, models for one another as they seek to adapt to their own circumstances. Early

on, the CER often took the initiative in connecting setting X with setting Y, though we encouraged settings to bypass us in seeking to learn from one another. Today, only a small fraction of the set

ting-to-setting communication is mediat ed by the CER.

The legitimacy of the CER as a re

search and development unit within its university context is in part sustained by its interest in and inquiry into the initia tive as a whole: what is working, what is not, and why. The products of such in quiry add to the general understanding of educational change and improvement and increase the precision of resource allo cation in the NNER member settings. Ad

mittedly, this is a tricky role, often de

bated in educational research circles. The CER is part of a professional college and, as such, has a social responsibility to go beyond the recognized role of universi ties in conducting research to play an ac tive role in efforts to improve education.

Over the years, CER staff members have used conventional modes of inquiry to seek to understand schools and teacher education and the methods of action re search to seek to understand and promote change.

Networks often become comfortable and even self-congratulatory to the point that many simply seek to maintain them selves - sometimes for years after their

mission has faded. Part of the problem is that the network hub increasingly be comes a secretariat, subservient to the in dividual needs of the members. There are no signs that the CER is becoming such; indeed, the member settings would prob ably scoff at the possibility. Nonetheless, there is a conceptual contradiction in the

CER's dual role of advocate and critic. Loss of the critical in symbiotic relation ships leads readily to parasitism.

Given the daunting nature of the NNER

agenda, it is natural for the CER to em

phasize its cheerleading role. And, after all, the measure of the CER's success is an aggregation of the successes of the

NNER settings. As a precaution against growing flabby over time, early in 1992

my colleagues and I created the Insti tute for Educational Inquiry (IEI) to add

muscle to the overall initiative. As an independent, nonprofit entity, the

IEI is able to move very quickly. With a corporate grant, it mounted a leader

ship training program and made it avail

634 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

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Page 5: The National Network for Educational Renewal

able to NNER settings on a competitive basis. The curriculum of the program im

merses a cohort of 18 key players from the schools of education, the university departments of arts and sciences, and the K-12 schools in a yearlong program of reading, writing, field projects, and in tensive conversation (22 days in a resi dential setting), all devoted primarily to developing a deeper understanding of the NNER mission and agenda. A grant from an anonymous donor enables us to bring into this curriculum the ideas driving oth er major agendas for education reform in the U.S. Participants generally agree that this is the most stimulating, formative, and intellectual experience they have had since their pursuit of advanced degrees. By September 1995, NNER settings will include 55 alumni of this program who

will be advancing the agenda locally and, we hope, regionally and nationally.

A grant from a family foundation en ables the IEI both to inquire into the ed ucational ecosystem that includes schools and to introduce this work-in-progress to the NNER members, especially through

the leadership training program. Prepar ing teachers to be moral stewards of re

newing schools is a considerable chal lenge, but an even greater challenge lies

ahead: preparing them to work with par ents and other professionals in human services to nurture and educate our young people for effective living in a changing society. As Lawrence Cremin so effec tively pointed out, it is folly to talk about excellence in American education while focusing only on schooling.5 It is great er folly to act as though schools alone are responsible for societal malaise and to as

sume that reformed schools, restructured schools, renewed schools, or schools of choice by themselves will bring into hu

man affairs the principles and ideals we

celebrate on ceremonial occasions and so commonly ignore in social, religious, economic, and political commerce. A

grant from a corporate foundation helps

sustain the IEI inquiry into the appropri ate role for education and schooling in

the infrastructure of a democratic society. The literature on educational improve

ment is replete with discussions of ob

stacles. We cannot be totally sure of hav

ing sorted out the concrete obstacles from the illusory ones or of having provided adequately for their future removal. Con crete obstacles are easier to predict and, we believe, easier to address. Removing them requires such things as money, time, inservice education for all groups of ac tors, and so on. We cannot predict how hard the individual settings will be hit by budget cuts, and so we are working closely with them to secure discretionary funds for the removal of a variety of concrete obstacles. The illusory obstacles are of ten raised as if they were real by those

most threatened by the proposed changes. The number and variety of illusory ob stacles is infinite. Rarely can such ob

stacles be confronted directly, and so

those who seek to move ahead are forced to make detours around them. Unforun ly, the literature provides little help to those seeking to deal with the real obsta

cle presented by the placing of so many "obstacle illusions" in the path of prog ress.

Those of us who staff the CER and the

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APRIL 1994 635

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Page 6: The National Network for Educational Renewal

Initiatives

often have nothing

more to guide them

than a sense that

something (usually

unspecified) is wrong

or that something

is to be achieved.

IEI keep reminding ourselves that the net

work is akin to a collection of trails to

expedite the movement of ideas and ex

amples. It is what goes on in the settings

themselves that counts. When the game becomes primarily one of drawing more attention to the trails and trailside attrac

tions, things quickly go awry. The dis

tractions so created come to obscure what

is or is not happening in the settings the

trails connect. Soon, growth of the net

work and its program of advertising come to be equated with - and even substitut ed for - progress at the sites. This is

why, when America 2000 blew away on an Election Day, so little residue was left. Since the proof of a network is in the ac tivities of its members, let us look a lit tle more deeply into the matters of mis sion, agenda, and change in the NNER settings.

SETTINGS AND SITES

I have used both "site" and "setting" in

referring to the members of the NNER.

For 13 of the 16 members, site and set

ting are synonymous: there is one college or university engaged in the process of

developing an organic relationship with partner schools. However, three settings comprise two or more institutions of high er education, each a site collaboratively engaged with schools. There are, then, 16 member settings, each with a director, that comprise a total of 25 sites commit ted to the NNER mission and agenda and

engaged in the process of renewal.

MISSION

The rhetoric of educational institutions often includes reference - sometimes reverently intoned - to mission and the importance of adhering to it. But those

who seek to understand the nature of that

mission often come up empty-handed. The criterion that guides choices among al

ternatives is apt to be adherence to what

is commonly done. Practice and mission are thus one. It is easy to find in cata logues and handbooks statements of pro

grammatic goals and objectives (the con

vention today is "desired outcomes"), but

it is rare to find a faculty with a shared

sense of institutional mission. Yet it is mis

sion that fuels passion, engenders hope,

and motivates effort. Soon after its creation, several of us in

the CER began to address this need and

ultimately produced both the mission and the agenda of the reborn NNER. Clear

ly, a mission of simultaneously renew

ing schools and the education of educa

tors arises in part out of a conception of

the purpose of compulsory schooling in

a democratic society. We concluded that schools have a mandate in two areas: en

culturation of the young into the privi leges and responsibilities inherent in a democratic society, and development -

by providing access to knowlege - of the ability to participate widely in that soci

ety. Ethical and moral issues pervade the fulfillment of this dual mandate.

Teachers must be fully prepared to ad vance this part of the mission. Unfortu nately, we cannot assume that their gen eral education in colleges and universi ties has equipped them with the prerequi sites for doing so. We must plan to pro vide them with the necessary intellectu al underpinnings, as is done in some oth er programs of professional education.

A carefully planned curriculum of lib

eral education, although necessary, is

not sufficient preparation for stewards of schools. To a course in ethics, for exam

ple, must be added consideration of the ethical issues that arise out of the inter

play among the competing interests of

students, parents, teachers, and adminis trators. Nor is general liberal education likely to provide for the caring pedago gy that professional teachers must learn to exercise.

Apparently, our four-part mission and its moral grounding appealed to those

teacher-preparing settings that sought membership in the NNER. Two aspects of the mission coincide with the mission of schooling: they are enculturating the young and providing broad access to

knowledge to allow all children to par

ticipate in society. The other two corre spond to the mandate for teacher prepa

ration programs: they are ensuring the responsible stewardship of schools and ensuring the practice of nurturing peda gogy (i.e., the art and science of teach ing).

Commitment to the mission of the

NNER brings with it the need to inte

grate into an effective whole the rele

vant contributions of a responsible facul ty group representing the arts and sci

ences, the school or college of education,

and the partner schools. The idea is to

create a center of pedagogy, dedicated to

the four-part mission, with boundaries

around the whole becoming increasingly defined, with a protected budget, and with a coherent curriculum.

AGENDA

I addressed above the critical place of

agendas in educational improvement. It

is commonplace for initiatives to have nothing more to guide them than a sense

that something (usually unspecified) is wrong or that something (such as excel lence) is to be achieved. Such initiatives soon collapse, often with recriminations all round, which makes the climate for

improvement worse than ever.6 When no agenda emerges or when recourse to the one at hand yields no new insights and

stimulates no vigorous discourse, disso nance and a sense of discontinuity take

over. It is the continual mining of a rich

agenda by the participating schools and

by the central staff that will keep the Coa

lition of Essential Schools, for example, alive and well for years to come. Like

wise, it is the mining of our very com

plex agenda that has sustained and prob ably will continue to sustain the Nation al Network for Educational Renewal.

Our agenda is derived from a reasona

ble set of propositions, called postulates, derived from inquiry into the conditions necessary to the robust conduct of teacher education. This inquiry has been of two kinds: reasoned argument regarding the

636 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

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Page 7: The National Network for Educational Renewal

necessary conditions of commitment, sup port, leadership, funding, faculty, stu dent selection and guidance, curricular coherence, laboratory facilities, regula tion, and so on; and empirical research into the extent of such conditions in to day's preparation programs. Since the 19 postulates have been rather widely prom ulgated through various conference pres entations, publications (including the No vember 1990 issue of the Kappan), and the like, there is no need to repeat them here. In dealing with the agenda, frequent recourse to the meaning and practical im plications of the postulates has marked the conversation, decisions, actions, and evaluations at the sites, in the CER, in the leadership program of the IEI, and at NNER conferences. And it shows no signs of abating.

THE CHANGE PROCESS

Throughout the century now drawing to a close, school reform has been driv en by a theory that has produced models

whose appeal has been little diminished by failure. The theory is a simple in put/output model. If we wish to reform schools, we vary the inputs and check the outputs. The use of this theory in testing the power of any particular variable in educational research has produced a lita ny of "no significant effects." Adherence to it in reform projects that go sour gen erates no cautionary labels to warn users away next time around. And it serves well the interests of those who seek sim plicity in matters educational. Even well documented analyses of failure in an era of school reform do little to dampen en thusiasm for this theory in subsequent periods.

If simplicity contributes to elegance, this is an elegant theory. In pupil learn ing, for example, there is a cause, such as teacher behavior, and an effect, usu

ally measured in terms of student test scores. Teach the teacher a new method of teaching reading, and the pupils will improve their reading scores. Unfortu nately, repeated recourse to the model has accounted for only incremental improve

ments in test scores. Teach school prin cipals the methods first, then they will teach the teachers, and the scores will go up more. But this modest increase in complexity actually weakens rather than strengthens the model. Since teachers in

situations requiring quantum leaps in stu dent performance would need to orches trate a dozen or more variables, each con tributing 3% or so to improvement, the tasks of orchestration become monumen tal, and the role of the principal as "in structional leader, so defined," becomes impossible.

Although this model is not without some usefulness in dealing with individuals as the units of interest - especially when the setting involves only a tutor and tutee - it is bankrupt when institutions such as schools are the focus of attention.

Schools are complex cultures - ecosys tems wherein individuals interact with one another and with elements of a larger, surrounding ecosystem. Seymour Sara son has convincingly described the ways in which individual school cultures cope

with well-intentioned intrusions from out side reformers and how inattention to school culture predicts failure.7 James Coleman's sobering findings regarding the weight that must be attributed to fam ily educational background in account ing for students' academic achievement strengthens the importance of the ecolog

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Page 8: The National Network for Educational Renewal

Politically

driven reform efforts

ignore the unique

ness of individual

school cultures in

an effort to find

widely applicable

interventions.

ical perspective in seeking to understand educational institutions in order to be able to improve them.8

Politically driven initiatives to reform education ignore the uniqueness of in dividual school cultures in an effort to find widely applicable interventions. Each school is viewed as a closed box, with the ecology of the contents excluded from consideration: a school is a school is a school. Inside the box, the teacher works on the learning of the pupils. The focus of reformers' attention is on the outside - on inputs and outputs. The model is simple and neatly linear.

In this model, improving the schools involves manipulating the inputs and sharpening and stabilizing the outcomes. Proposals for merit pay, awards to achiev ing schools, the introduction of new tech nologies, mandated curricula, and the like have recently been replaced by pro posals to restructure the context outside the school: eliminate districts and their boards, convert to a system of charter schools or schools of choice, and so on.

Yet what happens inside the box is still largely ignored.

It is not easy to gain credibility for models of change that take an ecological perspective. After all, if institutional cul ture can block change, then that very in stitutional culture must also facilitate suc cessful change. This perspective poses at least three problems.

First, reform initiatives that address schools as ecosystems are not readily replicated; each school is unique. The in

teractions within and around a school are

numerous, complex, and interrelated. Stu dents, teachers, and other workers inter act within a cultural membrane that is

permeable to the influences of the larger surrounding ecosystem. Sometimes, the influence flows both ways; sometimes, not. Such goals as international competi tiveness and teacher accountability may find their way from the outside through the membrane, but the chances of their

making the school culture more goal-ori ented and responsive are slim.

Second, there is no way to predict the fate of any input in a given school, even if it has produced satisfaction in other school communities. Third, properly un derstood, the model simply lacks political appeal. What does one write into a legis lative reform bill? Who gets the credit for success? At the end of the 1980s there

was nearly universal agreement among policy makers and grassroots reformers that "empowering" principals and teach ers to renew their schools was an idea whose time had come. But soon it had come and gone. Apparently, we were not ready for this leap of trust and faith.

The fact that an ecological perspective pervades the work of the NNER sites and

settings as well as that of the CER and the IEI does not guarantee success. But to ignore the individual and composite cultures of the 25 sites is to ensure fail ure.

Regular publication of the Center Cor respondent9 is an attempt to keep the spotlight on progress at the sites. It has become increasingly clear that any ini tial notions that the NNER sites might have had about making a few changes -

even a few major changes - in old ways of taking care of business have been re placed by full awareness that the agenda requires cultural renewal. And some sites are becoming acutely aware that the com ing together of two quite different cul tures, such as a university and a partner school, in pursuit of a common mission both accelerates the process and compli cates it. 1

Oddly enough, it seems necessary to

place the ecological model of institutional change within a somewhat linear, cumu lative model of human progress. There

must be a mission to strive to fulfill that makes sense to those who make up the culture - a mission that inspires and re kindles passion. Such is the mission of

reforming schooling and teacher educa

tion in a democratic society. And there must be an agenda that is akin to a road under construction - leading toward the destination, with each new section in place providing the stimulus to build an other. Usually, mission and agenda are what repeated calls for education reform fail to provide. And finally, there must be encouragement, support in the form of new resources, the sharing of experienc es, and drummers to sustain the march when energies flag. There is nothing mysterious about these ingredients. But it is probably futile to attempt educational improvement without them.

1. John I. Goodlad, Educational Renewal: Better

Teachers, Better Schools (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1994). 2. Seymour B. Sarason, Kenneth S. Davidson, and

Burton Blatt, The Preparation of Teachers: An

Unstudied Problem, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.:

Brookline Books, 1986). 3. John I. Goodlad, Teachers for Our Nation's

Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990). 4. The 16 settings are in 14 states and embrace too

many school districts and partner schools to list

here. The 25 institutions of higher education are:

Brigham Young University; California Polytech nic State University; a Colorado consortium con

sisting of Colorado State University (Fort Collins),

Metropolitan State College of Denver, the Univer

sity of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Colo

rado at Denver, and the University of Northern

Colorado; the University of Connecticut; the Uni

versity of Hawaii at Manoa; Miami University; Montclair State College; a combination in St. Louis, Missouri, of Harris-Stowe State College and Mary ville University; a South Carolina consortium of

Benedict College, Columbia College, Furman Uni

versity, the University of South Carolina, and Win

throp University; Texas A&M University; the Uni

versity of Southern Maine; the University of Tex as at El Paso; the University of Washington; the

University of Wyoming; Wheelock College; and

Wright State University. 5. Lawrence A. Cremin, Popular Education and Its Discontents (New York: Harper & Row, 1990). 6. The cycle of failure in four cities (not identified) is documented in a report of the Public Agenda

Foundation, Divided Within, Besieged Without:

The Politics of Education in Four American School Districts (New York: Public Agenda Foundation,

1993). 7. Seymour B. Sarason, The Culture of the School

and the Problem of Change (1971; rev. ed., New

ton, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon, 1982). 8. James S. Coleman, Equality of Educational Op

portunity (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government

Printing Office, 1966). 9. See, for example, Center Correspondent, Oc tober 1993, Center for Educational Renewal,

University of Washington, Seattle.

10. See Charles W. Case, Kay A. Norlander, and

Timothy G. Reagan, "Cultural Transformation in an Urban Professional Development Center: Pol

icy Implications for School-University Collab

oration," Educational Policy, vol. 7, 1993, pp. 40-60. m

638 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

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