21st Century Learning

Teacher 2.0 Blog

Just wanted to let all of you know that I have been asked to contribute to Teacher 2.0 - a new blog on "How the Internet can be used to create learning communities that advance professional development and improve classroom instruction."   The blog is promoted by David Deschryver and Denis Doyle of SchoolNet, with an impressive list of contributors. They invited Barnett Berry to participate and he asked me to be a co-contributor with him. I am quite humbled. There is one other educator on the list of contributors- Dana Huff.

I think this blog is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to engage policy makers and educational reformers around a topic of which we are all very passionate. I hope you will visit the blog often and engage in the conversations and ideas through your comments. Plus, I could use your moral support! Here is my first co-post.

Check the blog out at: http://edustatblog.com/

In addition, School Net is also hosting a conference: EduStat Summit 2007

June 6,7,8 2007
Columbia University
Teachers College, NYC

Teacher 2.0™: Developing the 21st Century Workforce

Teacher 2.0™: What are the core competencies for teachers, administrators and school staff in the twenty-first century?  How will we attract, develop and advance talent?  How will organizational design affect student achievement?  How will technology modernize school administration? As we set higher standards for our children, how will we equip educators for the new challenges they face in 21st century schools?

It Is Still About the Learning...

I was over on Christopher Sessums site today. If you do not have him in your feed, you are missing out. His blog is the perfect mix of art, information and intellect. This post caught my eye:Educational Technology and Teacher Preparation: Bridging Theory to Practice. Chris does a wonderful job of looking at the struggles teacher educators have with technology adoption, which in turn creates a struggle for preservice adoption, which in turn carries over to the classroom. As you can imagine a wonderful, engaging conversation began in the comments. One comment jumped out at me...Kelly says...

Christopher, so much to be done at so many levels. After reading through Will Richarson's discussion with soon-to-be-teachers and having several interns in our school in the past few years, it is clear that the new teachers will not bring about the momentus change in technology use that many thought would happen. From my perspective, we need to look to the people in the middle, those who have been teaching for a while yet who are willing to try new things. To me, they are the best hope. They are not struggling with all the stresses of new teachers nor are near the end of their careers. Most have children that are "wired" all day and see the possibilities of what could be done. We almost need to focus on a retraining program and then have these teachers be mentors. As someone in the middle of my career, I would love to do more work with technology and help others to do it but the time just isn't there no matter how I refine my schedule. As for higher learning, it is in the same rut. We've been waiting for quite a long time for there to be a change in teacher education. It must become a priority and this will only happen once we have gone the next step and begun to hire people who see that technology is important and not an add-on because they live with it. I feel that, until we see a movement in the upper administrative positions in these areas, technology will not be a part of the whole picture.

There were other comments too - all passionate and brilliant laying out well thought ideas. But Kelly's comments and one about tech integration kept gnawing at me. So I responded with this:

We have to stop thinking of it as integration and start thinking of it as teaching in the 21st Century. At what point did we stop thinking of the whiteboard as new technology and it became simply a medium through which we communicated to our classes.

Not sure I agree with preservice teachers not being part of the solution. If Ingersoll is right and 1/3 of the teaching force is retiring or leaving, then these bright idealist could truly become the tipping point for true educational reform. What I have noticed is this--

1. Who we think of when we think of netgenrs are not showing up in my ICT education courses. It is as if we draw the technophobic/resistent to education.

2. However, when they spend a semester in a virtual community with tech savvy minds from the blogosohere, when they start blogging for deep reflection based on what they are reading in their content classes and in the edublogosphere, when they start co-creating the syllabus and direction of the class and actually start using the tools and planning for the kids to use the tools to create and collaborate in their lessons--something happens. A light comes on and they see kids getting totally turned on by learning. Then they become true advocates.

My last few weeks are spent showing them how even as novices entering the workforce they can be teacher leaders. That teacher leadership is when you have an expertise to bring that can help other teachers- help their students achieve. That their expertise in 21st Century teaching skills makes them teacher leaders by default and advocates for children. By cultivating an attitude of advocacy early on, these fresh minds who can still remember why they went into teaching- "want to change the world and help kids"- are bold in advocating for using knowledge management tools, adaptive expertise, modeling connectivism, and being ok with the messy side of change.

I do think we need to be breathing life into mid-career teachers as  well, but I place my money on those who havent been tainted by the system or jaded by disempowerment- as being the real power behind educational reform.

We really need to focus on teacher prep programs -- cant wait to read Linda's new book, thanks for sharing.

Then I scooted over to David Warlick's site reading this post. Diane Hammond rocked my world with this-

“She talked about how they teach teachers to collaborate.”

I wonder if we shouldn’t be lowering the profile of the technology in these conversations with teachers and just focus on getting the job done. Why do the teachers want to collaborate? What do they expect to accomplish? What impact will collaboration have on professional practice? These are the questions they should be getting their heads around. The technology should be incidental, merely tools to accomplish specific tasks.

I don’t notice “technological apprehension” in other professional groups as much as I do in education. For instance my husband had a new ocular imaging system installed in his office last week. This is completely new equipment, software and processes for the office staff. This week staff are familiarizing themselves with the camera, imaging and analysis software, and patient database. We aren’t hearing questions such as “Why do I have to learn this; how will I learn this; how will I keep up?” Everyone is focussed on the end result, improved patient care. The staff are getting some preliminary images that are too dark or out of focus. They are practising and working together to take clearer, sharper images that will show the healthy eye, or the pathology, the doctors are looking for. Along the way…they’ll master the technology…

Why don’t we do that in schools - job-embed learning opportunities and give teachers a variety of tools to meet their pedagogical goals? Then along the way…

It Is What You Want to Do and Learn That Matters!

I couldn't agree more. I ask teachers all the time- When do you think about the air conditioning/heating unit? They always respond, "When it isn't working." EXACTLY!  Web 2.0  and other technologies should be just like that. You do not even notice them. They are so not the point. Have you ever seen this?  Proving change is always seen as premature.

Change will happen when we have a reculturation of the institution of school. When we focus on what is important rather than the tools. We are like a bunch of 4th graders who have just been given math manipulatives for the first time-- we have to play and explore with them first before we can actual get down to business of using them for learning.

Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00/434872938/

Making Curriculum Meaningful

Had a cool experience yesterday, I was invited to participate in a live chat hosted by Education Week on curriculum issues.

Two of my friends and colleagues were also guests.  Marsha Ratzel, a 6th grade math and science teacher at Leawood Middle School in Leawood, Kansas who has been part of countless online projects I have hosted and serves with me on the Teacher Leaders Network (TLN). And ...
Mark Clemente, the science chairman at Ocean Lakes High School, Virginia Beach, Va. who not only taught my child AP Chemistry but followed me as Teacher of the Year for Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Mark and I have worked closely face-to-face, online, and through TLN. The three of us were asked to be a part of this chat as a follow-up to our articles that appeared in the last print and web-based issue of Teacher Magazine.

LiveChat
The chat began with  Anthony Rebora introducing us all, "Welcome to our live Web chat on curriculum best practices. We have three accomplished educators on hand--all members to the Teachers Leaders Network--to discuss ways to make lessons more meaningful at a time when many schools are increasingly focused on test scores. We've already received a lot of challenging questions for our guests so let's get started." And wow-- what a fast paced fun way to field questions.

The Questions Were Tough!
I was surprised that the questions were so technical and wide-ranging and I was pleased at the positive spin participants had in favor of rigor and creativity both being needed in the delivery of classroom content. I found it challenging but quite fun to come up with intelligent responses to wide-ranging questions on the fly. I was in Raleigh NC yesterday morning and drove home to VA to be on the session with only 15 minutes to spare, only to find that my computer wouldn't connect to the network when I frantically tried setting the laptop up. I ran to a neighbor's house to get on the session...with
all my pre-prepared notes back home on my laptop. I was so disappointed because all the wonderful examples of what my edublogger friends were doing were on my laptop at home!

Overall though, I think it went off really well. And as I read back through the transcript I was generally happy with how if came off. Thanks Education Week for the wonderful opportunity!

Check it out and let me know what you think!

 

Teacher as Leader

I was over at Bud's site and read his post about the leadership meme. Bud is a teacher leader if there ever was one. Teacher leadership is more than leading your students and being a darn good teacher. Teacher leadership is about reaching out past the four walls of your classroom and leading other teachers.

I did a small qualitative study on teacher leadership. Here is a piece of the literature review from that study. Please feel free to weigh in (comment) with your ideas. I would be interested in what your take is on teacher leadership. Maybe I will post the entire study if anyone is interested.

Teacher Leader Awareness The term teacher leadership was first introduced to me as I sat in a sea of teachers at the Virginia Department of Education’s Teacher Quality Forum in March of 2002. Terry Dozier, director of the Center for Teacher Leadership, was at the podium describing the various roles of a teacher: teacher as researcher, teacher as writer, teacher as leader.

I was intrigued by the way she described a role I had recently been thrust into by being honored as Teacher of the Year in Virginia’s second largest school division. Teacher leadership--such an obvious idea--had never occurred to me. I questioned why? Why had none of my undergraduate or master’s level teacher preparation courses ever broached this concept? Principal as leader was the commonly accepted metaphor, with teacher as follower or teacher as worker as the only options I had ever considered. The last five years have been a whirlwind of personal discovery as I have followed this idea of teacher as leader in many different arenas. Inevitably it made perfect sense for me to choose “How is teacher leadership developed in William and Mary- educated novice teachers?” from the list of original research focus statements provided by School of Education faculty and listed in the “Phenomenological Group Research Study Foci Possibilities” document distributed in class.

Effective or decisive leadership is generally accepted as key to school success. Increasingly in the wake of “No Child Left Behind” legislation school leaders are being held accountable for the achievement of all students (Silva & Gimbert & Noaln, 2004). The data from the educational reform literature consistently highlights that effective leaders implement an indirect but powerful influence on a school's ability to improve its programs and upon increasing student academic success (Leithwood et al, 1999; Harris & Muijs, 2003). While student learning depends first, last, and always on teacher quality (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001) it has been demonstrated that the quality of leadership matters in determining the motivations of teachers and the quality of instruction in the classroom (Fullan, 2001; Segiovanni, 1999).

A quick review of the leadership research literature suggests that teacher quality is often intrinsic within the individual rather than the result of a collective action, and typically references to school leadership equate it with the principalship. A singular view of leadership, as in the administrative authority of a principal, remains constant in many districts across the country. Some credit this to the fact that schools as organizations have remained virtually unchanged for the last hundred years and equate leadership with authority and position (Harris & Muijs, 2003).

However, in an effort to adapt to emerging trends in school improvement and accountability, teachers at all levels are assuming greater roles of responsibility and leadership in this process of change (Harris & Muijs, 2003). Teacher leadership has quickly become widely recognized as a critical factor in meeting recent federal and state educational mandates, such as No Child Left Behind (McCay et al, 2001). Roland Barth (2001), a strong supporter of teacher leadership in schools, notes that there are at least ten areas, all of them having an impact on teacher-student relationships, in which teacher leadership is essential to the health of a school: choosing textbooks and instructional materials; shaping curriculum; setting standards for student behavior; deciding whether students are tracked into special classes; designing staff development and in-service programs; setting promotion and retention policies; deciding on school budgets; evaluating teacher performance; selecting new teachers; and selecting new administrators.

In light of No Child Left Behind, the current need for shared leadership has created many unanswered questions about how teacher leadership is defined, developed, and what purposes it should serve. Simply looking at the varied definitions of teacher leadership in current literature demonstrates the vast differences in perceptions about school leadership and how those roles should be filled. For example, Wasley (1991, p. 64) defines teacher leadership as "the ability to encourage colleagues to change, to do things they wouldn't ordinarily consider without the influence of the leader ". Similarly, Katzenmeyer & Moller (2001, p. 5) define teachers as leaders as: “teachers who are leaders within and beyond the classroom, identify with and contribute to a community of teacher learners and leaders, and influence others toward improved educational practice.” Lieberman (1992) claims that “teacher leadership roles are proliferating in greater variety than many thought possible” (p.161). Teacher leadership roles may be informal or formal and are as varied in nature as differing school contexts (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001).

Teacher leadership roles also vary in accordance with the professional development experience of the teacher. As teachers move through their careers they have different needs. How a teacher’s personal life stage relates to their career stage has an influence on their willingness to serve as a teacher leader (Super et al, 1989). For example, very early in their careers teachers often do not have families and have the time to devote to cultivating leadership skills and serving in leadership roles within the school setting. A few years later, the onset of children might make staying for meetings and serving on committees difficult. Again, as teachers near retirement, caring for aging parents might interfere with taking on leadership roles.

Cultivating teacher leadership early in a teacher's career is supported by researchers. According to Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) teacher leadership development should begin in the preservice program at the university. Curriculum and field experiences should be structured in such a way that they emphasize a teacher’s responsibility toward school improvement and encourage beginning teachers to take on limited leadership roles at the beginning of their careers. In fact, many nontraditional beginning teachers with previous experience in the world of business expect to be involved in leadership roles once they graduate (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001).

Varying perspectives in research and theoretical literature concerning teacher leader role definition further explains the unique nature of the leadership activities in which teachers serve. Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) explain that teacher leaders can serve in three main ways: through the leadership of students or other teachers as a facilitator, coach, mentor, trainer, curriculum specialist, or leading study groups; through the leadership of operational tasks such as keeping the school organized and moving towards its goals by serving on committees and performing action research; or through the leadership of decision making while serving on school improvement teams, creating business partnerships, and involvement in Parent Teacher Associations. Gehrke (1991) describes teacher leaders as individuals who: continuously work on improving their own teaching; provide curriculum development knowledge; participate in school decision- making; deliver inservice training for colleagues; and participate in peer evaluation.

Harris (2002) theorizes that there are four distinguishable dimensions of the teacher leadership role: brokering, participative leadership, mediating and forging relationships. Through brokering teachers are able to translate the precepts of school improvement into practice. When operating in the participative leadership role teachers feel part of the change or development of school improvement and collaboratively help fellow teachers by taking a lead in achieving a collective goal. Teacher leaders are important sources of information and expertise and can be utilized as a resource through acting as a mediator. And finally, by forging relationships with other educators, teacher leaders can model leadership techniques.

Other authors have identified even more facets of the teacher leadership role such as undertaking research (Ash, 2000), mentoring and induction (Sherrill, 1999), and sharing new ideas that have an impact on the school as a whole (Little, 2000). The important point emerging from the literature is that teacher leaders are, first, expert teachers, who spend the majority of their time in the classroom, and who in addition take on differing leadership roles at various times in their careers. The literature suggests that teacher leaders transform schools through these behaviors into professional learning communities (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001) that improve school functioning overall.

While the research clearly supports that teachers are assuming leadership roles, the question remains- are teacher education programs preparing them to operate successfully in these leadership positions? There is a growing realization that teachers need to explore teacher leadership concepts long before entering the classroom. Research suggests that many teachers are entering the job market ill-prepared to take on leadership roles. Higher education is criticized for being too narrow in its program development focus.

While it seems there is a concentration of courses on the teaching of content knowledge and methods, more institutions need to think about exposing future teachers to discussions about larger policy issues in education (Futrell, 2001). Preservice teachers need to understand not only the role of a teacher leader but why it is important that they strive to become one. Some colleges and universities have embedded the development of teacher leaders as part of the movement toward professional development schools. (McCay, 2001). These professional schools typically use mentoring as a way to develop teacher leadership skills in preservice educators. However, Sherrill (1999) has found that the teachers in these new leadership roles have experienced high levels of frustration. Teachers that were experiencing the frustration perceived they were unprepared to assume leadership roles relative to encouraging change, and felt that more intentional preparation was needed during their preservice and novice teacher stages to be successful with work as change agents. It seems what is needed in these teacher preparation programs is to help teachers understand the nature of leadership and how it relates to the school environment. According to Sherrill, universities may be quick to include competencies that support the concept of teacher leadership, but they do not necessarily develop programs of study that will prepare teachers to be leaders or to undertake a more active role in true school reform.

So What Do *You* Think?

The rest of the paper is a case study of  how a small liberal arts college in the south  has been intentional in its approach toward exposing preservice teachers to the concept of teacher leadership--if for no other reason that it helps prepare students for what lies ahead.

I would love to hear your thoughts about teacher leadership.

• Why is it that so many teachers do not see themselves as leaders?
• Should we start nurturing and identifying teacher leadership in our teacher education programs?
• What role does Web 2.0 play in the development of teacher leadership through the networks in which we operate?
• Are teachers who are netgenrs or digital natives, teacher leaders by default (even as novices) due to the skills and expertise they own and can teach other more seasoned teachers to do?

Would you be interested in reading more about my findings?

Photo credits:
http://digitalrich.blogspot.com/2006/12/leadership-thoughts-from-old-book.html
http://medicine.creighton.edu/AFA/images/mentor-myk.jpg
http://helenacobban.org/Pal-Isr-Mar-06/Jabaliya%20preschool--%20writing%20teacher.jpg