Do teachers who are involved with other teachers' practices (as supportive colleagues or by taking on leadership tasks) teach their own classes in a different way than teachers who are focused solely on their classroom responsibilities? Hank Becker and Margaret Riel are examining this question along with the possible influence on teaching practices of the presence of a collaborative professional working culture. In a research paper presented at AERA in April (and available on these pages before the end of June), Becker and Riel compared how teachers who had discussions with other teachers about pedagogical and subject-matter issues differed in classroom practices from teachers who kept to themselves. They found that teachers who had many professional contacts with other teachers at their school (that is, discussions and classroom observations) were 3 1/2 times as likely to employ a strong "knowledge construction" approach in their teaching than were teachers who had few such contacts. Conversely, low-contact teachers were 3 1/2 times as likely to focused on information transmission and skills practice as high contact teachers.

In examining work orientation more broadly, they examined three types of professional contacts: discussions with and classroom observations among teachers at their own school; involvement with teachers elsewhere such as by workshop attendance, district committees, and e-mail discussions; and leadership activity, including mentoring another teacher, teaching peers at workshops or conferences, teaching a college class, or publishing articles on education. They then classified teachers according to the breadth and depth of their involvement in these activities into four groups: the 3% with the most extensive collaborative professional practice (professional teacher-leaders), 12% who could be classified as professionally oriented, but not so strongly (professionally active); 30% with a "mixed practice," above the mean on collaborative contacts, but not outstandingly so (collaborative classroom teachers); and 55% who are classroom focused in their own practice (own-classroom teachers). Then, these four groups of teachers were compared on a wide variety of aspects of their teaching practice, including how salient group and individual projects were in their teaching, how much they engaged students in complex problems and gave students substantial freedom to undertake investigations around those problems, and how much reflective writing and self-assessment they required of their students. Answers to about 20 indicators of teaching practice were combined into an index that contrasts an information and skills approach to teaching with a constructivist one.

The accompanying figures show that the more that teachers orient themselves in professional activity beyond the classroom, the more constructivist their teaching practice. Becker and Riel propose that, consciously or unconsciously, teachers' instructional styles mirror their own interaction patterns. That is, teachers who learn from their peers, lead their peers, and present their ideas and opinions to their peers are more likely to have their students do the same in the classroom. They conduct their classes in a manner similar to the way they conduct their professional activities.

The researchers also found that the more teachers orient their professional practice beyond the classroom, the more likely they are to report substantial change of pedagogy in a constructivist direction in recent years. For more on teacher role orientation, see special report entitled Teacher Professionalism, School Work Culture and the Emergence of Constructivist Compatible Pedagogies..

© 1999 CRITO: Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations