Discussion
Traditional staff
development relies on experienced curricular and instructional experts, located in district offices, to orchestrate instruction for teachers that fosters instructional reform. A number of school reformers argue, instead, that
for teachers to successfully make major changes in their teaching practice requires a different model altogether. This model is school-centered and teacher-led, builds a collaborative culture among teachers, and leads to
actual changes rather than the kind of surface changes often found when reform is mandated or led from bureaucratic superiors. Teaching is a complex
occupation that calls for continuous learning throughout a teacher's career. In a five year study of the implementation of learning communities in secondary schools, McLaughlin and Talbert (1993) pointed to the role of
"teacher discourse" –the way teachers discuss their philosophy and practice to one another–as a critical factor in school reform. They found that the most effective teachers participated beyond the school in
professional networks addressing similar problems and evaluating strategies for solving them. Our findings suggest that teachers who play an active role in exchanging ideas about practices with other teachers in their
school are more likely to be the teachers who encourage students to be active "deep thinkers" in their classrooms. Teachers who place a high value on knowledge construction in classroom learning are more likely to
play an active role in understanding teaching and learning at their school. Conversely, teachers who focus on delivery of information or skill practice are more likely to spend their free time in the classroom rather than in
discussions with teaching peers at their school. We found that contact with teachers from outside of the school was an important influence on the pedagogy. This form of professional exchange, more so than contact within the
school seems to be correlated with constructivist approaches to teaching. This result is one of the most important and strongest in this paper. Increasingly researchers are focusing on documenting the teaching wisdom that is
embodied in the most talented teachers (Brown, Greeno, Lambert, Mehan & Resnick, 1999). These results clearly indicate that teachers who are taking leadership roles are the same teachers who believe that students should take
active leadership roles in creating their own knowledge. These findings also suggest that teachers who are not drawn into the professional community, those who are left isolated in their classroom, are teaching in
ways that contrast sharply with mentor teachers who engage in a continual teaching and learning interactions. Collectively these findings indicate a symmetry between the way in which teachers work and the way in which they
structure their classroom for their students. Teachers who are isolated from their peers, engage in teaching in which students work alone. Teachers who work in collaborative settings, create the same settings for their
students. Those who suggest changing the relationship of teachers to the larger education community as a way of changing what happens within the classroom will find that these results support their efforts. And the inverse relationship is also true. Those teachers who do not participate in any of the leadership
activities in the educational community are more likely to be the teachers who focus on traditional methods of delivery of information, on direct instruction. They do not place a high value on collaborative knowledge building
in the classroom or for themselves in the educational community. A special group of teachers, constituting only 3% of all teachers, scored high on all three measures of professional work orientation, with strong participation at
the school level, frequent connections to colleagues in other schools, and impressive participation in leadership activities. Over one-half of those teachers stand in the top quartile of teachers who most clearly describe their
practice in terms of fostering deep thinking, collaborative learning, and authentic project-based activities. An additional 12% of teachers indicated a very extensive level of professional engagement with the field. These
teachers were also much more likely than the remaining teachers to value student input in their lesson plans and to direct their teaching at deep understanding of problems that do not have known easy answers. But what about the
other 85% of the teachers? Here the relationship was again clear. Those teachers who played some part in the larger educational community, struggling with the solutions to the complex set of problems that face educators, were more
likely be teachers who ask their students to do the same thing in the classroom. The teachers who played a minimal role in the larger educational community are the teachers who do not expect this behavior from their
students. The role of the student in their classrooms is to listen, learn, and repeat. They are more likely to be concerned with helping students learn the right answers that can be found in the back of any textbook and less
likely to encourage students to ask questions for which there is no "right" answer. School Culture and Teaching Practice If teachers are more likely to acquire
constructivist viewpoints and to carry out constructivist-compatible teaching practices when they have a collaborative orientation towards their peers and when they take on leadership responsibilities, are there processes at the
school level that also facilitate those changes in teaching? We found that in the five percent of school sites where the work environment can be most clearly characterized by widespread teacher collaboration, group autonomy
in their own professional development, collective responsibility for each other's practice, and common views about goals and priorities, teachers are more likely to teach in ways that emphasize student construction of understanding
than they are in the vast majority of more typically bureaucratic school cultures. In many respects, these findings validate decades of research on school culture and teaching.
One of the most powerful and enduring lessons from all the research on effective schools is that the better schools are more tightly linked — structurally, symbolically and culturally — than the less effective
ones. They operate more as an organic whole and less as a loose collection of sub-systems. An overarching sense of consistency and coordination is a key element that cuts across the effectiveness correlates and permeates our
better schools (Murphy, 1992, pp. 94-96).
One of the persistent failures of efforts of school reform has been significant change in the structure of school to allow time for teacher learning (Riel, 1998b; Brown, Greeno, Lambert, Mehan & Resnick, 1999).
For the most part, resource allocation for teacher education has been directed towards a "training model" of self-contained workshops that are designed to incrementally build the knowledge base of teachers (Little,
1993). The decisions of what to teach, when it teach it and even how to teach are made by experts located away from the school context. The role of teacher is often to listen, learn and implement. The teaching training efforts of
the 50's and 60's have set a course of providing teachers with disconnected ideas and teaching practice fragments that are not easily transported to new settings. In a 1994 study of staff development, Miller and Lord found
that most efforts involved one-time workshops, with short-term, passive activities and limited follow-up which teachers assessed as inappropriate, unfocused, boring and irrelevant to their work. The methods used to teach in
these workshops often contradict the message about best teaching practice. And in fact most teachers describe their staff development as a disconnected series of workshops with only modest efforts at sustained long-term
programs of change. In contrast, personal and collective engagement in a knowledge base incorporating outside ideas is one of the characteristics that distinguish successful and less successful professional learning
communities (Louis & Kruse, 1995). Restructuring and reform efforts have begun to look at professional development in a way that is very different than these traditional models. The work of integrating instructional
strategies into practice is a complex process and teachers represent an important source of knowledge about this process. More recent efforts at teacher education utilize the expert knowledge of talented teachers using cognitive
coaching and peer mentoring as a way of increasing teaching knowledge and practice. This alternative approach builds a culture of learning and binds teachers together in a community, sharing what they learn to help design the best
match between the needs of students and the resources available. Descriptions of school cultures where teachers are continually learning, along with strong support for the experimentation with new ideas, are correlated with
descriptions of classroom learning with similar characteristics for students. Little (1993) lists four categories of professional interaction that build a culture of learning in practice:
One clear indication of professional practice is collective responsibility for setting standards and assuring quality of practice. While peer review is an integral part of university level evaluation (Shulman,
1995), teachers traditionally have not played a role in evaluating their peers either positively or negatively. In a bureaucratic culture, it is the work of administrators to assure quality of the teaching staff. But in a
professional culture, it is the responsibility of the community. The two national teachers associations recently jointly drafted national guidelines that support peer- assistance and peer-review programs, and California is
establishing a comprehensive peer-review process for school and district promotion and firing decisions (Bradley, 1998). Supporters of peer review programs place a high value on the knowledge developed by skilled teachers and
want to leverage this knowledge base to help improve the practice of less skilled teachers. In addition to providing an intervention procedure that helps teachers to learn new skills, peer-review provides increased career
opportunity, salaries, and professional recognition for teachers who serve as consulting teachers. Teachers working in isolation do not have institutional power to shape the designs of teaching and learning. Collectively,
teachers can confront political pressures that often place more emphasis on measurable outcomes that are meaningless indicators of real learning. Teachers know the difference between teaching students to perform well on tests
and teaching students to understand and use knowledge. Teachers who take a professional stance towards teaching and who are part of a large organization that works together to create good education will not be victimized by
well-intended parents and politicians who understand very little about education.
Professional Orientation, School Culture and Pedagogy Teachers face a very complex task each day they enter the classroom. They need to be well prepared
to structure learning for their students in ways the met the expectations of multiple stakeholders. These expectations are overwhelming and contradictory, making it necessary for teachers to select some and reject others.
Depending on the teacher's philosophical beliefs and instructional practices, the students will either have a very active or passive role in the process. The more active the role of the student, the more difficult are the
demands placed on the teacher who must be able to incorporate the wide-ranging ideas and theories generated by students who are searching for understanding. How does a teacher orient to the forces both in the classroom and
beyond the classroom to make these decisions? And what is the best way to structure learning and support for teachers as they search for the best ways to make these decisions? These survey data show that in schools where
this model of professional development is evident instructional practice is significantly different than in schools where it is not. When teachers are active participants in professional learning communities with a strong
sense of voice and authority, they create a similar learning context for their students.