Reflections on: A New Vision for Staff Development

Introduction:

My favorite line in this article is a quote by Ann Lieberman: “What everyone appears to want for students, a wide array of learning opportunities that engage students in experiencing, creating, and solving real problems, using their own experiences, and working with others, is for some reason denied to teachers when they are learners.” Engaged learning, one of the new buzzwords in education, is needed for teachers as well as students.

Article analysis:

Of the three powerful ideas that are mentioned in this article for school reform and staff development, I agree somewhat with the first two. The first, Results-Driven Education, makes prefect sense to me. Obviously, this is the direction that the state of Illinois is taking with the Praire State test. I think it is good to know what you need to know. However, I worry that this will lead to less creativity in schools. I have seen the science section of the pilot Praire State test and as long as they stick to science reasoning questions, it will allow for a great deal of flexibility in the individual classrooms. I do not worry about “teaching to the test” because the test is about thinking science and that it what every student needs. However, the article alludes to the fact that “virtually all students can acquire the school’s valued outcomes provided they are given sufficient time and appropriate instruction.” The fact is there isn’t always enough time and students are not always in the class to get the appropriate instructions. This same problem plagues staff development. There isn’t enough time and not all the teachers are participating.

The second idea, System Thinking, really became important to our school in the last two years when we went on a block 8 schedule. This schedule is very effective and lends itself well to my science labs; however, it has caused problems in other areas like math. Instead of taking advantage of the engaged learning that this schedule offers, some teachers only concentrate on the problems it brings to their subject areas. Instead of evaluating the effect of the block on the whole education of the student, sometimes we concentrate too much on “symptoms where the stress is greatest.” Like this article suggests, staff development of system thinking is needed to overcome this.

The third idea, Constructivism, is one I do not accept as a practical reform for staff development. Although in theory constructivism sounds great, in reality it is not easily achieved. As a science teacher I have been exposed to constructivism as a teaching methodology and find it too impractical. I steal the best ideas of this theory but do not follow it religiously because it is too slow. It bores some of the faster students and never reaches some of the slower students.

Conclusion:

Of all the major shifts in staff development mentioned in this article I think the most important is that staff development cannot be considered a “frill” if educational reform is to take place. Also, if we want engaged learning and creative thinking to take place in our students that is how we need to conduct our staff development. After all most teachers teach like they learn.