In fact, my colleagues and I here at UCD have been working to develop a
framework for action research/teacher education/collegial exchange/etc.
based loosely on an ecological perspective of teaching and learning. We
have identified four principles of collaboration that we find help us in
our work with teachers, administrators, teachers-in-training, researchers,
etc. With apologies for the length, I paste in a few paragraphs from a
recent ms. (Situating practice: Teacher preparation as school/university
collaboration, under review at TESOL Quarterly)
We extended invitations for partnerships to a number of schools who serve
non-native
English speakers -- elementary and secondary schools in the public school
system, intensive
English programs, community-based adult education programs. Through a
process of
negotiation involving all interested staff on both sides, we created
formal agreements that
articulated specific goals envisioned by all participants. We used
Goodlad's four functions of
partnerships as an organizing framework, and we emphasized the importance
of outcomes and
achievements in gauging the success of our endeavors. This focus on
demonstrable effects is
especially important; it provides a thread of continuity in our
interactions, a consistent
measure of the effectiveness of our projects. It quickly became clear,
however, that mere
good intentions would not suffice. The complexity of the problems we were
interested in
working on, and the differences in our backgrounds and responsibilities,
required us to
formulate explicit agreements on how to proceed, rules for interaction, if
you will. We
gradually came to agree that our conversations needed to be critical,
grounded, pragmatic, and
attuned to scale. In the remainder of the paper we will elaborate on
these principles and
provide examples from some of our partnership projects.
Critical. By critical we intend three broad commitments. First, we
assert that all
participants come to the table as equal partners, and that exchanges be
conducted in the spirit
of democratic collaboration. We participate in the conversations in
particular roles -- as
teachers, professors, administrators, for example -- but we remain aware
of the validity of
perspectives represented by others, and we constantly challenge ourselves
and each other to
speak plainly and openly. We do not rely on institutional or professional
authority as debates
proceed. Second, we hold each other accountable for consistency in the
service of outcomes.
That is, we recognize that attempts to work toward coherence at different
levels of context
will inevitably provide opportunities for us to choose expedient solutions
over more difficult
solutions that are consistent with the values we have elaborated. We give
each other
permission to provide critiques that keep us focused on key values. And
third, we follow
recent work of scholars such as Skrtic who extend the tradition of Dewey
by attempting to
anchor critique in an assessment of the consequences -- intended and
unintended -- of action,
rather than by an appeal to some ultimate truth (Skrtic 1995; Dewey 1916).
What this means
is that we surrender our commitment to particular ways of doing things and
we focus instead
on agreed upon outcomes.
This principle underlies all aspects of our collaboration and it
represents the most
notable -- and most difficult -- accomplishment of our efforts. To speak
plainly and honestly
is the hallmark of healthy relationships, and the boom industry in group
psychology and team
management provides eloquent testimony to the fact that it is not easily
realized. We have
created structures and procedures within which critical exchanges can
occur -- leadership
academies, conferences, planning meetings, etc. -- and we work to
encourage frank exchanges.
For example, in debriefing a summer institute in which graduate courses
were team taught by
university faculty and ESL teachers, the general glow of success was
tempered by the
acknowledgement of some of the teachers that they often felt like
glorified graduate assistants.
The course evaluations confirmed this, and underscored the importance of
creating class
activities that balanced classroom realities with theoretical
perspectives. In another instance, a
group of teachers, administrators and professors were developing a survey
instrument to assess
the "student climate" at a high school with a large proportion of ESL
students. In a heated
exchange it became clear that ESL students and the teachers who worked
most closely with
them had been systematically excluded from the process. In fact, it
became clear that the
survey was going to be constructed and administered only in English,
thereby effectively
excluding the very group it was designed to serve. This was a difficult
realization for the
group to confront, but the open dialogue provided a mechanism for working
through the
problem.
Grounded. We work from a perspective of teaching that is situated in
particular
settings, anchored in the daily realities of participants. There is an
ongoing interplay between
what we observe and what we believe, but when the two are in conflict,
observation takes
priority over ideological or methodological commitment. Our efforts
proceed from an attempt
to acquire and understand an accurate picture of daily realities. In the
complex realm of
human endeavor, what gets done reveals what is valued, and it is essential
that we construct
our understanding from what we see happening. While it may be true that
the future must be
built on a vision, it is equally true that action must be based on the
realities of the present.
This is a relentlessly empirical stance, the academic equivalent of
"put up or shut up."
Professors in methods courses do not talk about teaching without providing
example lessons
with second language learners. Teachers may assert their belief that they
work for a risk-free
environment in which every student can learn, but they must also
demonstrate the variety of
assessment tools that demonstrate this. All participants are encouraged
to keep personal -
professional journals in which they record the details of events and
situations, and which
serve as the data on which decisions are based. Video tape of instruction
is a common
element of methods conversations, and classroom observation by peer
coaches and graduate
students form the basis for most conversations. Test scores are
supplemented by other
indicators of achievement, and student evaluations of teachers and
professors are used to
provide different perspectives on classroom activities.
Pragmatic. Our goal is not to discover truth, but to solve problems
in the real world.
We attempt to develop a critical assessment of the functional value of
ideas, models, methods,
and materials. We ask not only if a teaching practice satisfies a
particular theoretical or
philosophical position but also what consequences result if we adopt it.
As we work we
avoid indulging in the gratifying but narrow practice of addressing
comments only to
members of our immediate circle; findings and recommendations must ring
true for everyone
engaged. Closely related to this is the admonition that no one be allowed
to create work for
others to do. In our attempt to solve complex problems of practice,
everyone brings
important insights and experience to the table; this is a collegial -- not
hierarchical --
endeavor in which individuals choose how they will participate and how
they will change.
Judging the practical merits of a proposal requires an explicit
statement of purpose and
value, and this will always vary according to one's role and
responsibility. Multiple
assessment of student learning, for example, always sounds better to
administrators or policy
makers than to teachers who have to actually implement the procedures.
Similarly, it is the
job of university professors to conduct research and write papers for
publication, so they can
be expected to be more enthusiastic about finely tuned measures of
methodological or
curricular effects than school personnel who often find that such
procedures interfere with the
teaching that they are intended to assess. Student teachers can be
expected to propose
frequent coaching sessions with their mentors in which they receive
encouragement and
suggestions for improving their practice, just as their mentors can be
expected to groan as
they search their calendars for the time required to conduct such sessions
with all of their
trainees. This principle is invoked to provide balance for our individual
enthusiasms.
Scaled. Decisions made at different levels have different impact,
and failure to take
this into account can have serious consequences. An understanding of
teaching requires an
examination of relationships among patterns that connect different levels
of context.
Depending on the phenomenon of interest, these levels might include the
individual student,
the classroom, the school, the family, the community, the school system,
and the broad
network of connections with civic, cultural, and professional
associations. However, these
phenomena are not all of the same order of magnitude, and we have had to
develop
procedures for dealing with the disparities. It is easy to slip, for
example, from discussions of
long-range planning and organizational decision-making into examinations
of classroom
activities without recognizing the potential errors involved in mixing
phenomena of different
scale.
Each of us involved in educational partnerships views issues of
teaching and learning
with lenses that are crafted from our particular responsibilities.
Teachers tend to focus on
individual students and classroom dynamics. Administrators worry about
schools, curriculum,
and testing. Professors have a high tolerance for abstraction as they
examine the interaction
of psycholinguistic phenomena and instructional dynamics. All views are
equally valid, but
they cannot all be accommodated at the same time. As we work with our
partners we need to
be decide what problem we are seeking to solve, and at what level. We
might agree, for
example, that learning is the primary goal of our work, but as we devise
strategies for
promoting student learning, we need to balance the sometimes conflicting
demands of our
roles and responsibilities. Standardized language proficiency tests
provide evidence of
learning across districts and they provide comparison statistics for
evaluation in a national or
state context. This would be of interest to school administrators, but
teachers and teacher
candidates can be expected to be more interested in informal measures of
assessment that
also provide evidence of students' adjustments to a new culture, new
friendships, and
potentially frightening school situations.