One of the problems with finding and putting into effect a "best
practice," is that what a "best practice" is, is always to some extent
unique to a particular group at a particular time.
As the beneficiary of one such experiment in "best practices" in my ninth
grade English class, I can add two other reasons why "best practices"
don't get sustained. The first is, of course, that education in this
country proceeds by large institutions and bureaucracies, and
bureaucracies are dedicated to the stamping out of uniqueness in the
interests of manageability and "good planning." If "best practices" are
indeed unique in time/particular people involved, etc., then they can't
be planned for, and they can't be evaluated on a standardized basis. Our
teacher was very innovative, produced inquisitive, well-equipped
students, and didn't last very long in the system. (He is now one of the
guiding lights in English education at U. of Chicago.) One complaint was
that we already knew what the high-school teachers had to teach, so we
were un-handleable - they didn't know how to change to teach us. The
other problem was that we tended to "dis" some of the less - shall we say
- dynamic of the older teachers, who just happened to have tenure. (I
must admit that I fell into this group.) The only teacher who could
handle us was the drama teacher, who was considered the departmental
"wild man." (He also left eventually, for Iowa.)
The point of the above? One is never introducing change into just one
class, or one grade, or even one school within a system. The entire
human/organizational context is involved. Unfortunately, the situation
in education in this country is that we don't provide enough resources
for teachers and administrators to do their jobs adequately even without
change. People tend to feel overwhelmed already, so adding novelty to
the mix can be seen as downright inhumane to the staff. The kids? They
come and go, but your colleagues will be around next year and the year
after that and.... And then there's the problem of plain old burn-out.
There can be another factor here - the question of loyalties. As a grad
student teaching undergrads I was caught between my feeling for
fellow-students and my feeling of "responsibility" as an agent of the
school. (Eugene Matusov's last post catches a lot of the flavor of this
question - to be responsible to the institution in the abstract or the
real people in my class?) The teacher who strives for a "best practice"
can also be making things more burdensome for his/her colleagues, or
compromising their "official" standards, and they're not likely to let
her/him ignore it.
It is interesting to note that, according to the discussion in Mike's
book , the two organizations devoted to official education and its goals
couldn't sustain a 5thD. The one that did was one that had a different
set of goals focussed on the kids themselves. So maybe schools aren't
the best place for best practices after all, and those "Sixties" people
at the alternative university in Berkeley were right?
Just wondering....
Rachel Heckert