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The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) has recently published a study of the role of the American teacher, Team Up for 21st Century Teaching and Learning – What Research and Practice Reveal about Professional Learning. As the study indicates, “The era of isolated teachers, working alone to meet the myriad needs of all their students, is neither educationally effective nor economically viable in the 21st Century.” The artisan teacher who works alone with their students is being replaced by the collaborative teaching community.
The Obama administration has set two basic goals for education by 2020: (1) The first goal is that all students be college and/or career ready by the end of high school. (2) The second goal is to close the achievement gap for students of poverty and minority students. To achieve these two goals teachers and students will need to become a professional learning community.
In order to reach these goals researchers have been looking for answers to two important questions:
- What makes for an effective learning community of educational professionals?
- What do we mean by ‘effective’ when we talk about teachers?
- Are we talking about the way teachers teach?
- Are we talking about increasing the amount of knowledge of the subject content?
- Do we need more satisfied teachers and stable school communities?
- Or is the ‘gold standard’ of measureable gains in student achievement the only metric that matters?
There are six principles of success that are guiding this work:
“Principle 1 – Shared Values and Goals: The team should have a shared vision of the capabilities of students and teachers. They should also clearly identify a problem around which the learning team can come together, with an ultimate goal of improving student learning.
Principle 2 – Collective Responsibility: Team members should have shared and appropriately differentiated responsibilities based on their experience and knowledge levels. There should be a mutual accountability for student achievement among all members of the learning team.
Principle 3 – Authentic Assessment: Teachers in the community should hold themselves collectively accountable for improving student achievement by using assessments that give them real time feedback on student learning and teaching effectiveness. These assessments are valued – not because they are linked to high stakes consequences – but because they are essential tools to improve learning.
Principle 4 – Self-Directed Reflection: Teams should establish a feedback loop of goal-setting, planning, standards, and evaluation, driven by the needs of both teachers and students.
Principle 5 – Stable Settings: The best teams cannot function within a dysfunctional school. Effective teams require dedicated time and space for their collaborative work to take place. This requires the support and, occasionally, positive pressure from school leadership.
Principle 6 – Strong Leadership Support: Successful teams are supported by their school leaders who build a climate of openness and trust in the school, empower teams to make decisions based on student needs, and apply appropriate pressure to reform.”
Professional Communities and the Artisan Model of Teaching
There are some teachers and administrators who believe, traditionally, that the artisan model of teaching is still most effective and creative. They feel that participating in a learning community stifles individual creativity. To respond to this it is necessary to keep in mind the key components of the professional learning community and how they relate to the principles of success:
- Colleague relations: collaboration around instruction (Principle 1)
- Basis for course assignment: rotation and mentoring relations (Principle 6)
- Instructional practice: common craft, and shared knowledge, inquiry, and innovation Principle 4)
- Professional practice: common craft, and shred knowledge, inquiry, and innovation (Principle 2)
- Professional rewards: Intrinsic rewards, collective progress, professional growth (Principle 2)
- Professional identify and commitment: Artisan community participant, commitment to craft and community (Principle 2).
Additionally, there are five questions about professional learning communities that need to be addressed by each school, on an ongoing basis:
- What are professional learning communities?
- What makes professional learning communities effective?
- What processes are used to create and develop an effective professional learning community?
- What other factors help or hinder the creation and development of effective professional learning communities?
- Are effective professional learning communities sustainable?
As Tom Carroll, the President of NCTAF concludes in his introduction to this study, “It is time to develop learning teams that embed continuous professional development in schools that are constantly evolving to meet the needs of today’s students. It’s time to team up for 21st century teaching and learning.”
