Rethinking Teacher Capacity

Bill McDiarmid Boeing Professor of Education University of Washington

Who Am I

• • • • • Teacher (36 years) • Elementary, secondary, higher ed • Rural & urban Father & husband Partnership builder Researcher (rural teachers & schools) Product of rural America

Why this topic?

• • • Capacity: “ Innate potential for growth, development, or accomplishment.” Aid in thinking about how best to support teachers -- along the continuum Radical changes in the context of teaching unacknowledged

Story of Teacher Capacity: Continuities

Categories are still useful • Knowledge • Skills • Dispositions

Continuity: What Teachers Need to Know & Be

• • • • (1) Subject matter: “careful review of the branches of knowledge required to be taught in our schools” (2) Pedagogical methods: “the art of teaching…” (3) Learning: “the laws which control the faculties of the youthful mind in pursuit and attainment of the truth” (4) Positive moral influence on students •

Massachusetts Governor Everett at the opening the Barre Normal School, 1839

Knowledge

• Learners -- both in general & specifically • Content -- what they teach • Methods -- how they create learning opportunities • Context -- School, community, state, regional, national, international

The Teaching Triangle

Learner Context Context Teacher Context Curriculum

Skills

• • • • • • • • • Craft knowledge-- i.e., How to … • • organize a classroom manage groups of (often reluctant) learners with individual needs counsel children/youth present new ideas, information, & processes assess what students are learning work with parents, colleagues, staff, administrators, community members manage paper flow perform a range of non-instructional tasks use constantly changing technology mentor beginning teachers

Dispositions

• Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, Commitments • • • • • • Caring about kids, colleagues, the community Believing that all children can learn what is in the curriculum Committed to ensuring each child learns Valuing public schools -- where all are welcome & nurtured -- as critical to democracy Valuing the transmission of essential cultural knowledge Valuing the intellectual, social, & spiritual development of every child

Story of Teacher Capacity: Discontinuities

How was teaching different 36 years ago?

• Students, classrooms, & schools • • • More homogenous ethnically & linguistically Special needs students segregated Teachers more control over curriculum, methods, assessment • Stronger local control, far less federal & state regulation

How was teaching different 36 years ago : Standards for Success

• • • • Largely locally determined -- therefore, uneven (lower in some rural areas) High school graduates worthy & employed members of community Maybe higher ed Kids “happy,” learned social skills

What social & cultural factors account for differences?

• • Immigration & changing demographics Changes in family make-up • • More single parents (most work) More mothers who work

What economic factors account for differences?

• • • • • • Fewer good paying manufacturing jobs More low paying service sector jobs Fewer rural jobs Greater global competition for markets Housing less affordable in some areas Higher education much more expensive

Summary: Changes over the Past Several Decades

• • • • • • • More ethnically & linguistically diverse students (and growing more so) Mainstreaming of special needs students Less local control Higher expectations for student performance Changing family structure Fewer well-paid blue-color jobs Global competition

Internal Changes: Rethinking Learning

New standards emphasize students’ ability not only to master key information, & process but to understand underlying ideas & concepts.

Teachers’ task: Understand the underlying ideas/concepts & transform them for diverse learners.

Internal Changes: Rethinking Learning

• • • • Understanding learning as a social rather than solely individual phenomenon Understand our world through interactions with others Language -- a social medium -- shapes what we experience Question: How do we take advantage? How can technology be used?

Internal Changes: Rethinking Knowledge

• • • • New knowledge being added a dizzying pace Impossible for individual to know an entire field Greater interdependence -- no one has the whole truth -- rather, strands Debate about what cultural knowledge to pass on -- hence, debate over standards

Internal Changes: Rethinking Learners

• • • Increased understanding of differences in learners -- modalities but also prior experience Persistent lack of success for same groups of students • • • • Poor -- both rural & urban Students of color English language learners Special needs Price paid by unsuccessful students never higher

Rethinking Schools & Democracy

19th c. origins: common schools as “social cement” & educating the citizenry 20th c.: increasing emphasis on economic role of schooling -- individual & national Measure of ed success: International competitiveness Teachers: responsible for nurturing the dispositions, habits, & practices critical to a democracy

Rethinking Teacher Learning & Expertise

• • Teaching as a practice that is shaped… • Colleagues & school community • • • • Surrounding community District & state policies Textbook & curriculum publishers Standardized assessments Requires knowledge & skills to negotiate a practice -- not acknowledged

Rethinking Teacher Learning & Expertise

• Nature of teaching expertise • • Routine expertise: “years of problem-solving experiences in a given domain, can solve familiar types of problems quickly & accurately” Adaptive expertise: “go beyond the routine competencies … flexible, innovative, and creative competencies rather than … speed, accuracy, and automaticity of solving familiar problems”

Rethinking Teacher Learning & Expertise

• • • Developing adaptive expertise requires time & support -- occurs across the continuum How do we support teachers across the continuum in developing their adaptive expertise?

Requires rethinking teachers’ careers as well as opportunities to learn from their practice & colleagues

What Does All this Rethinking Suggest

• Developing “cultures of evidence” in schools & universities • What’s the evidence that what we are doing is helping every student learn?

• Not just gathering data -- but interpreting it for practice in a transparent process

Conclusions

• • Discontinuities outweigh continuities in our understanding of teacher capacity Changing what teachers need to know, be able to do, & care about • • Contextual changes -- in society, politics, economy, & accumulation of knowledge Internal changes -- in understanding the social nature of learning, how teachers learn over time

Implications?

What do you think?