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Simultaneous renewal: when interns serve as substitutes.

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Abstract

Our paper highlights ongoing research and program development related to service learning within a Professional Development School (PDS) Network. Teaching interns selected to serve as substitutes at their various school sites so their mentors could have up to 10 days and $650.00 worth of professional development time and stipends to engage in "simultaneous renewal" with university teacher educators and arts and science faculty.

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John Goodlad's broadly disseminated A Place Called School (1984) allowed university presidents, academic deans, teacher educators and school leaders to peer inside schools. What they saw were poorly supported k-12 classrooms in which teachers lectured and students listened and did their assignments--silently. Goodlad, however, did not stop with disseminating the vilifying results. He launched a National Network for Education Renewal (NNER) designed to radically restructure teacher education by changing the relationship between schools and universities to encourage simultaneous renewal. In his books, Teachers for Our Nation's Schools (1990), and in his Educational Renewal: Better Teachers, Better Schools (1994), Goodlad outlined his basic beliefs. He believes that better schools are predicated on better teachers who are teaching in schools that serve as a hub for learning, practicing, and developing.

To improve the quality of teachers, Goodlad recommended two initiatives that would work in tandem The first was the establishment of a fundamental philosophy of education based on the moral and political dimensions of teaching and learning in a democracy, sometimes referred to as an agenda for democracy. The second included the establishment of an institute designed to advance the philosophical goals through national forums, research support, and school university partnerships referred to as Professional Development Schools (PDS). Twenty postulates developed to guide philosophical inquiry as well as professional development were also used to guide the PDS network discussed in this paper (Goodlad, 1990,1994, 2002).

A basic premise of Goodlad's agenda is that arts and science faculty, education professors, and public school teachers must collaborate. They must find creative ways to bring about simultaneous renewal for all participants in a university and public school network that contracts to make teacher education a top priority. Much of the NNER restructuring efforts transpire within what are Goodlad referred to as Professional Development Schools (PDSs). Goodlad's 20 postulates provide a framework for university/school partners to begin the arduous task of restructuring so that fundamental democratic values and capacities are realized in America's public schools--with faculty and students. The postulate that is most applicable to this project is Postulate twenty:

Those institutions and organizations that prepare the nation's teachers, authorize their right to teach, and employ them must fine-tune their individual and collaborative roles to support and sustain lifelong teaching careers...