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A teacher-in-residence approach to in-service.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Current approaches to professional learning for teachers seek to harmonize development activities with the demands of classroom practice and system-wide efforts to improve. The need for high quality learning experiences, on-site, which make the links between theory (aspiration) and practice (performance) relevant and real presents a challenge for in-service providers. Teacher-in-residence is a promising approach that engages teachers in a critical examination of new methods of teaching focused on the integration of health with academic study.

The gap in professional learning

The education community knows enough about what constitutes good pedagogy to ensure almost all children grasp almost all the material deemed worth knowing to graduate (Marzano, 2003). Our challenge or gap is to ensure all children enjoy the benefits of this knowledge and skill. The gap is not just between schools and countries, it is our gap in finding ways to equitably disseminate our knowledge of effective practice such that teachers can access and use this knowledge appropriately.

What we know, with some confidence, is that improvements in teaching are more likely to occur when learning is embedded in teachers' current practices (Hawley and Valli, 1999; Smylie, Allensworth, Greenberg, Harris, Luppescu, 2001). Teachers want to make sense of what they are doing, how their children respond to their practice and in light of these insights, and to then consider the implications their actions have for lesson design, class management, routines, student-to-student-to-teacher interactions. Accordingly, changes are be interpreted in relation to the culture in which they are expected to function.

Showers and Joyce, (1995) noted that teacher efficacy is enhanced when teachers have opportunities to see new approaches modeled, practice them, engage in peer coaching, acclimate students to new ways of learning, and use new teaching and learning strategies regularly and appropriately. Being successful with new practices brings about a sense of confidence and willingness to participate in other change efforts (Guskey, 1995; Smylie, 1995). Smylie, et al, (2001) identified core elements that describe effective teacher development as:

a) Experiential, engaging teachers in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment and observation.

b) Grounded in participants' questions, inquiry, and experimentation as well as research on effective practice.

c) Collaboration, involving sharing of knowledge among educators.

d) Connected to and derived from teachers' work with their students as well as connected to examination of subject matter and teaching methods.

e) Connected to other aspects of school improvement in a coherent manner.

The advent of professional learning communities promoted by Senge (1990) and Fullan, (2005) these core elements. Senge (1990) defined the learning organization as a place where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are matured, where collective aspiration is set free and where people continually learn how to learn together. In a professional learning community (PLC) teachers learn about a new idea, try it in their classrooms, reflect on it, talk about the...

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