Teacher learning and teacher change

“Change is governed by internal dynamics which are complex, autonomous, related to context, not submissive to external ideal models. If I were to use an analogy with Physics, the dynamics of teacher change would be more similar to the self-organising processes of the Physics of Chaos than to the deterministic ideal models of Classic Physics”

V. Mellado (2003) Cambio Didáctico del Profesorado de Ciencias Experimentales y Filosofía de la Ciencia

In the literature in the field of teacher learning and professional development “it has been more or less assumed that teachers who know more teach better.” (p.249, Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999). In this sense, many initiatives of professional development and teacher learning are designed as if there is a direct relationship between teacher learning and teacher change. However, as discussed in previous sections regarding the impact of traditional teacher in-service education, this is not always the case. In particular, there is not a direct relationship between all forms of teacher learning and substantial change in the practice of teachers.

There are different reasons behind this fact. First, not all opportunities for learning offered to teachers are actually addressed to the achievement of change³³. Second, change has shown to be a very difficult and complex process, as the opening quote in this section points out. Third, researchers and teacher educators have proposed different models for teachers’ change, some of them more difficult than others to achieve successful results. In the following, we will discuss these three interrelated issues.

33 There are many definitions in the literature regarding the notion of “teacher change”. Here, we refer to those changes in teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and attitudes that affect, and thus change, teachers’

practice. This practice is not restricted to teaching practice, to what teachers do within the classroom boundaries, but includes also other possible aspects of the practice of teachers within the profession:

changes in their work as curriculum makers, as action researchers, etc. In this sense, we refer to teachers’ change as teachers’ both didactical (Tobin and Espinet 1989; Furió and Carnicer 2002; Mellado 2003) and professional change. We use the notion of teacher change to refer to the fact that the professional culture of Science Education must be transformed, and this requires extensive changes in teachers’ deeply held beliefs, knowledge and habits of practice both regarding their work in the classroom and outside the classroom.

4.2.4. 1. Types of learning: transformative, additive and expansive learning

According to Thompson and Zeuli (Thompson and Zeuli 1999) all teachers’ learning is not equal. The authors define “transformative learning” as the learning experiences particularly addressed to have a transformative effect in the teacher. In this sense, it is the learning able to produce “changes in deeply held beliefs, knowledge, and habits of practice” (p.342) of the teachers involved. On the other hand, there is another sort of learning scenarios, named scenarios of “additive learning”. Through these learning experiences teachers learn new things or develop new skills, integrating them with what they already knew. In this sense, additive learning is the learning that adds to their current practice, rather than transforming it.

Historically, professional development has focused much more in additive learning than in transformative one. In general, traditional professional development “has focused on only adding new skills and knowledge without helping teachers to rethink and discard or transform thinking and beliefs” (p.46, Loucks-Horsley, Love et al. 2003) This is one of the reasons behind the discussed “lack of impact” on changing a teachers’ practice of most in-service training. This is also behind the mentioned problem of fit between ambitious reform efforts and the professional development to support them. This traditional professional development, when well designed, can be successful in terms of adding knowledge to the teachers’ existing knowledge base.

However, it is not the right sort of learning scenario if teachers’ change, both in the sense of changing deeply held knowledge, beliefs and attitudes and changing their own view of the profession, wants to be achieved. The expected learning outcomes of professional development addressed to additive learning have to be defined accordingly to the scope of these initiatives. We agree with Loucks-Horsley and colleagues (2003) that “There is a place for both additive and transformative learning in teacher professional development, but there needs to be conscious choices of what is being added and what is being discarded, and why” (p.46). Rather than discarded, we would have used transformed or evolved.

When referring to learning at the work place, Egenströn (2001) uses the notion of

“expansive learning” within a framework of cultural-historical Activity Theory³⁴.

34 Activity theory is a psychological framework with its roots in the cultural-historical psychology of Vygotsky's. Its founders were Alexei N. Leont'ev (1903-1979), and Sergei Rubinshtein (1889-1960) who

Interesting in his proposal, in addition to the use of the activity system as a fruitful unit of analysis, is the idea of contradictions as the driving force of change in activity.

Contradictions are not just problems or conflicts, but tensions within the activity system.

For instance, tensions among the established rules, the goals and the division of labour. According to the author, the transformation of the activity, that is change, happens in expansive cycles. As contradictions emerge, there can be a deliberative collective change effort to expansive transformation. This expansive transformation is achieved “when the object and motive of the activity are reconceptualized to embrace a radically wider horizon of possibilities than in the previous mode of the activity” (p.137).

In this sense, teacher change can only occur if there is a reconceptualisation (historical, social) of the teaching profession (the activity of teaching) and the objective of it (students’ learning) to a wider horizon (not only teaching but also designing, inquiring, etc. and not only all students’ learning but also teachers’ learning). However, this reconceptualisation is what it is looked for when aiming at change. In this sense, in the view of the author, change it is not a matter of teacher (or institutional) learning of something already known to be able to change, but learning is what takes place as change is happening. “People and organizations are all the time learning something that is not stable, not even defined or understood ahead of time. In important transformations of our personal lives and organizational practices, we must learn new forms of activity which are not yet there. They are literally learned as they are being created” (p.137-138, emphasis added). Despite we find the definitions and work of the author very interesting regarding a substantial part of teachers’ professional learning of

“what is needed” to be a different, extended-professionalised teacher in different educational institution (a teacher who participates actively in school-based reform), we also consider that the previous notions of “additive” and “transformational” learning are useful regarding the also existing more structured knowledge based for teaching and the teaching profession.

sought to understand human activities as complex, socially situated phenomena, going beyond paradigms of behaviourism. Activity theory refers to individuals engagement and interaction with their environment, (activity) as something done by subjects to achieve certain goals. While doing so, tools are produced.

These tools are exteriorized forms of mental processes, such as language, that become accessible and communicable to other people, thereafter becoming useful for social interaction. Activity also takes place in a particular context and culture, with particular rules and division of labour. This theory is usually represented by a triangle that has all these concepts as vertex and middle points, to show that all them influence each other in activity (subject, tools, goals, rules, culture and division of labour). This triangle is referred to as “activity system”.

4.2.4. 2. Description of teachers’ change

Even when transformative learning is pursued and teachers’ change wants to be achieved, many professional development initiatives fail to produce it. In this sense, it is necessary to understand better what teachers’ change is.

The conventional wisdom behind most professional development initiatives and reform rationales has been to focus their training efforts on changing teachers’ beliefs,

“for when one believes differently new behaviours will follow” (p.48, Loucks-Horsley, Love et al. 2003). However, research on teachers’ change has shown that this is not a linear, but an iterative process. Instead of being linear, changes in ideas, attitudes, actions and behaviours occur in a mutually interactive process. “On the one hand, people’s current thoughts influence what choices they make and what they attend to as they plan and carry out educational activities. On the other hand, people’s reflections on these activities and their outcomes influence their thoughts about educational matters” (p.48, Loucks-Horsley, Love et al. 2003). In addition, the relationship between changes in beliefs and changes in practice does not always hold. Some research results show that often there are dissonances and contradictions between beliefs and practice for certain teachers and contexts (Lederman 1992; Mellado 1996; 1998).

Teachers’ didactical and professional change is difficult and complex (Tobin and Espinet 1989; Mellado 2001; Davis 2003). On the one hand teachers’ have personal practical knowledge (Clandinin and Connelly 1987; van Driel, Beijaard et al. 2001), constructed over the years mainly in the context of their classroom, which generally has shown successful enough. This knowledge is conservative (Tom and Valli 1990), rarely made explicit or reflected upon, can act as an obstacle regarding didactical change and is the starting point of the change process (Tobin and Espinet 1989; Gil 1991; Furió and Carnicer 2002), in the same sense as scientific alternative conceptions can make difficult the construction of more adequate scientific ideas and are students’

starting point regarding future learning. In addition to their knowledge and beliefs, teachers have their own motivations, emotions and particularly important regarding change, self-esteem. This emotional part also plays an important role that should not be ignored (Hargreaves 1994a; Copello and Sanmartí 2001; Mellado 2003). On the other hand, teachers work in particular settings with particular cultures that greatly influence their practice. In this sense, some authors have point out to the need of resetting the “unit of change” towards the system rather than in the individual (Loucks-Horsley, Love et al. 2003). According to Davis (2003), to allow the social construction

of new knowledge and continued change “power structures and discourse practices embedded within educational settings must be made explicit, examined, and transformed.” (p.27).

Due to these and other difficulties, in the literature change is described as an slow, ongoing and progressive process (Appleton and Asoko 1996). Different authors have suggested different phases for this process of change. Porlán and Rivero (1998) use an evolutionist framework to analyse teachers’ change. According to the authors, the didactical change in teachers can be described as an evolution from traditional-transmissive didactical models to more innovative models, with different medium steps characterised by technological and spontaneous trends. Quite often the evolution from one of these models to another is not a matter of replacement but partial acquisition (Valcárcel and Sánchez 2000). Loucks-Horsley and colleagues (2003), on the contrary, use a model of teachers’ change regarding what teachers focus on. For the authors, teachers’ change over time evolve from self-oriented concerns to task-oriented concerns and only finally to a concern on the impact of the change. In this sense, the authors claim for “realistic expectations” if change wants to be achieved.

Implementation needs “several years in order for teachers to progress from an early focus on management to a later focus on measuring student learning” (p.50, Loucks-Horsley, Love et al. 2003)

The importance teachers’ give to students learning, which is the main reason why they engage in ongoing teacher development (Bell and Gilbert 1996), suggests that students’ should have a privileged position in order to trigger teachers’ change. For Guskey (2002) improvements in students’ learning outcomes related to teachers’ new practices is not one but the source of significant teachers’ change. In this sense, he proposes a model for teacher change in which teachers’ change their practices as a result of professional development but without changing their beliefs. It is not until the teacher gains evidence of the improvements these practices have produced in their students’ learning results that the teacher actually changes. Ball and Cohen reported findings in this direction: in their project real changes in teachers’ beliefs came after teachers have used the new practice and have seen the benefits it produced in their students, even though in the first place they implemented that practice without thinking it would succeed (Ball and Cohen 1999). For Guskey (2000) this means that “it is not the professional development per se, but the experience of successful implementation that changes their attitudes and beliefs” (p.139). The author proposes a model for teacher change that represents this idea (see Figure 5).

Despite this model is quite rigid, in the sense that significant change can only be achieved in this particular way, it stresses the importance of teachers’ trying out, testing in practice, reflecting on practice or inquiring their own practices for achieving change, which we agree are powerful strategies for teacher learning and change. However, we would not do such a strong hypothesis regarding how change happens. Within the framework of teachers’ narratives³⁵, for instance, beautiful accounts of the change process by teachers’ show how serendipitous, complex, chaotic and particularly multivariable this process is. An example: Fogarty (2001) recounts the four primary influences along her journey of personal change as the influence of a reading, the influence of a school culture, the influence of a mentor, and the influence of a student.

4.2.4. 3. Models of teacher change

The characteristics of teachers’ didactical and professional change described in the above paragraphs come from research studies in the field in which scholars have analysed this process in detail. However, the cited and other authors from research on teachers’ change are not the only ones that have ideas regarding teachers’ change. All researchers and teacher educators in the field of teacher professional development have their own beliefs regarding teachers’ change. These views of change guide their practice (as professional development designers, supporters or researchers) in the same way that teachers’ views on students’ learning guide their teaching practice, whether they research teacher learning or not. In this sense, it would be interesting to have models from which to “classify” existing views of teachers’ change.

35 Within this framework of teachers’ personal stories, it is stressed that despite all personal professional journeys are unique, professional development lessons we can learn and we can use these lessons to soften the resisters. For instance, from Fogarty's or others’ reflections, authors should re-dimension the importance of professional reading and narrative exchange among teachers.

PROFESSIONAL

Figure 5: Model of teachers’ change proposed by Guskey (2002)

In his review of teachers’ educational change, Mellado (2003) uses analogical models from the philosophy of science to establish a parallelism between scientific change and teachers’ didactical change. According to the author, one can understand better some aspects of teachers’ didactical change when comparing it with how science “change” or, in other words, how scientific theories are evaluated and what conditions cause scientific progress. In this sense, Mellado describes three possible models of teacher change: a model of technical rationality, a model of conceptual change and a model of gradual change through internal development. Despite some of the themes discussed for each of these models have appeared in the previous sections, the interest here lies on linking these ideas within particular models analogous to those of the nature of science.

The model of technical rationality is analogous to the positivist-falsationist image of science. Within the positivist analogy, teacher change is seen as unproblematic: the teacher is a technician that applies demonstrated didactical theory transmitted by the experts, and learns practical knowledge through observation. Within the falsationist analogy, teachers’ didactical change arises from teachers’ dissatisfaction with their beliefs and practice.

The second model for teacher change is that of conceptual change (Posner, Strike, Hewson and Gertzog 1982), which the author compares with the scientific research programmes of Lakatos and with certain aspects of the Khunian paradigm change.

Within this model, there is a “competence” between teachers’ beliefs and the new, alternative didactical models presented to them. In this scenario teachers’ change is also triggered by dissatisfaction with their theories. However, this is not enough.

Teachers’ central theories are resistant to change, and thus change won’t happen without the teacher being offered real alternatives. In this sense, the new theories need to be understandable, plausible and useful for the teacher to accept them, either replacing previous ones or better, following new definitions of the conceptual change concept, changing their status. In this decision, personal and social aspects have also an important impact. Regarding the personal, the teacher need to feel empowered enough for undertaking change. Regarding the social, the school culture in which the teacher work is crucial for promoting or inhibiting change.

The third model of teacher didactical change is that of gradual change through internal development. In the words of Parke and Coble (1997) this model is that of

supporting ``teachers to become architects for change through building upon their current conceptions instead of attempting to remediate them'' (p. 785). Following Mellado (2003) analogical exercise, this model can be seen as analogous to the epistemological notions of the research traditions of Laudan and the evolutionism of Toulmin. According to this model, teacher didactical change is seen as progressive instead of radical. Because it happens more by accumulation and ongoing transformation than by replacement, contradictions can easily coexist for a while. This progressive change occurs within a problem-based and inquiry approach, in which teachers engage in solving feasible (within the teachers’ Zone of Proximal Development³⁶) problems of their teaching practice. In this sense, change should affect all aspects of teachers’ knowledge and belief systems, including conceptual, methodological and attitudinal ones. This model explains, for instance, the aforementioned lack of direct relationship found in the literature between teachers’

epistemological beliefs and their practice, while also accepting that this does not mean that teachers are not already changing their views, or that their practice are not already changing. The seed of change could be there, coexisting with many other issues!

The third model of teacher change is also in agreement with previous notions of teacher development as self-development which can not be technically produced;

neither it can achieve any ideal level (Terhart 1999). Teachers, as students, as people, as any learner can develop and change within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Manning and Payne 1993). This fact also has consequences regarding the level of educational change or innovation that can be achieved in the system: as always, educational change is a matter mostly of teachers (also schools) change. Rogan (2007) speaks of defining an appropriate level of curriculum change in a given context and in a given time frame, so that there is no promotion of unrealistic innovation. He coins the term of zone of feasible innovation (ZFI), as parallel to the mentioned ZPD for learning, to refer to the extend to which curriculum development or innovation is feasible for certain teachers in their real contexts.

36 The Zone of Proximal Development is a well-known term coined by Vygostky, defined as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (p.86, Vygotsky 1978).

4.2.4. 4. Teacher learning and teacher change in our publications

Regarding the sort of learning pursued, the three publications of this compendium are

Regarding the sort of learning pursued, the three publications of this compendium are