next surfaced on my desk in late October (oops!), but I renewed my commitment to try out some of the strategies to engage my students in learning. It surfaced again when I cleaned my desk at the end of the semester. Wow, what great ideas were in that folder! At the end of the year I threw it out, because if I hadn’t tried out a single new idea from that folder in a year, I wasn’t going to.
Most of the thousands of teachers with whom I have worked relate to this story. Seminars and conferences generate ideas and strategies but attendees rarely incorporate them into everyday practice.
Change Is a Constant in Education
In my foundations of education class, we studied a history of educational change. From John Dewey to Benjamin Bloom, there seemed to be a small book full of change. To review this history in a broad sense, three leading thinkers are key. Dewey (1938) brought interactivity into the didactic world of teaching and learning. Ralph Tyler (1949) provided the first critical understanding of curriculum and assessment. Bloom (1956) edited a taxonomy of educational objectives that transformed how educators structure learning. As educators gained knowledge about how learning takes place in the brain, accepted the differing ways people think, and reviewed research about teaching and learning, the rate of change accelerated. Schools, districts, states, and nations began to call for accountability, which brought additional change.
Every part of schooling is in flux. Curricula at every level are constantly shifting through several iterations of curriculum mapping, into multiple variations of state standards, the Common Core State Standards, and other guiding documents. Each of these has required teachers to learn new skills, work cooperatively in new settings, and apply new teaching strategies. Teachers have also needed new skills and processes to incorporate new knowledge about the brain and diverse learners. Schools have codified models of instruction to define good instructional practices and standards for evaluation. The political and social climate puts additional pressure on schools and teachers. The goal has always been to graduate students who can contribute to the work force and function in society. As workforce needs shift away from repetitive labor toward technical work that requires more education, so do the desired results of schooling. Education is an institution of change which now comprises a library.
And yet, despite all of this knowledge—about how we learn, how curriculum should be constructed, and how we should teach—individual classrooms stay the same. There are still college classrooms where professors lecture about hands-on learning. There are still middle school classrooms where the teacher holds a mathematics textbook and asks students to copy down algorithms as she copies them from the book. Many classrooms—maybe even most classrooms—do not reflect the latest knowledge or best practices in education.
Changes in Instructional Practices Are Needed
Despite the continuous transformation of many aspects of education, further change is needed. There is a significant perception that public education is doing poorly (Harvey, 2018). School reform is bringing new curricula, expanded pedagogy, additional assessment, requirements for differentiation, new technology, stronger accountability, and more (McDonald, 2014). The media, politicians, business leaders, parents, school boards, and community leaders are vocal. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study report (TIMSS; National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2016), state testing programs, graduation rates, student surveys, attendance data, and other data all indicate we could be doing better (NCES, 2018). The common need for remedial programs for college students (Butrymowicz, 2017) and data about new employees in the workforce who need basic reading and mathematics skills beyond those they acquired in high school reinforce the need to improve (Rothman, 2012). Many students live in poverty or experience other societal factors beyond the control of the school, such as absent or ineffective parenting, lack of jobs, aggression, abuse, and the like, which contribute to students’ poor performance (Jensen, 2009). Along with these changes, educators are presented with students who are increasingly apathetic about school and have increasing distractions from school and learning (Chamberlin & Matejic, 2018).
This is not to say that educators are not working hard or making positive impacts. Much of public education is, in fact, doing fine, and dedicated teachers and administrators deserve credit for their great work. However, this book is about getting even better. School improvement has been a serious topic since the 1970s and has received much attention and support with a significant amount of resources (Edmonds, 1982; Hanushek & Lindseth, 2009). And yet, if you were to travel across the country, drop into a hundred random schools, and visit five classrooms in each of those schools, much of what you would see is similar to the classrooms of the 1950s. While this might seem to contradict the history of constant change discussed in the previous section, the reality is that individual teachers are slow to change (Weimer, 2016). There is, of course, a group of cutting-edge teachers who follow the literature and create their own change to meet the needs of a changing student body. Each of us can reflect on our own experiences as a student and pick out a small group of our favorite teachers who exemplified the best of teaching. However, a large portion of teachers teach as they were taught, relying heavily on direct, teacher-driven instruction. And even the best can get better. This truth is the very reason we need coaching.
We know more now: we know more about how the brain works (Jensen, 2008); we know more about how students learn (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010); we know more about what works in schools (Marzano, 2017). Leaders speak clearly of how effective instruction can improve learning (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010). Effective models and strategies define how to teach, how to assess, how to engage, how to build knowledge, how to differentiate, and how to work together. Comprehensive models of instruction from Charlotte Danielson (2013), Robert J. Marzano (2017), and others are well known. Carol Tomlinson (2014) has spent decades defining and refining differentiation. James Popham (2018), Peter Airasian and Michael Russell (2008), Thomas Guskey (2014), and many more are instructive about assessment. Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker (1998) defined professional learning communities to help teachers work together. We have national and international experts on every aspect of teaching and learning and every type of school who are published and active in the school improvement arena. We understand the problem and the solutions. So why is positive change so elusive?
Change Is Hard
Knowledge is available in the literature, in thousands of hours of professional development, and in the collective practice of millions of teachers. And yet change does not occur, or if it does it is at a glacial speed. Sharing knowledge with every administrator and every teacher and operationalizing it in every classroom for every student is the issue. In many cases, educators understand current best practices but struggle to apply the practices in their schools and classrooms. How do we get educators to change their teaching and learning strategies? It’s about teaching the teachers—through both preservice teacher preparation programs and in-service professional development.
As the requirements for rigor and standardization of curriculum have increased, many teachers, administrators, schools, districts, and states have struggled to keep up. Teacher training failed to keep pace and teachers started to fall behind as soon as they graduated. Professional development expanded; many great presenters provided learning opportunities for teachers. We live and work in an era of great knowledge about teaching and learning. We know what works in teaching, learning, assessment, and collaboration (Hattie, 2009, 2012; Marzano, Warrick, & Simms, 2014). Districts have worked diligently to provide current and effective professional development for teachers and administrators. Teachers leave conferences with folders full of tried and true ideas on how and what to teach. For many educators, speakers in their districts and at conferences are terrific sources of resources and ideas. But alas, even as professional development has increased, it falls short of keeping teachers and the system on the cutting edge (DeMonte, 2013). The transfer from the stage to the classroom remains weak. Classrooms look the same before and after the presentation. Frequently, faculty and administrators read, go to conferences, and attend workshops, and, though temporarily inspired, still continue practices with which they are familiar and comfortable.
Why do teachers continue to use
