Promising Professional Development Approaches

Although there are many ways to provide teachers with professional development, three approaches show the greatest promise for meeting teachers' needs. They include work-based learning, the mini-sabbatical, and the case study method.

Work-Based Learning
For some time, NCRVE researchers have systematically searched for innovative, work-based teacher professional development programs. In Teacher Learning in the Workplace and Community, a product of this initiative, they identified five programs where a workplace learning focus seemed most promising (Phelps et al., 1998). What these programs had in common was the major commitment they made to professional development, and the initiatives they used to connect professional development opportunities with work-based learning.

One example of this commitment may be found in the Jackson-Hillsdale (Michigan) School-to-Work (STW) Partnership. Shortly after the School-to-Work Opportunities Act was enacted in 1994, the Intermediate School Districts of Jackson, Hillsdale, and more recently Lenawee, joined together to establish an expansive system that would transform the educational experience of all students. This experience was designed so each student would "graduate from high school globally aware, technologically literate, technically competent, and prepared to succeed in a career path designed to accommodate individual interests and abilities" (p. 45). The system that was created to change students' educational experience focuses on three key components:

• Comprehensive Career Awareness and Planning--including K-12 career awareness and planning, educational development plans for all students, and exposure to career pathways and portfolios.
• High Academic Standards for All Students--facilitated through strategies such as integrated academics, contextual learning, and authentic assessment.
• Structured Work-Based Learning Opportunities--such as job shadowing, unpaid work experiences, cooperative education, mentorships, and senior transition projects.

An effort of this magnitude demanded that educators' roles change from teaching in traditional school settings to linking the school and the workplace in creative and productive ways. To meet this need, the partnership established a variety of professional development opportunities for teachers that ranged from gaining an in-depth understanding of STW transition to hands-on experiences in business and industry.

One such opportunity for professional development is a workplace fellowship program. In collaboration with the Greater Jackson Chamber of Commerce and Spring Arbor College, a Business Fellowship Program was organized to provide educators and corporate employees with collaborative workplace experiences. Corporate sponsors provided a $2000 stipend to each educator who participated in the fellowship program. Since the program was initiated, 53 educators have participated in a full-time six-week summer experience where they observe and work on activities in collaboration with the participating corporate employees. These activities apply concepts learned during the educators' workplace experience to work on actual projects and tasks. Four hours per week are spent on the Spring Arbor College campus discussing implications the experiences have for classroom instruction. Surveys of former participants have indicated that the experience assists educators in understanding the relationships between the school and the world of work.

Another opportunity created through the Partnership and strongly supported by the community is a Teacher Externship Program. Over the past four years more than 55 teachers have participated in a voluntary one-day, work-based experience within business and industry. Even though the externship is quite brief, it has helped teachers to better understand how their subject matter applies to the world of work. Teachers who complete the externship bring back a number of real worklife experiences they can connect with their teaching and share with their students.

Educators and business leaders in the Portland, Oregon area made a similar commitment to provide expanded learning opportunities for all teachers and students (Phelps et al., 1998). The vehicle for making this happen has been the Business-Education Compact (BEC). Established in 1984, the Compact is a non-profit organization that connects educators with the workplace and is supported through membership dues, contracted services, grants, and contributions. The BEC's board of directors includes 30 business leaders and 30 educators who collectively address its mission of promoting excellence, relevancy, and expanded learning opportunities for all educators and all students. Since 1984, over 1,800 teachers have participated in BEC programs, including paid or unpaid worksite internships with employers. Educators' experiences have in turn impacted more than 125,000 students. A parallel program called the School-to-Work Information System (SWIS) that provides students with direct work-based experiences was begun by the BEC in 1995. Examples of work-based and work-related learning activities offered to students include paid and unpaid work-based learning experiences with employers and employer/site visitations.

The Mini-Sabbatical
The mini-sabbatical is an innovative approach that can assist experienced teachers in learning how to create meaningful, reform-related curricula and instruction for school-to-career programs. It was developed to help teachers break out of the traditional classroom and its subject-specific instructional approach (Ramsey, Stasz, Ormseth, Eden, & Co, 1997). During the six-week mini-sabbatical, teachers engage in a range of learning experiences, from applying ethnographic techniques in the workplace to designing "authentic" lessons--those that apply classroom learning to real-life situations. Not only do they learn valuable information about the workplace; they also develop skills in translating workplace observations into meaningful learning experiences for their own students.

Usually teachers participate in mini-sabbaticals during the summer months. They spend the first two weeks preparing for observations and then observing work practices at job sites in business and industry. During the second two weeks, teachers apply their observational skills by preparing a curriculum unit that includes lessons based on "Classrooms that Work," a model derived from classroom observation research. The units that participants prepare should require students to apply practice and problem solving to real-life situations. In the final two weeks, teachers actually teach the new unit of instruction they developed and then assess its effectiveness.

The following are examples of two curriculum units teachers developed during mini-sabbaticals:

• Design and build a model jack for underground tunneling that temporarily supports the tunnel during the initial excavation work.
• Develop a plan for NASA on managing the colonization of the moon.

In her 1997 study, Stasz pilot tested the mini-sabbatical with experienced teachers. She found that teachers who took part in a mini-sabbatical increased their knowledge of work practice; created integrated curricula; adopted teaching roles to support applied, real-life learning; and developed alternative assessments.

Unlike many short, "one-shot" inservice education efforts, the mini-sabbatical serves as an excellent example of holistic professional development. Teachers are taught and coached from start to finish: conceptualizing the unit, developing the curriculum, teaching the content, and assessing its success. The mini-sabbatical promises to change teacher practice to models that align more closely with integration, school-to-work, and associated reforms. However, some issues still need to be worked out, including financing and academic credit for mini-sabbaticals.

The Case Study Method
A third promising approach to teacher education is the case study method (Cruickshank et al., 1996). Cases that portray important aspects of real-life situations, using pseudonyms to protect people and locations, are frequently used in areas such as business and law to bridge the gap between basic knowledge and actual practice. However, they can also offer teachers opportunities to apply knowledge in real-life teaching scenarios and allow greater personal reflection than didactic coursework or trial and error methods. Assessments of case study use in education and other fields have shown that participants enjoy them and in the process can improve their problem-solving and decision-making skills.

An abbreviated version of the full case and questions of Wilhollow High School demonstrates the usefulness of this method:

Teachers Santanya Murphee, an English teacher, and Kevin Bradenberg, a business teacher, were selected to attend a regional conference on the integration of vocational and academic education. They were chosen from among 10 interested teachers because they were well respected by other faculty, and had already jointly developed a project that involved giving students a common assignment across their classes.

Part of the workshop included ways of writing across the curriculum, so it turned out to be even better than they expected. Their principal, Jack Kilgannon, suggested they provide an inservice session for other teachers at the high school so all could benefit from their attending the conference. Later, when the principal saw how effective the inservice session had been for Wilhollow High School faculty, he suggested that Kevin and Santanya provide a similar session for teachers from the Wilhollow Technical Center, located five miles away.

One of the district's long-range goals was to get members of both faculties to cooperate with one another in integration activities. However, when the workshop began, they immediately sensed a feeling of hostility on the part of a number of the technical center teachers. The teachers pointed out that the examples Kevin and Santanya were using did not relate to the materials their students read. Further, they said that students did very little writing in their classes.

Later, in a conversation with Principal Kilgannon about their experience at the technical center, Kevin and Santanya began exploring why the inservice session had not been successful there, whereas it had been at the high school.

Here are a few of the questions related to this case that participants are asked to consider:

• What are some possible reasons why the inservice session was not favorably received by the technical center faculty?
• What should teachers know about one another and what others teach before they try to help one another?
• How could Mr. Kilgannon have helped Kevin and Santanya avoid the hostility from the technical center faculty in the first place?

NCRVE staff have prepared cases like the one at Wilhollow High School to aid educators in developing problem-solving, decision-making, and team-building skills as they implement integration in their schools (Schmidt, Finch, Faulkner, & Kandies, 1995). Cases are organized around four functional themes: (1) cooperative efforts, (2) curriculum strategies, (3) instructional strategies, and (4) administrative practices and procedures. The 46 cases were field tested with more than 400 teachers. Since their release in 1995, they have been used extensively in teacher preparation and professional development programs throughout the U.S.