Legislative Principles

4. Teachers, administrators, counselors, and other staff need time and support to develop programs that meet these objectives.

For the programs we are describing to be successful, it is crucial that educators and trainers engage in regular, systematic staff development activities designed to help them learn ways to improve the academic success of the diverse groups in their charge. To realize this goal, new Federal legislation should increase support for professional development activities for teachers and instructors, administrators, counselors, and others with the ability to influence change.

Schools and colleges that have tried to combine an integrated curriculum with work-based learning have found that staff development and teacher preparation are key aspects of improvement. Several distinct capacities are important to these changes (Schmidt, 1992). One is the ability to collaborate with other teachers, usually across disciplines. A second is knowledge about the world of work, which especially has to be developed by academic instructors with little work experience outside educational institutions; sometimes this is accomplished with internships or placements in work settings during a summer, for example. Third, many instructors at all levels need support in shifting their methods of teaching to those that are more work-based, student-oriented, and project-centered.

Support for instructors may be even more crucial for postsecondary institutions than for secondary schools. Unlike secondary schools, where teacher training is normally required, preparing postsecondary instructors for their teaching responsibilities is much less common. Aside from degree requirements, most states do not have credentialing requirements for community college instructors (McDonnell and Zellman, 1993), and staff development and in-service education are erratic. To prepare postsecondary instructors for teaching that is both more interdisciplinary and more active, a coherent approach to the preparation and in-service education of community college instructors is necessary.

To be sure, support for staff development was incorporated into the 1990 Amendments to the Carl Perkins Act. However, much of this has been limited to one-shot rather than sustained efforts. We recommend that Federal legislation support more powerful forms of staff development, including summer institutes, professional development schools, work placements, and continuing assistance to teachers at their own schools and institutions. Also, little attention has been paid to developing preservice programs that prepare instructors to provide work-related education; Federal legislation could provide support for creating new models.

In addition to teachers, administrators also need time and support to develop new programs. Career academies, clusters, and majors all imply significant changes in class scheduling, student grouping, and other aspects of school operations. Coordination among schools, colleges, employers, and non-school agencies involved in job training also requires new awareness and activity on the part of administrators (Finch et al., 1992).

Finally, professional development opportunities must be provided for counselors, as emphasized in principle 5.