Working Together to Facilitate Change
NCTE INBOX 8-13-13
Today there is growing agreement that literacy is at the center of all learning. The National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) conducted a nationally representative survey of educators of all roles, grade levels, and subject areas to find out where we stand as a nation. One key point from the survey results is "Working together is working smarter."
The following resources from NCTE and NCLE share how to foster teacher collaboration and facilitate school change.
One of the primary things that teachers value but that school reformers have given short shrift is time to collaborate. Linda Darling-Hammond, an expert on teaching and teacher education, writes about why this is so important to the profession in "What Teachers Need and Reformers Ignore: Time to Collaborate."
Collaborative inquiry offers an alternative to one-size-fits-all and top-down approaches to educator professional learning through its approach and its results. Collaborative inquiry changes the professional learning experience by reframing how professional knowledge is constructed and applied. Read more about how collaborative inquiry differs from traditional professional development.
The types of organizational conditions and practices that enable schools to build and sustain a collaborative culture that is grounded in evidence of student learning can be referred to as capacity building. Focusing on the collective capacity within a team, a school, a district, or an organization while also attending to rising literacy expectations increases the likelihood of effectively meeting the teaching and learning demands associated with the modern multi-faceted definition of literacy. See how to create a framework for capacity building.
What does it mean to take change to scale? Michael J. Palmisano tackles this question in Taking Inquiry to Scale: An Alternative to Traditional Approaches to Education Reform. Knowing that nobody knows a school or school district like those who live and work in it, Palmisano argues persuasively that change happens when educators come together to learn with and from one another in the context of shared practice. Read more in the sample chapter, "Reframing What It Means to Take Education Reform to Scale." Read more about scale in the Literacy in Learning Exchange post "Scale Matters."
How can you facilitate change in your school or district?
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