DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 333 064 UD 028 061

AUTHOR Lieberman, Ann, Ed.

TITLE Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the
Future Now.
REPORT NO 1SBN-1-85000-673-3
PUB DATE 90
NOTE 264p.
AVAILABLE FROM The Falmer Press, Taylor and Francis In., 1900 Frost
Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007.
PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Collected Works - General (020)

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DESCRIPTORS *Cooperation; Educational Change; Elementary
Secondary Education; *Organizational Change;
*Organizational Development; *Participative Decision
Making; Professional Autonomy; *School Organization;
*School Restructuring

ABSTRACT
This collection of 12 essays examines the school's
need to establish a collaborative environment as a precondition for
its own development. The following chapters explore the necessary
shift in schools from a bureaucratic to a professional mode: (1)
"Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Structure for Leadership in
Schools" (D. L. Clarke and J. M. Meloy); (2) "Teacher
Professionalism: Why and How" (L. Darling-Hammond); and (3) "What Are
Schools of Education For?" (S. B. Sarason). The following chapters
examine critical issues of fundamental change: (4) "A Fundamental
Puzzle of School Reform" (L. Cuban* (5) "Education Reform
Strategies: Will They Increase Teacher Commitment?" (S. J.
Rosenholz); (6) "Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety" (G.
Sykes); and (7) "Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart" (T. E.
Deal). The following chapters investigate the changing roles,
relationships, and culture of the school: (8) "The Social Realities
of Teaching" A. Liebermann and L. Miller); (9) "Teachers as
Colleagues" (J. W. Little); (10) "Leadership for Curriculum
Improvement: The School Administrator's Role" (G. A. Griffin); (11)
"Staff Development and School Change" (M. W. McLaughlin and D. D.
Marsh); and (12) "Schools for the Twenty-first Century: The
Conditions for Invention" (P. C. Schlechty). Two figures are
included. Each chapter inc)udes a list of references. (FMW)

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SCHOOLS AS COLLABORATIVE
CULTURES: CREATING THE
FUTURE NOW. ED ITED BY
ANN LIEBERMAN
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The Fahner Press

SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT ANO THE
MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE SERIES: 3

2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE

Schools as Collaborative Cultures:
Creating the Future Now

.4
School Development and the Management of Change Series

Series Editors: Peter Holly and Geoff Southworth

Cambridge Institute of Education
Cambridge, C82 2BX, UK

I THE DEVELOPING SCHOOL

Peter Holly and Geoff Southworth, Cambridge Institute k!l' Education, UK
2 HERE COMES THE ASSEMBLY MAN
A Year in the Life of a Primary School
Fred Sedgtvick, UK
3 SCHOOLS AS COLLABORATIVE CULTURES
Creating the Future Now
Edited by Ann Lieberman, University of Washington, USA

Forthcoming tides in the series:

SEMI-DETACHED TEACHERS
Building Support and Advisory Relationships in Classrooms
Colin Bion, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, UK
ASSESSMENT AND TESTING IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL
Colin Conner, Cambridge Institute of Education. UK
PRIMARY EDUCATION
From Plowden :o the 1990s
Norman Thomas, Honorary Professor at the I Iniversity of Warwick, UK

THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL

Implementing the National Curriculum in Science and Design Technology
Anne Pennell and David Alexander, Bedfordshire Education Service, UK
School Development and the Management of Change Series: 3

Schools as Collaborative Cultures:

Creating the Future Now

Edited by
Ann Lieberman

® The Falmer Press

(A member of the Taylor & Francis Grouro
New York Philadelphia London
UK The Falmer Press. Ra akine Road. Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG24
OPR
USA The Faimer Press, laylor 8: Francis 1nc., 1900 Frost Road, Suite
101, Bristol, PA 19007

::Selection ape4. editorial material copyright Ann Lieberman

Ail ri3Ovs reserved. No part of this publkation may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or hy any means, elearonic,
mechanical, photocopyink recording, or otherwise, withi-a permission in
writing .frorn the Publisher

First published 1990

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Schools as collaborative cultures: creating the future
now. (School development and the management of
change).
1. United States. Schools
I. Lieberman, Ann 11 Series
371',00973
ISBN 1-85000-672-5
ISBN 1-85000-673-3 phk

Jacket design by Caroline Archer

Typeset in 10i/11 Bembo by

Chapterhouse, The Cloisters, Formby L37 3PX

Printed and bound in Great Britain by laylor & Francis (Printers) Ltd.
Basingstoke on paper which ha, a specified pH value on final paper
manufacture of not less than 7.5 and is therefore 'acid free'.
 Contents

Acknowledments

Series Editors' Preface ix

Introduction Xi

Part 1: Understanding What We Value

Chapter 1 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Structure for Leadership in
Schools
David L. Clark and Judith M. Meloy 3
Chapter 2 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How
Linda Darling-Hammond 25
Chapter 3 What Are Schools of Education For?
Seymour E. Sarason 51

Part 2: Examining Critical Issues of Fundamental Change

Chapter 1 A Fundamental Puzzle of School Reform
Larry Cuban 71
Chapter 5 Education Reform Strategies: Will They Increase Teacher
Commitment?
Susan J. Rosenholtz 79
Chapter 6 Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety
Gary Sykes 103
Chapter 7 Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart
Terrence E. Deal 127

Part 3: Changing the Roles, Relationships and the Culture of Schools 151
Chapter 8 The Social Realities of Teaching
Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller 153
Chapter 9 Teachers as Colleagues
Judith Warren Little 165
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Chapter 10 Leadership for Curriculum Improvement: The School

Administrator's Role
Gary A. Gnffin 195
Chapter 11 Staff Development and School Change
Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin and David D. Marsh 213
Chapter 12 Schools for the Twenty-first Century: The Conditions for Invention
Phillip C. Schkchty 233

Notes on Contributors 257

Index 259

vi
 Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 David L. Clark and Judith M. Miov. 'Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic

Structure for Leadership in Schools' is reproduced with permission from Sergiovanni,
T. M. and Moore, J. H. (Eds) (1989) Sdwolinjor Tomorwu,, Boston, Allyn and Bacon.

Chapter 2 Linda Dar:ing-Hammond, 'Teacher Professionalism: Why and How' is a paper

commissioned by Ann Lieberman for the Task Force on Professionalism in New York
City, April, 1988.
Chapter 3 Seymour B. Sarason, 'What are Schools of Education For?' is a speech delivered
at the 50th Anniversary Education Convocation Address, Syracuse University, September
1983.

Chapter 4 Larry Cuban, 'A Fundamental Puzzle of School Reform' first appeared in
Kappan January 1988, pp. 341-44 and is reproduced with permission from Pauline Gough,
Kappan, Box 789, Bloomington, Indiana.

Chapter 5 Susan). Rosenholm 'Education Reform Strategies: Will They Increase Teacher
Commitment?' first appeared in American journal 0.1- Education, Volume 95, 4, August
1987, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 534-62.

Chapter 6 Gary Sykes, 'Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety' was first published by
the NCREL for the proceedings of a conference and is reproduced with permission from
the North Central Regional Laboratory (NCREL), Illinois, USA.

Chapter 7 Terrence E. Deal, 'Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart' is adapted from
'Cultural Change: Opportunities, Silent Killer, or Metamorphosis?' in Kirkman, R.,
Saxton, M. and Serpa, R. (Eds) (1985) Gainint? Control of the Corporah. Culture,
San
Francisco, Jossey Bass, pp. 292-331.

Chapter 8 Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller, 'The Social Realities of Teaching' ;s
reproduced with permission from Lieberman, A. and Miller, L. (1980) '1.eachers: Their
World and Their Work, Alexandria, Virginia, The Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development.
Chapter 9 Judith Warren Little, 'Teachers as Colleagues is reproduced with permission
from V. Richardson-Koehler (1987) Educators' Handbook: A Research Perspeaive, New
York, Longrnan, pp. 491-518.
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Chapter 10 Gary Griffin, 'Leadership for Curriculum Improvement: The School

Administrator's Role' is taken from Section Three, 'Issues of Leadership' in Tanner, L. N.
(Ed) (1988) Critical Issues in Curriculum. the Eighty-seventh Yearbook of the National
Society for the Study of Education. Part 1, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
pp. 244-86. Reproduced with permission from Kenneth J. Rehage of the NSSE.
Chapter 1/ An earlier version of McLaughlin and Marsh's chapter, 'Staff Development and
School Change' appeared in Staff Development: New Demands, New Realities, New
Perspectives,
(1978), New York, Teachers College Press and is reproduced with permission
from Carole Saltz, Teachers College Press.
Chapter 12 Phillip Schlechty, 'Schools for the Twenty-first Century: The Conditions for
Invention' first appeared in the Journal .± Teacher Educati,m, 44. and is reproduced with
permission from the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education.
 Series Editors' Preface

This book is a collection of essays' from a brace of the best commentators American
education has to offer. It provides rich testimony to the power of teacher collaboration
within school development. As we maintained in the lead volume to this series (Holly and
Southworth, 1989), teacher collaboration is a key activity in The Developing School. The
contributions offered here provide a set of improvisations on the same theme; that each
school needs to establish a collaborative culture as a precondition for its own development.
Associated themes touched upon here include bureaucratic schooling (the antithesis of
collaborative schooling), democratic leadership, teacher professionalism and teacher
leadership, teacher involvement in decision-making and 'colleagueship' (or collegiality).
Moreover, many of the authors represented here would seem to equate teacher
collaboration with teacher empowerment, an enhanced sense of professionalism and,
indeed, the restructuring of schooling.
There is undoubted power in collaboration, as this quotation from a teacher
'collaborator' would suggest:
(Because of the collaborative team-work) there are so many more times to cele-
brate, so many more people to celebrate with, so much more to celebrate .. . .
Looking back, let me sum it up this way. The literature circles project is a
wonderfully rewarding experience for both teachers and students. It is also a
huge, overwhelming and sometimes frustratir g undertaking and there's a vt-rv
good chance I would not have stuck with it if I had not had the other 'guinea
pig' teachers to fall back on. In a profession -II too often relies on each
individual doing his/her job independently, worh ;rig as a collaborative
teaching team is a refreshing change of pace and .. also a matter of survival,
maintaining your sanity, and achieving success.
These comments, from the member of a collaborative team of teachers, witness the power
in collaborative inquiry within collaborative implementation. The focus is on teachers
'coaching' each other, reflecting on their common experiences and building the
curriculum together. ... and, in so doing, creating a climate or culture of acceptance for
this kind of mutuaiity of support. As Slavin (1987) has emphasized, 'The collaborative
school provides a climate and a structure that encourage teachers to work together and
with the principal and other administrators toward school improvement and professional
growth.' School improvement, when defined in terms of student learning outcomes, is

ii
Schools 4S Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

what teacher collaboration is for. Collaboration is the process, the 'product' of which is
improwd teaching and learning in every classroom. As Judith Warren Little has
emphasize4 elsewhere,
In one of .. . the schools, classroom observation is so frequent, so intellectually
lively ar.d intense, and so thoroughly integrated into the daily work and so
associated with accomplishments for all who participate, that it is difficult to
see how the practices could fail to improve teaching. (Little, 1981)
It is clearly a matter of professionalization and internalization (the mobilization of the
change process from within) leading to a strengthening of staff relationships which, in
turn, enhances the performances of teachers and students alike. These important themes
are returned to time and time again in this volume and, in our opinion, they are the themes
which will make for genuine and lasting educational changes in the 1990s.
If collaboration for development is a theme of this series, collaboration 2S
development is the theme of this book which we warmly recommend to you.

Peter Holly and Geoff Southworth

Series Editors
 Introduction

Ann Lieberman

This book is a collection of articles or chapters written by intellectual and scholarly leaders
of the school reform movement in the United States and selected from a variety of books
and journals. Although they take different approaches to the discussion of the needs,
processes, problems, possibilities and practices for changing schools, they all share some
common themes. These themes include the creation of community in schools, the struggle
to understand and develop the use of such ideas as commitment, incentives, colleagueship
and leadership, and the desire fundamentally to rethink how schools can change. None of
thnse authors looks at the topic idealistically, but, rather, they all engage in the struggle to
be both visionary and realistic, to build futures rooted in the realities of schools. Such a
stance, we believe, allows all of to involved in the work of schools not only to deepen our
understanding of the complexities of making change in schools, but also to use what we
know from piactice, research and theory to do better work. From the schools of
education, wncic teachers and principals arc 'prepared' for their work in schools, to the
contexts wherein they 'become' professionals and leaders, changes are suggested.
The book is divided into three parts. In the first, three chapters explore the necessary
shift in schools from a bureaucratic to a professional mode. Clark and Meloy argue that the
assumptions about people and the structure of work in schools are 'unreasonable, unwise
and unnecessary'. They propose an alternative to the bureaucratic structure, focusing on a
broader view of leadership for schools, counseling patience in the building of new forms.
Darling-Hammond continues the discussion as shc sets forth reasons why
professionalizing teaching could fundamentally change schools. Her argument links issues
of status, autonomy and respect for teachers to the vital question of whether
professionalization will 'increase the probability that students will be well-educated'. Both
articles present powerful sociological analyses in support of these changes. Sarason's
chapter encourages schools of education to use history as a source of knowledge so that
they may better see how changes in the society have an impact on schools. He urges
colleges of education to be concerned with problems of practice, to have at least a portion
of an education faculty engaged in seeking to understand the realities of school life.
The second part examines the tough issues involved in the process of change itself
the necessities for and the difficulties of 'fundamental rather than superficial change.
Cuban's article poses two types of change. His discussion and analysis of 'first' and
xi

13
Schools as Collahorative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

'second' order change puts into historical, political and organizational perspective the
necessity for framing the big questions so that fundamental changes may be instituted.
Rosenholtz, using data from two reform efforts (minimal competency testing and career
ladders), discusses and analyzes the connections between teachers' academic success with
students an,4 their sense of efficacy and commitment making clearer the connection and
delicate nature of the teacher-student relationship. Sykes, deepening the discussion of
teachers and teaching, poses two perspectives which dominate the thinking of policy-
makers: one, the prescriptive approach to change with its consequent constraints, and the
other, the awarness or lack of it, of thc variety that exists among teachers and settings.
Deal, in his chapter, educates us to the critical importance of myth and symbol as we
attempt to change the organizational culture of the school.
The last part: goes into the sch.ols themselves, as the authors describe what the
changing culture of a school looks like, what the conditions are that support constructive
change and how the roles and relationships change. Lieberman and Miller begin the section
by exploring the notions of rhythms, rules, interactions and feelings of teachers in their
day-to-day work with students. Little, using both her own research and that of others,
documents 'close up' the practices and the problems of building colleagueship among
teachers. Using research to guide him, Griffin builds an important case for the role of
principal as promoter of curriculum work for the 'teacher as classroom executive',
redefining educational leadership for both teacher and principal in the process. In their
classic article, McLaughlin and Marsh document the necessary conditions for
implementing constructive change in schools. Evidence from the nation-wide Rand
Change Agent Study found in this 1978 article enlarged our knowledge of implementation
strategies and altered the direction of research into school change for the next decade.
Ending the volume, Schlechty provides us with a dramatic vision of how schools of the
tv..trity-first century should look. Ending where we began, the fundamental reform issues
are now practically and conceptually described. As Schlechty states in closing: 'All visions
are dangerous and can lead to excess, but without vision, the future will happen to us.
With a clear vision, we are in position to help invent what happens.'

xii

14
 PART I
Understanding What We Value

15
 Chapter 1

Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic

Structure for Leadership in Schools

David L. Clark and Judith M. Meloy

This chapter has a concern and a viewpoint that go beyond the question of restructuring
the roles of teachers and principals. The concern is that contemporary organizations have
sacrificed the freedom of their employees in favor of control over those employees to the
disadvantage of both the employee and the organization. The viewpoint is that the
decision to do so is based upon assumptions about people and organizational st-ucture that
are unreasonable, unwise and unnecessary.

Reflections on Leadership and Structure

The images of and metaphors for structure and leadership in the literature of organizations
are scam in number and similar in content. Before turning to a systematic examination of
our concern and viewpoint we offer two metaphors that affected our approach to the
topic.

A Metaphor for Leadership

Consider, for a moment, an alternative metaphor for leadership suggested by Walker

Percy in The Thanatos Syndrome. His narrator reports this 'secret belief' transmitted by Dr
Harry Stack Sullivan to his residents:
Here's the secret . . .. You take that last patient we saw. Offhand, what would
you say about him? A loser, right? A loser by all counts. You know what
you're all thinking to yourself? You're thinking, No wonder that guy is
depressed. He's entitled to be depressed. If I were he, I'd be depressed too.
Right? Wrong. You're thinking the most we can do for him is make him feel a
little better, give him a pill or two, a little pat or two. Right? Wrong. Here's
the peculiar thing and I'll never understand why this is so: Each patient this side

3
&hoots as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

of psychosis, and even some psychotics, has the means of obtaining what he needs, she
needs, with a little help frimt pi. Incidentally, Doctors, how do we know you
don't look like losers to me, or I to you)
The narrator continues:
But there it was, to me the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field,
that is to say, the patient's truest unique ;elf which lies within his, the
patient's, power to reach and which we, as little as we do, can help him reach.
Do you know that this is true? I don't know why or how, but it is true.
People can get better, can come to themselves, .. with a little help from you.2
.

Suspend more traditional metaphors for leadership and imagine that Dr Sullivan had been
thinking about a school and had been querying a group of administrative interns. How
easily do we fall into the habit of classifying the teachers in 'our' school? How many do we
classify as losers, recalcitrants, drones? How many teachers do we give up on? How hard
do we try to manipulate them to do what we think needs to be done or to force them to
leave if they do not respond?
Suppose the object were to figure out what it is that the teachers need rather than
what the school needs? Need to do what? Need to tap into each one's truest, unique self;
to reach so that s/he has a chance to succeed; to become what every person desires to
become an effective, recognized, rewarded individual in their work setting.
Our skills in and tools of administration have not been designed to fit the psychiatric
metaphor. We assume that someone, other than the classroom teacher, has the knowledge
and the wisdom to assert organizational goals, which are monitored with such devices as
management by objectives, teacher evaluation systems and curricular syllabuses. The
output of these control mechanisms on then be brought to bear on the analysis of the
teaching staff. Consequently, they can be classified and provided with technical staff
development interventions to help them become better than they are.
But this is no technical business in which we are engaged. Success in staff training
programs is like success in stopping or reducing smoking, drinking, gambling or drugs.
The individual has to want to take the action. Staff training has to follow the discovery of
one's unique self. The intrinsic compulsion to succeed, in any role, follows from the
discovery of one's unique self. When administrators foster that compulsion in others, then
the strength of the school as an adaptive, excellent unit increases permaaently. When they
fail to do so, the pills and the pats are useless tools for improvement.

A Metaphor for Organizational Struaure

Turn to an alternative metaphor for organizational structure suggested by the Declaration

of Independence ot the United States. The assumptions posited by the framers laid the
foundation for the political structures that followed. The self-evident truths were five in
number, the guarantee to all persons of (1) equality, (2) life, (3) liberty, and (4) the pursuit
of happiness based on (5) the consent of the governed.
Contrast this set of conditions with the assumptions underlying classical bureaucracy.
Weber noted:

17e,i
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Stmoure for Leadership in Schools

Bureaucratization offers above all the optimum possibility for carrying through
the principle of specializing administrative functions according to purely
objective considerations. Individual performances are allocated to functionaries
who have specialized training and who by constant practice learn more and
more. The 'objective' discharge of business primarily means a discharge of
business according to calculable rules and 'without regard for personc.3
Weber continued:
[Bureaucracy by] its specific nature . . . develops the more perfectly the more
the bureaucracy is 'dehumanized,' the more completely it succeeds in
eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal,
irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is the specific
nature Of bureaucracy and it is appraised 25 its special virtue.'
What an interesting contrast. The Declaration of Independence is built solely on
assumptions about persons. Bureaucracy assumes that organizational structure can be
considered 'without regard for persons.' Once the structure is considered apart from
people, the consent of the governed in the designation of leaders is inappropriate because
election reduces 'the strictness of hierarchical subordination .'s Domination and power
assume precedence over liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as Weber noted:
The professional bureaucrat is chained to his activity by his entire material and
ideal existence. In the great majority of cases, he is only a single cog in an ever-
moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed route of
march . . [and] As an instrument for societalizing' relations of power,
bureaucracy has been and is a power instrument of the first order for the one
who controls the bureaucratic apparatus.6
Suppose, then, that one could imagine an organizational structure with the individual as
its building block, exhibiting a total regard for persons. Reasonably, this personal model
would trade off control for empowerment, domination for freedom, and authority for
consent. An organization built on these principles would choose its members and leaders,
concern itself with the self-actualization of all its members, share the power tools of the
organization, de-emphasize hierarchical relationships, and create opportunities for self-
fulfilling jobs.
In fact, the Declaration of Independence as a metaphor for structure would require a
leadership style and leader behavior similar to that described by the metaphor of the
administrator as psychoanalyst. In both instances the design would be built around the
needs of the professional staff of the school.
These two metaphors do not fit the modal conditions in American schools. They are
not the metaphors on which either leader behrior or structure in schools has been based.
American schools are bureaucracies. The root structural metaphor for Max Weber was
clear: 'the fully developed bureaucratic mechanism compares with other organizations
exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production.'7 Our
metaphors for leadership suggest an individual in control, holding onto rather than passing
the buck, mobilizing the troops, running a lean and mean organization, making hard

I
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

decisions, not running a popularity contest. This chapter will argue that two sets of
interacting assumptions about (1) people and (2) organizational structure are paralyzing
efforts to modify the roles of principals and teachers in schools. As we try to modify one set
of assumptions, the other jumps to the fore and we conclude that the demands of
practicality make basic change impossible.
But one person's practicality is another person's will-o'-the-wisp. The definition of
practicality is derived from the assumptions one makes about the factors that effect
practicalness in specific circumstances or situations. Our view of schools currently is that
they are impractical organizations because they are based on incorrect assumptions about
both persons and structure. They are inappropriate as well as impractical because they
impose a system of control on the learning situation which inhibits the successful conduct
of the teaching-learning act. However, these conclusions should be held in abeyance
pending a more systematic examination of assumptions held commonly about people in
organizations and organizational structure.

Assumptions about the Person in Work Organizations

Fifty years ago Chester Barnard was grappling with the place of the individual in
organizational theory. He reminded his readers of the tendency for the 'person' to become
'people' as we think about him or her as 'them'.
Sometimes in everyday work an individual is something absolutely unique,
with a special history in every respect. This is usually the sense in which we
regard ourselves, and so also our nearest relations, then our friends and
associates . .. The farther we push away from ourselves the less the word
.

'individual' means what it means when applied to you and me ... .8

The complication of talking about the individual without categorizing her/him into
clusters of 'them' confuses the theoretician just as it does the practitioner. How can you
make assumptions about people that fit persons? Well, of course, you cannot. So the
theoretician falls back to the position of modal assumptions about people. How do you
think most people feel about themselves, their work, their relations with others? Are there
some assumptions about people that are more valid or more heuristic in dealing with
individuals than other assumptions? Are there some more likely to be true of more people
in more work situations? Have some assumptions or sets of assumptions about people had
more or less influence on the theories of structuring work organizations?
Organizatiowl theorists have argued for thirty year that the answer to these
questions is 'yes', from the complicated explication by Robert Presthus of Harry Stack
Sullivan's interpersonal theory to the simple, formulations of Douglas McGregor and
Chris Argyris based on behavioral and personality theory.9

Theory X and Theory Y

Douglas McGregor asserted that there were a few pervasive assumptions about human

6
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Strwture for Leadership in Schools

nature and human behavior that are implicit in both the theory and practice of
management:
I The average human being has an inherent dislike oC work and will avoid it if he
can.
2 Because of this human characteristic of dislike of work, most people must be
coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment to get them to put
forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives.
3 The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility,
has relatively little ambition, wants security above al1.10
He contended that these assumptions, which he labeled 'Theory X', influenced managerial
strategy although they did not describe accurately human behavior. He argued that these
assumptions were not straw men but were, in fact, the dominant assumptions in the heads
of managers.
This assumption of the 'mediocrity of the masses' is rarely expressed so bluntly.
In fact, a good deal of lip service is given to the ideal of the worth of the average
human being. Our political and social values demand such public expressions.
Nevertheless, a great many managers will give private support to this
assumption, and it is easy to see it reflected in policy and practice."
So it is this very day.
In contrast, McGregor asserted a set of generalizations about human behavior that, he
contended, represented a view of behavior better supported by the findings of social
science:

1 The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or

rest. The average human being does not inherently dislike work . . .
2 . . . Man will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives

to which he is committed.
3 Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their
achievement . .

4 The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept
but to seek responsibility . . . .
5 The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and
creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly,
distributed in the population .. .12
McGregor concluded his argument by noting that, 'if employees are lazy, indifferent,
unwilling to take responsibility, intransigent, uncreative, uncooperative, Theory
implies that the causes lie in management's methods of organization and contre and not
on 'the nature of the human resources with which we must work."3

Self-Actualization: Developmental Trends of Human Personality

Three years before the publication of McGregor's work, Chris Argyris attempted to
7
Schools as Collabcrative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

present an integrated picture of the behavioral sciences and organization in a volume he

subtitled 'The Conflict between System and the Individual'. Argyris rooted the conflict in
seven assumptions about developmental personality trends of individuals in our culture.
He argued that these dimensions are descriptive of a basic multidimensional process toward
self-actualization which is 'characteristic of a relatively large majority of the
population . 1.14
1 from a state of passivity to activity; increasingly self-initiatory and self-
determinat ive ;
2 from a state of dependence to independence;
3 from behaving in only a few ways to being capabk of behaving in many different ways;
4 from having erratic, casual, shallow interests to deeper interests;
5 from havir.g a short t:me perspective to a longer time perspective;
6 from being in a subordinate position to aspiring to occupy an equal and/or
superordinate position relative to their peers;
7 from a lack of awareness of self to an awareness of and control over self."

Argyris contended that these developmental trends were basic properties of the human
personality. Theoretically, this means that mature adults 'will want to express needs or
predisposifions related to the adult end of each specific developmental continuum. "6 He
went on to present empirical evidence, `to support the proposition that the basic impact of
the formal organizational structure is to make the employees feel dependent, submissive,
and passive, and to require them to utilize only a few of their less important abilities.'17
Fifty years ago, thirty years ago, twenty-five years ago and today these same
propositions sound true and troublesome:
1 Thc uniqueness of the individual, a truism in the way in which we view
ourselves, is lost as we view others in the organization.
2 Most of us, most of the time, typify our subordinates, colleagues and often
superordinates as exhibiting Theory X characteristics. We believe, rather
-dinarily, that superordinates view us as Theory X performers. We are each, of
course, certain of our own status as Theory Y performers.
3 All of us concur that Argyris' developmental continuum describes our own
personality growth pattern but arc (a) uncertain that it describes that of our
colleagues and subordinates and (b) certain that limits have to be placed on
f-ctering this development in the workplace.

Assumptions about the Structure of Work Organizations

Why are we making such stumbling progress toward modifying practice in our work
organizations to fit what bye been generally accepted theoretical propositions about
human behavior and personality for decades? In the field of education, for example, the
restricted role of the classroom teacher looks little different than it did thirty years ago.
One explanation is self-contained under the heading 'assumptions about the person'.
A reasonable argument can be mounted that a natural characteristic of people is to distrust

8
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Structure for Leadership in Schools

and undervalue others. Another possibility is that our assumptions about organizational
structure reinforce that 'natural' tendency by allowing us to rationalize our negative view
of people in more acceptable terms, e.g., 'I really believe in the creativity, energy,
ambition and independence of people, but you just can't tolerate anarchy in school or
business or.. . . ' In fact, these are complementary explanations. Not only can each position
serve to rationalize the other, but each tends to force us to accept the other. Presthus,
quoting Harry Stack Sullivan, described what we believe to be the case in explaining our
tolerance, even encouragement, of unacceptable work situations for employees in and
outside education:
The human organism is so extraordinarily adaptive that not only could the
most fantastic social rules and regulations be lived up to, if they were properly
inculcated in the young, but they would seem very natural and proper ways of
life . 18

Presthus noted the blindness to alternatives in organization induced by our organizational

assumptions:
We tend moreover to restrict our thinking about individual freedom to
government, concluding that freedom is assured when public power is
controlled. But somehow the logic of freedom which is so compelling in this
public context is often neglected where private power is concerned. There,
despite the intimate relationship between conditions of work and sell
realization, the implications of the concentrated power now characteristic of
our society have usually been ignored.°

Traditional Assumptions about Struaure in Schools

The basic assumptions of bureaucracy are the foundation for structural planning and
implementation in school organizations. They can be imagined, in effect, as a kind of
Theory X1, i.e., the traditional assumptions held about organizational structure by most
people who work in organizational settings.
There is an overarching Milli ption that bureaucracy is an inevitable structural form
for work organizations large or complex enough so that daily contact among all employees
is impossible. Almost all school systems and the majority of schools meet this criterion.
Consequently:
Assumption 1 The basic bureaucratic form is the only way in which school sysfrms and
schools can be organized.

Bureaucracy, as an erganizational form, carries with it a sct of minimal unavoidable

elements. Bureaucracy makes no sense without a hierarchy. The hierarchy serves two
functions of the bureaucracy: official authority and specialization. The principal of a school
assumes a set of specialized functions of an administrative nature in the building while
simultaneously representing the point in thc scalar hierarchy where the 'buck stops'
within the building unit. We assume that:

9 e,
Schoob as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

As-4mption 2 All schools need principals to carry out administrative functions and to
represent the authority of a system in the building unit.
How one becomes an administrator in a bureaucracy was made clear by Weber and has
never been seriously challenged: 'The pure type of bureaucratic official is appointed by a
superior authority. An official elected by the governed is not a purely bureaucratic
figure.'2° The reason: 'The designation of officials by means of an election among the
governed modifies the strictness of hierarchical subordination.2'
Assumption 3 School principals are appointed by the elected school board on the
recommendation of the chief school administrator.
The appointment of administrative officials in a bureaucratic system emphasizes the scalar
characteristic of the hierarchy and ultimately its oligarchic nature. Power within the
bureaucracy is centralized in the hands of a few. The mass of employees, if they are to
negotiate with the oligarchy, must organize outside the hierachy to create an external
power force to deal with 'their own organization'. Oligarchy and hierarchy, by
centralizing authority and decision-making, seek to create a rational organization in
pursuit of a set of generally agreed upon goals and objectives.

Assumption 4 The school system sets goals and directions at the system level taking into ac-
count advice 2nd counsel from subordinate levels. This centralization
is needed to support rational decision-making and accountability in
the organization.
Two other features of bureaucracy, specialization and specification, have had particularly
important effects on the organization of schools. The former characteristic is designed to
provide for technical expertise in the system where such expertise is required. The latter
clarifies the assignment and scope of responsibility of individual employees. The tecnnical
expertise of the teacher has been defined narrowly, i.e., as a subject and/or grade
specialization in the classroom. Broader instructional expertise, curriculum development and
planning, has typically been vested in staff and line administrators from curriculum
specialists to the principal. The consequences for teachers have been several. Teachers have
become isolated from one another and from the principal during the school day. The
autonomy of the teacher in the classroom has resulted in the restriction of the teacher's role
and responsibility to the teaching-learning act.
Assumption 5 The teacher's role in the school occurs behind the classroom door. The
professional responsibility of the teacher does not include deter-
mining educational goals, curricular content, or making basic deci-
sions about the operation of the school.

Finally, a unique characteristic of bureaucracy, often overlooked in descriptions of

necessary elements, is its reliance on education and training. Weber foresaw the need for
this development:
The modern development of full bureaucratization brings the system of
rational, specialized, and expert examinations irresistibly to the fore ... . The

10
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratk Structure fop Leadership in Schools

development is greatly furthered by the social prestige of the educational

certificates acquired through such specialized examinations.22

This element is not introduced to stimulate a debate about whether teachers or

administrators should be ',rained in their areas of specialization, but rather to highlight the
field's commitment to certification and examination as a route to organizational
effectiveness. The most popular rtform tool introduced as a consequence of the criticism of
education over the last five years has been standards manipulation through forms of
external examination for teachers and students.
Assumption 6 Office holders in schools should possess educational certificates. Increasingly,
proof of certificate eligibility will be established through external
examin at ion s .

Alternative Views of Structure: The Dilemma

Following the logic of the earlier section on assumptions about persons in work
organizations, the reader might now expect that the characteristics of traditional
organizational structure (Theory X') would be followed by a set of structural counter-
assumptions (Theory Y'). You might, for example, anticipate a form in which
bureaucracy is eschewed; in which school-level leadership might or might not be provided
by a single designated !eader; in which leaders are identified and chosen by means other
than appointment; in which goals and directions grow out of the successful activity of
professionals working with clients; in which job definition evolves from the work of the
professional; in which certification is a matter of concern among professionals based on
norms of performance. Such a hypothetical configuration would be a Y1 approach to
organizational structure, a true alternative to bureaucracy.
Suppose one did exist. How far would it stretch our credulity? Is it more difficult to
believe that 'schools do not need principals' than that `man will exercise self-direction and
self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed?' Is it easier to say
'principals should be elected' or `the capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of
imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is
widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population?' We submit that the latter set of
assumptions is much easier to accept than the former. Our impression is that the
assumptions about organizational structure are more deeply embedded in our
consciousness than those about people. That, we think, is the reasoin we honor those who
assert alternative views of people while still finding it impossible to apply their ideas in
practice.
This is not to say that those who asserted alternative views of persons did not attempt
to apply those views to the organizational structure. The difficulty arose when they asked
themselves to become 'practical' in applying their theoretical schema to organizations.
McGregor, for example, had no illusions about the fit between bureaocracy and Theory Y.
He noted 'the central principle of organization which derives from Theory X is that of
direction and control through the exercise of authority what has beers called "the scalar
princip1e".'23 In comparing management's ineffective use of control in contrast to
engineering he argued:
11
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

In the human field . .. we often dig channels to make water flow uphill. Many
of our attempts to control behavior, far from representing selective adaptions,
are in direct violation of human nature. They consist in trying to make people
behave as we wish without concern for natural law.24
But now listen to the relatively conservative tone of the recommendations by the Same
author in regard to organizational structure:
What is the practical relevance for management of these findings of social
sdence research in the field of leadership? . . . (11 One of management's major
tasks, therefore, is to provide a heterogeneous supply of human resources from which
individuals can be sekcted to fill a variety of specific but unprediaable needs . . . 121 A
management development program should involve many people within the
organization rather than a select few. ... (3) Management should have as 2 goal
the development of the unique capacities and potentialities of each individual
rather than common objectives for all participants . . 141 The promotion
policies of the company should be so administered that these heterogeneous
resources are actually considered when openings occur .. . and [5] If leadership
is a function a complex relation between leader and situation we ought to
be clear that every promising recruit is not a potential member of top
management.25
None of these recommendations requires the suspension in belief of any of the requisite
structural characteristics of bureaucracy. They are reasonable adjustments that can be made
within an existing structure which is, in fact, antithetical to the theoretical propositions
about people to which the author subscribed.
But that was a quarter of a century ago. What about today? The dilemma of
practicability stultifies even the most innovative of theorists. For example, Rosabeth
Kanter in discussing the empowerment of individuals in organizations runs directly up
against the limitations of thinking about people within the traditional structural model:
Unlimited circulation of power in an organization without focus would mean
that no one would ever get anything done beyond a small range of actions that
people can carry out by themselves. Besides, the very idea of infinite power
circulation sounds to some of us like a system out of control, unguided, in
which anybody can start nearly anything. (And probably finish almost
nothing.) Thus the last key to successful middle-management innovation is to
see how power gets pulled out of circulation and focused long enough to
permit project completion. But here we find an organizational dilemma. Some
of the focusing conditions are contrary to the circulating conditions, almost by
definition.26
Even analysts who begin with the consideration of structural alternatives often find
themselves trapped, in the final analysis, in modest adjustments still based upon the
traditional assumptions. Patterson. Purkey and Parker just published a monograph with
the provocative title, Productive School Systems for a Notrrational World. In practice,
however, the non-rational model sounds very rational indeed.

12

1) r
4.- to
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A a-mans& Strucnor for Leadership in Schools

Like the rational model, the nonrational model endorses the concept of
organizational goals, but assigns a different meaning and importance to the
construction of these goals. Both views of reality would argue that school
districts do have a central mission: to improve karning and the quality of life in
schools. When it comes to translating this mission statement into
organizational goals, the nonrational and rational schools of thought part
company.
For instance, the board of education may have a long list of district goals as
part of board policy. Individual schools could have their own list, and certain
parent organizations may produce still another list they want the school or
district to address. The key, within the nonrational model, is to use
organizational energy optimally in serving a variety of legitimate goals across
different lists as long as the district adheres to the overall mission of the
organization. [italics added127
In the example Patterson et al. assumed that the hierarchical responsibility for establishing
goals was reasonable and necessary. They noted that idiosyncratic goals might also be
stated at the school level so long as thcy did not conflict with board policy. They suggested
that in the non-rational model conflicting goals can be met by delaying or sequencing their
implementation, e.g., postponing the implementation of a program for the gifted until a
program for computer literacy is in place. That is a sensible deviation from the rigidity of
the traditional model but seems hardly to justify the nomenclature 'non-rational'.
This is not intended to be a criticism of Patterson et al. but rather to illustrate how
very difficult it is to imagine what might be defined as a Y ' organization even one that
might be termed arational rather than non-rational.

Alternative Views of Structure: Proposed Solutions

A familiar example of an organizational structure that does not conform to the necessary
elements of bureaucracy is the organized anarchy described by Cohen and March.28 They
described a class of organizations with three pervasive characteristics: problematic goals,
unclear technology, and fluid participation by the participants in organizational activities
and interests. The authors argued that such organizations were 'not limited to educational
institutions; but they are particularly conspicuous there. The American college or
university is a prototypic organized anarchy.29 This description is not judgmental. 'These
factors do not make a university a bad organization or a disorganized one; but they do
make it a problem to describe, understand, and lead.'3°
This organizational form is not a theoretical construction. Cohen and March
presented it as an empirical description of an organization that evolved within a
conventional bureaucratic structure. The evolution occurred in a setting in which
individual interests are apparently strong enough to modify, in a few essential ways, the
basic elements of the bureaucracy.
The actual form, different in degree from university to university, is an unjustified
variation in the bureaucratic model in response to the pressure of individual freedom.31

13
Schooh as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

The consent of the governed, for example, may not be stretched to a vote of the faculty on
a new dean, or president, or department chair (although it often is), but the faculty is
almost always in the position to advise and consent. One is hard prtssed to find universities
without presidents, but it is common to discover departments where the role of chair is
passed around from year to year. There are career administrators, but there are more career
professionals who move among teaching, research and administration. The power tools of
the organization salary level, recruitment, promotion and tenure are often held by
the professorial staff. Curriculum is routinely in professorial hands The university, as a
consequence of this variation, is not a perfect organization; on the other hand, it is neither
anarchical nor ineffective.
Another current commentator on organizational theory and leadership in schools
addressed the specific isitie being discussed in this section, i.e., the paucity of alternatives to
the bureaucratic model. Foster argued:
Administration must at its heart be informed by critical models oriented
toward social justice and individual freedom. This is not just 'nice% it
determines our entire way of life and the purpose of our most important social
institution, e,;,. ition.32
To illustrate alternatives to the bureaucratic model he suggested the bargaining model and
the community democracy model, analogous to worker ownership in industry.
Gareth Morgan attempted to loosen the hold of XI assumptions by describing a
variety of metaphors of organizational structure from the most conservative, i.e.,
organizations as machines; to less conservative but well-known, i.e., organizations as
organisms, organizations as cultures, organizations as political systems; to more
unconventional images, i.e., organizations as brains, psychic prisons, instruments of
domination. Morgan argued that:
Images and metaphors are not only interpretive constructs or ways of seeing;
they also provide frameworks for action. Their usc creates insights that often
allow us to act in ways that we may not have thought possible before."
and further:
I believe that people can change organizations and society . . Prescriptively, I
would thus like us all to recognize that reality is made, not given; to recognize
that our seeing and understanding of the world is always seeing as, rather than a
seeing as ts and to take a.) ethical and moral responsibility for the personal and
collective consequences of the way we see and act in everyday life, difficult
though this may be .. . Consistent with my overall orientation, I firmly
.

believe that we need to break the hold of bureaucratic thinking and to move
toward newer, less exploitative, more equal modes of interaction in organiz-
ations.34

We suggest that the clues to a Yi organizational structure are already surrounding us,
ready to be noticed. One starting point to provoke noticing is to play a game of
'antithesis'. What would be the opposite (4. the basic requisites of bureaucracy? Rather
than a hierarchy, imagine a heterarchy; rather than appointed leaders, elected leaders;
14
 Recanting Bureasc,acy: A Demxratic Struaure for Leadership in Schools

rather than centralized power, diffused responsibility; rather than system goals, individual
goals; generality rather than specialization; variative job definition rather than
specification; permeable boundaries of responsibility rather than circumscription of
responsibility; ex post facto rather than a priori expectations of satisfactory performance.
The game can be extended if one turns from antithesis to invention. What needs to be
done structurally to fit the characteristics of Argyris' mature individual and McGregor's
Theory Y? We need to create conditions that allow for self-direction and self-control. For
example, as a prior condition thc organization's goals must be derived from the goals of
the individual or, better yet, be discovered in the successes of the individual. The reward
system must be rooted in the intrinsic tewards of the individual's job. Empire builders
must be encouraged to seek added responsibility in the organization because responsibility
is not a finite element in the organization. The conditions of discovery are such that new
ideas. images, creative solutions and, of course, problems emerge from the people of the
organization. Ideas from any are treated as ideas from the influential. Individual employees
can run trials of new ideas or techniques in the same manner that organizations now
arrange trials. Workers develop intricate human, technical and conceptual linkages to the
organization the kind of linkages that suggest to managers in current organizations that
'this place will probably collapse without me.' The contract between the individual and
the organization feels like the intimate life-time employment described by William Ouchi
as characteristic of Japanese organizations.35 While referring to Theory Z, one could also
consider non-specialized career paths. slow evaluation, &coupled formal titles and actual
responsibility, and membership in multiple work groups.
Non-bureaucratic (Y1) structural alternatives are neither recondite nor beyond our
contemporary experience. If we look about us we see clues to Y1 in the practice and theory
of today, e.g.:
operating sub-units within current organizations that function successfully
with a non-bureaucratic structural form, for example, R&D centers or teams,
some university departments, self-managing work teams in industrial settings;
organizations in other cultural settings that exhibit non-bureaucratic features,
e.g., Theory Z, and the adaptation of some of these features in American
organizations;
non-work organizations that function effectively employing counter-
bureaucratic structures, e.g., voluntary service groups;
clan-like organizations that arise, at least occasionally, in the midst of or parallel
to a bureaucratic structure, e.g., alternative schools and private schools;
professional organizations that are better depicted as organic or coalitional than
bureaucrat ic ; 36

administrative techniques and strategies that struggle to survive in bureaucratic

settings (and for which we struggle to offer bureaucratic rationalizations)
although the strategies are clearly anti-bureaucratic in intent, e.g., self- and
peer-evaluation, election of leaders, empowerment, job enlargement, team
building;
15
 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

metaphors that suggest richer interpretations of everyday life in organizations

than the classical machine and military metaphors;
theoretical formulations that, though anti-bureaucratic, seem to conform
better to the practitioner's understanding of logic-in-use than does traditional
reconstructed logic about organizations;
theoretical and empirical anomalies that suggest the existing structural
orientation is flawed, e.g., evidence that modal behavior in organizations is
represented better by a theory in which action precedes intent; rationality is
retrospective rather than prospective; individual and organizational choices do
not conform to consistent preferences.
These glimpses of alternatives to the bureaucratic structure are overwhelmed not by the
practicalness of the bureaucratic model but by its omnipresence. Tradition and availability
are often confused with practicability. How can one imagine operable alternatives to a
structure so firmly in place? That is our dilemma, our challenge, our hope.

Conjoining Assumptions about Person and Structure in Organizations

Figure 1 displays the territory covered to this point in the chapter. Cell one represents
modal practice in organizations today. Operationally, most organizational participants
cling to a Theory X view of people. That view dominates our day-to-day life in
organizations. This view is not restricted to administrators; teachers ordinarily express
similar views of other teachers, administrators and their students. Organizational story
telling by teachers and administrators abounds with tales of incompetence, laziness.
inconsiderable behavior and intolerable domination.
However deeply alternative views of people have penetrated the literature of
organizational theory, they have barely made a dent in the interactions of persons in
organizations including schools. And why should they? The structure that surrounds
us in our work organizations demonstrates the basic wisdom of Theory X. We feel
compelled to supervise, control, motivate teachers. That is consistent with a fear that
without these organizational practices teachers will be unmotivated, indolent, uncertain of
their job requirements and unclear about organizational goals. Do we address similar
concern to the lack of motivation of the superintendent of schools or to the likelihood that
s/he will be unclear about the district's goals or her/his own job requirements? Are
slothfulness and confusion human characteristics determined by the scalar principle? Of
course they are not. However, the bureaucratic structure has always assumed that the
natural tendency of all people to behave in ways antithetical to the best interests of the
organization can only be controlled through domination. NX iien our back is up against the
wall to demonstrate school reform, we attempt to mandate higher standards 2nd levels of
performance; control and accountability mechanisms tests, merit pay, standards,
competitive comparisons are the first tools to which we turn.
A Theory X view of people is in harmony with a traditional view of organizational
structure. On most days of the year that harmony is expressed in our schools. But

16

4.
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Structure for Leadership in Schools

Assumptions about Structure

Theory X' Theory `1/'

x-xl X-Y1

conventional assumptions adoption ot structural

about modifications to relieve
persons and structure pressures on the bureaucratic
structure
- modal view in contemporary symbolic response; in some
organizational practice ways an empty set

I1I (2)

Y-Xl Y-Y'

neo-orthodox response to non-orthodox response to

'humanizing' the organization 'humanizing' the organization
modal view in current - emergent view in
organizational theory; organizational theory
emergent view in
organizational practice

(3) (4)

Figure 1. A Classificatory Schema of the Interaction between Assumptions about

Person and Structure in Organizations

something pulls away at our commitment to the traditional structure. The popularity of
specific devices (quality circles, peer evaluation, career ladders, matrix organization,
conflict resolution techniques) and more general strategies (empowerment, job
enlargement, strategic planning, school site management, Theory Z, shared decision-
making) demonstrate an uneasiness and disaffection with X-X' organizations on either the
basis of human concerns or organizational productivity or both. In some cases
modification is simply a response to pressure brought to bear on the hierarchy by
individuals chafing under the restrictiveness of a bureaucratic structure or clients
dissatisfied with the product or services of the organization. Often the adjustment is only
the attempt of opportunistic managers to modify structure while clinging to traditional

17
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the FuNrr Now

views of persons in the organization an X-Y1 position in Figure 1, cell two. It is even
reasonable to argue that cell two, by its nature, is an empty set because the adoption of
structural variations, tactical or strategic, to enhance the effectiveness of ultimate control
over individuals in the organization is unlikely to represent any modification in the
adopter's assumptions about the necessary elements of structural control.
In contrast, cell three is where most of us end up after we have decided to do our best
to think about or work toward 'humanizing' an organization. The decision to operate on
the basis of Theory Y within the constraints of a traditional organizational structure
produces results that 2re well meant but essentially inconsonant. Seven years after
publishing his seminal theoretical book on the individual and the organization, Chris
Argyris undertook the task of theoretically integrating the individual and the
organization. In a prophetic first chapter Argyris asked whether it is likely that the
relationships between the individual and the ort,anization can be maximized. He answered
his own question by suggesting that the best that can be hoped for is to reduce the conflict
in the relationships between the two, a kind of `satisficing' rather than maximizing the
relationship.
Argyris' position in Figure 1 was clearly in cell three. He noted:
We believe that organizations and personalities are discrete units with their
own laws, which make them amenable to study as separate units. However,
we also believe that important parts of each unit's existence depend on their
connectedness with the other . . . Our primary interest is at the boundaries of
both at the points where they overlap and are interrelated.37
Further, Argyris' definition of what he called the 'underlying nature' of formal organ;z-
ations was traditional:
Formal organizations are based on certain principles such as 'task specializ-
ation', 'chain of command', 'unity of direction', 'rationality', and others.
These are the basic 'genes' that are supported by, and at times modified in,
varying degrees by the technology, the kinds of managerial controls, and the
patterns of leadership used in the organization .38
Confronting this oxymoronic situation, how did Argyris imagine 'the organization of the
future?' First, he did not imagine revolutionary structural alterations: 'One conclusion,
however, shouid be evident by now. The pyramidal structure has not been overthrown. It
has simply been relegated to a more realistic position in terms of its potential.'39 But he did
predict changes that have continued to be discussed and implemented over the past twenty
years, e.g.:
Management in the organization of the future will give much more thought to
its basic values and planning as to how they may be implemented ...
The values about effective organizational relationships will be expanded and
deepened . . .

The concept of directive authority or power will be expanded to include the

influence of individuals through rewards and penalties that minimize

18

31
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Structure for Leadership in Schools

dependence, through internal commitment, and the process of confirmation.

The 'old' values regarding influence will still be maintained to be used for the
appropriate conditions. The 'new' values regarding influence will be added to,
not substituted for, the old .. .
The organization of the future will strive to enlarge the jobs .. .
Individuals [will be required] to become concerned for the health of the
organization . . . Thus employees (at all levels) may meet in small groups to
constantly diagnose organizational strengths and weaknesses . . .

The pyramidal structure will now exist side by side with sevel:l other
structures ...
Participants [other than designated leadersi will . be required to accept
increasing amounts of responsibility and therefore authority ...
As trust increases the climate should t,..nd to be ripe for some major changes in
the controls, reward and penalty, and incentive systems . . . Controls will
change to instruments of opportunity for increased self-responsibility and
psychological success ... The information collected `on' an individual will be
collected `by' him and evaluated by him, and he will take the appropriate
action .

Rewards and penalties, therefore, will also tend to be modified. There will still
be the more traditional rewards and penalties. especially to the degree that (I)
the foregoing changes are not possible, (2) the people's physiological and
security needs are not fulfilled, (3) the individuals are psychologically
threatened by growth and self-responsibility.'"
Cell three is simultaneously comfortable and stressful. The position takes the individual in
the organization into account at more than a superficial level. The traditional structure is
adjusted to fit individual needs. Argyris was picturing job enlargement, quality circles,
diffused leadership, self-evaluation, matrix organization, strategic planning, opportunities
for intrinsic job rewards. That is more than alright for 1964; but what stopped him cold
was the question of `by whose leave' . The answer is by the authority vested in appointed
officials in a bureaucratic system. The adaptations are dependent on the goodwill or the
good intelligence or both of designated leaders. Argyris' position, then and now, is neither
cynical nor manipulative. But it is strained. The fact is cell three accepts an impractical
theoretical position, one that argues simultaneously for freedom with responsibility in a
democratic system and control with benevolence in an oligarchic structure. We need to
return to Presthus' conjecture. Why it is that 'the logic of freedom which is so compelling
in this public context is often neglected where private power is concerned.'"
Cell four is the alternative. We must create and experiment with structures that fit
the accumulated theory and research about the human personality. We must not be
constrained by the traditional structural assumptions that were derived from an incomplete
and inaccurate understanding of human potential. In the following section we will try to
imagine a new school organization based on YY' assumptions.

19

32
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Reflections on a Democratic Structure for Leadership in New Schools

We know how to start the process of imagining such a new school because we know what
we need in a work organization and that others need the same basic ingredients to be
free, to be valued, to be challenged, to grow, to assume responsibility, to be secure, to be
rewarded, to be in touch with our own true selves. We know such an organization is
possible, that it is within our own power to create and implement if we choose to do so.
We are convinced that we must move in the direction of organizations for people if we
aspire to excellence in performance and freedom for human beings.
Initially we want to assert a small number of propositions that we fed are imperative
in imagining a new school:
1 A new school must be built on the assumption of the consent of ti e governed.

This concept is troublesome chiefly because it is strange. But, if any organization should
reflect our democratic ideals, it is the school. Designated leaders, e.g., the principal, should
be chosen by teachers. Thc professional staff of the school un:t should choose their new
colleagues. The professional staff is a work team of mature adults. They cannot manifest
professional responsibility in an oligarchy.

2 A new school must be built on shared authority and responsibility not delegation of authority
and responsibility.

The responsibility for a new school lies with the professional staff of the school, not solely
or even predominantly with a designated leader. If the new school is a team enterprise,
then the key actors on the team change from day to day and activity to activity. If there is
to be delegation of authority, it must come from the team to the individual. If specialists in
subject areas, or curriculum, or administration are to take on special spheres of
responsibility, that assignment must be made by thc staff of the school.
3 The staff of a new school must trade assignments and work in multiple groups to remain in
touch with the school as a whole.

The role of principal or headteacher or chair should be assumed ordinarily for relatively
short periods. The staff should include many individuals whose experience includes terms
of work in administration and instructional develppment as well as classroom teaching.
The work groups formed within the staff sholild provide opportunities to interact with a
variety of colleagues on a variety of problems.
4 Formal rewards to the staff, i.e., salary, tenure, forms of promotion, should be under the
control of the staff of the new school as a whole.

There is no perfectly satisfactory way to distribute differential rewards. But no one is in the
better position to deal with this difficult issue than a collegial group. Peer evaluation and
decision-making may end in the decision to reduce individual distinctions and emphasize
group distinctions. It may not. In either event the power tools of formal rewards and
recognition must not be controlled by an individual outside the group. The problem is a
professional issue of self-determination.

20
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Stnicture for Leadership in Schools

5 The goals of the new school must be formulated by and agreed to through group consensus.
The professional staff is responsible for negotiating the acceptability of the goals to the school
community.
Although formal goals probably have little to do with organizational efficacy, the school
needs to represent itself to its political constituency and clarify, for itself, its raison d'etre.
The school is the professional staff, acting both individually and collectively. The staff is
responsible for negotiating the relationship of individual goals to the goals of the school as
an organization, translating those into programs, and subsequently expressing the goals
and programs to other responsible agents and agencies in an intelligible and acceptable
form.
We are going to stop with this short list of 'musts' They represent sufficiently the
basic change in orientation that we feel is necessary to the 'new school'. If they were
implemented, schools would be operating on the basis of:
democracy;
group authority and accountability;
variability, generality and interactivity in work assignment;
self-descipline and control exercised individually and collectively;
group commitment to and consensus about organizational goals and means
We are certain of one thing. We will never move within the bureaucratic structure to new
schools, to free schools. That structure was invented to assure domination and control. It
will never produce freedom and self-actualization. We cannot get there from here. The
risk of movement from here to there is not great. The bureaucratic structure is failing in a
manner so critical that adaptations will not forestall its collapse. It is impractical. It does
not fit the psychological and personal needs of the workforce.
An alternative structure can be argued as practical on grounds of organizational
productivity. Research evidence on creativity and innovation supports organizational
structures that promote freedom, self-control and personal development. Organizational
studies indicate that such non-bureaucratic characteristics as activity, variability,
self-efficacy, empowerment and disaggregation are more likely to be found in effective
organizations than thcir bureaucratic counterpr stability, regularity, accountability,
control and centralization. In the replacement of the bureaul atic structure, necessity may
turn out to be the progenitor of practicality. From our viewpoint only one argument is
needed to sustain the change. An oligarchic work organization is discordant in a free
society. Persons need and deserve the same degree of protection of their human rights in
the workplace that is assured in their broader role as adult citizens.
Finally, we counsel patience in the development of and experimentation with new
organizational forms. We have been patient and forgiving of our extant form. Remember
that new forms will also be ideal forms. Do not press them immediately to their point of
absurdity. Bureaucracy as an ideal form became tempered by adjectival distinctions
bounded, contingent, situational. New forms need to be granted the same exceptions as
they arc proposed and tested. No one seriously imagines a utopian alternative to
bureaucracy. But realistic alternatives can be formed that consistently trade off control for
freedom the organization for the individual; and they can be built upon the principle of
the consent of the governed.
21
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Notes

1 Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome (New York: Farrar, Straus. Giroux, 1987), p. 16.
2 Ibid., pp. 16-17.
3 H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1958), p. 215.
4 Ibid., pp. 215-16.
5 Ibid., pp. 200-1.
6 Ibid., p. 228.
7 Ibid., p. 214.
8 Chester I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1968). p. 12.
9 Robert Presthus, The Organizational Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 93-134;
Douglas McGregor. The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), pp. 33-58;
Chris Argyris, Personality and Organization (New York: Harper and Brothers. 1957). pp. 20-53.
10 McGregor, op. cit., pp. 33-4.
11 Ibid., p. 34.
12 Ibid., pp. 47-8.
13 Ibid., p. 48.
14 Argyris. op. cit., p. 49.
15 Ibid., pp. 49-50.
16 Ibid., p. 53.
17 Ibid., p. 75.
18 Presthus. op. cit., pp. 119-20.
19 Ibid., p. 19.
20 Gerth and Mills, or. cit.. p. 200.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., p. 241.
23 McGregor, op. cit., p. 49.
24 /bid., p. 9.
25 Ibid., pp. 185-8.
26 Rosabeth M. Kanter, The Change Masters (New York : Simon and Schuster, 1983), pp. 171-2.
27 Jerry L. Patterson, Stewart C. Purkey and Jackson V. Parker, Productive School Systems for a
Nonrational World (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development),
p. 27.
28 Michael D. Cohen and James G. March, Leadership and Ambiguity (Boston, MA: Harvard
Business School Press, 1986), p. 3.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 'Unjustified variation, as opposed to rational variation, is emphasized in evolutionary theory
An unjustified variation is one for which truth has not been established, but one for which truth
is not precluded.' Karl E. Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing (New York: Random
House, 1979), 123.
32 William Posit oaradigms and Promises: New Approaches to Educational Administration (Buffalo,
N. Y.: Prome is Books, 1986). p. 189.
33 Gareth Morga. Images of Organization (Beverly Hills. CA: Sage Publications, 1986), P. 343.
34 Ibid., pp. 382-3.
35 William G. Ouchi, Theory Z (New York: Avon Books, 1982), pp. 15-22.
36 James D. Thompson. Organizations in Action (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), pp. 142-3.

22
 Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Smsaure for Leadership irt Schools

37 Chris Argyris, Integrating the Individual and the Organization (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
1964), p. 13.
38 lbitl p. 14.
39 Ibid., p. 272.
40 Ibid., pp. 273-6.
41 Presthus, op. fit., p. 19.

23
 Chapter 2

Teacher Professionalism: Why and How?

Linda Darling-Hammond

Discussions about teacher professionalism often center on issues of money, status,

autonomy and respect for teachers. These are all important matters at a time when
recruitment of talented individuals to teaching is more difficult, but they are not the
primary reasons for pursuing teacher professionalism. The major reason for seeking to
create a profession of teaching is that it will increase the probability that students will be
well educated. Indeed, the most pressing problems of public education today student
failure, dropouts, school vandalism, anomie, lack of acquisition of critici thinking skills,
the flight to private schools require as part of their solution the increased
professionalization of teaching.
Professionalism depends not on compensation or status, but on the affirmation of
three principles in the conduct and governance of an occupation:
1 Knowledge is the basis for permission to practise and for decisions that are made
with respect to the unique needs of clients;
2 The practitioner pledges his first concern to the welfare of the clients;
3 The profession assumes collective responsibility for the definition, transmittal
and enforcement of professional standards of practice and ethics.
These principles outline a view of practice that is client-oriented and knowledge-based.
This view also suggests criteria and methods for accountability that are based on the
competence of practitioners and their effectiveness. Currently the practice of teaching in
public schools is not organized to support these principles or modes of accountability.
Instead, the bureaucratic organization of schooling and teaching requires practice that is
procedure-oriented and rule-based. It enforces accountabillty based on the job scripts of
practitioners and their compliance with task specifications. The individual needs of
students are difficult to accommodate in this system. The growth of knowledge in the
occupation is difficult to support and sustain.
This chapter seeks to describe the goals and requirements of a professional system of
teaching. It discusses how schools must be restructured to support professional
accountability and how parent, public and professional control can be reconciled in a
system that focuses on the needs of students.

25
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Why Pursue Teacher Professionalism?

The basic problem in public education today is finding a way to meet the diverse needs of
students who come to school with varying capabilities, learning styles, psychological
predispositions, family situations and beliefs about themielves and about what school
means for them. Recent concerns about 'at-risk' youth those who drop out, tune out,
become pregnant, fall behind converge with major changes in the home backgrounds of
students: more children live in poverty, with one or no parents, in divorced or
reconstituted families than ever before in recent history.
At the same time we expect more of schools and teachers than ever beforc. We expect
students to be not just minimally trained but well educated. Our changing economy
requires that we produce 'knowledge workers' in large numbers: America's movement to
a post-industrial, technological and infoimation economy will require a highly skilled,
analytically trained and creative workforce to sustain technological growth as low-skill
manufacturing jobs continue to move overseas (Carnegie Forum, 1986).
These goals and challenges require that schools develop the capacity to meet students
needs and society's demands in a way that they have not before been asked to do. Schools
process students through courses, grades and programs in a fashion that assumes that
exposure to the treatment will accomplish the objectives of education. As John Dewey
characterized the 'old education', defik.ed by these course, curriculum, grading and
grouping requirements:
There is next to no opportunity for adjustment to varying capacities and
demands. There is a certain amount a fixed quantity of ready-made
results and accomplishments to be acquired by all children alike in a given time.
It is in response to this demand that the curriculum has been developed from
the elementary school up through the college. There is just so much desirable
knowledge, and there are just so many needed technical accomplishments in
the world. Then comes the mathematical problem of dividing this by the six,
twelve, or sixteen years of school life. Now give the children every year just the
proportionate fraction of the total, and by the time they have finished thcy will
have mastered the whole. By covering so much ground during this hour or day
or week or year, everything comes out with perfect evenness at the end
provided the children have not forgotten what they have previously learned.
(Dewey, 1900, pp. 33-4)
What Dewey called the 'old education' is a view of education derived from a factory
model of organization in which students are raw materials subjected to uniform schooling
processes. He and other progressives at the turn of the century sought to replace this
approach 'its passivity of attitude, its mechanical massing of children, its uniformity of
curriculum and method' (Dewey, 1900, p.34) with a child-centered approach that
focuses on the needs and aptitudes of students. These two opposing views of the purposes
and methods of education ha,re remained in conflict ever since, and arc at the root of
educational reform debates today, including, especially, debates over the necessity and
form of teacher professionalism.
The criticisms of current educational reformers that our schools provide most

26

:is
 Teacher Profissionalion: Why and Haw

children with an education that is too rigid, too passive, too rote-oriented to produce
learners who can think critically, synthesize and transform, experiment and create are
virtually identical to those of the progressives at the turn of thc century. Indeed, with the
addition of a few computers, the Carnegie Forum's (1986) scenario for a twenty-first
century school is essentially the same as John Dewey's (1900) account of the twentieth
century ideal.
Then, as now, the notion was advanced that the provision of universal high-quality
education is linked to the professionalization of teaching. But these earlier attempts at
reform failed to take hold in any substantial way. Cremin (1965) argues that 'progressive
education Jemanded infinitely skilled teachers, and it failed because such teachers could not
be recruited in sufficient numbers.' Because of this failure, in each of its iterations
progressivism gave to standardizing influences, iii the efficiency movement of the 1920's
the teacher-proof curricular reforms of the 1950s and the 'back to the basics' movement of
the 1970s. Disappointment with the outcomes of these attempts at rationalizing school
procedures led in turn to renewed criticisms of schools and efforts to restructure them.
The crux of the issue is whether the beliefs and strategies that shape schools will rely
on a bureaucratic approach to teaching or a professional approach. These approaches start
from two entirely different views of the purposes of education, the nature of learning, the
characteristics of learners and the requirements for effective teaching. Below we explore
these differences.

The Bureaucratic Approach to Teaching

The logic of school structure described by Dewey, which is still more pronounced today,
results from a view of education and learning which is conducive to the bureaucratic
organization and management of schools. This view is as follows. Schools are agents of
government that can be administered by hierarchical decision-making and controls.
Policies are made at the top of the system and handed down to administrators who
translate them into rules and procedures. Teachers follow the rules and procedures (class
schedules, curricula, textbooks, rules for promotion and assignment of students, etc.), and
students are processed according to them.
The basic assumptions underlying this view are that:
students are sufficiently standardized that they will respond in identical and
predictable ways to the 'treatments' devised by policy-makers and their
principal agents;
sufficient knowledge of which treatments should be prescribed is both available
and generahzable to all educational circumstances;
this knowledge can be translated into standardized rules for practice; these can
be operationalized through regulations and reporting and inspection systems;
and
administrators and teachers can and will faithfully implement the prescriptions
for practice thus devised and transmitted to schools.

27
Schools 4$ Collabotatim Cultures: Creating the halm. Now

The circular bottom-line assumption is that this process, if efficiently administered, will
produce the outcomes that the system desires. If the outcomes are not satisfactory, the final
assumption is that the prescriptions arc not yet sufficiently detailed or the process of
implementation is not sufficiently exact. Thus the solutions to educational problems
always lie in more precise regulation of educational or management processes.
This logic has been extended to its furthest reach in the school policies of the last
fifteen years. Since the early 1970s, state governments have exerted more and more control
over the form, substance and conduct of schooling. Centralized textbook adoption,
mandated curriculum guides for each grade level and subject area, rules governing when
children must start school and hr w they will be tracked into programs and promoted from
grade to grade, use of minim.= competency tests and other standardized assessments to
define teaching and determine student placements, and rationalized management schemes
such as performance-based budgeting systems, management by objectives, and
competency-based education are policies that have gained widespread currency. In
addition to the assumptions described above, these policies assume that state legislators and
bureaucrats know better than local school administrators, teachers or parents what the
goals of education ought to be and how they can be realized. In this sense the policies
embody state-oriented rather than client-oriented control of education.
State governments did not invent this view. They are merely adopting at higher level
in the governance system what was begun and developed in large urban school systems in
the early part of this century (Wise, 1979). Indeed, New York City was at the forefront of
city school systems that adopted bureaucratically administered 'scientific management'
prinriples as a means for bringing order to school operations. These principles were
outlined in 1913 by Franklin Bobbitt, advising on 'The Supervision of City Schools':
Principle 1. Definite qualitative and quantitative standards must be
determined for the product (i.e. student).
Principle II. Where the material that is acted upon by the labor processes
passes through a number of progressive stages on its way from
the raw material to the ultimate product, definite qualitative and
quantitative standards must be determined for the product at
each of these stages (i.e. grade levels).
Principle III. Scientific Management finds the methods of procedure which
are most efficient for actual service under actual conditions, and
secures their use on the part of workers (i.e. teachers).
Principle IV. Standard qualifications must be determined for the workers.
Principle V. The management must train its workers previous to ,,,Tvice in
the measure demand by its standard qualifications.
Principle VI. The worker must be kept up to standard qualifications for his
kind of work for his entire service.
Principle VII. The worker must be kept supplied with detailed instructions as
to the work to be done, the standards to be reached, the
methods to be employed, and the appliances to be used.
(Bobbitt, 1913, quoted in Wise, 1979, pp. 83-4)

28
 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

It is easy to sec how this depiction of management by product, job and task specifications
fits with bureaucratic organizational structures and goals: the specialization of functions,
rationalization of activities and creation of routines to guide task performance. The
ultimate goal of bureaucratization is to remove considerations of persons from the conduct
of the work. As Weber put it: 'Bureaucracy. ... develops the more perfectly, the more (it)
is dehumanized' (Gerth and Mills, 1958, p. 215).
Ted Sizer (1984) has described how the increased centralization and bureaucratization
of education, adopted ir the name of 'scientific management', dehumanize education and
constrain what is possible in schools. First, the system of pyramidal governance
forces us in large measure to overlook special local conditions, particularly
school-by-school differences . . . While central authorities almost always try to
provide local options and 'consultation', the framework of school remains
permanently fixed. This framework includes the organization of schools by
students' ages, by similar subject departments, by time blocks, by specialized
job descriptions, by calendar, and in many states, by precise forms of staff
contracts a ' licenses.
Within this framework much that fundamentally ,:lefines the process of education is
predetermined. Changes within the framework can only be marginal.
Second, 'bureaucracy depends on the specific, the measurable .. . . [Those aspects of
schoolkeeping which can be readily quantified often become the only forms of
representation. The endless and exclusive talk of attendance rates, dropout rates, test
scores, suspension rates .. . reminds one of Vietnam War body counts'.
Third,
large administrative units depend on norms, the bases of predictability.
Inevitably, a central tendency becomes the rigid expectation. In September, a
sixteen-year-old will be an eleventh grader, and eleventh-graders will score in
certain ways on certain tests. The fact that a group of sixteen-year-olds, all of
whom can ultimately master the material on those tests, shows a wide spread in
scores of achievement and aptitude on any given day is usually overlooked ... .
Insisting on strict norms which hierarchical bureaucracies require in order to
function is wasteful and unfair.
Fourth, 'centralized planning requires a high level of specificity.' This translates into
specialized job descriptions for adults in schools, each of whom is responsible only for
certain specific tasks and not others. From the student's point of view this means that there
arc a number of adults who know a bit about him, but none who sees him as a whole.
From the school's point of view this means that learning must be carved up into small
pieces and allocated across slots in the day or week to teachers whose job it is to perform
the specified tasks, whether useful or not. From the teacher's point of view, this means
that the needs of students and alternate ways of serving those needs must be
subordinated to the demands of the tasks and slots.
Fifth, 'bureaucracies lumber. Once regulations, collective bargaining agreements,
and lioensure get installed, change comes hard. Every regulation, agreement, and license
spawns a lobby dedicated to keeping it in place. The larger and more complex the
29

41
 Schools as Collaborative Cuhures: Creating the Future Now

hierarchy, the more powerful the lobby becomes, even more remote from frustrated
classroom teachers, poorly served students, and angry parents. Indeed, this feature of
bureaucracy decreases accountability. Ironically, prescriptive policies created in the name of
public accountability ultimately reduce schools' responsiveness to the needs of students and
the desires of parents. Faceless regulations become the scapegoats for school failure,
since
no person in the system takes responsibility for their effects on kids.
Finally, 'hierarchical bureaucracy stifles initiative at its base.' Or, as the Carnegie
Forum put it, `everyone has the brakes and no one has the motors to make the schools
run.' Sizer concludes: 'It is astonishing that so few critics challenge the system. In an
absolute sense, the learning exhibited by even a 'successful' student after over twelve
thousand hours in classrooms is strikingly limited. When one considers the energy,
commitment, and quality of so many of the people working in the schools, one must place
the blame elsewhere. The people are better than the structure. Therefore the stucture must
' e at fault.' In the final analysis perfected bureaucracy with its emphasis on developing
rules 'without regard to persons' is intrinsically unsuited to the task of
educating human
beings.
For all of the laudable goals of bureaucracy equal and uniform treatment of clients,
standardization of products or services, prevention of arbitrary or capricious decision-
making it lacks the tools to manage complex work, to handle the unpredictable or to
meet disti,.aive needs of clients. By its very nature bureaucratic management is incapable
of providing appropriate education for students who do not fit the mold upon which all of
the prescriptions for practice arc based. As inputs, processes and measures of outcomes are
increasingly prescribed and standardized, the cracks into which students can fall grow
larger rather than smaller. This is because the likelihood that each of the accumulated
prescriptions is suitable for a given child grows smaller with each successive
limitation
upon teachers' ability to adapt instruction to the students' needs.
The problem with the bureaucratic solution is that effective teaching is not routine,
students are not passive and questions of practice are not simple, predictable or
standardized. Consequently, instructional decisions cannot be formulated on high, then
packaged and hand-d down to teachers. Nor can instructional problems be solved by
occasional forays into the classroom by inspectors who monitor performance or dispense
advice without intimate knowledge of the classroom context, the subject matter being
taught, the goals of instruction, the stages of development of individual children and the
social structure of the class or school as a whole. We have pushed the bureaucratic model
of
educational improvement as far as it can go, and it does not go far enough.

Bureaucratization and Teaching

In the bureaucratic model teachers are viewed as bureaucratic functionaries rather than
well trained and highly skilled professionals. Little investment is made in teaching
preparation, induction or professional development. Little credence is given to licensing or
knowledge acquisition. Little time is afforded for joint planning or collegial consultation
about problems of practice. Because practices are prescribed outside the
school setting,
there is no need and little use for professional knowledge and judgment.
Thus novice
30

12
 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

teachers assume the same responsibilities as thirty-year veterans. Separated by egg-crate

classrooms and packed teaching schedules, teachers rarely work or talk together about
teaching practices. A rationale for these activities is absent from the bureaucratic
perspective on teaching work.
In the bureaucratic conception of teaching, teachers do not need to be highly
knowledgeable about learning theory and pedagogy, cognitive science and child
development, curriculum and assessment; they do not need to be highly skilled, because
they do not, presumably, make the major decisions about these matters. Curriculum
planning is done by administrators and specialists; teachers are to implement a curriculum
planned for them. Inspection of teachers' work is conducted by superiors whosejob it is to
make sure that the teacher is implementing the curriculum and procedures of the district.
Teachers do not plan or evaluate their own work; they merely perform it.
Accountability is achieved by inspections and reporting systems intended to ensure
that the rules and procedures are being followed. Teachers are held accountable for
implementing curricular and testing policies, assignment and promotion rules, and myriad
other educational prescriptions, whether or not these 'treatments' are appropriate ill
particular instances for particular students. As a consequence, teachers cannot be held
professionally accountable that is, responsible for meeting the needs of their students;
they can only be held accountable for following standard operating procedures. The
standard for accountability is compliance rather than effectiveness.
Indeed, the very definition of 'professionalism' in teaching has been turned on its head
in public schools. Rather than connoting a high level of training and knowledge applied to
practice that must, above all else, serve the needs of clients in intellectually honest ways,
the term is used by most policy-makers and administrators to mean an unquestioning
compliance with agency directives. Evaluation criteria stress good soldiership and
conformity with district policies rather than knowledgeable advocacy of appropriate
teaching practices. The 'professional' teacher in common parlance is one who 'does things
right' rather than one who 'does the right things'.
Teachers who feel the tug of professional accountability describe in graphic terms the
ethical struggles they experience when asked to conform to policies and procedures that
they know to be educationally counterproductive, at times even damaging to their
students. Those who know the most about good teaching and who care most deeply about
their students are most apt to say they will leave the profession if teaching content and
methods are further regulated (Darling-Hammond and Wise, 1985). These teachers find it
anti-professional to focus on rules and reporting systems rather than on their students:
The only thing that would make me leave teaching is if they ever computerize
all these objectives and I have to sit there and check off forms for 38 kids and
250 different objectives. I think if it got down to that, I would simply resign
because I would feel like I was spending more time on forms than on kids.
Or, as another teacher put it:
I feel sorry for any teacher who is interested in teaching. It is going to be much
worse in the years to come. For those who like the record keeping, and there
are plenty of them pathetic teachers but great record keepers this will be a

31

.4 3
 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

way of moving them up the ladder. It won't help the good teachers. It will
help the people who teach by the book, because it is safe and it doesn't require
any imagination. (Darling-Hammond and Wise, 1985, p. 331)
We can no longer pretend that one best system will be found that can be codified and
packaged for rote administration by teachers. We now know that effective teaching
techniques vary for students with different learning styles, at different stages of cognitive
and psychological development, for different subject areas and for different instructional
goals. We know that students will differ in their approaches to learning. Consequently,
we can no longer pretend that it is sufficient to treat students as raw materials and teachers
as factory workers. If students are to be well taught, it will not be by virtue of bureaucratic
mandate, but by virtue of highly trained, well supported professionals who can use their
knowledge and judgment to make sound decisions appropriate to the unique needs of
children.
Unfortunately, the educational system does not encourage the development of such
knowledge on the part of teachers. Teacher education is typically short and often
characterized by a cookbook approach to the acquisition of teaching techniques; induction
into the profession is virtually non-existent new teachers are left to sink or swim when
they enter the classroom. It is difficult for teachers to learn from their colleagues when no
provision is made in the structure of schools for collegial sharing or decision-making.
Indeed, the notion that teaching knowledge is largely irrelevant is reaffirmed whenever
teacher shortages are met with emergency and alternative certification procedures that
confirm the unimportance of pedagogical knowledge for teachers.
Professionalism proposes an alternative to the current approach to managing
teaching. it suggests a more client-oriented and accountable method for structuring
schools and teaching.

What is Teacher Professionalism?

Professionalization is not a dichotomous event or a state of grace into which an occupation
clearly falls or does not. Rather, it describes points along a continuum representing the
extent to which members of an occupation share a common body of knowledge and use
shared standards of practice in exercising that knowledge on behalf of clients. It
incorporates conditions of specialized knowledge, collective self-regulation, special
attention to the unique needs of clients, autonomous performance and a large dose of
responsibility for client welfare.
Professionals are obligated to do whatever is best for the client, not what is easiest,
most expedient or even what the client him/herself might want. They are also obligated to
base a decision about what is best for the client on available knowledge not just that
knowledge acquired from personal experience but also that clinical and research
knowledge acquired by the occupation as a whole and represented in professional journals,
certification standards and specialty training. Finally, professionals are required to take into
account the unique needs of individual clients in fashioning their judgments about what
strategies or treatments are appropriate.
These are fine goals, but how are they operationalized to result in something that
might be called professional accountability? In policy terms these requirements suggest
32

4
 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

greater regulation of teachers ensuring their competence through more rigorous

preparation, certification, selection, evaluation in exchange for the deregulation of
teaching fewer rules prescribing what is to be taught, when, how. This is, in essence,
the bargain that all professions make with society: for occupations that require discretion
and judgment in meeting the unique needs of clients, the profession guarantees the
competence of members in exchange for the privilege of professional control over work
structure and standards of practice.
The theory behind this equation is that professional control improves both the quality
of individual services and the level of knowledge in the profession as a whole. This occurs
because decision-making by well trained professionals allows individual clients' needs to be
met more precisely, and it promotes continual refinement and improvement in overall
practice as 'effectiveness' rather than 'compliance' becomes the standard for judging
competence.
It is important to note, too, that professional authority does not mean legitimizing
the idiosyncratic or whimsical preferences of individual classroom teachers. Many parties
to the professionalism debate seem to suggest that increased teacher authority and
autonomy are the major goals of this course of action. The thought is that by giving
individual teachers more freedom, they will be empowered to do what is best for students.
This simple construction, however, is dangerous and one-sided. It does not adequately
answer the obvious question, 'What if more authoritative and autonomous teachers do
not do what is best for students?' Having weakened other alternative sources of authority,
how will we ensure that students' needs are given voice and their interests are served?
Indeed, in other public service occupations autonomy is the problem that
professionalism is meant to address. It is precisely because practitioners operate
autonomously that safeguards to protect the public interest are necessary. In occupations
that have become professionalized these safeguards have taken the form of screens to
membership in the profession and ongoing peer review of practice. Collective autonomy
from external regulation is achieved by the assumption of collective responsibility through
self-governance (Darling Hammond, 1986). Responsible self-governance requires, in
turn, structures and vehicles by which the profession can define and transmit its
knowledge base, control membership in the occupation, evaluate and refine its practices
and enforce norms of ethical practice. This requires major changes in the structure of
teaching both inside and outside schools.

Changes Needed to Promote Teacher Professionalism

As the above discussion indicates, teacher professionalism requires changes in both the
policies that define the teaching occupation and the ways in which schools are organized
for teaching. These changes fall into three main categories: (1) policies governing entry
and continuation in the profession; (2) policies and practices defining what teachers do in
schools and classrooms; and (3) policies governing how and by whom decisions
about professional membership and teaching practices are made.
The goals of professionalizing policies are to protect the public by ensuring that:
(1) all individuals permitted to practise in certain capacities are adequately prepared to do

33

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School; as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

so responsibly; (2) where certainty about practice does not exist, practitioners will,
individually and collectively, continually seek to discover the most responsible course of
action; and (3) as the first two points suggest, practitioners will pledge their first and
primary commitment to the welfare of the client.

Preparation for Responsible Practice

The first of the goals listed above that all individuals permitted to practise are adequately
prepared is crucial to attaining the conditions for and benefits of professionalism. So
long as anyone who is not fully prepared is admitted to an occupation where autonomous
practice can jeopardize the safety of clients, the public's trust is violated. So long as no floor
is enforced on the level of knowledge needed to teach, a professional culture in schools
cannot long be maintained, for some practitioners will be granted control and autonomy
who are not prepared to exercise it responsibly.

Teacher Education
Professionalism starts from the proposition that knowledge must inform practice, yet
teacher education is often denounced and even avoided on the grounds that either it does
not convey the knowledge necessary for real teaching (some argue this must be acquired on
the job) or that there is no knowledge-base for teaching anyway. Yet much is known
about how to teach effectively, and where it has nz,c yet been fully incorporated into
current teacher education programs, efforts must be made to strengthen rather than to
eliminate these programs. Indeed, teacher education programs have been charged with
preparing teachers for bureaucratic rather than professional practice, so they have fashioned
courses of study in response to state certification and program approval guidelines that fit
the task as it has been prescribed.
Shulman (1987, p. 8) classifies the elements of teaching knowledge as follows:
content knowledge;
general pedagogical knowledge, with special reference to those broad principles
and strategies of classroom management and organization that appear to
transcend subject matter;
curriculum knowledge, with particular grasp of the materials and programs
that serve as 'tools of the trade' for teachers;
pedagogical content knowledge, that special amalgam of content and pedagogy
that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional
understanding;
knowledge of learners and their characteristics;
knowledge of educational contexts, ranging from the workings of the group or
classroom, the governance and financing of school districts, to the character of
communities and cultures; and
knowledge of educational ends, purposes and values, and their philosophical
and historical grounds.
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 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

Note that only the first of these areas of knowledge could be generally expected of a typical
liberal arts graduate. A rich and powerful conception of teaching knowledge is necessary if
we are to develop professional standards of practice that can guide the technical decision-
making that is rightfully and necessarily the role of teachers. The goal 'is not to
indoctrinate or train teachers to behave in prescribed ways, but to educate teachers to
reason soundly about their teaching as well as to perform skillfully.. . . . Therefore, teacher
education must work with the beliefs that guide teacher actions, with the principles and
evidence that underlie the choices teachers make' (Shulman, 1987, p.13).
This means teacher education that includes much more than courses in methods of
teaching reading, methods of teaching social studies and so on. The current curriculum in
many ;:chools of education could be compared to training doctors in methods of treating
cancer and techniques for treating heart disease, without any grounding in anatomy,
physiology, biology or pathology. Technique without theory, evidence and knowledge of
content does not provide a basis for professional decision-making. Thoughtful, reflective
and effective teaching requires that teachers have rigorous grounding in cognitive sciences,
so that they understand how people learn; in developmental psychology, so that they
know when children are rcady to learn particular things in particular ways; in learning
theory and pedagogy; an I in professional ethics, so that they can responsibly resolve
dilemmas of teaching practice.

Teacher Induction
Consistent with this view of teaching knowledge and practice, serious and intensive
induction of new teachers is necessary before they are allowed or expected to teach without
supervision. This major departure from the current sink-or-swim approach to beginning
teaching is crucial for two equally important reasons: (1) because teaching knowledge is
complex and requires judgment in its application, it cannOt be fully acquired in a classroom
setting; and (2) because a teaching profession is first and foremost committed to the
welfare of students, inexperienced practitioners cannot be allowed to learn on the job
without guidance.
It is in the initial years of teaching that teachers learn how to apply theory in practice
and what the norms of professional practice require. Without assistance they may fail to
learn how to teach effectively, even as they acquire survival skills. Learning to cope and
learning to teach are two entirely different programs of study. Balancing the many
considerations about students, instructional goals and teaching strategies that go into
effective teaching is a difficult job that can only be mastered under the tutelage of those
expert in the art of teaching. Furthermore, supportive and sustained induction is necessary
to stem high attrition rates of new teacbeis and to provide equity to students.
The current lack of support experienced by beginning teachers is exacerbated by
typical school district placement policies. As McLaughlin (1986) has noted:
New teachers are often given those students or courses with which experienced
teachers do not wish to deal. Instead of giving beginning teachers a nurturing
environment in which to grow, we throw them into a war zone where both
the demands and the mortality rate are excessively high. It is really not
surprising that almost one-third of teachers leave the profession within their
first five years of teaching.
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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

The placement of beginning teachers in the most difficult assignments is encouraged

by district internal transfer policies which allow successful senior teachers to move to
schools of their choice. Schools with high turnover rates which also tend to be schools
serving the most disadvantaged students in the most challenging teaching conditions
hire new teachers to fill their vacancies. When a vacancy arises in a desirable school, senior
teachers tend to transfer away from the more difficult schools. Consequently, these schools
are more likely to be staffed with disproportionate numbers of new and inexperienced
teachers and are less likely to maintain an adequate cadre of expert, experienced teachers
who can assist these novices. Thus beginning teachers are presented with the most difficult
educational problems and with little opportunity for assistance. As a result, many
experience frustration and leave the profession. Not incidentally, the students of these
neophytes those who most need expert teaching are continually subjected to
instruction by persons whc are just learning ir perhaps not learning how to teach
(Wise et al., 1987).
This datnaging practice need not continue. A professional structure for teaching,
recently create, by contract in Rochester, New York, has eliminated teacher transfer
rights based on seniority, while putting in place an intensive assistance and evaluation
program for beginning teachers and veterans having difficulty, staffed by expert
experienced teachers. Betting on the payoffs of recruiting and supporting talented
teachers, the Rochester plan will boost salaries dramatically, establish peer evaluation for
career advancement and establish professional development schools. As in other
professions, teaching in Rochester will be based on serious, sustained induction and
incentives for continued professional growth.
Serious induction does not mean four evaluations for a beginning teacher instead of
two every year. or two evaluators filling out the evaluation checklist instead of one. What
is needed is a type of induction ia which expert, experienced practitioners have substantial
time to provide continuous supervision to new practitioners, helping them learn to make
the thousands of important decisions that a teacher must confront every day. This function
can be best performed by mentor teachers providing expertise specific to the subject area or
grade level taught, if they are given time to do so.
Ultimately, the creation of professional development schools in which expert teachers
join with university faculty to provide a structured internship experience for new teachers
would be the most effective means of inducting new teachers. Such schools would be
exemplars of good practice, would produce and transmit knowledge of teaching to new
entrants, and would provide the highest quality education to those students who now
receive some of the lowest quality schooling.

Teacher Licensure and Hiring

The guarantee that those permitted to teach are in fact prepared to do so is fundamental to
the development of professionalism. This is a key issue in teaching, where forty-six states
maintain emergency licensure procedures and twenty-three have recently sanctioned a
double standard for entry by adopting alternative certification provisions that minimize the
training needed to teach (Darling-Hammond and Barnett, in press). These loophole
deemed necessary by state officials to ensure an adequate supply of teachers, but by faiiing

36

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 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

to distinguish the roles and responsibilities less prepared entrants are qualified to assume,
they fundamentally undermine the presumption that all professionals will share common
knowledge and commitments. They permit autonomous practice by those who have not
satisfied the prerequisites for public truq.
Current teacher shortages make this concern particularly pressing. Whenever
shortages result in the lowering of standards for entry, public confidence in the capacity of
teachers to make sound educational decisions declines, and the press for regulation of
teaching increases. This is a situation where the alternatives available within the current
structure of teaching seem constrained to diAasteful trade-offs. If untrained teachers are
admitted to full membership in the occupation, the risk of uninformed practice and
student mistreatment is high. If one does not lower standards, and a shortage of
teachers results, the alternatives are also suboptimal: enlarged class sizes, constricted
program offerings, misassignment of current teachers. This bind occurs because current
school and teaching structures do not yet envision diversity of teaching structures and
roles, and do not really permit professional supervision.
In other professions differentiated roles and responsibilities have gradually emerged as
a means for balancing the requirements of supply and qualifications. Those not fully
certified or less extensively trained are limited to performing tasks for which they have
been prepared, and they practise under supervision. Complex decisions are reserved to
those qualified to make such judgments. The Holmes Group's recommendation that
untrained college graduates be hired only as instructors who practise under the supervision
of certified teachers is a step in this direction (Holmes Group, 1986).
Differentiating teaching roles in schools so that real supervision is possible will require
a different formulation of teacher responsibilities and classroom groupings than is currently
found in most schools. Rather than each teacher being solely responsible for a group of
thirty students, we will need to encourage the kinds of team teaching arrangements found
in some schools where a group of practitioners takes responsibility for a larger group of
students. In a setting where, say, three professional teachers and two instructors are
responsible for 100 students, many possibilities become apparent for appropriate
supervision, for organizing large- and small-group instruction, for consulting about
teaching plans and decisions, and for developing strategies for meeting individual
children's needs. These possibilities are explored further below.

Structuring Responsible Practice

The goal that professionals will continually seek to discover what is the most responsible
course of action suggests that ongoing professional development and norms of inquiry are
extremely important. But because knowledge is constantly expanding, problems of
practice are complex, 2nd ethical dilemmas result from conflict between legitimate goals,
this requirement cannot be satisfied by prescriptions for practice or unchanging rules of
conduct. Instead, the transmission and enforcement of these norms must be accomplished
by socialization to a professional standard which incorporates continual learning, reflection
and concern with the multiple effects of one's actions on others as fundamental aspects of
the professional role.

37
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

While appropriate practice cannot be reduced to rules and lodged in concrete, there
must be means for encouraging its pursuit even where the correct course of action is not a
routine judgment. Though standardized practice is inadequate, we cannot accept the
notion that any practice is appropriate. What is sought cannot be achieved through either
more precise legislation on practice nor by total discretion for individual teachers. instead,
we are seeking to vest in members of the profesjon a common set of understandings about
what is known and a common commitment to test and move beyond that knowledge for
the good of individual students and the collective advancement of professional
understanding.
Several conditions are necessary for the support of teacher learning. First, meaningful
processes for teacher evaluation must be created to sustain professional development.
Second, teacher isolation must be overcome so that opportunities to discuss problems of
practice can be frequent and regular. Finally, teacher involvement in evaluation of practice
and in decision-making about policies and practices must be established.

Creating Meaningful Evaluation

The evaluation of teachers by principals and other supervisors has been a longstanding
practice in American schools. Teachers anticipate that annual brief visit from the principal
who, according to the stereotype, stands stone-faced at the back of the ClasstoOnl filling
out a form; and principals rush to squeeze in their visits to teachers amidst their myriad
other duties.
In most school districts teacher evaluation is a perfunctory, routine, bureaucratic
requirement that yields no help to teachers and no decision-oriented information to the
school district. The process does nothing for teachers except contribute to their weariness
and reinforce their skepticism about bureaucratic routine. Isolated from decision-making
and planning, it does little for administrators except add to their workload. It does not
provide a mechanism for the school system to communicate its expectations concerning
teaching, except that teaching is a fit subject for bureaucratization.
Very rarely does this ritual have other outcomes such as the special recognition of a
teacher or the termination of his or her employment, the improvement of curriculum or
program activities, or the deployment of staff development resources to meet teachers'
specific instruct' .nal needs. The ritual exists to satisfy the bureaucratic imperative that
every teacher be inspected by an administrator every year. Indeed, it is fashioned to
preclude any other outcome. The time of the evaluator is too short, the span of control too
wide and the expertise too limited to produce reliable and valid insights that might lead to
significant action. Actions predicated on the ritual prove difficult to institute because the
database is too sparse and unstable to withstand the scrutiny that accompanies any
important change in teacher status or teaching practice.
Bureaucratic evaluation relies on administrators (chiefly principals) to assess teachers
in a standard manner using general criteria, such as generic teaching skills (does the teacher
plan? set objectives? teach to the objectives? cover the curriculum?) or other context-free
teaching behaviors. Bureaucratic evaluation is highly standardized, procedurally oriented
and organized by checklist. These attributes, intended to ensure reliability, limit the
relevance and utility of evaluation for most teachers and many purposes. This form of

38

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 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

evaluation can, at best, support assessments of minimal competence. It cannot attend to

the appropriateness or outcomes of instruction, provide assistance to competent teachers
on their specific goals or refinements of particular pedagogical techniques, or address the
substance and long-range consequences of instniction.
Professional evaluation, on the other hand, involves teachers in the development and
operation of teacher evaluation processes, bases evaluation on professional standards of
practice that are client-oriented, recognizes multiple teaching strategies and learning
outcomes, and treats teachers differently according to their teaching assignments, stages of
development and classroom goals. If tenured teachers can be assumed to be competent,
based on careful selection and induction, then the presumed need for annual inspections of
teacher performance to 'catch' incompetence can be greatly reduced. Evaluative activity
can then be explictly aimed at continuing professional development, and can be geared to
individual needs and goals.
The most appropriate strategies for growth-oriented evaluation are personal goal
setting and self-evaluation, joined with peer-mediated and situationally relevant reviews of
practice, conducted by teachers sharing similar expertise and teaching assignments.
Successful models of such practices have been established and documented (Wise et al.,
1984a, 1984h; Barber, 1984). They share in common an emphasis on reflective, goal-
oriented improvement in teaching and access to relevant learning opportunities and expert
advice.
The formative and individually relevant character of such a teacher evaluation process
must be safeguarded by the existence of alternative avenues for addressing the infrequent
but important problems of veteran teachers who experience extreme difficulty in
maintaining professional standards of practice. Most teacher evaluation systems are notably
ineffective at gaining help for these teachers or removing them from classrooms. Typically,
both unions and administrators play ostrich while these teachers are transferred from one
school to another, because neither the will nor the resources are present to assist them or
terminate their employment.
Districts that have successfully tackled this problem have created separate processes
for the referral, assistance and assessment of teachers having difficulty. These processes are
established in collanoration with teacher associations and provide intensive assistance by an
expert veteran teacher in the appropriate subject area under the supervision of a committee
of teachers and administrators. The committee takes responsibility for safeguarding the
teacher's due process rights, ensuring that a plan of improvement is formulated and
sufficient assistance is given, and recommending return to non-probationary teaching
status if the needed improvement is secured or termination of employment if it is not. By
extending the resources available for assistance and documentation, and expanding the
supervision of the process, it becomes sufficiently fair, objective, and careful to produce
defensible decisions (Wise et al., 1984a; Darling-Hammond, 1986). This, indeed, produces
professional accountability.
All of the evaluation processes described above for induction, for professional
development, for personnel decision-making are based on an assumption foreign to the
bureaucratic world view: that teachers have much to share and learn from each other. In
traditional evaluation practices, talk about teaching is limited to a one-on-one interaction
between an administrator and a teacher in one or two post-observation conferences each

39
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creiring the Future Now

year. This is obviously an extremely inefficient way to promote consensus about

professional teaching practices. Knowledge about teaching must be shared if it is to be
extended from one classroom to another.

Overcoming Teacher Isolation

The vision of teaching work as it is implemented in American schools is one where the
teacher's job is to instruct large groups of students for most of the working day. The other
tasks of teaching preparation, planning, curriculum development, tutoring those in
need of additional help, consulting with other professionals, seeking answers to student or
classroom problems, working with parents are deemed so unimportant that little or no
time is made available for these activities. With the exception of most teachers' daily 'prep
period', usually spent filling out forms and trying to get access to the xerox machine.
teachers have virtually no planned time to consult with their colleagues.
One twenty-year high school teacher vividly described the extent of teacher isolation
when he remarked: 'I have taught 20,000 classes; I have been evaluated 30 times; but I
have never seen another teacher teach.' This kind of teacher isolation stands in the way of
developing professional standards of practice, because there is no basis on which to develop
consensus or to explore alternatives. This situation is largely due to the egg-crate classroom
structure and the factory-based notion that students are processed through these
classrooms in standard-sized groups. Alternative procedures for grouping, teaching and
learning are not envisioned; flexibility cannot be easily accommodated.
Other countries, including Japan. China and West Germany. structure teaching
much differently (see e.g. Shimahara, 1985). A typical high school teacher might teach
standard-sized groups of students approximately fifteen hours out of a forty to forty-five
hour school week. The remainder of that time is used for preparation and jo:r_ curriculum
planning, tutoring of individuals or small groups, and consultations with parents, students
and colleagues. The time spent in large-group instruction is more profitably used, because
it can be more appropriately structured to fit the needs of students and goals of instruction;
instruction is better prepared; and particular problems or special student needs can be
individually addressed in the remaining time available. Students need not fall inexorably
behind in this system. Teachers need not suffer the frustrations that come from the
schedule constraints that preclude dealing with important teaching matters as they arise.
Under conditions such as these teachers can work collegially to design programs, to
shape appropriate learning experiences for students and to develop shared standards of
professional practice. They can evaluate their work and make the decisions that are needed
to continually improve schooling. There are many ways such restructuring can be
accomplished if we are willing to abandon preconceptions of how schools ought to look
and work. These range from team teaching arrangements with joint planning time for
teachers to core curriculum arrangements which reduce the absolute number of students
each teacher must come to know while maintaining overall teacher-pupil ratios. Varying
class formats and uses of teacher and student time are possible when teaching
responsibilities are shared and emphasis is placed on personalizing teacher-student
relationships rather than processing students through fragmented courses and grade levels.
Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools has created a number of productive teaching
arrangements within existing per pupil resource limits. Many others are possible.
40

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 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

Equal emphasis must be placed on regularized oppo.tunitics for teachers to share

what they know, to consult about problems of practice and to observe one another
teaching. This means adjusting schedules to provide shared time and adjusting
expectations about the use of time in faculty meetings. in-service sessions and other shared
settings. These changes will come about when attention to learning in schools takes
precedence over attention to rules, regimens and procedures. The metaphor changes from
one of schools as factories to schools as knowledge work organizations, in which students
are workers, teachers are managers, and principals are managers of managers. As
managers. teachers will be expected to allocate the use of time and resources as needed to
being about the goals of the organization, not just within set blocks of classroom time but
in a larger framework that allows for additional interactions with students individually
and in small groups with parents and with colleagues.

Involvement in Professional Decision-making

Much of the discussion above has centered on teacher responsibility for professional
practice. However, where there is no responsibility for shaping pracrice,there can be no
accountability for appropriate practice, only for following standard operating procedures.
It does little good to diagnose problems, if there are no means available then to correct
them.
Teacher involvement in school decision-making is currently a relatively haphazard
occurrence. Although in some school districts teachers participate on committees
responsible for textbook selection, curriculum development and staff development, in
others these decisions are made primarily by administrators or school board members. in
only a very few schools or districts do teachers have an effective voice in decisions that
structure teaching work: decisions about class scheduling, course requirements, student
placements, program development or teacher assignments. In even fewer do teachers have
any input into personnel decisions concerning the hiring, evaluation and tenure of either
teachers or administrators.
Lack of voice in these matters means that teachers are often expected to practise their
profession under conditions that may be administratively convenient but not especially
conducive to effective teaching. It is important that peer review be considered in this
broader context of teacher collaboration in decision-making and problem-solving. The
substitution or supplementation of principals by teachers in traditional evaluation processes
in and of itself will do little to change the overall role of teachers in professional decision-
making. It is the degree to which teachers assume collective responsibility for instructional
quality that determines professionalism. Such involvement must be pervasive if it is to
produce a professional conception of teaching.
Aside from personnel evaluation, there is another evaluative function rarely
performed in schools which is central to the operation of other professional organizations.
That function is ongoing review of practice by staff who also play a major role in
establishing the policies which, in large measure, determine that practice. This evaluative
function serves the joint purposes of monitoring organizational activities and establishing a
continuous dialogue about problems of practice among the practitioners themselves. The
very distant analog in school systems is program evaluation, an activity generally
conducted by central office researchers who report findings to government sponsors and
41
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

school board members. Teachers are neither the major producers nor consumers of such
information. Hen o! neither they nor their students are the major beneficiaries of such
evaluation results.
Teachers need to discuss and take responsibility for resolving immediate, concrete
problems of teaching practice if teaching lore is ever to be transformed into meaningful
professional standards. One could envision many methods for achieving this. Standing
committees such as those used in hospitals could meet monthly to review practices in
various subject areas or grade levels, or to examine other functional areas: academic
progress; student discipline; grading policies; student and teacher assignments to particular
courses, programs or teams; organization and scheduling of classes; and so on. Or more
flexible approaches might be tried. Roland Barth (1988) describes how faculty meetings
can be used to examine and change curricular strategies across grade levels and classrooms.
School problem-solving strategies often start with those matters of most immediate
concern to the school community as a whole. What is critical is that teachers have both
time to pursue these evaluations as part of their role (rather than as 'released' or
extracurricular time) and authority to make changes based on their collective discoveries.
The effective schools literature has confirmed the value of faculty decision-making.
This research indicates that participatory school management by teachers and principals,
based on collaborative planning, collegial problem-solving and constant intellectual
sharing, produces both student learning gains and increased teacher satisfaction and
retention (Mackenzie, 1983; Pratzner, 1984). These schools also feature principals who are
effective leaders, and studies show that such principals create conditions in which teacher
leadership, peer support and assistance, and participation in decision-making are
encouraged.
Teachers in collaborative settings practise a form of peer review and evaluation when
they identify problems, observe one another, share ideas and ask, 'How are we doing?'
The inquiry ethic that permeates effective schools improves standards of practice by
decreasing teacher isolation and providing directly relevant opportunities for professional
growth.

Decision-making and Accountability

The requirements for professionalism outlined above suggest new modes of decision-
making and different guidelines for allocating educational resources and responsibilities.
Teachers and principals are prominently involved in decisions currently made at the top of
the system and handed down for implementation. Resources that would otherwise be
devoted to developing and administering mandates, rules and reporting systems are shifted
instead to the support of those functions that ensure and support competence in clatsrooms
teacher selection, induction and evaluation processes; professional development
activities and time for teachers to engage and solve teaching problems. Less money and
energy are devoted to creating bureaus, offices and programs to solve problems and more
to supporting school settings that can prevent problems.
Many objections to professionalization of teaching have been raised on grounds of
costs, practicability and accountability. Thtc.e objections start from the view that the
present system will he retained intact and 'professionalization' will be added on, creating

42

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 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

expense, unclear lines of authority and confusion. The add-on approach to school reform
has certainly added to the financial and logistical burdens of operating schools. Instead, the
movement toward a professional basis for teaching will require rethinking the ways in
which resources are allocaced, responsibilities are divided and accountability is sought.

Allocation of Resources
Teacher professionalism proposals almost always incorporate recommendations for
substantial increases in teacher salaries, often linked to changes in career advancement
structures for teachers. This is because attracting and retaining well trained knowledgeable
individuals into an occupation generally requires compensation competitive with that they
could receive if they entered other fields requiring similar levels of knowledge and training.
Proposals to provide intensive induction of teachers and time for professional discourse and
problem-solving have cost implications as well. Some critics believe that the public will
never be willing or able to afford a system that compensates and supports teachers in a
manner comparable to other professions.
This is probably true if current school structures and modes of investment were to
continue. It is instructive to note that as bureaucratiz._tion has taken hold in American
schools, teacher salaries slipped from 49 per cent of educational expenditures in 1972 to
only 38 per cent in 1982 (Darling-Hammond, 1984). When just over a third of school
expenditures pay the salaries of teachers, we have obviously moved a long way from the
image of education as Mark Hopkins at one end of the log and the student at the other.
Clearly, other uses of school dollars have grown proportionately, making these resources
less available for supporting teacher-.
Data from the Center for Education Statistics indicate that the number of
administrative staff in school systems grew by 183 per cent between 1955 and 1985. while
the number of teachers increased at half that rate (CES, 1982, 19P7). Most of the
administrative increase in recent years has been at levels above the school central and
area offices as the number of school-level principals and supervisors has risen only
slightly since 1970. In 1986 more than 21 per cent of elementary and secondary school
employees were engaged in administrative functions; 58 per cent were engaged in teaching
and other professional specialities. (The remainder were engaged in service, maintenance
and transportation activities.) (US Department of Labor, 1986). Thus, excluding service
workers, school systems in 1986 employed approximately one administrative staff person
for every two and a half teachers. This suggests a very top-heavy approach to the
management of schooling.
Professionalizing teaching suggests a redefinition of administrative structures and
roles, and hence reallocation of educational dollars. If teachers assume many of the
instructional tasks currently performed by administrative staff (e.g. curriculum develop-
ment and supervision), the layers of bureaucratic hierarchy will be reduced. If teachers are
more carefully selected 2nd better trained and supported, expenditures for management
systems to control incompetence will be unnecessary. If, for example. investments are
made in the front-end of the teaching career for induction support 2nd pre-tenure evalua-
tion, the costs of continually recruiting and hiring new entrants to replace the 40 to 50 per
cent who leave in the first few years will decline; the costs of band-aid approaches to staff
development for those who have not learned to teach effectively will be reduced; and the
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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

costs of remediating or seeking to dismiss poor teachers as well as compensating for the
effects of their poor teaching on children will decrease. Strategic investment in teacher
competence frees resources for innovation and learning.
Furthermore, more effective and efficient solutions to perennial school problems can
be found by tackling them at the source than by creating bureaucratic offices to administer
add-on programs that treat problem symptoms in compartmentalized fashion. An
examination of the bureaucratic superstructure of any large school system will illuminate
the point. Having created large, impersonal and bureaucratic structures for processing
students through schools, students experience problems in adapting themselves to the
procedures.
In the typical urban high school, for example, because teachers do not have time to
address the multitudinous needs of the 150 or so students they see each day, and because
personal attention is difficult to sustain in a school of 2000 or 3000 students, and because
students' needs, interests and aspirations do not fit comfortably in the course schedules,
tracks, curricula and other standardized regimens of the institution, many problems occur.
These range from violence, vandalism and other disciplinary problems to alienation
expressed in truancy, early pregnancy and dropping out to underachievement, anomie and
disinterest in school.
Rather than personalizing and humanizing the educational experience to prevent
some of these problems, the bureaucratic solution is to create new offices, job titles and
programs that seek to compensate for the predictable effects of an ill-designed system.
Thus we have created roles for counselors (each of whom is responsible for hundreds of
students' personal problems!), social workers and instructional specialists; we have created
separate offices and staffs to deal with school security, teen pregnancy prevention, dropout
prevention, drug abuse prevention, compensatory education, truancy and so on. Each of
these offices has its own bureaucratic hierarchy, paperwork and reporting requirements; its
own constituency and 'target population'; its own add-ons to the school curriculum or
program structure, as though carving up students into little pieces that correspond to
programs will somehow solve the fundamental problems of their maladaptation to a
bureaucratized, dehumanized system of ..chooling.
Needless to say, when the problems are not solved, the offices are expanded to meet
the increased 'need' for their services. Thu, bureaucracy feeds on the fruits of its own
labor, and resources for schools and classrooms are deflected to new and expanded bureaus
and special programs administered from the central office. The root causes of school
problems will not be addressed until resources are made available at the school level to
implement sensible solutions that create conditions under which teachers and students can
interact more productively. A more efficient use of school dollars to change the school
conditions that result in problems will largely finance the costs of securing professional
teaching conditions.
This means that decisions about the uses of many school resources must be made by
faculty, principals and parents to ensure that these uses address community needs and local
problems. Restructuring decision-making processes is an even more politically charged
issue than reallocating resources, though the two are closely linked. At the crux of the
matter are allocations of authority and responsibility to roles and levtis in the educational
system.

44

t , 5
 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

Allocating Responsibility and Authority

In large school bureaucracies, authority for decision and responsibility for practice are
widely separated, usually by many layers of hierarchy. Boards and top-level administrators
make decisions while teachers, principals and students are responsible for carrying them
out. It is for this reason that accountability for results is hard to achieve. When the desired
outcomes of hierarchically imposed policies are not realized, policy-makers blame the
school people responsible for implementation; practitioners blame their inability to devise
or pursue better solutions on the constraints of policy. No one can be fully accountable for
the results of practice when authority and responsibility are dispersed.
Furthermore, when authority for decision-making is far removed from practitioners
and is regulatory in nature, change comes slowly. Dysfunctional consequen( zs for students
cannot be quickly remedied while edicts hang on, immune from the realities of school life
and protected by the forces of inertia, lobbies and constituencies both inside and outside the
bureaucracy. The amount of effort and influence required to change a school system policy
is so great that most teachers, principals and parents find it impossible to deflect their
erergies from their primary jobs to the arduous and often unrewarding task of moving the
behemoth. They sigh and strive to cope, looking for loopholes that might allow
unobtrusive alternatives to grow for a time.
The symptoms of advancing bureaucracy include (1) lack of flexibility :.tt the school
level for allocating resources dollars, people and time to meet the unique educational
needs of students (2) lack of flexibility in the classroom for determining teaching methods,
materials and processes when texts, curricula, schedules and testable outcomes are already
prescribed; (3) standardization of inputs numbers of secretaries, specialists, counselors,
texts, supply budgets and so on are predetermined; and (4) increases in paperwork required
to communicate directives and to monitor student and school activities, because external
decision-making is enforced by reporting systems.
Thus adjustments in programs. course requirements, schedules, staffing and materials
to meet the needs of students are difficult to make; the knowledge of school staff about
more productive alternatives is not used; and time is deflected from teaching to
paperwork, monitoring and reporting systems. Even where flexibility might exist, the
pressures for conformity are so strong that principals anti teachers are often afraid to test
the limits of the regulatory structure. The end result is that when problems are identified,
practitioners often claim they have no authority to change the status quo. Eventually a
general acceptance of the failings of the system comes to prevail, and cynicism overwhelms
problem-solving initiatives by principals, teachers or parents.
When authority is removed from the school, so is accountability for learning. Until
authority for making decisions is granted to those who have responsibility for performing
the work those who are living with these decisions on a daily basis reform of practice
cannot occur and accountability cannot be secured.
School-level decision-making makes some people nervous for at least two reasons.
First, there are legitimate concerns that educationally harmful decisions will be made, or
that equal treatment of students wi: not occur. Second, there are concerns that
collaborative decision-making at the school level is simply not practicable that
ultimately, no one will be in charge, and chaos will reign. These concerns deserve careful
attent ion
45
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

With respect to the first concern, it is helpful to divide responsibilities between those
that must be centrally administered and those that, by their nature, cannot be effectively
administered in a hierarchical fashion. Wise (1979) offers a useful distinction between
equity and productivity concerns. The former generally must be resolved by higher units of
governance, since
Inequalities in the allocation of resources, opportunities, and programs are
generally problems which arise out of the conflicting interests of majorities and
minorities and of the powerful and the powerless. Because local institutions are
apparently the captives of majoritarian politics, they intentionally and
unintentionally discriminate. Consequently, we must rely upon the
policymaking system to solve problems of inequity in the operating educational
system. (p. 206)
As Wise notes, though, 'productivity questions are intrinsically more difficult than equity
questions because they arise not out of a political impasse but from a fundamental lack of
knowledge about how to teach' (p. 53). The shortcomings of scientific knowledge are not
due to a general absence of knowledge about teaching but to the fact that the appropriate
use of teaching knowledge is highly individualized, while policies are necessarily uniform
and standardized. Thus policy decisions about methods of teaching and schooling processes
cannot ever meet the demands of varying school and student circumstances.
Problems of low productivity cannot . . . be solved by policy intervention. No
science or technology of education can form a firm basis for policy intended to
improve productivity. . . Consequently, efforts to improve educational
. .

productivity can and should continue at the institutional level. (Wise, 1979.
pp. 206-7)
There must be some responsibility for decision-making at the level of the Board of
Education, which is accountable to the public for setting educational goals and seeing that
they are pursued in an equitable fashion. These responsibilities include allocating resources
equitably among schools, setting standards of equity for students and employees, setting
standards for competence among the professional staff and defining in broad terms the
goals which the scnool system should pursue. The Board and the central staff, however.
should not seek to legislate or regulate the details of how education is delivered to students.
If these decisions about the delivery of education are to be made at the school-level,
questions about how collaborative and responsible decision-making can be structured mt..,t
be answered. There are many models that have been used successfully in individual schools.
For purposes of illustration, though, the following discussion focuses on an approach to
'shared governance' implemented in an entire school district over many years. This
approach, developed in Salt Lake City (and earlier used by the same superintendent in
Newark, (California), demonstrates how voice, responsibility, authority and
accountability can be secured in the best interests of students. (The description of this
approach is based on a longer discussion in Wise a al., 1984a.)
Salt Lake City's shared governance approach is based on four principles: delegation,
consensus and parity, review and appeal, and trust, openness and equity. The principle of
delegation was established by the board of education, which agreed to delegate all but the

46
 Teacher Professionalism: Why and Haw

most important decisions to the superintendent with the proviso that he administer the
schools 'in cooperation with the employees and the patrons of the school district'.
Delegation continues with the superintendent's delegation of specific responsibilities to
teachers and parents and inclusion of this agreement in the teachers' association contract.
Teachers and administrators cooperatively develop budget proposals; all administrative
meetings are open to teacher representatives; and teachers, principals and parents variously
serve on specific committees and councils, including school-community councils, school
improvements councils and teacher evaluation committees.
The principle of consensus and parity encourages school and central office governing
councils to reach consensus by specifying parity voting when consensus is not reached.
Each parity casts one vote: in a school community council the faculty gets one vote and the
patrons as a whole get one vote; in a school improvement council the principal gets one
vote and the faculty gets one vote. When a committee resorts to parity voting because it
cannot achieve consensus, it explicitly acknowledges impasse and it forfeits the decision to
the superintendent or, ultimately, the board. 1.,us substantial incentives exist for working
toward consensus, and shared goals invested with authority and choice energize the efforts
of practitioners and parents.
Consensus and parity attempt to avoid what the superintendent called 'power
negotiations', in which councils, committees and groups 'utilize numbers to win a
position: stack the committee, circulate petitions, etc.' It provides an alternative to the
traditional, autocratic styles of educational leadership in which 'principals and
superintendents base many of their decisions and actions on the sovereignty of their
positions; they enforce their power in handing down decisions which may or may not be
beneficial to students.'
The third principle review and appeal -- allows for traditional grievance processes,
resolution of impasses in the shared governance councils, and a hearing for any complaint
by any citizen, school employee or student by a neutral third party on any matter thought
to be unfair, unjust or not in the best interests of students. This buttresses the fourth
principle trust, openness and equity a collection of processes designed to combat the
'mistrust and suspicion which were creeping into the educational system, on the part of
teachers and administrators as well as from the community and students.' These processes
include open disclosure requirements that teachers share their expectations for
classrooms with parents and processes to ensure curriculum equity and other goals. Best
characterized as faith in the consent of the governed, these approaches to consensual
decision-making allow the blind spots or self-interests of any given group to be checked by
others.
Decision-making responsibilities are carefully defined. Principals and faculty on the
school improvement councils make program decisions, within the constraints of broad
board policy, decisions about teachers' assignments and teaching loads, and curricular
decisions. Parents and faculty on school community councils make decisions about length
and timing of the school day, school safety and rules, and curricular emphases in the
school. Veto power is built in to preclude decisions outside the parameters of board policy,
but most decision are 'owned' by the faculty and patrons of the school.
There arc many other models of shared governance available and in use. The point is
that, with careful thought and confidence in the power of people to make reasoned and

47
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

enlightened decisions, educationally sound, democratic governance is not only possible; it

is preferable to prescriptions that reach beyond their means to effect change.

Accountability

Ultimately, the question is how accountability for student learning can be enhanced. The
first-order question is what accountability consists of. Many currently equate
accountability with something like monitoring of student test scores or tabulations of
school management indicators. Unfortunately, this view leaves the student, the parent,
the teacher and the educational process entirely out of the equation. What parents have a
right to expect when they are compelled to send their children to a public school is that
their child will be under the care of competent people, who are committed to using the
best knowledge available to meet the individual needs of that child. The parent has no
assurance of accountability by virtue of know ing that school district procedures have been
promulgated and school staff are required to file reports about these procedures.
Bureaucratic accountability can provide only the latter kind of assurance. It does not
focus on the compelince of staff but on the power of mandates to tell them what to do. It
does not focus on the transmittal and use of teaching knowledge but on the regulation of
standardized teaching practices, which by definition must, in some instances, fail to meet
the needs of unstandardized students.
Professional accountability starts from a different premise. Its first assumption is that,
since the work is too complex to be hierarchically prescribed and controlled, it must be
structured so that practitioners can make responsible decisions, both individually and
collectively. Accountability is provided by rigorous training and careful selection, serious
and sustained internships for beginners, meaningful teacher evaluation, opportunities for
professional development and ongoing peer review of practice buttressed by collegial
decision-making and consultation. By such means professionals learn from each other,
norms are established and transmitted, problems are exposed and tackled, parents'
concerns are heard and students' needs are better met.
In such a system parents can expect that no teacher will be hired who has not had
adequate training in how to teach; no teacher will bc permitted to practise without
supervision until he/she has mastered the professional knowledge base and its application;
no teacher will be granted tenure who has not fully demonstrated his/her competence; and
no decision about students will be made without adequate knowledge of good practice in
the light of students needs. Establishing professional norms of operation, by the many
vehicles outlined above, creates as well a basis for parent input and standards and methods
for redress of unsuitable practice that do not exist in a bureaucratic systcm of school
administration. Enforcing professional standards is the only way to stop thc educational
buck-passing that is encouraged. indeed produced, by hierarchical decision-making.
If openness, trust and equity are to be realized in the public educational system, then
radical steps must be taken properly to align responsibility and authority, to achieve the
consent of the governed, and to promote knowledge-based decisions that focus on the
needs of students. This work is not easy, and will not be accomplished quickly. As Clark
and Meloy (1987) have noted:

48

4.;i1
 Teacher Professionalism: Why and How

We counsel patience in the development of and experimentation with new

organizational forms. We have been patient and forgiving of our extant form.
Remember that new forms will also be ideal forms. Do not press them
immediately to their point of absurdity. Bureaucracy as an ideal form became
tempered by adjectival distinctions bounded, contingent, situational. New
forms need to be granted the same exceptions as they are proposed and tested.
No one seriously imagines a utopian alternative to bureaucracy. But realistic
alternatives can be formed that consistently trade off control for freedom, the
organization for the individual. And they can be built upon the principle of the
consent of the governed (p. 40).
New forms of organization, which support the conditions for professionalism in the public
interest and which ensure accountability in fact rather than in form only, must be
developed if schools are to work effectively for all students and if responsible and responsive
educational decisions are to be made.

References

BARBER. L.W. (1984) Teacher Evaluation and Merit Pay: Background Papers Pr the Task Force on
Education for Economic Growth (Working Paper No. TF-83-5). Denver, CO: Education
Commission of the States.
BARTH, R. (May 1988) 'Principals, Teachers and School Leadership', Kappan 69(9) pp. 639-42.
CARNEGIE FORUM ON EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY (1986) A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the
21st Century. New York: Carnegie Corporation.
CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS (1982) Digest of Education Statistics. Washington, D.C.: US
Department of Education.
CENTER FOR EDUCATION JTATISTICS (1987) Digest of Education Statistics. Washington, D.C.: US
Department of Education.
CLARK, D.L. and MELOY, J.M. (October 1987) 'Recanting Bureaucracy: A Democratic Structure
for Leadership in Schools.' Unpublished manuscript. Charlottesville. VA: University of
Virginia.
CREMIN, L.A. (1965) The Genius of American Education, New York: Vintage Books.
DARLING-HAMMOND, L. (1984) Beyond the Commission Reports: The Coming Crisis in Teaching. Santa
Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
DARLING-HAMMOND, L. (March 1986) 'A Proposal for Evaluation in the Teaching Profession',
Elementary School Journal, 86(4): pp. 1-21.
DARLING-HAMMOND, L. and BARNETT, B. (in press) The Evolution of Teacher Policy. Santa Monica,
CA: Rand Corporation,
DARLING-HAMMOND, L. and WISE, A.E. (January 1985) 'Beyond Standardization: State Standards
and School improvement', The Elementary School Journal, 85(3): pp. 315-36.
DEWEY, J. (1900) The School and Sudety. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (reprinted).
GERTH, H.H. and MILLS, C.W. (1958) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford
University Press.
HOLMES GROUP (1986) Tomorrow's Teachers. East Lansing, MI: Holmes Group.
MACIVNZIE, D.E. (1983) 'Research for School Improvement: An Appraisal of Some Recent
Trends,' Educational Researcher, 12: pp. 5-17.

49
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Futurr Now

MCLAUGHLIN, M.W. (1986) 'Why Teachers Won't Teach', Phi Delta Kappan, 67: pp.420-6.
PRATZNER, F.C. (1984) 'Quality of School Life: Foundations for Improvement,' Educational
Researcher, 13(3): pp. 20-5.
SHIMAHARA, N.K. 'Japanese Education and its Implications for U.S. Education', Phi Delta Kappa's,
Feb 1985, pp. 418-21.
SHIJIMAN, L. (February 1987) 'Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform,'
Harvard Educational Review, 57(1): pp. 1-22.
SIZER, T.R. (1984) Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School. Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin.
US DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (1986) Current Population Survey, 1986-87. Unpublished data.
WISE, A.E. (1979) Legislated Learning. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
WISE, A F ARLING-HAMMOND, L., MCLAUGHLIN, M.W. and BERNSTEIN, H.T. (1984a)
Teacher Evaluation: A Study of Effective Practices. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
WISE, A.E., DARLING-HAMMOND, L., MCLAUGHLIN, M.W. and BERNSTEIN, H.T. (1984b) Case
Studies for Teacher Evaluation: A Study c f Effective Practices. Santa Monica, CA: Ra:id
Corporation.
WISE, A.E., DARLING-HAMMOND, L., BERRY, B., et al. (1987) Effective Teat her Selection: From
Recruitment to Retention. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

50
 Chapter 3

What Are Schools of Education For?*

Seymour B. Sarason

My purpose here is not to locate and discuss attitudes and forces external to the field of
education that have had adverse effects on its development and accomplishments but rather
to discuss features that are internal to a school of education. My discussion is based on the
assumption that in viewing and moving to the future our schools of education cannot be
satisfied with where they have been, that their mission must undergo substantive and
directional change. Schools of education are in dangerous times precisely because education
has returned to the national agenda and there is reason to believe that, consistent with our
traditions and past practices, money and a renewti national resolve to improve education
will be the major ingredients of the 'new answer' to our educational ills. The current
national discussion has one characceristic that is as startling as it is discouraging. I refer to
the apparently total amnesia for the fact that everything being said and recommended
today was said and recommended in the years following Sputnik in 1957. Why the post-
Sputnik efforts fell so short of the mark, despite billions of federal dollars, is a question that
is going unraised and undiscussed. The superficiality of the present discussion a
discussion more fitting for a morality play than for planning educational change should
be a cause for anxiety in educators with intact memories. If the script for this morality play
is acted out the way I fear it will, it will be another instance of 'the more things change,
the more they remain the same'. That is an optimistic view because I believe that the stakes
are higher and that the losses will be greater than ever before. We know that our world has
changed, but we do not feel in control of these changes at our cores we are far from sure
that wc know what to do. Intuitively we know that there is something radically wrong in
the relationship between schools and society and that radically different responses from
those in the past will be necessary if we are not to be victims of a self-defeating repetition of
past events. There is a crisis of confidence and a bankruptcy of ideas. In our past there have
always been crisies, severe and incapacitating ones, but there was always the bedrock
feeling that we would surmount them in a manner consistent with our values and
traditions. Today far fewer people, young and old, have that feeling.
We know that the world of our fathers is not our world, and that our world is not

This chapter was prepared originally as the Fiftkth Anniversary Education Convocation Address.
Syracuse University, 23 September 1983.

51
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

that of our children. What we do not know, what plagues us, is how to explain these past
changes to explain them in ways that give direction and purpose to our futures. That
brings me to the first aspect of the challenge facing us as educators. That aspect, put in
terms of the past, was the failure of schools of education to inquire into the ways that our
society was changing. More specifically, in the process of allocating more personnel and
resources to study schools and all that goes on in them, our schools of education neglected,
relatively speaking, to investigate sources of societal change that would have significant
impact on our schools. The sad truth is that educators in the post-Second World War era
were not better prepared than anyone else, perhaps worse prepared, for what began to
happen in the late 1950s and the sizzling 1960s. During those years the vast gulf between
school and society was exposed. The isolation of schools from their social surround,
especially in our urban centers, was pierced, giving rise to conflicts and violence during
which a lot of lives and careers were adversely affected. Why were we so unprepared? To
what had we been so insensitive? In our focus on what was happening in schools what were we
not attending to outside them? These are questions I have addressed in several places. Here I
wish to elaborate on a point which I consider to be not only a major part of the answer to these
questions but a particularly clear instance of a conceptual and cultural narrowness against
which we must guard if we are to be adequate to the challenge before us.
I venture the opinion that when the history of our society in this century is written,
from vantage points far more dispassionate and less culture-bound than ours of today, a
significant chapter will be about the GI Bill of Rights. That landmark legislation has to be
seen, of course, in terms of the Second World War. During that war, which was a world
war in a way that the First World War was not, our entire society experienced its effects.
The Second World War was truly global, and never before had so many people and
institutions in our society been so meaningfully involved in or affected by a war. Millions
of individuals literally stopped 'working' and entered the armed services. The fabric of
millions of families was altered as one or more of its members left for war. The frequency
of new marriages among young people increased, as did the number of forced separations.
Many fathers never saw their offspring until the war ended. Many never saw them because
they died in battle. Many of these new marriages encountered all kinds of strains, not only
because of the factor of forced separation, but also because of the fantasies and realities of
infidelity. Women entered the workforce in large numbers, a fact which had significance
beyond the economic, because it provided them with a frequently, unexpectedly,
satisfying sense of self in a social context. The war, 2S always, presented a bitter pill for
parents having to withstand the real possibility that they would never see their children
again, or that they would see them maimed. For the most part, wars are fought by young
people, but the price paid by their parents (who are more numerous) is in its own way
terrifying. For the United States the war lasted four years, although the draft was started
in 1940. Five or six years in the life of a society are not long except when they are
accompanied by major changes in the accustomed way in which people experience their
lives, their relationships to each other and their traditional institutions. To live for and
dream of a return to normalcy at the Same time that one is adapting to a quite different
state of affairs and to live this way for several years, which in the life of an individual is a
very, very long time is an invitation to disillusionment.
There are many ways to characterize the war years. One is to say they were years of

52

ti
b4
 What Are Schools of Education For?

anxious waiting waiting in terms of individual goals as well as for societal stability and
world peace. The anxiety stemmed not only from ambiguity about whether the war
would be won, but also from uncertainty about how 2nd when it would end, and at what
price. Bear in mind that for the first half of the war Germany, Italy and japan seemed on
the road to victory. Even near the war's end in Europe, when Germany seemed on the way
to defeat, it mounted a counteroffensive which came close to turning the tide. If people
greeted the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima with satisfaction and relief, those
feelings can be understood in the context of an end to anxious waiting. From the vantage
point of the post-war years, questions can be raised about the use of the atomic bomb.
Some of these questions are legitimate, particularly those based on the assumption that
means should have been taken to demonstrate to Japan the holocaustic consequences of the
new weapon. But I have little doubt that if there had been a public referendum on the use
of the bomb, the vote would have been ovewhelmingly in favor of its usc. Not that most
people were bloodthirsty or desirious of inflicting a cruel revenge, but that if it meant an
end to the fighting and the anxious waiting, they supported using it. Of course, if the
armed forces had been polled, the results would have been unanimous.
Another stimulus to the anxiety arose. From the very beginning of our involvement,
casualties returned to civilian life, their numbers increasing as the war continued. The
casualties were both psychological and physical in nature, and their difficulties in
readjusting, as well 2S those of thcir families and friends, were common knowledge. But
reminders of what could happen were not essential for those .:xpeiiencing prolonged
anxietv The dynamics of waiting included the fear that separated people can and do
change md that reunion at war's end might fall short of one's dreams. Regardless of
circumstances some people manage to live in a fool's paradise, but for most people
wives, parents, older children the reunion was seen as potentially dangerous.
I said earlier that millions of men stopped 'working' and entered the armed services.
For some this represented, of course, a massive unsought interference with what they liked
and wanted to do. For others, however, leaving their work was not intrinsically saddening
Lecause their work Was not satisfying to them. They did not relish going to war, of
Course, and their reluctance had more to do with going to War than giving up interesting
work. War has, as we know, perversely unexpected consequences. During the Second
World War some men and women in the armed services found themselves in jobs and
positions of responsibility far above or more interesting than they experienced in civilian
life. We are used to hearing about the grime and tragedy of battle, and we cannot be
reminded of it too often. We are also familiar with the confining routine, and Catch-22
features of military living. But the fact remains that for some people, their military work
was more satisfying than their civilian work. For these people (their numbers cannot be
known but I assume they were not insignificam; the return to civilian life would pose
difficult problems. Similarly, those who had been wrenched away from satisfying work
2nd whose prolonged military service was experienced as senseless futility and mind-
breaking boredom would have distinctive problems of readjustment. Let us not forget
probably the largest group: those who left unsatisfactory work and experienced more of
the same in the military. Their problems in readjustment were undoubtedly quite varied,
but it is hard to see how they could return to civilian life with a positive conception of
themselves.
53

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 Schools as Collaborative Cukures: Creating the Future Now

An army needs officers. and the size of the military establishment during the Second
World War required a staggering number. Traditionally, officers tend to come from the
nighiy educated groups of the population and the Second World War was no exception.
Medical, legal, business, educational, psychological, engineering, administrative, scientific
these were only some of the kinds of personnel that were required. Many who had
already finished their education and were practising their professions were drafted or
volunteered for service. With the outbreak of war it seemed as if our colleges and
universities would be denuded of students (and faculty), who would be drafted en masse.
But as it became clear that modern war required the kinds of knowledge and expertise
represented in various university departments, and that to gain a minimum level of
proficiency in these fields assumed a college education (e.g., physicians and engineers cculd
not skip college), our colleges and universities became, in part, accelerated training centers
supported by the military. In fact, government support of these programs made it possible
for many people to receive a college education (however narrow and accelerated) who
ordinarily would not have, anticipating the GI bill. A sizable number of high school
graduates who were college bound were drafted directly into the armed services, just as
college students were drafted while they were still in school. Some of these people, either
because they had been in college or had obtained high intelligence test scores, were sent to
officer candidate schools or selected for special training programs run by the military.
Indeed, a good number of these young people were exposed to jobs and career possibilities
which they pursued after the war. The correlation between education and officer status
was lost on no one. Occasionally, it gave rise to feelings of superiority and smugness
among the educated; it very frequently was viewed with derision and hostility on the part
of the less educated. Feelings aside, the significance of education in military and civilian life
was established as never before.
It is hard to say how the military experiences of the highly educated soldier influenced
his adjustment to civilian work. Hordes of them flocked back to the universities to finish
their education or professional training, or to reorient themselves toward the future,
Those who had an established profession before entering the military had the difficult task
of starting all over again, a task complicated by three factors. First, the returnees felt
robbed by the years spent in service; those years mav have had some value and interest in
terms of work, but were not likely to pay off in restarting a professional career. Second,
they were aware that while they were in service those who had remained in civilian life had
furthered their careers. Third, those who had remained in civilian life, however grateful
they might have been to those who had been in the military, were not faced with a
readjustment but with the linear pursuit of their work.
We must keep in mind that at the same time everyone was rejoicMg at the war's end,
they were also anticipating that our society would soon be faced with economic problems,
high unemployment and social unrest. The change from a war to a peace economy has
never been easy (neither for the victors, nor for the defeated), and given the length and the
dimensions of the Second World War, it is not surprising that some gloomy forecasts
were made. The specter of the Great Depression, during which the veterans had come to
maturity, seemed to be taking shape anew on the horizon. From one depression to war to
another depression? No one wanted to be on that road, but many feared they were.
During the war the conflicts between industry and labor had largely been contained. but

54

f;
 What Are School( of Education For?

there was good reason to believe that as soon as the war ended that struggle would erupt
again. The racial problem had already gathered momentum, during the war, and it
certainly would gather force and speed with the end of war. So, .ide by side with rejoicing
at the approaching end of war was anxiety about the future of self and society.
One other factor must be mentioned, and again it is a.. example of the perverse
dialectic of war. War is hell, especially for those in or near battle whose unseen hut
constant companion is death. But the conditions of war, as countless novelists have told LS,
also produce a social cohesion, a sense of community, a special freedom in thought,
language and behavior ordinarily missing in peacetime. Entry into service is an upsetting
affair productive of loneliness, in which one actively seeks and needs to establish social
roots. It is a socializing process in which internal and external pressures facilitate
relationships and structured social living. One may experience frustration, loneliness and
despair one can count on that but one also can count on the sense of belonging which
is a product of rigid military structure with its strong formal and informal codes of
behavior. Life is structured and confined far beyond what one is accustomed to or desires.
but the other side of the coin is that one knows one belongs. Griping and hitching are an
important feature of military living (and why not?), as are fmtasies of freedom and
pleasures when the war is over. However, for some soldiers the return to civilian life had
sonic surprises, among which was a yearning for that strange amalgam of structure.
freedom and social cohesion they had so long dreamed of leaving. The people and world to
which they were returning had, like themselves, undergone change. In this war, unlike
previous wars, our soldiers spent time in all corners of the globe in strange countries with
strange customs. and sonie of the relationships, sexual or otherwise, they formed were not
easy to give up or forget. Memories of war-time experience were no less subject to the
mechanisms of selective recall than were those of the civilian life they had left.
If the years immediately after the war did not produce economic chaos, they did
exacerbate or produce personal turmoil. For at least a decade after the war professional
journals were full of articles about how the war helped set the stage for personal and
familial conflicts. In fact, one characterization of those post-war years is as the Age of
Psychology and Psychiatry. It is not fortuitous that not long after the war's end Leonard
Bernstein composed the concerto The Age of Anxiety. The federal government had begun
a massive program to care for veterans who had incurred service-connected disabilities, and
a large fraction of the funds went to the development of psychiatric services. Indeed,
between the Veterans Administration and, somewhat later, the National Institute of
Mental Health, social science and psychiatry departments of the university were supported
in regard to mental health training and research endeavors. Mental Health! One might as
well characterize those post-war years as the Ave of Mental Health because it became a
national concern. It was not only the veteran who needed help, but, it was argued, so did
millions of other people. How could we educate and train enough psychotherapists to
begin to meet the demand for help? What we really needed, said one eminent psychiatrist,
were more five-dollars-an-hour therapists. The most obvious significance of these
developments was reflected in people's changing sense of autonomy, potency and social
connectedness the ways in which they experienced and sought solutions for personal
problems.
One other obvious feature of the war years has to be noted, a feature whose

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implications for the future were not comprehended. The enemy in the Second World War
was fascism and racism. How could we fight such an enemy and tolerate racism in our
own country? That was a question pushed to the fore by blacks who at the start of the war
were largely in segregated units in the army. Both in the armed forces and civilian life this
question raged, accompanied by violence and even riots. We are used to hearing about the
civil rights movement after the war. The fact is that the civil rights movement, among
blacks and whites, was forged during the war. If the war years presented challenges and
opportunites for blacks, the same was true for women. They, too, both in the armed
forces and civilian life, had assumed roles previously denied them.
It is hard to overestimate what a catastrophe the Great Depression was to most
people. It caused personal turmoil, disappointment and disillusionment for which many in
the older segments of our society today still carry scars. One must bear in mind that, from
its beginning in 1929 until a year or so after Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. being out of
work or hungry was an individual catastrophe and not a situation for government action.
Even when the federal government assumed responsibility, its programs were of the
'band-aid variety, leaving millions of citizens, young and old, dependent, anxious and
bewildered. It was not untd the Second World War that the Great Depression ended. Yet
throughout this period of social upheaval the bulk of the people held to the belief that the
situation would change for the better. They still nurtured hope and great expectations that
in the not too distant future the land of opportunity would again be fertile.
The Second World War and its immediate aftermath were further reinforcements to
hope and great expectations. We were a decisive force in subduing a fascist enemy. A
lasting peace seemed possible, not an ersatz one such as followed the First World War. The
obvious inadequacies of the League of Nations would be replaced by a viable United
Nations. Colonialism was on its way out. Peace and justice seemed inexorable forces
which would overcome the international conflicts breaking out soon after the war's end.
In our own society the immediate post-war period was dominated by four
developments which, over time, became intertwined. For our purposes their significance
lies in their illumination of the role of great expectations in our society. The first was the
population explosion, which set in motion an economic expansion requiring material and
human resources to a degree which could not be adequately dealt with. More of everything
was needed, .iLd new opportunities for work and advancement escalated. The Great
Depression became an item in the history books, a relic of an unstable past from which the
appropriate lessons had been learned, justifying a view of a stable future. A second
occurrence was the rise of the poverty, civil rights, racial and women's movements all
seeking to establish a durable foundation for their great expectations. They asked for no
less than the opportunity to give expression to the great expectations which had long been
their right not their reality. The third event, in point of time the first, was the passage of
the Second World War GI bill, whkh provided new opportunities for millions of veterans.
For many veterans these werc educational and career opportunities which thcy did not
envision before the war. Education as z door-opening process to personal and material
advancement took on a reality it had never had before. The fourth development was the
culmination of what a small minority of people in Western society had been saying for
several centuries: science and technology had the potential to solve all the important
human problems and to allow the realization of one's goals. This belief became general.
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What science had done in the past was nothing compared to its future potential (and the
problem of death was no exception: witness the research on and potentials of cryogenics).
Give science its head and follow it to a heaven on earth, if not for ourselves, then for our
children or their children (Sarason, 1975).
For two decades after the Second World War the philosophy of great expectations
was a factor in the experience of work. As increasing numbers of people poured into our
colleges and universities exposing them to knowledge and career possibilities that had
not existed before the war, inculcating in them the modern version of individual and social
progress, and sensitizing them to the obligation of applying individual aspirations to the
betterment of society increasing numbers left these centers armed with hope and great
expectations. Education was a door-opener to opportunity; the more education one had,
the more doors would open, and widely. Gone were the days when a BA degree was a
union card to a 'good job'. The dues had gone up, so to speak, and now one needed (and
should want) advanced degrees for the 'really' good jobs jobs having high status, high
pay and high personal satisfactions.
It is hard to overestimate the significance of the fact that within the span of two
decades increasing percentages of our population entered colleges and universities. From
one standpoint it could be argued that many of these people, herded as they were onto
overcrowded campuses and attending overcrowded classes, hardly received an education.
Education is not a passive process in which an instructor 'puts' knowledge and wisdom
'into' the mind of the student. Nor is it a process in which teacher and student never talk
with each other. The hallmark of learning is certainly not the degree to which a student
can regurgitate in an examination what he has been told to read and what the instructor
has said in lectures. Is it not a corruption of the traditions of a liberal arts education to
transform college into a trade school? Was it justified to encourage students to seek a
college education who had neither the appropriate motivations nor capacities to benefit
from it? Worse yet, the argument goes on, how can one look approvingly at the
proliferation of graduate degrees testifying largely to the payment of tuition? The tragedy
of those years was not only that students were shortchanged, but that the functir-n of the
university to transmit and sustain the values of intellectual learning and inquiry to
'liberate' (through the liberal arts) the minds of people and at the same time instill an
appreciation of cultural continuity was transformed and degraded. Robert Nisbet's
(1971) book The Degradation ti the Academic Dogma, represents one of the better analyses of
this type of criticism. lt is a bitter but not unsympathetic statement.
It is not to deny validity to these criticisms to say they becloud a most significant
-xiint: through a confluence of factors this 'land of opportunity' suddenly opened wide the
doors of higher education, which had been long accepted as a sure entry into a good life. If
more people entered these doors than in any other society, past or present, it was not only
because the doors opened wide, adorned with enticing welcome signs, but also because it
has always been part of the transmitted culture that education was an instrument for
personal progress. One should always strive and expect, and the more schooling one had,
the more one had a right to expect of life. The university, formerly the preserve primarily
of the affluent, became more representative of the larger society. One can bemoan the
untoward effects of such quick growth on the university, but one must not neglect to ask
what was likely to happen to the new millions leaving our colleges and universities, armed

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with hope that their experience in the world of work would confirm their great
expectations.
If the philosophy of great expectations from education suggests a reaching for a
desirable state of affairs, however defined, it also suggests that there is a state of affairs to be
avoided. The material benefits and status to be gained through higher education have
always been obvious and emphasized to a greater degree than what may be termed intrinsic
benefits that is, the increased understanding of, and fascination with, culture and
history, a perception of self-growth in regard to such understanding and a never-ending
sense of wonder about man and his works, possibilities and dilemmas. Through education
one not only hoped to become a 'better' person, but also to acquire interests and a style of
thinking which would forever enrich one's life. These intrinsic, hard-to-define benefits
were like a good diet: somehow they sustained one against debilitation, or at least they
kept at bay some of the more insidious influences which make life difficult or unbearable.
But there was little question that the limit obvious benefit of higher education was that it
led to a smorgasbord of career opportunities from which one could choose according to
interests and talents, and one could expect one's choice to provide income over time to
meet one's expectations. Material expectations varied considerably among the different
career possibilities, but in no instance did one expect to find living an economic struggle.
The public school teacher obviously expected less income than did the physician, but until
recent years teaching was considered a noble and obviously important profession. if those
who entered teaching were inadequately remunerated, the discrepancy between what they
received and what they felt they deserved was far from enormous, and presumably there
were other benefits which took the edge off the consequences of thi Jiscrepancy.
it is a mistake in emphasis to criticize our colleges and universities as having become
elevated forms of trade schools, pandering to materialistic students who tend to lack
intellectual curiosity and appreciation of the intrinsic benefits of a higher education. From
the traditional perspective of the faculties of the arts and sciences the criticism is by no
means without foundation. From the perspective of many students any aspect of their
education must meet the criterion of 'relevance' for their future careers, and not many
aspects do. The mistake in emphasis is one of insensiti.ity to the fact that at the basis of
students' thinking was a distinction no less significant for its unclear articulation: the
distinction was between labor and work. To labor is to be imprisoned in activity in which
outcome or product has no personally meaningful relationship to the person's capactities
and individuality', e.g.. the assembly-line worker, garbage collector, pencil-pushing clerk
or the 'organizational drone'. To work is to have one's outcome and product bear the
stamp of one's capacities and individuality. To labor is to be stamped by the activity: to
work is to put one's stamp on the activity. Work, in Dewey's terms, contains the promise
of an experience. Labor is devoid of such a possibility.
To deny that our society is one in which size of income and material possessions are
criteria of 'success' is lunacy. The great expectations which have long been part of our
ideology are largely defined in economic terms. lt is not surprising, therefore, that
following the Second World War, when millions of young people were able to obtain a
higher education during two decades of societal affluence in which advances in speed of
communication and travel redefined the scope and substance of the good life tLey saw
education as ensuring some access to that good life. The society not only told them to

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expect, it told them what to expect. But that was never the whole story, because in some
vague, inchoate way most of these young people were expecting their careers to have the
characteristics of work and not labor. They may have left our colleges and universities
seeking the highest bidder for their knowledge and skills; they may have chosen their first
job because they could quickly move up the economic and status ladders; they may have
gone on spending sprees for new homes, cars. TV sets and other accoutrements of gracious
living; and they may have easily cottoned to the presumably painless use of bank loans and
credit cards may have entered the world of work in all of these ways, but it is a mistake
to conclude that they expected work to be an unfulfilling experience, a personal trap in
which individuality and potentiality were the major victims.
I have deliberately restricted my comments to the two decades after the Second World
War because most of that period has been characterized as somnolent, silent and smug.
Certainly most of that period lacked the sustained overt emotionalism and upheaval of
succeeding years. That turbulence did not begin on a certain day or in a particular year.
Like all social upheavals, this one had its roots in the near and distant past. We think of the
Second World War as turbulent, but the turbulence conjured up in our minds took place
on battlefields, on the seas and in distant lands. We tend not to think of the forces set into
motion within our society, forces which began to alter that society radically, such as
accelerated migration to industrial centers, new job opportunities for women and racial
and ethnic minorities, an emerging civil rights movement (particularly in regard to
segregation in the armed forces), rising affluence, mammoth disruption in family life, the
setting of the stage for the future population explosion and the beginning awareness that
the post-war period was not and should not be a return to the good old days. If we
thought of the two decades after the war as silent and conformist, it is because we had no
way of comprehending the significance of the availability of higher education to millions of
young people. We were too busy enlarging and creating colleges and universities, too busy
searching for faculties to man them, too busy following up the wondrous scientific and
technological advances spurred by the Second World War, to examine how this revolution
in opportunity reflected past traditions and public rhetoric and what kind of harbinger it
might be for different kinds of scenarios in the future. I do not say this in criticism. If we
were unprepared to deal adequately with the problem in a logistical and architectural sense,
we were even less prepared to deal with its social history, institutional implications and
changing zeitgeist. It has been pointed out that national revolutions occur after rising
expectations have been blunted. I am Aiggesting that the upheaval (not revolution) of the
last decade stemmed in part from the earlier remarkable increase in the numbers of young
people populating our colleges and universities. It was not only that they came in
unprecedented numbers, but that they came with attitudes toward and expectations of our
society which they had little or no reason to believe were unrealistic until, of course,
their later entry into that society changed their view of that society.
The GI Bill of Rights of whose many generous provisions at least half of the fifteen
million participants in the war took advantage was the single most potent stimulus to
and reinforcement of the theme of great expectations. When that legislation is seen in the
context of the Great Depression, the war years and the decade or so after the war, you
begin to see why great expectations were on a collision course with the realities of this
society in an unstable world.
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The changed nature of the relationship between education and work, between great
expectations and events in the post-Second World War period, i have discussed in my
book, Work Aging, and Social Change: Professionals and the One-Life, One Career Imperative
(1977), from which some of the contents of this chapter were taken. If I have gone back
over some of that ground, it was with the purpose of illustrating how schools of education
neglected to examine the implications and consequences of a piece of legislation that,
indirectly but extraordinarily powerfully, came to influence all of public education. That
legislation was primarily for and about higher education but in the light of its significance
for the millions who took advantage of its provisions (significance for the individual,
marriage and parenthood) it could have been predicted that the fantastic importance they
gave to education for themselves and their children in a world they perceived as having
changed, a world they strongly felt should change, a world which they hoped their
children would shape far more than they had been able to shape theirs was a
predisposing force to the later call for altering and improving our schools. The world had
changed and should change that was obvious to almost every adult, veteran or not, and
it was a message communicated in myriad ways to their children. Our schools did not hear
or misinterpreted the message.
A critic could ask: why blame schools of educations for not studying the
consequences of the GI Bill of Rights, the title already reflecting the future, more general
emphasis in our society on rights over obligations, on novelty and change over trading and
conformity, on expectations over compromise. Would it not be more appropriate and
respectful of scholarly domains to direct your remarks to the social sciences? On numerous
occasions I have expressed the opinion that it is scandalous that the social sciences have
virtually ignored the significance of the GI Bill of Rights. But, as you well know, the
enamorment of the social sciences with grand theorizing and rigorous, but too often
trivial, research had little or no place for the field of education, higher and lower. That is
why, as I discussed in Psychology Misdirected (1981). the social sciences in general, and
psychology in particular, have not been able to come to grips with John Dewey, whom
they regard as at best a philosopher and at worst an educator. The lesson in all of this for
schools of education is that they should not have relied on the social sciences to be sensitive
to social events and forces that would have an impact on our schools. That is a
responsibility that schools of education must take on far more extensively than they have in
the past. The past is a puzzle and the future is essentially unknowable except in broad
outline. Nevertheless, as members of a university we justify our existence by persevering in
trying to reduce the past's puzzle-like features and trying to make the best guess we can
about what in the future we should begin to adapt to. That means that we have to learn to
be more sensitive to present events, not only in terms of appearances but also of the
underswells they may be reflecting. Recently a number of books have appeared
summarizing and trying to nuke sense of the 1980 census data. Some fascinating
possibilities have been discerned in those data, almost every one of which would, if the
trends continue, have an important impact on our schools. Needless to say. I am not aware
that anyone is trying to figure out what each of these possibilities should mean for how our
conception of schools and schooling may have to change. In &hoofing in America: Scapegoat
and Salvation (1983), from a vantage point other then census data, I have interpreted
ongoing social changes in ways that forced me to conclude that the axiom that education

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best takes place inside schools is largely invalid. I note this here only to suggest that the
most potent enemy within us is the tendency to scan the scene of social change imprisoned
intellectually within the structure and traditions of educational institutions into which we
were socialized and with which we continue to be related institutions from which most
Of us derive our livelihood in whole or in part. Once we recognize that enemy and begin to
cope with it we will be better prepared for a future that is rushing toward us.
Let me now turn to a second aspect on my uninvited challenge to schools of
education.
This aspect of the challenge. again put in terms of the past, stems from the fact that
educators not only accepted responsibility for schooling but, more fateful, adopted a stance
which essentially said: we know how to solve and manage the problems of schooling in
America. Educators did not say: there is much that we do not know, many problems that
are intractable to our efforts and many individuals we are not reaching or helping. Put in
another way, educators were not saying out loud that which in their daily work was
obvious to them. Yes, they would say, we need more financial and other resources which.
if made available, would improve education. That is why when in the late 1950s and early
1960s the federal government began to provide additional resources, it seemed to educators
as if they were at the start of a new era in which they could really deliver on past promises.
Of course, the public looked eagerly to what seemed a rosy future. There were, needless to
say, controversies about how to use the new resources, what should be changed and who
should be changed. But no one was saying that those debates should be intepreted as
indicating either that we were far from clear about what the problems were or that we had
any solid ground for believing that any particular idea or practice would work as its
proponents said. There were answers galore, a surfeit of promises, and it was
understandable if the public gained the impression that the problems of schooling were like
problems in mathematics in that they had clear answers. Matters were not helped by
educatic--1 critics and researchers, largely in our universities, who said not only that the
emperor was naked, but also that he was suffering from a terminal disease. They, with a
few exceptions, did not say that the problems of schooling were long-standing and not
amenable to quick remedies; that past emperors in the research community had misled
them; that, actuarially speaking, most research being proposed would turn out to be, at
best, fruitless and, at worst, harmful in its side effects; that the research endeavor, however
necessary, is no basis for devising timetables and communicating unjustified optimism;
that the researcher, like the educational practitioner, wrestles with unk iowns, trying to
do his or her best with extroardinarily complex problems. Like the practitioners, the
educational researchers promised the public more than they could deliver. implicity
suggesting a timetable that was wildly unrealistic. Far from seeing their kinship with the
practitioner, the educational researcher tended to use the practitioner as scapegoat. All of
this was taking place at the same time that both researcher and practitioner knew in their
hearts that they were seeking their ways through a forest of ignorance that seemed to
grow trees faster than they could be cut down.
Let me make my point by analogy. Why is it that since the rise of scientific medicine
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, we have not criticized and indicted the medical
researcher and practitioner for not being able to cure the bulk of cancers or, for that
matter, hundreds of other bodily afflictions? Why was it not said that medicine was either
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a failure or quackery that did not deserve public support? One part of the answer is that the
medical community made a virtue of its ignorance insofar as its stance with the public was
concerned. That community did not say that it would be able to cure cancers next year or
twenty years from now. On the contrary, it emphasized the complexity and scope of the
problem, the inadequacies of past and present conceptions and practices, the false starts and
disappointments that await it and the public in the future, and the need for patience.
forebearance and the long-term view. In short, scientific medicine said: we will do our
best, we will try to learn; let us not underestimate the obstacles and conundrums we face.
This stance may not be the polar opposite of how the educational community has
presented itself to the public, but it comes uncomfortably close. Why this has been and
continues to be the case is beyond my present purpose which is to emphasize that, to the
extent that the educational community does not alter its stance, it is doomed. That stance
will not be altered without the leadership of our schools of education. I am not suggesting
that we compose a symphony of mea culpas in which the major theme is ignorance and the
supporting chords are dysphoria and hopelessness. Nor am I suggesting that we change
our stance only in order to obtain and increase the suppott of our various educational
enterprises. The primary aim of this aspect of the challenge is twofold: first, to get the
educational community off the moral hook of promising more than it can deliver; second,
to increase public understanding of why the problems of schooling in our society are and
will be as vexing as they are. Implicit in this altered stance is a very important message: no
longer will the educational community accept full responsibility for dealing with
educational problems, most of which by their very nature are exacerbated by forces beyond
the school. That is not to say that educators will not deal with these problems as they
manifest themselves in our schools, that educators will not try to suck better approaches,
but rather that these problems will be intractable as long ar, they are seen as the primary
responsibility of educators. Just as the medical community does not accept responsibility
for cancers caused by smoking, pollution, food additives and scores of other possible
carcinogens, the educational community cannot accept responsibility for problems
originating in the larger society. Just as the medical community continues to deal clinically
as best it can with etiological factors over which it has no control, so must the educational
community do its best with problems beyond its control in the sense of prevention.
Schools of education must assume leadership in relationship to diverse community groups
and institutions, in a way that makes clear that responsibility is shared. As I have said
elsewhere (Sarason, 1982), for all practical purposes the answer to the question, 'Who
owns the schools?' has been: educators. However understandable that was in terms of
seeking professional status and of community compliance, it was a disastrous mistake,
confusing leadership with shared responsibility.
I said earlier that these are dangerous times for schools of education precisely because
education has returned near to the top of the national agenda. For one thing the critics of
education are again making scapegoats of educators as if the major problems are their
responsibility and of their making; and proposals for change continue to assume that in the
future this responsibility should remain where it is. I hear nothing from the educational
community to challenge that assignment of responsibility. Therein is the danger that the
proposed nostrums will be seen by the public, the ultimate victims, as 'answers'. Who is
saying that we are not dealing with problems that have 'solutions' in the sense that four
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divided by two is two? Who is saying that however wondrous available technology may
be (like the computer), we are far from knowing how technology can or should be
employed in a school, that it is not simply a matter of engineering technology into the
classroom? (Is amnesia about the promise of teaching machines, the new math, the new
biology and the new physics total?) Who is saving that any effort at educational change,
like the trials for a new drug, has to be concerned with 'side effects', indeed has to assume
that there will be undesirable side effects which can be of a degree with will cause us to
abort our efforts? Who is saying that we should never undertake any educational change
or innovation unless there is a general recognition that we may fail outright or fall short of
the mark, not because we lack confidence in what we will do but because we are realistic
about the limitations of our knowledge, theoretical and practical, in an unpredictable
world? The silence on these issues is, for all practical purposes, complete.
The third aspect of the challenge concerns the relationship of schools of education to
the public schools. More than a decade ago. in relation to a partial critique of the social
sciences (Sarason, 1974), I made the recommendation that any social scientist whose
writing and research purported to have significance for how things do or should work in a
particular setting should be encouraged (originally, I said required!) to spend every third
year, full-time, in that setting in some appropriate position. That recommendation arose
from my observations of many academic social scientists who in the 1960s earnestly strove
to make a difference somewhere in society, most frequently in Washington. They strove
to make a difference in two ways: as consultants or by taking a position during leave of
absence from the university. With very few exceptions they came back to the universities
psychologically bloodied: discouraged by their lack of influence, appalled by what they had
seen or experienced, uncomprehending of why the social world had not already come
apart, and grateful that they could return to the groves of the academy where, relatively
speaking, peace and rationality reigned and the pursuit of knowledge was the prime virtue.
Their world was divided in two: inside and outside the university, and guess which one
they thought to be askew? I am overdrawing the picture only somewhat, but that should
not distract you from the fact that most of these social scientists were forced to become
aware that their theories and research were not applicable to the world as it is, as they
experience it outside the university. Indeed. Patrick Moynihan, a one-time academic, was
so impressed with the feckless efforts of social scientists that in his book, Maximum Feasible
Misunderstanding (1969), he recommends that the arena of social policy should be
considered off-limits to them and that their role should be restricted to evaluation, not
planning, consulting about or administering policy. Moynihan's recommendation is, as I
point out in The Psy Magical Sense of Community (1974, p. 257), as mindless as the theories
and research which were the objects of his criticisms were inadequate.
I have been discussing the social scientist as he pursues social action for the purpose of
applying basic theory to the solution of the problems of society. There is a second way, far
less ambitious and more unplanned or fortuitous, which can be illustrated by Second
World War experiences. It first has to be noted that in the Second World War almost
everyone in the university willingly and eagerly sought to be helpful. No one was saying
that the rest of society should fight the war while the university should continue its pursuit
of basic knowledge. Academic people in or out of the armed services concentrated on
practical problems in which they frequently had no background or previous interest . They
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were not seeking basic knowledge or developing new theoretical systems. The problems
were immediate, pressing and in need of practical solutions. Overcoming visual problems
of pilots, instilling certain attitudes in soldiers, managing mental breakdowns near the field
of battle, learning how to form groups and maintain morale, teaching of heretofore
neglected foreign languages, increasing industrial efficiency and output, developing
effective propaganda. training people for espionage, predicting reactions to stress,
improving decision-making and planning processes this is a very small sample of the
problems academic people were dealing with. The war had personal and professional
consequences for university people, personal in the sense that for many it simply expanded
their knowledge of the larger society and its problems, and professional in the sense that it
changed the substantive nature of many fields. It is hard to overestimate how much the
Second World War changed the direction of basic research and theory because it was an
unpredictable consequence of dealing with some practical or applied problems. Garner
(1972) discussed and illustrated this process in regard to experimental psychology.
The topic of space perception is almost synonymous with the name of
James Gibson these days, so when I want to talk about concepts and research in
space perception. I cannot do so without talking about James Gibson's
research. He was well established as an authority on perception before World
War II, but his experiences during that war working on some applied
problems, changed the nature and direction of his theorizing considerably.
Specifically, his experiences led him to his 'Ground Theory' of space perception
as described in his book, The Perception of the Visual World, published in 1950.
As Gibson describes the experience in that book, he and some other
psychologists were trying to understand how aircraft pilots estimate the
distance to the ground when they are landing an airplane. He found that the
traditional cues for depth perception, listed without fail in every introductory
textbook on psychology, simply failed to explain the perception of depth at the
distances required in flying and landing an airplane. He furthermore found that
experiments had to be done in the field to get at the process, that laboratory
experiments changed the nature of the process too much. So into the field he
went.
It was from these experiments that Gibson came to the conclusion that the
prerequisite for the perception of space is the perception a continuous
background surface; thus the 'Ground Theory' which evolved from this work.
The important point for my thesis today is that Gibson's whole way of
thinking about the problem of space perception changed when he was faced
with the problem of understanding how pilots in a real-life situation actually
land their airplanes without too many crashes. His theoretical notions were
changed by his contact with people with problems. He did not develop these
important ideas by a continuous relation Lo his previous work. Rather, his
research and thinking, according to his own report, took a decided turn for the
better as a esult of his experience (pp. 8-9).
Garner could have used his own illustrious career as an example.
It is unfortunate that it was as . consequence of a world war that theory and research

64

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 What Are Schooh of Education For?

in practically every university discipline changed markedly and the pace of acquiring new
knowledge accelerated. The lesson, of course. is not that we should have more wars but
that concern with practical problems can lead to new and fundamental knowledge. But
this lesson was not drawn, so that in 1972 Garner was znmpelled to say: 'The quality of
basic research is improved by communication between the basic research scientist and the
people who have problems to solve. Thus for scientists to engage in goal-oriented research,
research aimed at solving problems knewn to exist, is both to perform a service to society
and to improve the quality of basic rmarch itself. . . . If the scientist will talk to people
with real problems, and just as important, if those people will talk to those of us who are
scientists, then both those who acquire knowh-dge and those who apply it will benefit.
The relation is truly symbiotic.
I should remind the reader that the thrust of my discussion has not been to deny the
validity of thr tradition ti.t holds that research and theorizing untrammeled by practical
considerations, or the need to solve immediate social problems, can contribute new general
knowledge about man and society. I have argued against the exclusivity of this tradition
and its historically unwarranted assumption that dealing with the practical problems of
people and society is dangerous and unproductive. I hope that it has also been clear that I
have not advoclted that the academic social scientist should become involved in practical
matters as an end in itself but rather as a means of testing his comprehension of social
realities or for the deliberate purpose nf experiencing a new role in its actual fullness.
I must turn again to peisonal experie -ice. One of several major reasons why I started
and directed the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic was to test myself in the role of leader. It
was an inchoate kind of motivation but in some dim way i felt I had to do it if I were to
understand bettei hy new settings fail, and rather quickly so. I was painfully aware of the
self-defeating character of most organizations. new and old, but I was vaguely
uncomfortable in the knowledge that my understanding was from an outsider's
perspective. And, frankly, the literature I read on leadership and organizations was far
more effective than seconal as a sleep producer. I also found what was for me a fantastic
omission in this literature: there was practically nothing on how to create a new setting,
even though new settings were being created at an ever-accelerating rate. The more I dug
into the literature, the clearer it became that what information we have is based on
chronologically mature, malfunctioning organizations. So in my curiosity about myself as
a leader I was led to the problem of the creation of settings, which I defined as two or more
people coming together in ne \A and sustained relationships to attain stated objectives, As
best I could, it is all described in my book, The Creation of Seuings and die Future Societies
(1972). I experienced leadership and the creation of settings in their fullness. I would like to
believe that the things I learned and reported are fundamental and a contribution to general
knowledge. Whit I believe is ultimately of no significance unless others agree that what
came out of ten years of planning and working ten years of continuou , day-by-day,
month-by-month responsibility, influencing and being influenced, experiencing anxiety,
joy and controversy is of general import. If that book was a biography of a particular
clinic in a particular university in a particular city, I should not be surprised if it met with
disinterest. What may be interesting to me, or what was the most self-transforming
experience of my life, is important to me personally. but unless I can relate the particulars
of my experiences to more general contents and issues I am not fulfilling my role as a
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 Schoolt as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future P.'ow

member of a university faculty. The most pertinent point here is that as a member of a
university faculty I had an obligation to pursue knowledge even if that meant 'messing' in
a sustained way with the realities of modern society. But, as I pointed out before, that
sense of obligation is not shared by many people in the university, who have sucassfully
innoculated themselves against the contamination of society.
I have reiterated what I wrote years ago in relation to social scientists because I feel
that my critique and recommendation should have even greater force for the faculty of our
schools of education. Visiting schools is fine, there is nothing wrong with giving
workshops, and consulting to schoo - can be instructive, but none of these, or all of them
in combination, can substitute for implementing and testing one's theories and research
findings on a full-time basis in the setting for which they are deemed appropriate. Let me
bolster my argument by saying something critical about one of my great heroes, John
Dewey. As you well know, John Dewey sought to change and improve our schools but,
as you also know, schools took over his rhetoric but avoided giving life to his ideas. Why
this happened is a long story and I refer you to Cremin's (1961) The Transformation of the
School and Hofstadter's (1964) Anti-!ntellectualism in America. There is one part of the
explanation that has not been noted and it is wrapped up in the question: Why did Dewey
start the lab school at the University of Chicago at the end of the last century? There were,
I believe, three major reasons. The first was Dewey's need to have a vehicle through which
he could test his ideas the experimental attitude always characterized his approach.
Foremost in his purpose was to wed psychology to education; he was drawn to Chicago
precisely because he would have the support to overcome the artificial separation between
the two fields. Indeed, a few years after he started the lab school he stated in his 1899
presidential address to the American Psychological Association that education had to be
conceptualized within the context of the social sciences, a position that, as 1 shall indicate
at the end of my remarks, has special significance for the distinctive history of Syracuse's
School of Education. The second reason was Dewey's interest in child development.
Dewey way back then was already fashioning conceptions that were remarkably similar to
those that Piaget came to decades later.
We have yet to appreciate fully the legacy of what Dewey did and learned in his lab
school. But what Dewey did not see he saw almost everything else was the difference
between creating your own school and changing an existing one. Dewey's third purpose
was to use the lab school as a force for changing our existing schools and school systems.
Dewey did a magnificent job in creating, inspiring and overseeing an atypical educational
setting, but that is a different order of task than trying to implement ideas in what I have
called the culture of existing h 1 1191421 n_ewey, of course, was 2S astute an observer as
there has ever been of our schools, but his astuteness (a word that indulvs understatement
in his case) did not extend to the obstacle course one runs when trying to introduce change
into an ongoing institution rooted in history and tradition. To comprehend and cope with
that task would have required Dewey to immerse himself in the change process in 'real
life' schools. That is the degree of full-time immersion that is all too rare among faculty in
schools of education and in the social sciences. Our phenumenology of schools in relation
to the change process is dramatically altered once we assume a full-time role in the
quotidian activities of schools, and it is a process that always has an impact on our theories
and goals.

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 What Are Schools of Education For?

My argument can be illustrated by a brief comment on one of those rare full-time

immersions undertaken by Dean Burton Blatt. I refer to the year Dean Blatt spent away
from Boston University to become Deputy Commissioner for Mental Retardation in
Massachusetts. What he learned and experienced is contained in his book. Exodus from
Pandemonium (1970). 1 especially recommend the chapter titled 'Fifteen Ashburton Place',
the central office then of the Department of Mental Health. This chapter is realistic,
unsettling and wisely humorous. He took that position after his photographic eassy,
Christmas in Purgatory (1966), awakened this nation to the inhumanity in our 'humane'
institutions. In fact, he communicated his findings to the assembled Massachusetts
legislature, reporting much the same state of affairs that Dorothea Dix had to the same
legislature more than a century earlier. Dean Blatt wanted to be a force for changing and
improving institutions in our states and he took a leave of absence from the university to
become such a force. Paradoxically, but only so on the surface, he became such a force at
the same time that he began to question his basic assumption that it was possible to bring
about sustained change in these institutions. The realities of the system and our society, he
came to conclude, would prevent accomplishing such sustained change. The loss of
innocence is much to be preferred to the consequences of theorizing or hortatory rhetoric
divorced from the realities. From one standpoint, as he noted, he failed in his purposes
because he was in part responsible for many states spending many millions of dollars to
improve what could not be improved except over very short periods of time. But in one
enormously significant respect his efforts, together with one other earlier event in our
society, had major roles in bringing about the third revolution in American education. The
first revolution was the legitimation of compulsory education. The second, and this is the
earlier event I alluded to, was the desegregation decision of 1954. That decision and Dean
Blatt's awakening this country to the moral issues involved in maintaining segregated
institutions were in part responsible for the third revolution embodied in Public Law
94-142, a law intended to change every school and institution in our society. I have to
point out that neither in our schools of education nor in our social science departments was
there sensitivity to the potential interconnections between the desegregation decision in
relation to schools and what Dean Blatt was describing in our institutions, many of which
dignified themselves by appropriating the appellation 'schools'. Public Law 94-142 might
well have come about if Dean Blatt had never done or written what he did. But the fact
that he did what he did immersing himself in a total way in a responsible position in the
ongoing social world hastened a process that needed hasteners.
I am not asserting that every member of a school of education needs to leave the
university to spend a meaningful period of time in a meaningful position. What I have
recommended is that those members whose theories and research purport to describe the
realities of our schools, or contain clear proposals for what schools should do or be, should
be encouraged to test their ideas in the setting for which they are presumably relevant.
There are, of course, faculty members for whom my recommendation does not hold; here
I use as illustration Professor Thomas Green. His two books, Work, Leisure and the
American Schools (1980) and Prediaing the Behavior of the Educational System (1968) are
remarkable not only because of the way in which Green probes beneath the surfaces of our
society, but also because of the tightly reasoned arguments that literally force yo-i to think
differently about our society and our schools. Green does not tell you how to act
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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

differently or what program you should mount, but rather why you have to think
differently than you have been accustomed to.

References

BLArr, D.B. (1966) Christmas in Purgatory. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
BLArr, D.B. (1970) Exodus from Pandemonium. BOSIOL, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
CREMIN, L. (1961) The Transformation of the School. New York: Alfred Knopf.
GARNER, W. (1972) The Acquisition and Application of Knowledge. A Symbiotic Relationship,
American Psychologist, 27: 10.
GREEN, T. (1968) Work, Leisure, and the American Schools, New York: Syracuse University Press.
GREEN, T. (1980) Predicting the Behavior of the Educational System. New York: Random House.
HOFSTADTER, R. (1964) Anti-Intellectualism in America, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
MOYNIHAN, P. (1969) Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding. New York: Free Press.
NISBET, R. (1971) The Degradation of the Academk Dogma. New York: Basic Books.
SARASON, S. B. (1972) The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies. San Francisco, CA.: Jossey-
Bass.
SARASON, S. B. (1974) The Psychological Sense of Community. Prospects .for a Community Psychology.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
SARAsoN, S. B. (1975) 'Psychology to the Finland Station in the Heavenly City of the Eighteenth
Century Philosophers,' A merican Psychologist, 30, (11), 1072-30.
SARASON, S. B. (1977) Work, Aging, and Social Change: Professionals and the One Life-One Career
imperative. New York: Free Press.
SARASON, S. B. (1981) Psychology Misdirected. New York: Free Press.
SARASON, S. B. (1982) The Culture of the St hool and the Problem of Change. 2nd ed. Boston, MA:
Allyn and Bacon.
SARASON, S. B. (1983) Sc hooting in America: Scapegoat and Salvation. New York: Free Press.

68

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 PART 1:1
Examining Critical Issues ofFundamental Change

511
 Chapter 4

A Fundamental Puzzle of School Reform*

Larry Cuban

Tough-talking federal and state policy-makers active in current school reforms have
consistently charged that, while schools did their jobs well at some earlier date, misguided
reformers have since caused standards to slip, student performance to decay and schooling
to become ineffective. Schools, they argue, have changed for the worse.
The copycat spread of state reforms intended to stiffen academic standards, raise
teacher pay and tighten the assessment of teachers depends on the pervasiveness of this
view of a decline in the quality of schooling. The current crop of changes, state policy-
makers claim, will improve what occurs in classrooms and schools and right the wrongs of
the past. Set aside the vocabulary of crisis and the clever images of rising tides of
mediocrity, however, and few of these aggressive cheerleaders for current reforms could
sav that the governance of schools, the ways teachers teach or the organizational structures
of schooling have substantially changed over the last century.
The graded school with self-contained classrooms, the sorting of students by age and
the division of the curriculum into grade-level chunks were all innovations introduced to
American schools in the mid-nineteenth century. A superintendent in every district, a
principal in every school and a teacher in every classroom were familiar fixtures to turn-of-
the-centory taxpayers. Teachers' reliance on textbooks, worksheets and homework was
already standard practice in early twentieth century classrooms. Despite the rhetoric of
reform, basic ways of schooling children have been remarkably durable over the last
hundred years.
How can it be, then, that so much school reform has taken place over the last century
yet schooling appears to be pretty much the same as it has always been?1 Such a
contradiction long-term stability amid constant change puzzles well intentioned
policy-makers, practitioners and researchers eager to improve schooling. But it is essential
that those same policy-makers and practitioners try to make sense of this contradiction.
This chapter offers some views on reform and the process of change and connects these
views to a fundamental puzzle of school reform.

This chaptcr draws on the author's The Managerial Imperanre The Prati,-r o./ Leadership In S;hooli
(Albany: New York State University Press. 1988),

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Change versus Progress

Change is not necessarily impi.ovement. Most Americans see change as positive. Yet
change may or may not be progress. When a divorce splits a husband and wife, one partner
may see the pain and loss as an opportunity to begin a new life, a chance for personal
growth, an improvement over the past; the other may view the split as a disaster. How we
look at change depends on our goals and our mental map. An example related to schools
might help clarify the point.
A century 2nd a half ago tax-supported common schools took in boys and girls from
cities and farms, as well as migrants and immigrants. Buildings were erected; teachers
were hired; the school year was lengthened; more children attended classes and graduated;
children from many different cultures shared the same classrooms. These changes aimed to
improve a growing, maturing system of public schooling.
To some people these planned changes or reforms appeared to be progress toward a
better fit between democracy and the schooling that children received. In the eyes of other
observers, however, these changes were seen as efforts by an elite class to shape the beliefs,
values and behavior of children to meet the social and economic needs of those in power. In
this view the innovations of nineteenth century schooling are seen not as improvements
but as impositions of the powerful upon the weak as forms of social control. The
judgment of whether a change is an improvement, then, rests in the mind of the beholder.

Two Kinds of Planned Change

If charge is not necessarily progress, and if there is more than one kind of change, then we
need to examine what kinds of planned change there are. There are at least two types of
reform: first-order and second-order change.2 Let me use a sad example to illustrate what I
mean by each.
In 1986 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) experienced
grave setbacks with the tragic destruction of the Challenger space shuttle and of two
unmanned rockets within a three-month period. By all accounts, an agency that had
soared with the successes of lunar landings, shuttle flights and space walks staggered to a
halt with the deaths of seven astronauts and two rocket failures. With public awareness of
a complete collapse in performance, the Presidential commission appointed to investigate
tne disasters 2nd NASA's new leadership were forced to define the pioblems clearly. In
engineering terms the commission had to determine whether the Challenger accident was
a design problem, a lapse in quality control or some mixture of the two. Defining the
problem accurately was crucial, since the definition would chart thc direct:jn of changes in
NASA's goals. formal structure and relationships with government contractors and
Congress.
Similarly, for issues facing schools, there is a need to determine whether problems
should be seen as design or quality control issues (or some combination of the two). For
schools, solutions to what engineers would call quality control problems improving the
efficiency and effectiveness of what is done I call first-order chriges. First-order changes
in schools would include recruiting better teachers and administrators, raising salaries,

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 A Fundamental Puzzk of School Refiym

allocating resources equitably, selecting better textbooks, adding (or deleting) content and
coursework, scheduling people and activities more efficiently and introducing new
versions of evaluation and training. First-order changes try to make what already exists
more efficient and more effective, without disturbing the basic organizational features,
without substantially altering the ways in which adults and children perform their roles.
Those who propose first-order changes believe that the existing goals and structures of
schooling are both adequate and desirable.
What engineers would call solutions to design problems, I call second-order changes.
Second-order changes rtek to alter the fundamental ways in which organizations are put
together. They reflect major dissatisfactions with present arrangements. Second-order
changes introduce new goals, structures and roles that transform familiar ways of doing
things into new ways of solving persistent problems.3 Specific examples of second-order
changes are the open classroom, a voucher plan, teacher-run schools and schools in which
the local community has authority to make budgetary and curricular decisions. Each of
these reforms attempts fundamentally to alter existing authority, roles and uses of time and
space.
Since the turn of the century, successful school reform that is, changes that have
been incorporated into the routine operations of schools has generally been a series of
first-order changes. On occasion particular second-order reforms have been attempted in
uncocrdinated fashion. Such innovations as student-centered instruction, non-graded
schools, team teaching and open-space architecture have been tried but have had little
enduring effect except in cases in which individual teachers and principals have selectively
adapted them to local conditions.
The last three decades offer many examples of first-order changes sponsored by state
and federal laws. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965 and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of
1975 spent billions of dollars and produced a number of changes in the schools:
new layers of program speciali,ts who pull children out of classes to receive
additional help, such as reading experts, Chapter 1 teachers, bilingual
education teachers and vocational education staff;
procedural changes that guarantee due process for handicapped students;
classification systems for categorizing children (limited English speaking, gifted
and handicapped) and for certifying teachers (as teachers of English as a second
language, of the gifted, of the learning disabled); and
expanded tinting to measure student performance.4
These changes altered existing rules, modified practices or led to the hiring of specialized
staff members. The reforms created new constituencies that could be easily monitored, but
the changes seldom dented existing organizational structures. Nor did these federal efforts
substantially modify the curriculum or classroom instruction. No such changes were
sought, and few occurred.
In those years federal policy-makers tried to guarantee equal access to schooling tather
than to transform the structures, roles and relationships within states, districts 3nd schools.
The fust-order changes that were achieved were far from trivial. Expanding access ard

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

opportunity for children who had been poorly served by the schools was a massive task and
one that was consistent with the overall goals of a democracy.
The changes that resulted from federal interventions have been replaced in the 1980s
by activist state governments that have moved to Ml the vacuum created by the Reagan
Administration's attempts to reduce the federal role in school affairs. State after state has
introduced omnibus reform bills aimed at getting teachers and students to work harder in
classrooms. Governors, legislators and superintendents have mandated a longer school day
(and more days in the school year), higher graduation requirements, more tests and tighter
connections between tests and what is taught. Furthermore, many states have legislated
higher entry-level salaries for teachers, merit pay schemes, competency tests for new and
veteran teachers and accountability schemes that both caress and slap the schools. Most of
these state reforms aim for quality control. They seek to make the existing system more
productive, not to disturb basic classroom roles or the governance structures of schools.
The historic design of public schooling instituted in the urban schools of the mid-
nineteenth century remains essentially intact. Three decades of federal and state
intervention have been heavily loaded toward first-order changes that have strengthened
the existing structures of schooling.

Making Sense of Contradictions

Let me tie together these distinctions about change. and let me try to make sense of the
riddle with which this chapter began: how can schooling have changed so much over the
last century yet still appear much the same as it has always been?
Part of the contradiction depends on one's frame of reference. Change may be a
continuous process, but notions of improvement reside in the heads of participants and
observers. One viewer may judge a reform to be an improvement, while another judges
that same change to be a step backward. Although this distinction between change and
improvement is enlightening, it still does not account for the durability that we find in the
governance, pedagogy and structure of schooling. The distinction between first- and
second-order changes helps to explain this puzzle.
Recall that a number of second-order reforms established the dominant structures of
schooling between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The self-contained
classroom, the graded curriculum, the fifty-minute period, frequent testing, the reliance
on textbooks and worksheets and the current governance structure of schools were once
reforms that have since become institutional benchmarks of what constitutes proper
schooling. Since the turn of the century, periodic Ifforts to make langes in the schods
have succeeded if they enhanced these structural elements. For example, such changes as
different textbooks, new courses anci new tests; more time in school; higher teacher
salaries; compensatory education; and new procedures to gain equity for students all
succeeded to a greater or lesser extent because they were essentially first-order changes.
They aimed to improve the quality of what already existed what had come to be called
traditional schooling and not to alter the existing organizational structures. In effect,
first-order reforms reinforced traditional structures and gave further legitimacy to existing
school practices. Schools did change, but they remained fundamentally the same.

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 A Fundamental Puzzle of School Reform

Not surprisingly, many reforms that were intended to alter the fundamental
structures of schooling met with little, if any, success. Consider student-centered
instruction, open-space architecture, nan-graded schools, team teaching, the widespread
use of audiovisual technology, programmed learning, differentiated staffing, flexible
scheduling and other erratically introduced reforms. Some of these reforms have succeeded
in altering the vocabulary used by policy-makers and practitioners. Some have significantly
influenced the content of journals and the agendas of conferences. Some have even, on
occasion, altered professional curricula. But these reforms have seldom found a permanent
home in tht classrooms and schools of the nation. Indeed, most were adapted to fit the
contours of exictina iassrooms. For example, from child-centered progressivism there
remains a res it. ield trips, the use of small group discussions and a patina of
informality in t .1...i-student relationships.
Most reforms foundered on the rocks of flawed implement afion. Many were diverted
by the quiet but persistent resistance of teachers and administrators who, unconvinced by
the unvarnished cheer of reformers, saw minimal gain and much loss in embracing second-
order reforms boosted by those who were unfamiliar with the classroom as a workplace.
Thus first-order changes succeeded, while second-order changes were either adapted to fit
what existed or sloughed off, allowing the system to remain essentially untouched. The
ingredients change, the Chinese saying goes, but the soup remains the same.

Reframing the Problem

As a veteran practitioner turned professor wrestling with this puzzle, I have come to
appreciate the fact that organizations have plans for dealing with reformers. I have also
found that defining problems carefully at the outset is far more important than generating
clever solutions to ill-defined problems. My distinctions about change are not the only ones
that could be made, nor are they necessarily the most significaat. However, they do
provide me with a language to understand the persistent reappearance of reforms. Let me
apply my view of change and continuity to the most common goal of school reform over
the past century: changing teacher behavior.
The inventory of efforts aimed at changing what teachers do in their classrooms
staggers the observer. Reformers, however, have seldom asked the basic questions: How
do teachers teach? What is constant and what has changed in their teaching? Why do they
teach as they do? Instead, reformers desperately seeking improvement jump to the
question: How should teachers teach? But in doing so, reform-minded policy-makers and
practitioners have often tasted disappointment. Annoyance with teachers has grown in the
past century. If only teachers were more responsive; if only teachers understood the
importance of this or that reform; if only teachers worked harder so went the refrain.
Thus, by asking the wrong question first How should teachers teach? a succession of
disappointments in classroom reforms led to the inaccurate conclusion that intransigent
teachers were tr blame. But asking more fundamental questions Which innovations
have been embraced or rejected and why? What are the implications of proposed changes
for classrooms and schools? leads to very different analysis.
What I am describing is a reframing of the problem. For example, by defining a

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating thr Future Now

problem initially as, say, persuading teachers to install new machines in their classrooms,
the solution must be framed in terms of getting teachers, individually or in groups, to alter
routine behaviors. Such a definition of the problem assumes that convincing teachers to use
instructional television or computers or other machines is all that is necessary. Alas, it
ignores the power, in shaping behavior in the workplace, of organizational and cultural
norms and the individual teacher's perspective.
Similarly, policy-makers who are deeply interested in improving student per:ormance
in critical thinking, moral behavior and academic achievement are often unaware of these
distinctions about change. They eagerly offer politically feasible solutions to the problems
of schools in such simple-minded terms as raising teacher salaries, extending the school
day, placing more computers in classrooms, adding steel to the flabby academic spine of the
curriculum, introducing more tests for children, publishing test scores or cutting class size.
Such solutions are evidence of ignorance about first- and second-order reforms, of a
misunderstanding of the power of organizational norms and of a pervasive amnesia about
earlier school reforms.
If both policy-makers and practitioners understood the inherent dilemmas of
schooling and could distinguish between types of planned change a very different dialogue
about the problems that beset the schools would occur. For those who advocate structural
(second-order) change in schools, a feeling of impotence might grow. Although my
analysis may suggest pessimism about what can be achieved in reforming schools, I believe
that iewing change as I have will actually encourage optimism about what can and cannot
be c c within the current organizational structures. Some reforms will simply not be
accommodated by the current system; they will be rejected outright or adapted into pale
shadows of their original selves. For those who seek fundamental, second-order changes
that will sweep away current structures and start anew, as was done in the mid-nineteenth
century, basic social and political changes would need to occur outside schools.
There are those, of course, who seek fundamental changes of a less dramatic form.
Consider the work of Theodore Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools or the few isolated
experiments in abolishing attendance boundaries within a district, or in setting up teacher-
run schools, or in designing and implementing voucher plans. Few proposals, however,
have aimed at altering the teacher's role in the classroom or changing the teacher's
relationship with the students except for those few proposals that would saturate
schools with fifteen or twenty microcomputers in each classroom. Without a strong push
from outside the school, second-order reforms are tough to adopt and even harder to
implement. But they can occur.
Surely, understanding previous school reforms and the distinctions that I made about
conceptions of change might lead reformers to hold clearer and more modest notions of
what is possible within the currcnt structures of schooling. This argument for modesty
should be judged against the unalloyed cheerleading and overpromising that accompany so
many proposed reforms. These inflated claims lead inexorably to a wave of disappointment
that frequently hardens into an acid rain of cynicism the most corrosive of fallout from
failed reforms. In short, reframing the fundamental questions about school reform is most
important. What are the goals of proposed changes? What blocks those goals within and
outside the schools? What have previous efforts achieved? Why did they fail? How do
organizational structures help or hinder these proposed changes? Answers to such
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questions offer more promising agendas both for continuity and for change than does the
vocabulary of crisis or the rhetoric of reform.

Notes

1 Mid-nineteenth century reformers, for example, successfully introduced the graded elementary
school, which replaced the one- or two-room schoolhouses in towns and cities. The
architecture, use of time and governance of elementary schools changed dramatically and has
become the norm. Yet reformers also introduced such innovations as the Dalton Plan, the
Platoon System, classroom radio, programmed instruction, open classrooms and flexible
scheduling. Few traces of these reforms remain. For confirmation of the observation of
continuity amid change sec John Goodlad, A Place Called School (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1984), Ch. 4; and Larry Cuban How Teachers Taught (New York: Longrnan, 1984), Ch. 6.
2 The concepts first order and second order come from Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and
Richard Fisch, Change: Pnnripks of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (New York:
Norton, 1974).
3 The structure of schools includes the formal and informal goals used to guide funding and
organizing activities, including such things as who has authority and responsibility for
governing schools and classrooms; how time and space are allotted; how subject matter in the
curriculum is determined; how students are assigned to classes; how those classes are organized;
how the different roles of teachers, principals and superintendents are defined; and how such
formal processes as budgeting, hiring and evaluating are determined and organized. To a large
extent these structures shape the roles, responsibilities and relationships within schools.
1 want to make sure that my distinction between the two orders of change is clear. I do not
value one sort of change more than thc other. Recall my earlier points that change is not
necessarily improvement and that improvement is larg:ly in the eye of thc beholder. I do not
question the intentions of those who boost first- or second-order reforms. 1 question only their
understanding of what they are attempting to change.
4 Michael Kirst, 'Teaching Policy and Federal Categorical Programs,' in Lee Schulman and Gary
Sykes (eds), The Handbook of Teaching and Policy (New York: Longman, 1983), pp. 434-6.

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 Chapter 5

Education Reform Strategies:

Will They Increase Teacher Commitment?*

Susan ]. Rosenholtz

Since the report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education prophesied doom
for public education over two years ago, educational policy-makers in nearly every state
have scrambled to predict and conquer educational events and practices that appear to be
most out of control. Underlying much of the current flurry of reform activity is the
assumption that teachers' lackluster perkrroance in no small way accounts for the
inadequacy of student learning.
From the researcher's perspective, the teacher workforce is indeed sorely troubled.
Shortages of qualified teachers have already begun to appear in sonic states (National
Center for Education Statistics INCES1, 1984). The intellectual caliber of new teaching
recruits, at least to the extent that it is revealed by measures of verbal ability, is
considerably lower than it was a decade ago (Schlechty and Vance, 1983). While teachers
with the highest verbal ability stand the greatest chance of succeeding academically with
students (Ekstrom, 1975; Gibson and Dembo, 1984; Rosenholtz, 1989), their early
defection from the workforce is disproportionately higher than those with low verbal
ability (Mark and Anderson, 1985; Schlechty and Vance, 1983).
Because of widespread and largely justified alarm about the status of our
nation's teaching corps, many states and localities are seeking through various means to
improve their teaching forces. These efforts take many forms: written examinations for
teachers, extended apprenticeship periods, financial incentives and rewards for classroom
excellence, various schemes for evaluating teacher performance and more. Most of the
reform efforts have been subjected to little critical analysis and even less evaluation. To
make matters worse, interventions are apt to be implemented without the use of currently
available knowledge about the teaching occupation knowledge that strikingly
contradicts many approaches to sthool reform currently under way.

*This chapter was published in American Journal of Education (August 1987) 95(4): 534-62, drawing on a
paper commissioned by the National Center for Education Statistics. The research was funded by a grant
from the National Institute of Education (N1E-G-83-0041). The author ::cknowledges assistance from
Susan Kyle, Paula Silver and tws, anonymous reviewers who commented on an earlier draft.

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In this chapter I argue for the necessity of research and analysis for present education
policy-makers, so as to encourage good ideas, discourage bad ones and permit wise mid-
course corrections. To illustrate how cumulative research and analysis can provide sound
information to foster and support further school improvement, I examine in some detail
two education reform efforts that have gained considerable currency among policy-makers
nationwide. My purpose is to elucidate ways in which policy intervention may affect
teachers' academic success with students, their sense of teaching efficacy and their
commitment to the reform. I follow this with a brief discussion of the aims of policy
research and specific policy recommendations arising from my analysis.

Education Reform

Max Weber once posed a critical dilemma when he asked how one controls organizational
participants to maximize effectiveness and efficiency and minimize the unhappiness this
very need to control produces. This same dilemma exists today not only in large-scale
organizations but in schools as well. It serves as a meaningful backdrop for thinking about
the potential conflicts that confront the current reform movement: those of
standardization and autonomy, management by hierarchical control or facilitation of
professionalism, mandatory versus voluntary change and so forth.
The view of school improvement advanced here attempts to deal with these conflicts
by applying a broad base of knowledge about the organizational conditions necessary to
improve teacher quality and commitment to a detailed analysis of how these conflicts are
played out in two current reform efforts: minimum competency testing for students and
career ladders for teachers.
It makes sense to filter the effects of current reforms through the lenses of teachers
involved, since only those factors that are perceived by teachers can affect their subsequent
attitudes and behaviors. That is, how teachers experience policy changes will affect their
commitment to them and the extent to which these interventions will have salutary effects
on student learning. To explore teachers' perceptions, I turn to qualitative data from my
ongoing study of the organizational context of teaching (Rosenholtz, 1989) conducted in
Tennessee, where a career ladder plan and minimum competency testing were
concurrently being implemented. Data collected from extensive interviews with a
stratified random sample of seventy-three elementary teachers statewide will illuminate
many of the conflicts embedded in these reform efforts. I will also draw on a wide range of
studies by others who seek to chronicle the effects of similar reform efforts both in
Tennessee and elsewhere in the nation.

Minimum Competency Testing

Of fundamental importance to any policy study of education reform is the definition of

student learning itself; and a pivotal part of the current reform movement, at least in the
elementary school grades, is the understandable focus on students' basic skill mastery and
the means to assure content coverage. Minimum competency testing (MCT) is often

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heralded as a viable means to exercise hierarchical control over teachers' curricular choices
by establishing clear instructional objectives and systematically examining their attainment
through standardized testing (Resnick and Resnick, 1985). Indeed, Dornbusch and Scott
(1975), in their oft-cited study of organizational authority, found that evaluation of work
Was the pivotal mechanism through which control was exercised. Control through
evaluation was found most effective when those being evaluated believed the evaluations
were important, central to their work and capable of being influenced by their own efforts.
Herein lies a fundamental challenge confronting MCT: where teachers perceive it as both
soundly based and negotiable, their commitment to the program and their classroom
curriculum should be aligned closely.

Task Conceptions as a Potential Source of Conflict

This challenge, however, looms large indeed when we examine teachers' task conceptions
the goals of their work and the technology available to attain them. Quite apart from
children's mastery of basic skills, teachers may define student learning as developing
students' problem-solving skills; raising youngsters' self-concepts; encouraging friendly
interpersonal behavior; instituting peace and quiet in the classroom and corridors and so
on. Not surprisingly, teachers seldom use objective test results to gauge their teaching
effectiveness (Ashton and Webb, 1986; Lortie, 1975; Kasten, 1984). With MCT, thcn,
teachers and policy-makers may hold highly divergent task conceptions about the very
substance of teaching.
Moreover, confronted by the same task demands, constituents may hold entirely
different conceptions about the way work should be carried out: policy-makers tend to
emphasize task uniformity, whereas teachers stress the need for task diversity; policy-
makers tend to emphasize task simplicity and routinization, whereas teachers stress
complexity and uncertainty (Scott, 1981).
To complicate the issue further, task conceptions held by different constituencies are
associated with preferred work structures (Scott, 191). Teachers who view their work as
uncertain and complex will naturally desire more autonomy and discretion to carry it out;
policy-makers who view teachers' work as more routine will prefer hierarchical work
arrangements that both centralize decision-making and promulgate directives for teachers
to follow. All of this means that, given disparate task conceptions held by teacbtrs and
policy-makers, there is a fundamental and profound basis for conflict over MCT. In the
section that follows I explore these conflicts as they relate to Tennessee's MCT program. A
caveat is in order first to explain the circumstances under which MCT was implemented.

MCT in Tennessee

Two Tennessee task forces, each consisting of approximately five State Department of
Education personnel, five education professors and five hand-picked elementary school
teachers, initially developed an MC: program for elementary grade students. Although 80
per cent of the teachers came from suburban or urban districts ranked statewide in the top
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

14 per cent by per-pupil expenditure, over two-thirds of the districts in the state are rural
and poor, many ranking among the poorest in the nation (Fowler, 1985).
Using assorted grade-level curriculum guides and basal texts, the task forces identified
708 skills in reading and 661 skills in math and, to measure pupils' mastery of these,
constructed 241 reading and 435 math tests. Tests were to be administered individually and
orally to kindergarten and first grade students to avoid reading difficulties.
During the first year of mandatory implementation, districts chose to institute either
the reading or the math 'Basic Skills Program'. The state assigned districts the task of
monitoring teachers' compliance with the program; district reports, in turn, were
scrutinized by the state. Compliance was assured, as open systems theorists would quickly
point out (e.g., Scott, 1981), because the state ultimately commanded and could thus iust
as easily redraw the fiscal resources vital to the survival of districts and schools within
t:Iem. Accordingly, interviews we conducted with teachers at the end of this initial year
revealed uniformly high conformity to the standards statewide, as well as accompanying
realignments in their instructional emphases.

Unintended Conrequences of MCT

Because of conflicting task conceptions and preferred work structures, MCI was not
welcomed by the majority of Tennessee teachers, resulting in negative and unintended
consequences. In particular, respondents voiced concern that their loss of task autonomy
constrained their ability to deliver appropriately paced instruction. Standardized
curriculum, teachers explained, impaired their discretion to match appropriate learning
objectives to particular student needs (see also Darling-Hammond and Wise, 1985). Over
one-third of our sample expressed this objection:
All kids are to be exposed to all skills. I don't think that does any good. If you
progress too fast, the kids still lose out. The kids have to learn the basics first, or
b won't do any good to expose them to other skills.
There are too many [math] skills to get through when some children can't
even 'regroup.' Because children are different you have to make allowances for
them.
With the Basic Skills Program every day I feel more frantic. I feel like a
cattle-driver with a whip like we have to get through the pass before
nightfall.
In the implementation of MCT, then, some teachers confronted a dilemma between
the coverage of basic skills, on the one hand, and rudimentary mastery of them, on the other.
As it turns out, the problem of inappropriate instructional pacing is the villain of the piece
in many teaching and learning problems. Barr (1975), for example, has estimated that over
80 per cent of the variance in reading achievement is accounted for by pacing. Proper
pacing means striking the critical balance between students' achievement levels and their
successful task experiences, an undertaking that takes on exponential complexity as the
heterogeneity of students' achievement levels within a classroom increases (e.g.,
Beckerman and Good, 1981). This latter point is particularly meaningful for the present

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analysis: more than 80 per cent of our sample reported teaching academically
heterogeneous classes, and almost all workcd with low-SES students in varying
proportions (ranging from 4 per cent to 94 per cent). Not unexpectedly, inappropriately
paced instruction directly associated with emphasis on coverage of material has been
found to account for poor reading performance on the part of low-SES students (Dreeben
and Gamoran, 1975). The other side of the Same coin is that teachers in the most
academically successful low-SES schools reject the goal of coverage in favor of more
concentrated teaching, scrutiny and selection of appropriate instructional goals and
materials, which, in turn, lead to greater basic skill mastery (Ha Binger and Murphy, 1986;
Levine, Levine and Eubanks, 1985).
A critical question in the study of state-mandated MCT is the extent to which it
allows for local variations in students' skill levels and local deviations from statewide
standards. State-mandated curriculum that is predicated on assumptions about students
performing at grade level will almost certainly fail in more academically diversified
classrooms, unwittingly programming students for less (rather than greater) basic skill
mastery.
For teachers, the consequences of this problem may be far more extensive than one
might initially anticipate. To understand the deleterious affects of MCT on teachers'
attitudes and behaviors, we turn to the social psychological literature on workplace
commitment. The contributions of Hackman and Oldham (1980) and Gecas and Schwalbe
(1983) inform our discussions of the way people's commitment is shaped by varying
organizational conditions.

Conditions of Workplace Commitment

Performance efficacy is one of the primary feelings that account for work commitment
(Gecas and Schwa lbe, 1983). Where people work efficacioasly, their feelings are closely
tied to how well they perform on the job; good performance is self-rewarding and provides
the incentive for continuing to perform well. Alternately, poor performance is an occasion
for distress that causes high efficacy people to search for ways to avoid such feelings in the
future and to tegain those pleasurable feelings that accompany good performance
(Hackman and Oldham, 1980).
Several organizational conditions enhance performance efficacy. The first is task
discretion and autonomy (Hackman and Oldham, 1980). Jobs that give people autonomy
and discretion require that they exercise judgment and choice; in doing so, they become
aware of themselves as causal agents in their own performance. Loss of the capacity to
control tht terms of work or to determine what work is to be done, how the work is to be
done or what its aim is to be, widens the gap between the knowledge of one's unique
contributions to wo A-. and any performance efficacy that can be derived from it.
Accordingly, with the advent of MCT, respondents in our sample took considerable
umbrage at the state's confiscation of their professional autonomy: 'For someone else to
tell me what they think is needed when I can see some other things that are needed myself
is infuriating.' And this: 'What really bothers me is that the teacher's judgment is not
considered important any longer. We used to be able to decide things . . . Now we teachers
are frustrated.'

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This dysfunctional conflict was no better illustrated than in the classroom curriculum
resulting from MCT. The need to ensure that their students passed competency tests
forced teachers either to equivocate angrily or to de-emphasize reluctantly other important
content areas (see also Darling-Hammond and Wise, 1985). Over one-fourth of our
sample voiced this complaint: 'I am not able to do things that are good for kindergartners.
I feel like I have to hide in my room to let children have show-and-tell."I wanted to do
more creative dramatics and storytelling [this year!. I wanted to expand my study of
marijuana that I instituted last year. Maybe draw in some teenagers to talk with the class.
But there is not a lot of time to do anything like that. I did the drug unit during health but
I had to steal time for the dramatics.'
Recall from earlier discussion that task conceptions shape the structural arrangements
within which work is performed. Whoever controls that structure, as Scott (1981) points
out, can fundamentally alter the task conceptions of people who work within it. The
specific point here is that, with MCT, teachers may deflect attention and effort from earlier
task conceptions to a narrower or altogether different set of goals embodied in the
evaluation system.
In two recent studies of MCT the redefinition of teachers' task conceptions is
precisely what occurred. Shannon (1986), in interviewing twenty-four elementary teachers
who had been using MCT in reading for at least two years, found a major effect was the
routinization of teaching. Increasingly told what to teach, when to teach it and when and
how to evaluate, teachers abandoned their own pedagogical judgments about tending to
the varied needs of students. When MCT in math was implemented in Pittsburgh's
schools, teachers gradually omitted from their teaching those topics within the curriculum
that would not be tested directly in a given year (Resnick and R.esnick, 1985).
Lest readers question the value of alternate learning opportunities, they need only
consider the effects of MCT on the language arts curriculum alone. Writing instruction
and practice in some classrooms have been replaced by rote exercises in sentence
diagramming (Suhor, 1985), an ineffective strategy to help students better their writing
skills (Sherwin, 1969), but nonetheless content most likely to appear on competency tests
(Suhor, 1985).
Where students' opportunities to master a broader bwe of knowledge are
undermined because teachers must divert their instructional emphases to material that is
tested, to material that many consider inappropriate, and to material that they have had no
hand in shaping, their performance efficacy and workplace commitment suffer (e.g.,
Shannon, 1986).

The Absence of 'Buffering'

Performance-based efficacy also depends on organizational conditions that facilitate the
attainment of work goals; for teachers, on conditions that optimize student growth. It
follows that intrusive managerial tasks that pull teachers away from instruction are
frequently culpable in the loss of their workplace commitment (e.g., Blase, 1986).
In Tennessee's MCT program, basic skills were often at odds with those in districts'
basal texts; and, because of most districts' fiscal constraints, outside resource materials had
to be located and purchased by teachers themselves. Moreover, in many districts teachers

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tested both for mastery in their own basal series to meet district requirements and again
tested for mastery to meet state requirements.
Given all this, it is not surprifing that the most onerous aspect of MCT to three-
quarters of the teachers in our sample was the time needed to acquire materials to teach
state-mandated skills, the overwhelming burden of additional paperwork and the time
required to test, all of which they perceived as needless encroachments on their teaching.
On each of these points there was nearly unanimous accord: 'Each student has to take
twenty or thirty tests. It seems to be that "Basic Skills" is more testing than teaching.
That is all I do."I am actually teaching less."It takes away from actual time spent
working with children."There's not much teacher time to be human toward the
students.' Teachers chronicled precisely how they accommodated to these new extraneous
demands by reducing their instructional time with students: 'I really feel bad because I'll
let the kids have five extra minutes of play or give them independent seatwork so I can get
some of my work done. I feel bad about taking time away from my students, but I have
to."I feel like I'm robbing Peter to pay Paul. The time has to come out of somewhere,
doesn't it? I can't not sleep each night because I have to do paperwork for the state. So I
have to take it out of my teaching time.'
Rather than providing students with greater opportunity to master basic skills and
testing them to ensure mastery, MCT instead robbed them of access to their most critical
learning resource teachers' instructional time. Overburdening paperwork reduced both
student-teacher interaction and student learning the stuff of performance efficacy.

The Negative Consequences of Low Commitment

The absence of conditions that allow people to feel efficacious in their work has profound
and negative consequences for their commitment to it (Gecas and Schwalbe, 1983).
Subordinates recognize the real constraints and deprivations on their performance and have
a clear sense of their low efficacy. But because people usually have the need to make self-
enhancing judgments about themselves, the definition of success in these settings is often
recast among subordinates in terms of behaviors and values that still allow them
opportunity to derive a sense of self-esteem, status and control. Instead of fulfillment
through work, subordinates redefine their goals as simply to 'make out'. 'Making out'
behaviors providing temporary relief from boredom, finding ways to leave the job,
focusing more on social than on work relationships with co-workers and so forth are, of
course, antithetical to organizational efficiency. Stated differently, work becomes devalued
and at the same time oriented toward satisfactions other than those that come from
successful job performance (Gecas and Schwalbe, 1983).
In a like manner teachers who lack opportunities to attain work-related goals, who
feel professionally disempowered and unefficacious become disaffected, absent themselves
from work or defect from the profession (see Rosenholtz, 1985, for a review). As a
mediating step along the way, low-efficacy teachers converse more with their colleagues
about poor working conditions than about teaching problems and their solutions (Ashton
and Webb, 1986; kosenholtz, 1985, 1989). This pernicious type of talk presents
something of a paradox for teachers. Where they regularly complain about difficult
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

working conditions such as insufficient resources with which to teach and a lack of
understanding by the state in respect to the teaching realities that they confront they
buttress their belief that any lack of teaching success is attributable primarily to external
causes over which they have little control. Indeed, wh.m we asked teachers what they
generally talked about with their colleagues, many replied unhesitantly, 'State skills. Well,
you know the record keeping is now about as ridiculous as it can get. The whole system is
supposed to help us become more efficient, but what good is it if it takes half the day to
figure it out? There aren't many teachers here that would disagree with that."The basic
skills program. Also the career ladder. Those have been the .nain topics this year. They just
keep putting more and more requirements on us and teachers' general attitude toward
them is very negative.'
Because colleagues convince each other that confronted by such overwhelming odds,
no one can reasonably expect to succeed, teachers more readily give up (Ashton and Webb,
1986; Rosenholtz, 1989). It is not unexpected that 20 per cent of our respondents either
openly contemplated leaving the profession or reported others doing so, directly because of
MCT. 'I have enjoyed teaching but I am planning to retire early because I have been
frustrated in my ability to do what I know is best in my own classroom. I think that with
the amount of paperwork that we have, the recording and testing and everything, that I'll
leave that to someone younger."I am really afraid all the good teachers are going out of
teaching. Sometimes I ask myself, "Will we only have desk-sitters in the future?"
Further, over 60 per cent of our sample complained of lower faculty morale brought
about by MCT:
I think the morale of teachers is very low now. The teaching load as far as book
work, paperwork, is just weighing them down so 1.1eavily that they resent
spending their time with paperwork and not actually teaching. If we had aides
to help us, then we could spend more time teaching. Teachers just realize that
there are not enough hours in the day, so many of us will bring stacks of work
home, and I work almost every night until eight or nine o'clock, sometimes
midnight, and that gets old after a while. You have to enjoy what you're
doing, and I do enjoy being with children, if I just had more time to teach them
instead of filling out reports.
In the past I've always enjoye iching. I felt that I helped in some way.
Now there is so much other than ing I am required to do. I guess I am just
burned out. I am not looking forward to the fall.
That reduced teacher commitment may result from policy changes is a noteworthy
labyrinth of education reform that begs research disentanglement. If policy changes pose
too great a burden, teachers may dissociate themselves from their work and receive social
support from colleagues for the divestiture. The possibility that increased demands that
serve as barriers to classroom effectiveness may cause good teachers to defect must also be
entertained and examined. In sum, researchers who chart policy changes need to be
mindful of this fundamental paradox: the administration of MCT may place new demands
that create additional problems lowered teacher commitment that worsen the very
instructional services reformers intended to improve. Problems that arise from the
implementation of new policy are, of course, not intractable. But without research activity

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to assess th z. effects of policy changes on the teacher workforce and without proper
procedures that feed back essential information and recommendations to policy-makers, it
is not likely that corrective action will be undertaken.

Benefits of MCT

Slightly more than one-fifth of our respondents did embrace and derive benefit from MCT
(see also Darling-Hammond and Wise, 1985). Most came from settings closely resembling
those of the original developers of the Basic Skills Program suburban districts with
comparatively greater fiscal resources, far less heterogeneity in students' social class and
academic backgrounds, and greater emphasis on basic skill mastery. Three points arise
from this. First and foremost, teachers' task conceptions were more closely aligned with
the goals of MCT, reducing the potential for conflict. Second, that the large majority of
these teachers enjoyed relatively less academic diversity in their classrooms with more
students performing at grade level guaranteed a better fit between MCT and youngsters'
learning needs. T ird, almost all teachers reported sufficient buffering with which to
implement MCT: because of greater fiscal resources, districts and schools ithin them
acquired additional and vital teaching materials; paid aides or parent volunteers handled
new paperwork and testing demands; and district office personnel calibrated state and
district requirements to avoid duplicative testing. Because of these factors, MCT posed
fewer threats to teachers' task autonomy and discretion. As teachers succeeded in meeting
minimum competency standards, they accrued greater performance efficacy from their
work. Under precisely these conditions, as Dornbusch and Scott would readily agree,
evaluation of work as a device for organizational control well satisfied subordinates.
Among the teachers we interviewed 22 per cem found the standards and tests helpful
in detecting students' learning difficulties and, of far greater significance, in modifying the
way learning was perceived by both students and teachers. As one explained, 'I find skills
that children don't have and so I have to teach them. Now teachers care that students
learn. Before they could just teach and, if the students learned, okay; if not, they could jt..)t
go on to the next thing. The kids also know that "I have to know this" and "my teachers
care that I get it." So it helps.'
Others stressed the meliorative effects of MCT on poorer teachers, for example, 'I
think the standards are more effective for teachers who need guidelines.' In fact, some
teachers hailed the change as a way to orient their own classroom instruction, thereby
ensuring that the most important skills received adequate time and attention: 'I think
helps a teacher measure her own teaching. Lots of times I will compare my tests [the
district's] with theirs [the state's]. Now I'm more aware of some specific skills and how
well I have taught them as well as how well they're covered in the curriculum.'
Some additional factors in the study of MCT. at least at the elementary school level,
include the extent to which standards gradually alter teachers' task conceptions, what they
come to emphasize in their classroom curricula, and how they subsequently gauge their
effectiveness. That is, where standards for student mastery are clearly specified and where
teachers are judged ultimately by their students' success in reaching these standards,
instructional content may become driven by newly implemented st andards and their

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measurement. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this may already be occurring in Texas,
Detroit, South Carolina and Maryland (Popham et al., 1985).
But any such investigation depends on the contextual conditions in which teachers are
embedded. A goodly portion of the differences between those who applauded the Basic
Skills Program and those who disdained it may be explained by the fit between teachers'
task conceptions and MCT and the resources at their disposal to execute the reform,
including the distribution of raw materials students themselves. In other words, both
the nature of the problems that teachers confront and the nature of the strategies that are
conceived to remedy those problems are shaped by the circumstances under which they
occur.
To briefly review, then, MCT embittered most teachers because of hierarchical
decision-making about teaching problems and solutions over which they exercised no
control, because of insufficient resources to implement the reform, and because teachers,
rather than collaborating about how problems created by MCT could be solved, filled the
void caused by the above conditions with counterproductive communications.
In the next example of education reform career ladders we shall confront some
of these same issues. Specifically illustrated are the consequences of decentralized decision-
making versus the sc te's hierarchical control for teachers' workplace commitment.

Career Ladders

Interpreted most generously, career ladder plans (CLPs) intend to bring about a salutary
effect on schools through functional assignments in which talented teachers take on
additional school-system responsibilities in return for increased pay and status to help
their colleagues improve. To examine the potential of these assignments and to illustrate
how research knowledge can be usefully brought to bear on policy decisions, I contrast
two examples of CLPs currently under implementation. The cases illustrate rather
dramatically that the success of reforms in helping teachers become more efficacious and
contribute more productively to schools depends in large measure on how carefully they
are designed and implemented.
In the first example Hart (1985) instructively details one Utah distric. s attempt to
institute a CLP from twenty-seven interviews she conducted with principals, teacFers and
the superintendent. Here the CLP was developed by a task force of administrators and
teachers from each of the district's schools, headed by the superintendent. Explicit in the
plan was a commitment to the individual school as the most promising organizational level
for improvement and change, and the desire to marshal the resources of experienced and
talented teachers within it to bring such improvement about. Ideas were negotiated with
faculties through task force representatives; at the time of its implementation, 80 per cent
of the district's teachers voted in its favor.
The career ladder consisted of four steps. The two highest levels teacher specialist
and teacher leade.: carried with them salary increments of $900 plus pay for additional
contract days to 'ark on instructional improvement projects, clinical supervision,
mcntoring and ass.sting probationary teachers with professional development. Individual
faculties selected teacher leaders and specialists on the basis of instructional collegial

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leadership. Each school defined teacher specialist roles, their number allocated by school
size with an eye toward serving specific faculty needs (e.g., the number of probationary
teachers needing assistance and supervision, specific program needs, faculty expertise,
etc.). Empowered by t:ieir expertise, teacher leaders shared (albeit in sometimes
intimidating ways) decision-making responsibilities with building principals.
Several benefits reportedly accrued to schools during the CLP's first year:
1 During the extended contract days, planned opportunities for teacher
collaboration were organized, which resulted in increased faculty interaction
and group cohesiveness.
2 Teacher leaders provided in-service programs based on topics identified by
individual school faculties.
3 Probationary and experienced teachers began to request technical assistance on
their own initiative from teacher leaders, who also reported benefiting a gen deal
from these interactions.
4 Teachers at all levels received reinforcement for the quality of their work.
Teachers gained more knowledge of their colleagues' skills and talerts.
5 Principals and faculties confronted and communicated with each other on
professional issues; faculty meetings evolved into substantive decision-making
arenas.

Several structural features implicit in the plan accounted at least in part for its initial
success. First, teachers' being given considerable task autonomy and discretion both to
formulate and to implement the CLP better ensured their commitment to it. As a result,
teachers' task conceptions were closely aligned with program goals. That is, because
teachers collectively constructed the plan it came to have shared meaning and value. Second
and this requires a brief caveat in-service needs were defined by teachers themselves:
the agenda evolved from problems to be solved or goals to be accomplished at specific
schools. To understand why this particular feature may have engendered greater
commitment to the CLP, we again consult the literature on the organizational conditions
under which people experience high performance efficacy.

Teachers' Learning Opportunities

If job commitment is to be enhanced, work must provide challenges and opportunities to
deal successfully with them. Opportunities that allow people to grow and develop, to
perfect current skills and learn new ones, give them a sense of challenge, progress and
personal accomplishment that increases the meaningfulness of work and their
commitment to it (Hackman and Oldham, 1980).
For their part teachers often complain of monotony, professional stagnation and a
lack of direction, where they have continued to use the same instructional techniques and
practices year after year, quite often to the point of becoming bored, unenthusiastic and
unable to motivate students (Blase, 1986; Kasten, 1984). We can then understand more
fully why the absence of opportunities for professional growth is a common explanation
teachers offer for their absenteeism and defection from work (Kasten, 1984; Rosenholtz,
1985, 1989).

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1.11,
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Schools as CollahoratWe Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Most schools provide only liaited opportunity for teacher learning. For one thing,
the average in-service teacher receives fewer than three days of 'staff development' each
year, and little of that training deals with instructional problem-solving (Joyce, Bush and
McKibbin, 1981). For another, the most common types of in-service training are one-time
'pullout' programs designed by &Ilia office administrators that have little, if any,
immediate or sustained effect on tea,: ers' instructional improvement (Little, 1984;
Walberg and Genova, 1982).
In the CLP studied by Hart, learning oppoitunities were intentionally decentralized:
teachers not only specified goals according to their own learning needs, they also designed
school in-service programs to help meet these needs. This means that personalized rather
than standardized help was available. Assistance was therefore useful enough for teachers
to avail themselves of opportunities for professional growth and challenge. Because the
district granted individual faculties the autol:omy and discretion to shape their own
learning opportunities, teachers were more likely to implement new techniques, strategies
and ideas, thereby enlarging their instructional repertoires.
A third possible explanation for the CLP's success one that requires more
substantial exposition on the latter theme is that criteria for advancement on the
district's career ladder included instructionally related collegial leadership. That this
element was viewed as central to the plan's success represents a marked departure from the
experience teachers typically confront in schools. Working in professional isolation, where
they seldom see or hear each other teach, teachers rarely communicate about task-related
matters especially by requesting or offering professional advice aryl assistance in efforts
to improve instructionally (see Rosenholtz, 1985, for a review).
Professional isolation occurs, at least in part, because, as teachers act to protect their
self-esteem, they shy away from situations where conclusions about a lack of professional
adequacy may either be publicly or privately drawn. If the call for aid raises some questions
about how capably they can render such assistance, if they might be found wanting or
deficient, rather than sustain possibly negative evaluations, they will frequently and
unconsciously forgo helpful efforts on behalf of a colleague. Likewise, teachers avoid
requests for assistance, where they are viewed as potentially embarrassing or stigmatizing
and where they threaten to disclose professional inadequacin.
However, to the extent that teachers believe that anyone, even the most capable
colleague, might need help in a similar situation, it becomes unnecessary for them to draw
causal inferences about their own teaching adequacy. That is, if teaching is collectively
viewed as an inherently difficult undertaking, it is both necessary and legitimate to seek
and to offer professional assistance. This is exactly what happens in the most
instructionally successful schools. Here, because of strong administrative or faculty
leadership, teaching is normatively defined as a collective rather than an individual
enterprise, and requests for and offers of assistance among colleagues set thc conditions
under which teachers improve instructionally (Rosenholtz, 1985, 1989). Thus the
criterion of instructional leadership in the CLP studied by Hart explicitly underscored the
importance of teachers' collaborative exchange. Mindful of the importance of teachers'
learning opportunities for their commitment, we can understand why the CLP produced
greater exchange of advice and assistance among colleagues.
There is a fourth possible reason for the success of this Utah plan. Integrating leaders'

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 Education Reform Strategies: Will They Increase Teacher Commitment?

interactions with colleague3 into regular workday activities heigi. -ns teachers'
consciousness of learning as a continuous process. Nowhere in Hart's data is this more
poignantly illustrated than in experienced teachers' requests for advice and assistance from
teacher specialists and leaders. For these teachers particularly, a repository of new ideas,
techniques and models, like a centripetal force, pulled them toward a mission of
professional improvement essential to their commitment to the CLP.
That teacher learning is experienced as a collective, recurrent aspect of school life
seems equally important for new entrants to the school; beginners offered help; beginners
who see requests and offers of assistance continuously exchanged among colleagues
become socialized to the ways in which one learns to teach. That is, norms of collaboration
establish themselves in situations where newcomers observe colleagues engaged in some
mutually accepted definition of the way teaching is done. Hart found that in implementing
the CLP, novices more readily solicited and accepted advice and assistance. But, where
beginners observe few instances of teacher collaboration, they learn that teaching is more
an individual than a collective endeavor. Because requests for advice and assistance in
isolated settings are intepreted more as signs of teaching inadequacy than as eagerness to
learn, in times of trouble novices seldom ask.
Finally, the initial success of this Utah district's CLP may also result from the benefits
teacher leaders accrued as they supported the work of others. In helping their colleagues
improve, teacher leaders were apt to confront new work challenges and feelings of greater
efficacy. Indeed, there is ample evidence that providing teachers with the opportunity to
assume responsibilities, initiative and authority commensurate with their talents and
abilities, and recognizing them for a job well done, increase their workplace commitment
(see Rosenholtz, 1985, for 3 review).

Ilniltended Consequences of CLPs

We also find unintended and pernicious umsequences in the forging of CLPs, and, among
their many variations, there is grist for the policy researcher, that, when combined with
the proper feedback mechanism, results ideally in guidance for the reform itself. Next I
identify some of the problems states and localities confront in their efforts to implement
CLPs.

Evaluation Standards
States and districts can and arc identifying evaluation criteria that, because they are hased
on the teaching effectiveness liteiature, may differentiate effective frcrn ineffective
teachers, at least in basic skill instruction for low-SES youngsters. The challenge to devise
means that distinguish competent from great teachers, however, has yet to be met
successfully. If exceptional teaching remains more a reputational than an observable
phenomenon, the implications for changing good teachers into great teachers are few. Of
equal importance, if teachers do not accept evaluation procedures as a legitimate gauge of
their classroom effectiveness, there is precious little basis for organizational control
without subordinate alienation (Dornbusch and Scott, 1975).

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The Tennessee teachers we interviewed were confronting the state-developed

evaluation and selection procedures for career ladder advancement for the first time. The
CLP contained four steps with supplemental salaries of $2000$3000 for advancement to
the two highest career levels, plus additional pay for extended contract duties. Developed
over an eight-month period. the CLP, like its MCT counterpart, permitted teachers no
meaningful involvement. Primarily for this reason, the NEA affiliate, representing some
80 per cent of the state's teachers, actively but unsuccesifully campaigned against passage
of career ladder legislation (Handler and Carlson, 1985).
A newly created Board of Education appointed by the governor was charged to
oversee and monitor CLP implementation. A specific criterion for appointment to the
board was that members hold no prior association with the education profession. After five
months of study, the board's chairperson testified in legislative session that policy-making
for the CLP was 'not based on proper information, not based on knowledge, not based on
experience, but absolutely based on recommendations by the State Department of
Education'. He further testified that he and other board members understood neither what
they were doing nor the ramifications of their decisions. 'One of the things we have not
done enough is listen to teachers', he confessed (Morgan, 1985).
Because decision-making in the Tennessee CLP wa so deliberately centralized,
explicitly excluding teachers from either formulating or overseeing its implementation,
nearly two-thirds of the sample we interviewed challenged the fairness and legitimacy of
the evaluation system. Over half of our respondents, for example, charged that the
classroom observation procedures better measured teachers' cunning and endurance than
their effectiveness for example, 'You can do anything for a few days if you know an
evaluator is coming in."The evaluators only make three observations, two of which are
prearranged with the teachers. You can fool anybody for a couple of days.'
C.infirmatory support for these qualitative data comes from two concurrently
conducted studies of Tennessee teachers. In Handler and Carlson's (1985) survey of over
1000 randomly selected teachers statewide, only 34 per cent believed that the state's
method of classroom observation was approptiate, purposeful, useful or objective. In
Morgan's (1985) survey of 178 teachers statewide, only 5 per cent deemed the evaluation
procedure satisfactory, and 82 per cent of the respondents among them those who had
already been promoted to one of the two highest career levels felt that a significint
number of mediocre teachers could reach these levels by deceiving evaluators. Teachers
expressed identical sentiments in Handler's (1986) study. In interpreting these findings, it
is well worth noting that a clear majority of respondents in both studies felt that teaching
effectiveness could, with proper time, expertise and effort, be evaluated with reasonable
accuracy. Teachers' complaints instead focused on the inadequacy of the specific evaluation
system developed. In Morgan's survey, for example, 97 per cent of the respondents felt
that the CLP had not been adequately analyzed and prepared before it was implemented.
Of equal relevance, the clear majority of teachers in Handler's (1986) study, as well as
our own respondents, voiced the complaint that the observation system was not designed
to help them improve instructionally. Specifically, state evaluators gave little or no
feedback (helpful or otherwise) to applicants who were observed, for example, 'Teachers
want to see their evaluations; I think all of us have a right to see the evaluations done on
us."If an evaluator really talked with them [teachers] after each evaluation, and just

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 Education Reform Strategies: Will They Increase Teacher Commitment?

explained, instead of [teachers] having to wait until right before school starts [to discover
the outcomes], it would be fairer.' If evaluation practices offer few learning opportunities,
that is, means by which teachers can either identify improvement needs or redirect their
energies toward betterment, we can clearly anticipate a decline in teacher commitment to
the CLP. One teacher's comment underscored this point rather poignantly: `My morale is
low this year because I went through the career ladder [evaluation]. It was pretty rough. I
had to be evaluated by three people from the state department. My principal had to
evaluate me also. She was very positive and made suggestions and I agreed with them.
When the people from the state came in they used a form that had a little tiny space for
strength and a big space for weaknesses. It was very ego-deflating.'
The applicant for the two highest career levels level II and level Ill was required
to submit a `portfolio'; an astonishing array of materials from five previous teaching years
including sample lesson plans, behavioral objectives, test items, disciplinary standards and
teacher-made materials, which the state weighted more heavily than actual classroom
observations (Morgan, 1985). According to teachers in our sample, these could be
fabricated without the dimmest glimmer of relevance to one's actual classroom
performance: 'You have to write lesson plans, unit plans, and document everything with
letters. People can really make this stuff up if they want to. I know people who are doing
that. The main thing is that it doesn't show whether you're a good teacher or not."A
person who is a good test-taker and does well assembling materials could be a rotten
teacher. They could fool anybody.'
Worse still from the perspective of teachers' commitment to the CLP, and parallel to
Tennessee's Basic Skills Program, was teachers' pervasive complaint that the construction
of the portfolio robbed students (as well as family members) of applicants' time and
attention:
The hours needed to develop a good portfolio do not reflect a good teacher, so I
decided to drop out. I also think that all those hours take away from the
children. The teachers don't go in fresh. Only one teacher in our school stayed
in.
A good friend of mine applied for career level three. She gave her whole
year to three. Not only did it take away time from her classroom; it took away
from her six-year-old daughter, who finally one night begged her mother to just
take the time to talk with her, because she spent every waking minute on that
stupid portfolio, and all that junk that they wanted in there. She had to choose
one or the other.
In Morgan's (1985) survey, 96 per cent of the respondents including those who had
been promoted felt that the portfolio required too much time and paperwork to be
worthwhile. In Handler and Carlson's (1985) study, 78 per cent of the teachers indicated
that the portfolio was a w.:ste of time and an inappropriate measure of teaching
effectiveness. Teachers further reported that the time-consuming nature of the evaluation
procedure was one reason that many had chosen not to apply. We found this latter
commcnt conspicuously stressed in our own sample as well. Teachers cited either
themselves or their best-performing colleagues as choosing to devote their year to students
rather than to developing a portfolio:

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

My principal really encouraged me to apply. He said that I could do it, and that
I was already doing this and already doing that. And I did sign up for it. And
then they started making changes and adding this and adding that, and you had
to go take this rest over, or go take this test in addition to that test . . that was
taking away from my time, and I just felt that I really needed the time to work
on things to help my children and things for my classroom. So I dropped out.
The time I spend on my job will be spent on preparing classes not on a
portfolio, or running down the hall asking people to sign papers that I have had
a student teacher or a field trip. I use my time and energy on my job.

Distributive Justice
Quite apart from the organization's inability to exercise control, additional deleterious
consequences result from centralized decision-making about evaluation standards and
teachLrs' subsequent unwillingness to accept their legitimacy. Simply put, if career
promotions are based on faulty evaluation practices and if the best teachers are not
selected for promotion teachers' sense of injustice will stir. If the procedures by which
the distribution of rewards are perceived as unjust or unfair that is, if the contibutions
of rewarded teachers are perceived as no greater than those of the unrewarded problems
of distributive justice arise. Unrewarded individuals react to injustice by attempting to
restore equity in the setting. Typically, they may alter the level of theiT own contributions
downward in the direction of lower commitment, or they may leave the situation
altogether (Cook and Hegtvedt, 1983).
In our study, teachers' persistent challenge to the soundness of evaluation practices
caused many to forebode trouble when rewarded teachers began to make substantially
higher salaries than others. Typical of their comments: 'I really don't feel like the teachers
who applied Ito the CLPI are doing a better job. There's going to be a lot of conflict.' And
this: 'Neither of the two teachers who've applied for the top career levels are the best
teachers in this school. If they make it, the rest of us will resent it terribly.'
These teachers' apprehensions were confirmed through interviews conducted just
after career ladder selections had been officially published in newspapers throughout the
state. Each respondent expressed grave reservation, surprise and dismay about many of
those chosen to advance: for example, 'I know someone who just got to career ladder two
and she's one of the poorest teachers I know. I like her as a person, but she's a lousy
teacher.'
We also encountered evidence of distributive justice:
I think the career ladder has affected the morale of teachers. It used to be your
morale was based on whether you felt you were a success. You could be the best
teacher possible. Some teachers that are not nearly as good as other teachers
have advanced or succeeded passing a certain stage and it's obvious that they are
not as good a teacher as someone who did not, and that just shows it's not
working. And it's going to make that teacher feel like 'Why should I give all I
have anymore? What's the use? Maybe I should go and practice doing what it
takes to pass the tests and not worry about what goes on in my classroom.'

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 Education Reform Strategies: Will They Incrense Teacher Commitment?

The career ladder has taken morale lower than I have ever seen it. I know
that I do my best. I've always tried to do my best and when thcy tell me that
I'm not one of thc best teachers because I'm not on career ladder three, that can
take your morale way down. I've seen a lot of teachers taking leaves of absence,
retiring, and putting less energy into their classrooms.
In Morgan's (1985) survey, 97 per cent of thc respondents, including those selected for
career advancement, felt that the CLP was ineffective and unfair given the specific teachers
who were promoted during the first round. Three-quarters of the teachers reported that
the CLP had caused friction among colleagues. of equal relevance, almost 90 per cent
reported that their morale had been negatively affected by the CLP, and 60 per cent
rerorted substantial declines in their commitment to the profession. Similar problems
including collective faculty ostracism of promoted teachers were reported by Handler
(1986).
Problems of distributive justice are significant not only because they reduce the
professional commitment of the unrewarded; they also inhibit school improvement if
colleagues consider master teachers' advice, assistance or suggestions illegitimate. That is,
if teachers come to resent those who are promoted, school improvement becomes an
activity restricted solely to the chosen few. How teacher selection for career ladders alters
faculty interaction carries profound consequences for the ethos of the school and for the
learning and subs pent commitment of teachers who work within it.

Evaluation and Collaboration

Another serious and consistent forewarning by roughly a third of the teachers in our
sample about the evaluation instruments employed by the state was their threat to the
positive collaborative relations teachers currently enjoyed. Teachers predicted an end to
offers of assistance among colleagues because all portfolio material submitted by applicants
for evaluation to the CLP had to be accompanied by documentation of its originality:
I'm not in favor of the master teacher plan. It's too much dog-eat-dog. I don't
like the bit of someone getting an idea and wanting to close their door and not
share anything with others. It hurts the children. When you do something
good. you really ought to say, 'Hey, this really works well you ought to try
it.' Teachers are not going to do that if they have to document everything
they've done as original. It's really hard because if you do something really
well, you sure don't want anyone else to take credit for it. That's not the way
education should be. That is not for the good of the children.
Teachers share a lot here. They are very professional. But the career ladder
is changing all that. It used to be that we all had the same goals, so we helped
each other. Now that recognition is being directed to individuals, everybody is
trying to be their best to help themselves, not others.
If the means to select teachers for career ladder advancement are ill-designed, ;f: they
are not thoroughly informed by an understanding of the nature of organizational behavior,
they are apt not to succeed. Should the costs of career ladders turn out to be the collegial
relations needed to enhance teachers' learning, their performance efficacy and ultimately,

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

their commitment, in them we have the makings of a national educational failure at the
very point in our history when we need a major success.
The evolution of changes among teaching colleagues, therefore, becomes critical to
document. Under what conditions will collaborative exchange among teachers be affected
by CLPs? What additional training will be needed to help master teachers succeed in their
varied functional assignments? What arc the best mechanisms for providing such training?
What are the characteristics of functional assignments that appear most promising in
bringing about school improvement? How can competent teachers who are not selectei
for advancement still be made to feel appreciated? What will ultimately happen to their
school commitment? In raising these and other issues throughout this analysis, I have
made implicit assumptions about the nature of policy research that now become essential
to explicate. Accordingly, the section that follows discusses the purnose of such research,
followed by specific policy recommendations.

Policy Analysis

The Goals of Policy Analysis

At its core policy research is 'decision-oriented' research that aims to provide information
to shape policy decisions. As Coleman (1972) defines it, the ultimate product is not
necessarily a contribution to existing knowledge in the scholarly senfe but rather a social
policy modified by the research results. It is necessarily the case, then, that policy analysts
focus on evaluating the effects of varying practices or programs alternative to the status
quo to (1) understand the respects in which they differ from each other and from the status
quo, (2) articulate the consequences of each in terms of costs and benefits, and (3) attempt
to meet concrete demands 'as imaginatively as is compatible with meeting them
appropriately' (I3raybrooke and Lindblom, 1970, p. 99). It is equally the case that analysts
must incrementally and serially accumulate knowledge to aid in policy decisions, rather
than relying on a single case study (Coleman, 1972; Braybrooke and Lindblom, 1970).
&Cause the aim of policy research is to develop concrete recommendations that stress
tractable variables, much of its current worth hii.ges on the fact that it will provide a
means of assessing the teaching occupation during a time of important changes, of
monitoring those changes 2S they occur and of supplying essential information, analysis
and advice to those who will make them occur. Because it provides policy-makers,
beneficiaries and the genelal public with some notion of the actual effect of education
policy, findings can be used to modify current programs and help in designing others for
the future. Mindful of thesc benefits, I turn next to specific policy recommendations.

Policy lniplkations

MCT
Given that public schooling by its very nature serves the interests of society, when policy-

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 Education Reform Strategies: Will They Increase 'Mather Connintment?

makers perceive that fundamental reading and computational skills have not been taught,
skills on which the society depends most earnestly for its iurvival, it is reasonable that they
take measures to ensure that basic skill mastery receives appropriate curricular emphasis. It
could hardly be otherwise. But where education policy hierarchically prescribes a
standardized curriculum, and where it tightens surveillance to assure compliance, as we
have seen, it unwittingly secures the academic proress of but a few and almost certainly
condemns the rest. In other words, compliance with MCT does not ensure that teachers
win rclporid faiionafly er willingly to the program. To the contrary. this strategy often
products consequences that are more inimical than the problem policy-makers initially set
out to conquer and control.
There is a viable alternative to hierarchical decision-making and its pernicious and
unintended consequences. If the goal of MCT is to improve, support and ensure the
capacity of schools to deliver appropriately paced instruction, states must rely on delegated
authority, precisely because schools confront such complex and uncertain work. Galbraith
(1973) describes this arrangement as `targeting' or 'goal setting', meaning that control,
rather than being secured by minute descriptions of tasks and their procedures, is specified
by desired outcomes appropriate for the organization. That is, the work of teachers takes
place with a structure of guidelines that they help shape. and they are granted considerable
discretion over pedagogical decisions concerning means and techniques. Considerable
research suggests that teacher involvement in decision-making of precisely this sort is
essential to successful educational change (for a review, see Purkey and Smith, 1985).
But for delegated authority to lead to task-related progress instead of organizational
chaos, Galbraith argues, two structural mechanisms must be set in place. The first he calls
'augmented hierarchies', where teaching efforts are coordinated by adding specialized
administrative and clerical personnel charged with enabling instructional endeavors and
gathering and summa6zing information needed for future decision-making about
students' learning needs and how best to fulfill them. The second Galbraith labeh 'lateral
connections', where colleagues work in groups to coordinate and share technical
information, to save them from floundering and to assist in error correction.
The larger points to recognize are that strategies to implement MCT must maximize
teachers' control of the instructional process, while administrators find part tcipatory ways
to mobilize teachers' efforts in addressing basic skills problems, and thcn ,nust provide
appropriate resources that respond directly to those problems.

CLPs
The Same problems and solutions inhere in career ladder implementation. States and
localities may in earnest seek to reward the most outstanding teachers and, through their
selections, augment school resources to help more needy teachers improve. But centralized
decision-making about how this should be accomplished leads to outcomes that both
jeopardize the success of the reform 2nd dampen the spirits of even the most enthusiastic
teachers. Delegated authority, by contrast, where district administrators galvanize local
staff participation in the design and implementation of CLPs to meet specific teacher
learning needs within their respective schools, yields a higher probability that CLPs will
result in instructional improvement.

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SChoOls as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

The Role of the State

In three ways state education agencies (SEAs) assume a critical role in delegating authority
for the implementation of reform efforts. First, they must specify bread parameters for the
development of programmatic goals and permissible variations for local adaptation.
Second, they must monitor local implementation efforts and provide helpful feedback
directed at improvement. Third, SEAs must set up 'augmented hierarchies' by allocating
sufficient resources both fiscal support and appropriate technical assistance organized
around programmatic goals. Resources include not only teaching materials but also
information on model programs for dissemination, replication or adaptation, release time
for local staff to observe exemplary practices, personnel who steer local staff toward useful
resources and specialists who furnish information and training (Turnbull, 1985). On this
latter point Turnbull (1985), in reviewing research on SEAs' efforts to improve school
quality, notes that most contain some sort of intermediate unit between themselves and
districts for resource allocation, a structure particularly well suited for states sud, as
Tennessee with many small and isolated rural districts. Successful intermediate units, in
addition to delivering direct technical assistance to schools, establish networks for
information sharing and coordination between districts.

The Role of the District

Successful implementation of new programs. Turnbull also points out, requires that
districts clarify at the onset the locus for school change that is, what they want to
accomplish in specific schools convey this sense of direction, help schools set
programmatic goals and monitor goal attainment. Moreover, in utilizing the resources
states offer, the most successful implementation efforts provide someone designated as the
'local facilitator' a member of the district staff who both organizes and advocates the
improvement effort in much the same way that intermediate units deliver assistance. That
is, locai facilitators mobilize the commitment of teachers and administrators, arrange
learning opportunities for school personnel, acquire materials, handle schedules and
procedural details for implementation, evaluate changes in schools and plan for ongoing
change. In fact, local facilitators, working closely with intermediate units, usually produce
more positive and enduring change than either working alone (Turnbull, 1985).

Conclusion

The next decade will be a time of enormous turmoil in the teaching occupation. A
majority of our teaching workforce in 1992 will be people who are not currently employed
(NCES, 1984). This means that well over a million new teachers will be entering the
classroom during the next six years. Who they are, how they will be trained and selected,
what kinds of experiences and abilities they will bring with them and what kinds of
conditions they will encounter in schools are questions of more than academic interest. For
this huge turnover is beginning just as the issue of the unsatisfactory quality of American
schooling has seized the interest of policy-makers at all levels, policy-makers who intend to

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 Education Reform Strategies: Will They Incrtase Teacher Commitment?

make changes to improve that quality. The major object of these changes is the teaching
workforce itself.
The combination of demographic forces and conscious policy decisions makes for a
period of extraordinary volatility within and around the teaching force. There is also the
eager anticipation and hope that, through the many permutations of policy
interventions, wt will ultimately improve the current performance of schools. In reality,
however, not enough information about teachers and teaching is utilized to provide a
steadfast base from which policy changes Lan be confidently launched. Where purposive
effort!, to improve quality are mounted, they may hit with highly uneven impact if their
effects are not properly anticipated. Further, without a satisfactory feedback mechanism,
there is no avenue to supply continuing insight, constructive criticism and dispassionate
scrutiny to assist policy-makers in knowing whether their efforts are well designed
interventions that solve actual problems or merely cosmetic changes that never penetrate
the surface.
The task of buttressing policy changes with real information, accurate analysis and
sound recommendations falls on the research community. Such an ambitious enterprise has
many dimensions: tracing and monitoring reform decisions; providing thoughtful and
informed comment about them; offering technical advice to those who will be designing,
implementing and evaluating them; and keeping in the public eye the conditions in
education generally, and the teaching occupation particularly, that create a compelling
rationale for well conceived changes. Only then can the promise of current policy
intervention become more than just another episodic chapter in the history of American
education.

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Report to the Secretary of Education, US Departn:.-nt of Education. Knoxville, TN:
University of Tennessee.
HART, A. (1985) Case Study Prepared for the Utah State Offire of Education. Salt Lake City, UT:
University of Utah.
JOYCE, B., BUSH, R., and MCKIBBIN, M. (1981) Information and Opinion from the Califirnia Staff
Development Study: The Compact Report. Sacramento, CA: California State Department of
Education.
KASTEN, K. L. (1984) 'The Efffiacy of Institutionally Dispensed Rewards in Elementary School
Teaching,' Journal of Research and Development in Education, 17: 1-13.
LEVINE, D. U., LEVINE, D. F. and EUBANKS, E. E. (1985) 'Successful Impknientation of
Instruction in Inner-city Schools: Journal of Negro Education, 54: 313-31.
LITTLE, J. W. (1984) 'Seductive Images and Organizational Realities in Professional Development,'
Teachers College Record, 86: 84-102.
LORTIE, D. (1975) Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
MARK, J. H. and ANDERSON, B. D. (1985) 'Teacher Survival Rates in St. Louis, 1969-1982,'
American Educational Researrh Journal, 22: 413-21.
MORGAN, B. (1985) 'Career Ladder Plan Not Working, Survey of Teachers Indicates,' Chattanooga
Times (15 August) p. 35.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS (1984). The Condition of Education. Washington,
D.C.: Department of Education.
POPHAM. i. J., CRUSE, K. L., RANKIN, S. C., SANDIFER, P.D. and WILLIAMS, P. L. (1985)
'Measurement Driven Instruction: It's on the Road,' Phi Delta Kappan. 66: 628-34.
PURKEY, S. C. and SMITH, M.S. (1985) 'School Reform: The District Policy Implications of the
Effective Schools Literature,' Elementary School Journal. 85: 353-90.
RESNICK, D. P. and RESNICK, L. B. (1985) 'Standards, Curriculum, and Performance: A Historical
and Comparative Perspective,' Educational Researcher, 14: 5-20.
ROSENHOLTZ, S. J. (1985) 'Effective Schools: Interpreting the Evidence,' American journal of
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ROSENHOLTZ, S. J. (1989) Teachers' Workplace: A Social Organization of Schools. New York:
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SCHLECHTY, P. C. and VANCE, V. S. (1983) 'Recruitment, Selection, and Retention: The Shape of
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Scorr, W. R. (1981) Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.;
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SHANNON, P. (1986) 'Merit Pay and Minimum Competency Testing,' Reading Research Quarterly,
21: 20-35.
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TURNBULL, B.J. (1985) 'Using Governance and Support Systems to Advance School
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76: 69-80.

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 Chapter 6

Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety

Gary Sykes

Two perspectives dominate the literature on incentives in teaching. The first seeks truth on
average and for the most part. the modal tendencies that characterize teaching, the grand
patterns, the systemic features of the occupation. The second perspective identifies
discrepancies and anomalies, the variation around the mean, the exemplary, outlying case.
The first perspective raises few hopes that substantial change is possible. The concept of
'incentives' suggests variables that can be easily manipulated to produce changes in
behavior. 'Sticks and carrots' is the familiar phrase. Both policy-makers and organizational
theorists are used to thinking in terms of altering incentives to produce changes. But
considerable research and commentary in teaching suggest that the incentive structure of
teaching poses formidable constraints on the prospects for reform. Fundamental aspects of
teaching, this perspective holds, are essentially unalterable, and these aspects compose and
deeply influence incentives in teaching. The second perspective provides a more hopeful
approach to the possibilities for change. If there are modal tendencies in teaching, so too is
there variation. Some communities, some districts, some schools and some teachers stand
out and exemplify good practice. The task is tc. distinguish good from mediocre practice,
to abstract principles from the success stories and to spread good works. Although there
rrh, be constraints, this perspective capitalizes on variety for promising leads and the hope
of steady, incremental improvement.
To provide a balanced assessment of teaching incentives, acquaintance with both
perspectives is necessary. An understanding of the constraints protects against facile
solutions and false optimism. By itself, however, this perspective leads into a cul-de-sac of
fatalism. An understanding of the possibilities suggested by variety points to ways out,
grounds hope in concrete instances of good practice and of pitfalls to avoid. Constraint and
variety, then, form the analytic themes of this essay, the twin speakers through which to
drive insights about teaching incentives.

Preliminary Distinctions

The terms 'reward' and 'incentive' often are used interchangeably in common parlance,
but within the analytic literature take on more specific meaning. Generally, reward

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conveys a broad meaning, denoting the pleasure, satisfaction or fulfillment gained from an
activity or experience. Incentive is conceived as a reward offered or exchanged for specific
work behavior. An incentive is an anticipated re.iard that directs the action of a worker.
Incentives, then, are often conceived as methods or tools with which social groups or
organizations induce specific behaviors.
This distinction does not quite do away with ambiguity. Is incentive a sub-category
of reward, or, rather, an attribute of a reward, so that under some circumstances any
reward could become an incentive (Mitchell et aL, 1982)? The latter conception seems
more promising analytically as it avoids the untenable view that some rewards can never
serve as behavioral incentives. But so defining this relationship opens up a wealth of
complexity. To determine the conditions under which a reward has incentive value
requires an understanding of (1) what individuals anticipate will be rewarding; and (2) the
mechanisms that control the distribution of those rewards. The incentive system available
to any worker, then, will depend on the motivations he brings to the worksetting, and on
organizational mechanisms to control reward distribution.
This observation suggests, following Chester Barnard's (1938) classic formulation,
that organizations may improve the incentive value of their reward system by altering the
worker's 'state of mind', and/or capacity of the organization to offer rewards already
perceived as worthwhile. However, work motivation, a 'state of mind' construct, is a
complex matter. Incentives operate not through some simple connection between action
and reward, but on subjective perceptions regarding cost and reward values. Much of the
research on human motivation is experimental and relatively low on ecological validity,
and there are multiple theories of human motivation (see, e.g., Weiner, 1972). In real-
world action settings, identifying the play of human motives is exceedingly difficult.
Assumptions about human motivation are necessary to explanations of work
behavior, but teaching work takes place primarily within organizations and social groups
that influence individual behavior through structure and culture. To understand the effects
of various incentives on teachers requires knowledge and assumptions about individual
psychological processes, about social and organizational arrangements and about their
interaction.
Incentives influence participation and performance in organizations. Katz and Kahn
(1978), for example, classify behavior necessary to organizational functioning as (1) joining
and staying in the system (recruitment, absenteeism and turnover); (2) dependable
behavior/role performance (meeting or exceeding quantitative and qualitative standards of
performance); and (3) innovative and spontaneous behavior/role performance beyond role
requirements (creativity, professional growth, problem-solving, cooperation, etc.). These
distinctions suggest the targets at which to direct incentives. From a policy perspective,
the equity implications of incentive systems are also important, the effects incentives have
on access and opportunity in education. A fundamental principle of equity is that each
school should receive its fair share of good teachers, a policy goal far from realization.
Combination of these distinctions yields the following targets for incentives in teaching:
The composition of the teacher workforce, as shaped by recruitment and retention;
The distribution of the teacher workforce across states, districts and schools. Teachers
are the most critical resource for learning in school, and so must be fairly distributed;

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The disposition of the teacher workforce with respect to such process factors as
performance and effectiveness, commitment and professional growth, efficacy and
expectations, innovative and problem-solving behavior and others.
The effects of teachers in terms of student learning and other outcomes of schooling.
In the discussion to follow reference will be made to each of these policy goals.

The Constraint Perspective: Some Realities of Teaching

Education's Market Structure

Incentives to attract and motivate teachers, suggests much commentary, are both weak
and scarce. Consider first an analysis at the sector level. Education is a public monopoly:
. . . it is not market oriented; it is widely considered to be socially necessary and

therefore deserving of public protection is, in fact, the captive setvant of a

captive clientele; it is open to a good deal of public scrutiny on issues having to
do with perceived equity, quality, and goals; it cannot unambiguously define
its aims or clearly identify technologies that are dominant in light of aims that
might be specified; its contribution to its clientele's life and learning is
uncertain and also modest as compared to other societal influences; its
governance is highly decentralized, yet subject to a wide variety of influences so
that each unit perceives itself as facing a unique configuration of clients and
masters. (Pincus, 1974, p. 115)
One might quarrel with one or another of these observations, but education's market
situation is self-evident . A healthy dose of capitiist competition, argue Milton Friedman
and like-minded economists, is the most obvious, direct and powerful means to reshape the
incentive structure of reaching. Absent choices, the education syttem's clients parents,
students, community members cannot exert much influence on a large. cumbersome
public bureaucracy. How to motivate teachers to adopt promising new practices. to be
responsive to students, to have high expectations for learning and to display similar
desirable behavior? Introduce choice via open enrollment plans, vouchers or tuition tax
credits, answer market-oriented economists.
Proponents of choice schemes argue that local bureaucratic centralization is only one
of a large number of ways to organize public education. There are alternatives on both the
supply and demand sidt.s. Clients can be given choices and providers could be freed to
supply local options at the school or district levels (Elmore, 1986). Unrestrained individual
choice is not likely to yield collective, public welfare, but with some restrictions, choice
systems could dramatically alter teaching's incentive structure.
This is not the place to debate these schemes. The point is that one powerful source of
motivation in many organizations the opportunity for clients to switch brands, parties,
services is largely absent in education. In a monopoly situation consumers cannot 'exit';
their only recourse is to complain, and to seek changes (Hirschman, 1970). Perceptions of
decline in educational quality can produce political action of various kinds, but schools

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have developed capacities to resist change while appearing to be responsive. Without

competing alternatives, argue some analysts, the prospects for improvement are weak
because the spur of competition is missing.

Teaching and Transcendent Ideals

Man searches for meaning in his work, for significance that enobles and commits. Private
schools attract individuals with deep commitments to particular religious ideals and
traditions despite lower salaries and fewer resources than most public schools provide.
Teachers in inner-city parochial schools express a sense of mission that knits them together
into a community of believers (Cusick, 1985). The same is true for teachers in Christian
academies (Peshkin, 1986) and elite New England private schools (Lightfoot, 1983, Chs 5,
6). A community of belief, often set against prevailing cultural beliefs in the larger society,
can supply esprit and commitment to transcendent ideals that are powerfully motivating.
The political ideology of the public schools, however, precludes such particularistic
commitments. The strict separation of church and state in our society means that publicly
supported schools must be secular in their orientation in order to serve children of diverse
creeds and origins. But secular societies fail to supply connection to the transcendent ideals
and purposes provided by religious institutions. Parochial schools typically offer lower
wages than public schools but attract teachers who wish to live out their religious
commitments in communities of like-minded believers.
Canada offers a setting in which to study these motives because in three of the five
western provinces public funds are used to support the parochial schools; in the other two
the catholic schools are private. Some research indicates higher levels of affiliation and
commitment among teachers and parents associated with the privately funded schools.'
These schools tend to be at risk financially and to demand sacrifices to keep them alive.
Consequently, members of the school community feel specially needed; they contribute to
the survival of the school.
Public bureaucracies are restricted in the dedication they can command from their
employees. Public school teachers may live out a service ideal, but the institution they
work within tends to be large, impersonal and secular, features that over time sap
commitment. By contrast, private schools are mostly small, personal and value-laden
institutions, whose clients must volunteer to join. Often they are beleaguered financially
and must struggle to attract students and to survive. Their special missions compel intense
loyalty from those who choose to affiliate, for they are sacrificing much for their beliefs.
Public schools lack the circumstances to command similar levels of dedication from
unionized employees working in large bureaucracies.

Incentives and the Occupational Ethos of Teaching

A third set of constraints on the employment of incentives rises out of the ethos of the
profession, . . the pattern of orientations and sentiments which is peculiar to teachers and
which distinguishes them from members of other occupations' (Lortie, 1975, p. viii). Dan

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Lortie has provided the most comprehensive recent analysis and his portrait stresses the
relative weakness of rewards and incentives in teaching.
Lortie distinguished extrinsic, intrinsic and ancillary rewards of teaching. The first
include rewards attached to the role that exist independently of role incumbents, including
salary and benefits, level of prestige, power over others. The second refer to sources of
satisfaction rising out of the work itself. These are largely subjective and will vary over
time and from individual to individual. The third refer to objective characteristics of work
that may be perceived as rewarding by some, but not necessarily all, teachers. An example
might be a work schedule that permits easy integration of family duties with work
responsibilities, a factor likely to be of greater importance to women. His major
observations, largely supported by other accounts of teaching, are as follows.
Psychic rewards assume the greatest importance for teachers, particularly rewards
derived from interaction with students. Individuals are drawn to teaching out of a
desire to work with people and to live out an ideal of service. Teachers feel most
rewarded when they `reach' students, have a good day, make a lasting impression on
youngsters and produce learning in their students.
Teachers downplay extrinsic rewards in their self-reports. The ethos of the profession
supports altruistic motives and provides little warrant for concern about wealth,
status or power. However, there are indications that many ;:eachers today may be
unhappy with these features of the occupation, a point taken up below.
Lortie's data indicate a disjunction between engagement and work satisfaction,
especially for young men and older single women. The return on time and effort
devoted to teaching does not appear to warrant the investment, producing patterns of
disengagement by many career teachers who may turn to other interests, or
psychologically withdraw from the work.
The satisfactions of teaching are not easy to come by. Lortie portrays teachers as
uncertain and anxious about whether they are having effects on students. The
uncertainties ale endemic: teachers must work with conscripts in groups and must
elicit work from them. Criteria for effectiveness are vague, expectations are multiple,
often conflicting and global. Easy entry to teaching and the =staged nature of the
career fail to provide structural reassurance about competence.
The task imperatives of teaching what is necessary to carry out the work are ill-
supported by teacher status realities. Teachers must manage groups and create an
environment for learning, often a delicate accomplishment. Yet they control neither
the conditions nor the resources of work. Teachers, Lortie notes (pp. 165-6), are like
theater directors and middle managers without comparable control or resources.
The teaching career has few rewards associated with it. Salaries are front-loaded;
individuals will reach peak earnings by their late 30s, then plateau thereafter. Few
advanced positions exist to fulfill ambitions, provide variety and challenge or
stimulate growth. Furthermore, teaching has been institutionalized as temporary
work, with easy entry, exit and re-entry. Career rewards depreciate collegiality and
the emergence of leadership among teachers: few consider teaching suitable work for
a lifetime, and veterans possess ambiguous status at best; they are 'survivors' in a
dubious system.
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The organization within which teachers work has few selective incentives to
distribute. Schools tend to be 'incentive-poor': there are at best only modest informal
means for rewarding teachers choice assignments and schedules, in-service
experiences, some extra pay for extra duties.
Career and work incentives contribute to the norms of privacy and individualism.
Teachers protect autonomy in the classroom at the expense of colleagueship and
professional community. Isolation, and its debilitating effects, is perhaps the most
widely noted social feature of teaching. Teachers become `entrepreneurs of psychic
profits' (Lortie's phrase) striving to secure rewards from their own students while
resisting organizational demands that divert them from this quest.
This portrait of a profession seems dispiriting enough, but a recent update of Lortie's work
etches the lines yet more deeply. In 1984 a research team revisited Dade County, Florida,
where Lortie had collected survey data in 1964 for his study. They administered the same
survey to a large sample of teachers, then compared their results to Lortie's (Kottkamp et
al.. 1986). They found a substantial increase in the number of teachers reporting no
satisfaction from extrinsic rewards, a decrease in the numbers reporting satisfaction from
their status in the community, and an increase in the importance of ancillary rewards,
particularly the opportunity to have time away from teaching (vacations, summers). The
authors concluded that teachers find their work less rewarding today than teachers did
twenty years ago. The features of teaching receiving greater emphasis today are the
opportunities to get away from the work, not to suCCetd at it. Reviewing these results,
Lortie (1986) posits increased 'structural strain' in teaching: . . tension between the
qualifications and self-images of teachers in large school districts, their position in the
formal system of governance, and their ability to make firm decisions in matters related to
their own classroom and students' (p. 571).
An implication of this occupational analysis is that the accommodations made over
the decades to teaching's weak rewards have themselves become sturdy features of the
occupation that are highly resistant to change. Job security in exchange for better pay and
status may be a tolerable bargain for many, a bargain that accountability efforts threaten.
Task interdependence and collegiality may be low, but teachers have learned to guard their
constrained autonomy behind the classroom door. The absence of career advancement may
drive the ambitious out of teaching after a few years, but those who like the opportunity to
enter, exit and re-enter easily may not hunger for advanced responsibilities. So, although
surveys routinely turn up evJence of teacher dissatisfaction, many proposals to alter
fundamental aspects of teaching such as career ladders, merit pay, peer evaluation, team
teaching and others meet with resistance. Many teachers have adapted to the constraints in
place; on balance the effort necessary to make big changes may not appear worthwhile.

Dilemmas of the Individual in Public yiervices

Public service organizations, argues Michael Lipsky (1980), confront a common set of
pressures that shape the orientations and work routines of the 'street-level bureaucrats'
who must provide services to large numbers of people. His analysis, like Lortie's, locates

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difficulties in motivating and directing the work of teachers in fundamental aspects of the
work situation. A selective review of his generalizations will illustrate this point of view:
In human services, chronic resource shortages are the rule, not the exception. This
may reflect public spending priorities, but the underlying cause is the infinitely elastic
nature of demand for services. The schools in our century have become multi-purpose
human service agencies, expected to meet a wide and expanding range of nerds and
problems. Teachers are expected to meet the needs of individual students yet confront
them in groups of twenty-five to thirty. 'The fundamental service dilemma', notes
Lipsky, `... is how to provide individual responses or treatment on a mass basis'
(p. 44). Even modest reductions in class size strain school budgets as well as society's
capacity to produce enough teachers. Sarason (1982) refers to the 'myth' of class size
reduction in noting that if tomorrow Congress passed a bill appropriating funds to
reduce all classes to twenty or fewer students, society could not produce enough
teachers to meet the demand. Furthermore, the human demands on teachers are
enormous and would continue to be so even if they faced classes of twenty rather than
thirty. Teachers must husband their resources and ration services, yet these necessary
responses to the work situation run counter to the ideology of individual needs. This
tension between ideals and realities is inherent in the situation and deeply influences
teachers' capacity to obtain rewards from the work of teaching.
Thachers, like other street-level bureaucrats, pursue conflicting mid ambiguous goals,
many of which cannot be easily measured. Goals such as good health, equal justice
and public education are 'more like receding horizons than fixed targets', and the
front-line individuals charged with their pursuit often have little control over all the
factors affecting the outcome. The relationship between means and ends is often
unclear, provoking a restless search for what works, and the existence of multiple
goals often leaves conflicts of purpose which the teacher must resolve (see, for
example, Berlak and Berlak, 1981, and Lampert, 1985, for accounts of specific
dilemmas and how teachers manage them). Without a delimited set of goals with
corresponding performance indicators and output measures, it is extremely difficult
to control the work of teaching through incentives. Efforts to 'manage by results'
often divert teaching from what is desirable to wh is measurable, thereby distorting
the broader, deeper and more humane purposes of the enterprise.
Working in schools as in other human service agencies involves a basic contradiction:
'On the one hand, service is delivered by people to people, invoking a model of
human interaction, caring, and responsibility. On the other hand, service is deliwied
through a bureaucracy, invoking a model of detachment and equal treatment under
conditions of resource limitations and constraints, making care and responsibility
conditional' (Lipsky, p. 71). Teachers are caught between often conflicting demands
to serve as advocates for their students, and to meet responsibilities as subordinate
employees in a hierarchical organization. Thc result often is goal displacement
process students rather than educate them; control behavior rather than impart
knowledge. Yet the psychic costs, the alienation created by this loss of ideals, take a
toll on the inner life, corrode the spirit of the individual who loves children, who
came to serve, who seeks to hold onto a positive image of self. Horace's compromise

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(Sizer, 1984) is but one example of a pervasive pattern in human service work. 'The
existential problem ... is that with any single client I teachers) could interact flexibly
and responsively. But if they did this with too many clients their capacity to respond
flexibly would disappear' (p. 99). So teachers must trade quality of service for serving
more students, a trade no matter how made that must create doubt and anxiety.

Functions of Weak Incentives

One perspective on this situation is that teaching's weak rewards and incentives did not
develop through accident or inattention. The difficulties in attracting, holding, nourishing
and directing a sizeable corps of teachers are deeply rooted in structural constraints a
public monopoly organized along bureaucratic lines; in historical accommodations to the
rapid growth of the educational system; in the occupational ethos of teachers; in the
indeterminacy of means and ends in education and the lack of a firm knowledge base; and
in the existential realities faced by teachers in their daily work situations.
Weak incentives are so persistent and pervasive a feature of teaching as to raise a
question: do weak incentives serve any functions in teaching? This appears a peculiar
question. The usual move is to regard weak incentives as the problem, then search for
solutions higher pay, career ladders, improved working conditions and so on. But, this
question insinuates, might weak incentives he the solution to certain endemic problems in
teaching? If so, this helps explain the persistence of weak incentives for they
simultaneously represent the conditions of teaching and adaptations to those conditions.
To understand the potential functions of weak incentives, a closer look into the
psychological operation of incentives is necessary. The most familiar image of the impact of
rewards on behavior is operant conditioning theory, wherein rewards are conceived as
stimuli evoking responses. Within this framework goals servc to direct behavior:
individuals choose a goal then organize their actions to reach it. Humans are prospectively
rational, this theory proposes. Other theorists, however, posit more complex cognitive
mediation between external incentives and responses. Within this view people act first,
then determine the goals of their actions later. 'The rationalizations developed for
particular behavior can affect subsequent behavior by their focusing and committing
effects' (Pfeffer, 1982, p. 105). People are retrospectively rational according to these
theories, and construct beliefs and attitudes out of reflection about their actions (Weick,
1979).
Incentives enter the picture because they have a double significance: 'The
informational aspect facilitates an internal perceived locus of causality and perceived
competence, thus enhancing intrinsic motivation. The controlling aspect facilitates an
external perceived locus of causality, thus undermining intrinsic motivation and
promoting extrinsic compliance or defiance' (Deci and Ryan, 1985, p. 64). The incentive
structure of human action supplies information leading to attributions that influence
subsequent behavior and attitudes.
The implications of self-perception or retrospective rationality arguments have been
developed in two distinct but conceptually related literatures. One treats the consequences
of engaging in some activity for an insufficient reward (Bern, 1972); the other deals with

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the consequence of overrewarding behavior (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Lepper and Greene,
.978). The fundamental generalizations emerging from these two lines of research are the
following (Pfeffer, 1982):
. pasons who are induced to engage in some behavior for little or no external
reward will adjust their attitudes to be more favorable toward the intrinsic
aspects of the task they are doing. This attitudinal change results from a process
of rationalizing why they are engaged in the action. In the absence of external
reward, they rely on internal constructs of positive affect and self-motivation to
explain their activity (p. 107).
And,
... if paying people too little or providing too few external reasons for thcir
behavior increases their task interest and job satisfaction, providing too many
rewards or paying them too much undermines task interest and job
satisfaction. The argument is that persons confronted with salient extrinsic
reasons for their activity will attribute their behavior to these external factors
and, therefore, have less reason to justify their actions as being the result of the
intrinsic nature of the task or situation itself (p.109).
A large body of experimental research has explored both hypotheses, but there has been
relatively little work in field settings. Nevertheless the implications for the role of weak
incentives in teaching are suggestive. Two speculations occur (the reader might supply
others):

Weak external incentives support the service ideal in teaching. focusing teachers on
relations with students as the primary source of gratification. Given the nature of
teaching work, with a premium placed on nurturing, caring behavior, this incentive
structure is functional. Performance contracting or other forms of pay for results
might well dehumanize teaching work by directing teachers to the pursuit of external
rewards at the expense of developing caring relations with students.
Commentators note the tendency for teachers to lower expectations about student
achievement, to make 'deals', 'treaties', and 'bargains with students that exchange
behavioral compliance for easy standards and superficial engagement in the hard work
of learning (see, for example. Sedlak et al., 1986, Powell, Farrar and Cohen, 1985;
Cusick. 1983). Weak incentives may serve as a psychological resource in this process,
helping to rationalize the gradual loss of ideals while holding onto some self-esteem.
Coupled to the extreme difficulty of engaging most students most of the timc in real
learning. weak incentives encourage teachers to adjust perceptions of what they can
accomplish to the realities of teaching. Weak incentives convey the message that only
so much is expected of teachers. Losing initial ideals from one perspective is adapting
to the demands of work from another. Weak incentives help to justify such
adaptations. 'How can we be expected to accomplish so much if the rewards are so
few?' might be the message to self that forms over time, serving as a protective,
coping mechanism for teachers.

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Other functions of weak incentives rise out of organizational rather than cognitive
concerns:
Weak incentives help promote turnover. Turnover is functional in two respects.
First, human service work is so emotionally demanding that few people can sustain it
year after year without encountering burnout or other stress reactions. The absence of
strong career rewards means that many individuals will be short-termers, or will leave
for a period then re-enter, or will enter late. If teaching featured a strong career line
that required sustained experience for upward mobility, th :. psychic toll would be
great. High turnover allows regular infusions of fresh recruits, a necessity in work of
this sort. Second, high turnover helps reduce educational expenditures. School
systems regularly replace senior with junior teachers, saving increments on the pay
scale. If all entering teachers remained a full forty years, the cost implications would
be significant, and a graying workforce would be less responsive to innovation than
an age-mixed workforce. Consequently, weak career incentives serve a number of
functions.
Weak incentives form part of the recruitment bargain of teaching. As Parsons (1958)
noted, incomes of persons working in the public sector are lower but more secure
than those earned in the private sector. Individuals attracted to public sector
occupations accept the trade-off between the amount of money received and the
amount of risk entailed. The occupation is populated with persons who have accepted
this bargain. Consequently, incumbents are unlikely to feel enthusiastic about
schemes that increase income in exchange tor greater risk. In this case it is not the
weak incentive per se that is functional but its correlate, security.
Teaching sanctions diverse interests. Weak incentives allow low commitment which
in turn frees teachers to engage in a range of other activities, including second jobs
(Geer, 1966). In 1981, for example, an NEA teacher survey (1982) reported that 19.8
per cent of teachers were employed outside the school system in the summer. 11.1 per
cent during the school year. Many individuals in our society may want to blend
several lines of work rather than submitting to the demands of a single occupation.
Teachers own small businesses, sell real estate, tend bar, run summer camps. These
secondary jobs provide income, diversity in work and connections in the community.
Teaching's weak incentives tacitly sanction such combinations. Teaching may attract
individuals who wish to avoid narrow, intense work commitments in favor of
occupational diversity, or encourage adaptation in this direction amorg those who
decide late to stay on. In either case such individuals are likely to resist calls for greater
commitment to teaching because they have struck a different bargain, one predicated
on low commitment. Of course, teaching does not preclude single-minded
dedication, and many make this choice; but neither does teaching demand it.
Schools, according to prevailing popular metaphor, are loosely coupled organizations
(Weick, 1976). Control and coordination of work are weak despite the outward
trappings of bureaucracy. In organizations featuring poorly understood technology,
little evaluation of work and weak market mechanisms, formal structure and
processes are not coupled to work performance, and this is useful: it permits the work

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 Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety

to be done according to the localized judgments of those doing the work, while
presenting to the outside world the appearance of rational control (Meyer and
Rowan, 1977). If teachers are in the best position to interpret and respond to the
needs of students, then the fact that teachers are beyond the reach of organizational
controls may benefit students because control mechanisms, including those that are
incentive-bawd, reduce and otherwise distort the scope of caring and responsiveness.
Teachers, as both Lortie and Lipsky argue, must manage a set of ambiguous,
conflicting purposes, none of which can be ignored entirely. Strong external controls
tend to be reductionist and to oversimplify the complexities of teaching work.
Teaching's weak incentive structure leaves teachers unsupported but provides
considerable room for creative subversion of bureaucratic rules and regulations, at
least some of which get in the way of good teaching.
These arguments are highly speculative. They serve to illustrate, not to exhaust, the
possibility that teaching's weak incentives may over time have come to serve adaptive
functions, perhaps even to have engendered commitments among teachers. Weak
incentives have emerged as a common definition of the problem in teaching; this has led to
a variety of policies designed to improve the rewards of teaching. This concern has
overshadowed the possibility that weak incentives serve a series of adaptive functions and
are complexly interrelated with other features of teaching. 'Adaptive' and 'functional' do
not equal 'desirable', of course. Some of the adaptations are pathological in terms of
student well-being and the longer-term interests of teachers. With others it is not so clear.
However, this perspective argues that changing fundamental features c teaching, even
those that appear pathological, may be considerably more difficult than the reform rhetoric
would lead one to believe. Furthermore, the uses of weak incentives are but one aspect of
the broader theme that fundamental constraints rooted in the nature of teaching work, in
the development of the occupation and in the sentiments of teachers restrict the
possibilities for directing teaching work through manipulation of incentives. To
understand the possibilities for progress, wc must turn to the second broad perspective.

Variety as Possibility: The Search for Exemplars

If teaching on average features weak incentives, there is also considerable variation in the
educational system. How rewarding teaching is depends on characteristics of teachers,
including their gender. race, age, social background and other factors, and on the
situations within which they teach. Much current literature identifies school-level
characteristics that influence the satisfactions of teaching. and more recently intrerest has
also emerged in district-level factors.
A review of evidence from this perspective can be divided accordiog to a widely
recognized distinction in response to the question, 'What do people want from their
jobs?' Responses tend to break into two sets of factors: those related to satisfaction,
happiness and fulfillment; and those related to dissatisfaction and unhappiness. The first
have to do with the work itself tasks, events indicating success in performance,
possibilities for professional growth. The second have to do with the conditions that

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surround the job, including physical worLing setting, interpersonal relations, salary, j4.,o
security, policies and regulations, etc. When this second set of factors falls below
acceptable levels, job dissatisfaction ensues, However, the reverse is not true. Optimal
external conditions will not by themselves produce positive attitudes. Human need for
challenge, self-actualization and competence stems from the experience of work itself and
the intrinsic rewards associated with that work. But the foundation or fulfillment of such
needs is associated with surrounding factors such as fair compensation, working
conditions, administrative practices, etc. Herzberg et al., (1959) label these factors
'hygiene' and 'motivation', to distinguish basic health needs from the higher needs for
self-realization and growth.

Establishing the Foundation: Attracting and Retaining 'Teachers

The simplest, most direct policy variable to manipulate in attracting teachers is salary.
Research indicates teacher supply is responsive to salary differentials and a number of
generalizations are evident:
Despite school finance reform efforts in many states there are still substantial
interdistrict disparities in educational expenditures. Odden (1986) cites a number of
studies indicating large differences by aistrict in overall per pupil expenditures, class
sizes, teacher-administrator ratios, percentage of teachers with a master's degree,
teacher salary, books-and-materials expenditures per pupil and other measures. To
interpret such discrepancies fully requires an accounting of variations in cost across
districts, but even after such adjustments inequities are likely. Local capacity and
preference to support education will exert a strong influence on a district's ability to
attract and retain teaching talent. State equalization measures are in place in many
states but inequities are still large.
Some evidence (Turner et al., 1986) indicates that salary incentive to attract teacners
with master's degrees has modest effects on student achievement. However, a
district's ability to provide such incentives is a function of (1) median family income
and (2) economies of scale based on district size. Large districts can achieve economies
by increasing pupils per teacher, then use the savings for salary incentives. Small rural
districts do not have this option.
Recent reviews of compensation in teaching (Ferris and Winkler, 1986; Stern, 1986)
indicate that aggregate teacher supply is positively related to salary levels in teaching
and negatively related to salary levels in alternative occupations. The most
comprehensive study, conducted on a sample of teachers in Britain (Zabalza, 1979),
found that a 10 per cent increase in relative salary would bring about a 21 per cent
increase in female entrants and a 36 per cent incrtase in male entrants to teaching.
The amount of income individuals must forgo in order to teach varies by field. One
study (Levin, 1985), for example, reports that in 1981-82 undergraduates majoring in
humanities or the social sciences had to give up $110041300 of income in selecting
teaching over positions in business and industry. Chemistry and computer science
majors, however, had to forgo $8500, and physics majors $10,600. Shortages in fields

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such as math and science extend back decades and obviously are related to such wage
differentials.
Higher salaries also are likely to produce higher SAT scores among recruits. One
study (Manski, 1985) found that setting a minimum SAT score (verbal plus math) at
1000 would require raising teachers' salaries approximately $90 per week (in 1979
dollars), if the fraction of high school graduates who eventually enter teaching were
to be held constant. SAT scores are not a proxy for teacher quality, but academic
ability is at least a desideratum in teaching.
Wage differentials affect teacher mobility between districts. Higher wages decrease
the probabililty that teachers will leave (Eberts and Stone, 1984), other factors being
equal.
Wage differentials contribute to teachers' decisions to leave teaching. Teachers are
influenced by what they are making relative to what they can make in other fields; the
wider the perceived difference. the greater the likelihood teachers will exit for other
work (ihid).
Racially isolated inner-city schools have particular difficulty attracting and holding
teachers due to 7 range of non-monetary factors related to working conditions.
Effotts to offset poor working conditions with monetary ncentives have been only
marginally successful. 'Combat pay' tends to attract young, inexperienced teachers
from nearby schools, only marginally improves iurnuyer and does little for
instructional quality (Bruno. 1986).

Economists argue that teacher salaries are 'hedonic wages' that reflect characteristics of
individuals and jobs (kosen, 1974). That is. teachers iespond to a mix of salary, woi king
conditions and other job characteristics. Teachers may be willing to trade salary for other
benefits such as small class sizes, motivated students and pleasant surroundings.
Unfortunately, these factors often seem to cluster. Some districts offer higher wages and
better working conditions, others offer neither. There is little firm evidence based on
teacher behavior to indicate how teachers make trades among these pecuniary and non-
pecuniary factors, but survey and interview data reveal sources of teacher dissatisfaction
that vary across districts and schools:

In a recent national survey (Metropolitan Life, 1985) a substantial percentage of

teachers reported as less than adequate such resources as: administrative support (18
per cent); people responsible for discipline (25 per cent); guidance counsellors (38 per
cent); and teachers's aides (43 per cent). Not surprisingly, the percentages of teachers
reporting unsatisfactory conditions are highly associated with the wealth o the
school district within the state.
A survey of California teachers (Koppich, Gerritz and Guthrie, 1985) found that: 27
per cent of teachers say they have insufficient textbooks and other instructional
materials; 10 per cent report having too few desks and chairs for students; 20 per cent
say they do not have access to audiovisual equipment; and class size reductions headed
the write-in responses (see also McLaughlin et aL, 1986), an understandable complaint
in that California has the largest teacher-pupil ratio in the country.

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Crrating the Future Now

A survey of New Jersey teachers (Eagleton Institute, 1986) produced results

somewhat different from those in California. These teachers were most dissatisfied
with the amount of paperwork, administrative duties and time spent on non-teaching
responsibilities. They also objected to low salaries and to their lack of voice in school
policy-making.
Two other teacher surveys emphasize the large discrepancies that exist between
teachers' desired versus their actual involvement in school decision-making. The 1986
Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher revealed that 97 per cent of
teachers surveyed agreed that school districts should have a team approach to school
management involving teachers, but only 50 per cent of teachers reported this as the
reality (p. 50). Another recent survey found that large numbers of teachers report
little involvement in such matters as hiring staff, establishing testing or grading
policies, setting expenditure priorities, developing a student discipline code, selecting
texts, planning staff development or evaluating teaching.2 Teachers vary in their
desire to have greater authority over such matters, but in many schools teachers
apparently have little opportunity to exercise control over some central aspects of
teaching.
These salary and working condition factors influence recruitment, retention, mobility and
job satisfaction in teaching, but act only af. the foundation on which to build organizations
that support teacher growth, competence and commitment. Subtle factors involving both
the hard Ss strategy, structures, systems and the soft Ss style, skill, superordinate
goals combine to produce work settings that motivate and effectively direct teacher
work.3 To these factors we turn next.

Motivating and Direcfing the Work of Teaching

Teachers derive their deepest satisfaction in teaching from their work with students.
Consequently, creating conditions in which teachers can be successful provides direct
benefits to both teachers and students. If the psychic rewards of teaching are most potent,
then it follows that measures to improve psychic rewards should receive top priority. The
better teachers are at their work, the more rewarding they find teaching, and the more
likely they are to devote effort to teaching and to remain committed to it.
These notions come together in a concept that has begun to receive attention in the
research on teaching. Teacher efficacy, the individual's perceived expectancy of obtaining
valued outcomes through personal effort, is associated with student achievement (Ashton
and Webb, 1986), and is itself influenced by organizational factors (Fuller et al., 1982).
Teachers' sense of efficacy varies from individual to individual but is systematically related
to school-level factors. A recent survey study of a large sample of elementary teachers
begins to suggest what factors are involved, and is worth summarizing.
This study collected survey data from over 800 elementary teachers in seventy-eight
schools in order to examine how school organizational factors influence teachers'
commitment to teaching.4 The study proposed that in schools where teachers could
acquire skills necessary to good teaching, felt effective in helping students learn and felt

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 Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety

rewarded for their efforts, they would also develop high commitment to teaching as
evidenced by positive attitudes, low absenteeism and little desire to leave teaching.
Dramatic school-level differences emerged, related strongly to a number of organizational
processes. In schools that support teachers and build their sense of efficacy:
There is an emphasis on goal-setting and on developing consensus on values what
the school stands for, what 'we're trying to achieve'.
Goal consensus is the outcome of frequent talk among faculty and with the principal
about instruction. Teachers get together frequently before, during and after school
to talk. The principal facilitates the process through scheduling, faculty meetings,
in-service activities, etc.
Teachers collaborate frequently. They observe one another, shate materials, work on
curriculum together and plan for the future. Crucial to this collaboration is the social
meaning of help-giving and seeking. In collaborative schools, asking for and
providing help is the norm modeled by the principal and experienced teachers. In
isolated schools, help-seeking is construed as a sign of weakness or inadequacy;
teachers learn not to ask for fear of being stigmatized as incompetent.
Teachers' learning opportunities are frequent, valuable and associated with shared
goals, regular feedback and evaluation, and norms of colleagueship.
Principals are crucial to healthy school cultures. Through their activities and
interactions with teachers they foster goal consensus; model openness, collaborative
behavior and reciprocity; buffer teachers from intrusions such as the loudspeaker;
establish student discipline procedures so that faculty can concentrate on teaching
rather than behavior management; evaluate teachers and arrange for feedback directly
and through experienced teachers; encourage the emergence of instructional
leadership via delegation to lead teachers; and hire teachers who share a collaborative
orientation to teaching.
In such schools teachers are more likely to develop attitudes conducive to effective
teaching:
Teachers gain in certainty about their ability to produce academic achievement in
students. They develop self-esteem that is tied to successful teaching of skills and
knowledge.
Teachers believe that learning to teach takes a long time, that teaching cannot be
mastered simply, that they must continue to work on their craft and to improve year
by year;
Teachers emphasize individual learning differences among children and the need to
respond to such differences. If children fail to learn, teachers sell-eh for new strategies
rather than 'blame the victims'.
Teachers believe that teaching is a collective not an individual endeavor; they believe
in help-giving and seeking, and value ideas from colleagues.
Teachers identify learning as the acquisition of skills, not the unfolding of innate
abilities. They believe learners are made, not born.

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Teachers associate excellence in teaching more strongly with producing academic

achievement in students rather than with a range of general, diffuse developmental
goals.
Teachers are more willing to 'buck the system' in cases where policies conflict with
their best professional judgment. Teachers do not feel powerless in the face of
bureaucratic constraints.
Rosenholtz's research further reveals that collaborative schools had lower rates of teacher
absenteeism and produced higher standardized test scores in reading and math, over a
three-year period. Finally, neither the size nor the socio-economic status of the school
predicted healthy teaching cuhures. They were equally prevalent (or equally rare) across
the range of communities, a surprising but heartening finding. There is no reason, it
appears, why all schools might not begin moving in this direction.
Judith Little and her colleagues have built an impressive body of ethnographic
research that complements this portrait of healthy teaching cult ires in schools (Little,
1981, 1982, 1987; Little et al., 1986; Bird and Little, 1986). This work focuses on school-
wide processes that produce shared norms and work orientations. Most critical are the
norms of collegiality, an expectation for shared work within a school, and of continuous
improvement, an expectation for ongoing analysis. evaluation and experimentation.
Careful observations in more and less successful schools (based on school-wide test scores
over several years plus nominations) revealed a number of 'critical practices of adaptability'
(Little, 1982):
Teachers engage in frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete and precise
talk about teaching practice By such talk teachers build up a shared
language adequate to the complexity of teaching
Teachers are frequently observed and provided with useful (if potentially
frightening) critiques of their teaching. Such observation and feedback provide
shared referents for the shared language of teaching.
Teachers plan, design, research, evaluate, and prepare teaching materials
together .... By joint work on materials, teachers share the considerable
burden of development required by long-term improvement, confirm their
emerging understanding of their approach. and make rising standards for their
work attainable by them and by their students.
Teachers teach each other the practice of teaching. In the most adaptable
schools, most staff, at one time or another, on some topic or task, are permitted
and encouraged to play the role of instructor for others. (p. 331)
These practices do not develop by accident. Organizational structures and processes
encourage and insist on such behavior. Principals, once again, are critical. They model such
behavior themselves, supply resources to teachers, set up routines and expectations and
create organizational arrangements that facilitate collegiality and reduce teacher isolation.
In her recent work Little has begun exploring how district-level processes contribute
to the emergence of teacher leadership (see Little et al., 1986). Teamwork among teachers
is quite fragile in many schools and often fails to survive turnover of key actors such as the

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 Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety

principal or lead teachers. Consequently, actions at higher levels within the system are
necessary to the institutionalization of work norms and patterns that support
collaboration. The superintendent's actions are critical. S/he proposes and champions
collaborative arrangements, personally attends critical planning meetings, holds principals
to expectations, allocates resources and models collaborative behavior for management.
Specific support factors such as mutual time for planning and training for key personnel are
important as are formal roles and staffing patterns to support various forms of teamwork.
The image of a successful school rising out of this work fits well with many of the
generalizations from the effective schools literature (see Purkey and Smith, 1983; Rutter,
1983; and Rosenholtz, 1985, for reviews). This literature emphasizes that 'good schools'
are tightly coupled: there is consensus among faculty on goals; there are procedures to
measure and track goal attainment; expectations for achievement are high; and curriculum
is well coordinated. To achieve these desirable features requires collaboration among
teachers, regular feedback and evaluation, and precision in the shared language of teaching.
In su-h schools teachers' sense of efficacy is high, and consequently they feel rewarded in
their work. The ambiguities. uncertainties and loose coupling that the constraint
perspective suggests are widespread seem to be substantially reduced in some schools,
making the work of teaching more satisfying, more rewarding and more effective. But,
most commentators agree, there are not enough such schools. They seem to be the
exception, not the rule, and so we return to the original insights about teaching and its
constrain ts

Teaching Incentives: An Agenda for the Future

In their now sacred text Peters and Waterman (1982) cite philosopher Ernest Becker's
argument that man is driven by an essential dualism: to be part of something and to stick
out, to be a conforming member of a winning team and to be a star in his own right.
Schools, like other work organizations, must meet both these needs if teachers are to be
satisfied and productive workers. It is this simple and this difficult.
Future research on incentives in teaching might take up any number of topics, but
want to propose three areas for further inquiry: incentives and school effectiveness; the
relationship between accountability and teaching incentives; and the equity implications of
incen t i Yes .

Incentives and School Effectiveness

The work of Rosenholtz and Little is valuable because it establishes connections between
the social psychological processes contributing to teachers' efficacy and the sociocultural
characteristics of schools as teacher worksettings. This review has emphasized that cultural
characteristics of schools contribute to schooling outcomes directly and through effects on
teaching's intrinsic rewards. Such features of schools are in principle alterable, are widely if
not abundantly present and constitute a prime locus for future research.
Inquiry to date on effective schools, however, has been a mixed blessing. The research

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

has begun to identify alterable features of schools that contribute to student achievement,
but in translation for use has led to new orthodoxies rather than flexible guidelines for
practice. Future work must begin to differentiate and refine our conceptions of good
schools to avoid the 'list logic' (Barth, 1986) that dominates current thinking.
First, research must take up differences among elementary, middle and secondary
schools. Elementary schools differ considerably from high schools in their organizational
properties. For example, they tend to be smaller, less specialized by subject matter and
department, and to possess a more captive student dientele. Women make up the majority
of elementary faculty, while high school faculties are more evenly divided by gender.
These and other differences may influence systematically the character of school
effectiveness, and the deployment of incentives.
Second. research must view schools in a community context. Communities vary
along a variety of dimensions including wealth, socioeconomic status, racial composition
and location (i.e., urban, suburban, rural). Schools must be responsive to their
communities, but there are few indications how such responsiveness influences school
effectiveness. Conceptions of school effectiveness must begin to take account of the fit
between schools and communities rather than viewing schools as context-free, gtneric
institutions.
Third, research might begin to identify differences among similar schools that are
effective, in order to illustrate that no single formula or recipe underlies the creation and
maintenance of a good school. Portraiture as a social science genre is relatively new, but
Lightfoot (1983) among others already has made contributions. Such work might start
with a set of common prescriptions or ingredients, then reveal how very differently these
are enacted in particular schools.
Finally, future woik must portray schools as dynamic organizations undergoing
cycles of growth, decay and regeneration rather than as static entities comprised of
properties. 'How do good schools become so?', and, 'How do they remain so?' must
receive the same attention as, 'What characterizes effective schools?' We must, in short,
begin to produce a film library of good schools, not just albums of snapshots.

Accountability and Teaching Incentives

The prevailing thrust of much policy-driven change is to legislate better teaching. This
takes the form of more regulation, more tests, more curriculum sno:ifications, more
reporting requirements for teachers, in short, more external mountability. Such an
approach attempts to improve school effectiveness by prescribing the goals of schooling
and translating them into measurable results. Goal clarity and high expectations are
certainly desirable as the school effectiveness literature testifies, but a single-minded
emphasis on accountability is not likely to inspire teachers. In fact, our best teachers may
find external controls most burdensome and diverting (Darling-Hammond, 1984), and
some interesting experimental evidence suggests the costs of heavy-handed accountability.
Edward Deci and his colleagues hypothesized that when teachers are placed in highly
controlling environments that reduce their autonomy and emphasize conformity to
external rewards and punishments, they will in turn become more controlling with
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 Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Vanity

students. They tested this hypothesis by asking forty people to instruct a group of students
in solving puzzles (Deci and Ryan, 1985):
Results . . . revealed that teachers in the performance-standards condition made
twice as many utterances, spent twice as much time talking, and allowed
students to work alone much less than did the no-standards teachers. They also
gave three times as many directives, made three times as many should-type
statements, and asked twice as many controlling questions as did the no-
standards teachers. Further, the performance-standard teachers were rated as
being more demanding and controlling, as giving students less choice and less
time to work alone, and as being less effective in promoting conceptual
learning, than the no-standards teachers. Finally, the raters indicated tha., iey
would prefer to be taught by the no-standards teachers. (p. 267)
Other experimental research supports this study, but the results are more eye-opening
than definitive. The description of controlling teachers sounds remarkably like the
portrayal of classroom life in John Goodlad's study (1984). Deci goes on to point out other
sources of controlling behavior in teachers, including rowdy, disruptive students, but the
implications are clear. If we genuinely expect teachers to encourage creativity, higher
order reasoning and autonomy in students, then placing them in regulated environments
will be a disaster.
There appear to be two extremes to avoid. One is direction without support, where
goals are specified and accountability mechanisms put in place but teachers are treated as
low-level bureaucrats expected to carry out orders. This is not what the effective schools
literature recommends, yet it is what a lot of educational policy looks like today. The other
extreme is support without direction, where teachers are given freedom to experiment but
little guidance about goals. This was the drift in the 1960s with the cafeteria-style
curriculum and the tacit sanctioning of treaties, deals and bargains between teachers and
students. Peters and Waterman conclude their book with a chapter on the 'simultaneous
loose-tight properties' of effective companies. This is the elusive mix in organizational
cultures of shared values, constant, swift feedback on results and attention to the client,
coupled to considerable autonomy and innovation from the rank and file worker. School
environments that get this mix right empower teachers while reducing their arr.' -ry and
uncertainty about results.
Little research has been done on how accountability mechanisms affect teachers.
Experiments of the sort carried out by Deci are suggestive, but are low on ecological
validity. It is important to understand the circumstances in which common accountability
mechanisms serve as disincentives for teachers. A useful line of research would explore the
effects of accountability and control procedures on teachers' motivation, morale and
effectiveness. Field studies might draw on the hypotheses and concepts derived from the
psychological literature on rewards and incentives.

Equity and Teaching Incentives

Teaching incentives have equity implications. The distribution of incentives that affect

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 Schools as Collaborative Cukures: Creating the Future Now

teacher recruitment, retention and effectiveness is critical to educational equity. The

current system is inequitable at every level: between states, between districts within states,
and often between schools within districts. Where a student lives predicts the quality of
education he receives; where a teacher teaches predicts the quality of teacher worklife.
Consequently, research must attend to the distribution and redistribution of incentives.
Research on incentives can attend to equity in several ways. One is to study the
equity-related consequences of incentive-based policy. If. for example, states allocate funds
for teacher salaries, merit pay, career ladders or similar programs, follow-up studies should
determir.e whether the state formulas widen, narrow or hold constant salary disparities
across districts. Efforts should be made to ensure that the rich do not get richer while the
poor get poorer or stay the same.
A second priority would be to initiate and study interventions that mix pecuniary and
non-pecuniary incentives for attracting teachers to hard-to-staff schools. Policy to date has
not been especially innovative in this regard. Combat pay and various categorical program
monies have not proven effective. Clearly, special measures must be initiated to encourage
teaching in inner-city and rurally isolated schools. Bonus pay may be part of the solution,
but only in combination with attention to school resources, structures and cultures.
Research might evaluate various schemes, and attempt to understand how teachers trade
off such factors as salary increases, reduced class sizes, fewer classes and more time for
planning, access to better teaching resources and materials, improvements in the physical
plant, increased autonomy and other teaching 'valuables'.
There is a tendency to think of incentives in simplistic terms as directives with
rewards attached to them. Yet the concept of incentives is useful because it encourages
policy-makers to attend to the people teachers mostly who must carry out policies.
But as this review has attempted to illustrate, the interplay of incentives, motivation and
behavior both individual and collective is quite complex. There are no simple ways
to improve teaching through manipulation of incentives. The incentive structure of
teaching is difficult to change on a large-scale basis. But there are some promising leads in
the research literature and some exemplars to follow. Thinking about incentives can help
improve effectiveness, accountability and equity in teaching.

Notes

1
These observations are drawn from an unpublished report by Donald Erickson and Richard
Nault, 'Currency, Choice, and Commitment: An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Public
Money and Related Regulation on Canadian Catholic Schools: Research Report Submitted to
thc Spencer Foundation', January 1978.
2 An unpublished paper by Phil Schlechty, 'Schools for the 21st Century: The Conditions for
Invention', delivered at a conference at Stanford University, 4 November 1986.
3 These findings are drawn from a draft report by Samuel Bacharach and associates, 'The Learning
Workplace: The Conditions and Resources of Teaching', Washington: National Education
Association, April 1986.
4 These findings are reported in draft chapters of a book by Susan Rosenholtz, "leachers Workplace:
The Sotial Organization of Schools. (1989) New York: Longman Inc.

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 Teaching Incentives: Constraint and Variety

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 Chapter 7

Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart*

Terrence E. Deal

Early into the night that was September 8, 1971, my strong spirited wife died.
She was forty years old, and in the sixteen years of our marriage she had been
sick only once. Without a clear warning, without even a foreboding, I was
suddenly alone with our three children. In this terrible moment, I brought
them together in our family room and heard myself say, 'Mom didn't make it.
She died.' (Lindeman, 1974, p. 275)
But now that I know that I no longer live as a Catholic in a Catholic world, I
cannot expect the liturgy which reflects and cultivates my faith to remain
what it was. I will continue to go to the English mass. I will go because it is my
liturgy. I will, however, often recall with nostalgia the faith that I have lost.
And I will be uneasy knowing that the old faith was lost as much by choice 2S it
was inevitably lost. . . The Catholic church of my youth mediated with special
grace between the public and private realms of my life, such was the extent of
its faith in itself. That church is no longer mine. I cling to the new Catholic
church. Though it leaves me unsatisfied, I fear giving it up, falling through
space. (Rodriguez, 1982, pp. 107-9)
In the personal and religious aspects of life it is easy to recognize the wrenching emotional
and spiritual impact of loss. We become attached to people we love, and the death of
loved one leaves a personal void. We attach ourselves to the enduring symbols of religion,
and any change in them creates a spiritual 112CUUM. Most of us can recall vividly the pain
such experiences cause. Memories of loss haunt us throughout our lives, despite conscious
or unconscious defences or denial. We grieve over the loss of anything we value long after
the object or symbol is actually gone.

This chapter is adapted from Chapter 15, 'Cultural Change: Opportunity, Silent Killer or
Metamorphosis' in R. Kirkman, M. Saxton and R. Serpa, Gaining Control of the Corporate Culture (San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1985) 292-331.

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The Human Side of Organizations

In our professional lives, however, we rarely think about loss in this way. Organizations,
after all, arc intentionally rational instruments, created primarily to accomplish desirable
goals. In pursuing goals, people are assigned to formal roles within a well defined structure
of responsibilities and relationships. In many organizations, what people contribute to the
bottom linc of profits or test scores has become more important than who they are or what
they represent. When we leave our spiritual, fraternal or personal lives and cross the
boundary of work organizations, the awareness of basic needs tend to diminish or vanish
beside goals and tangible outcomes (Argyris, 191.?.4). We become employers, teachers,
managers, principals or executives ostensibly immune to deeper human emotions. We
rarely recognize that changes in thc nature of work also create losses that trigger powerful
individual or collective reactions. The costs may not be immediately obvious nor reflected
directly in tangible ways, but left unattended over time, pressure builds up and can become
a silent killer in organizations much like hypertension in the human body. The
unresolved loss of title or office can cause personal maladjustments, such as depression or
excessive drinking; the substitution of a computerized system for manual procedures can
create uncertainty, confusion and a loss of identity. Wholesale changes in an organization
can dramatically affect overall morale, pnxluctivity and turnover. Most often, however,
we fail to link those effects to the real Cause. We attribute the blame to personal or other
intangible sources, rather than to change in the work setting.
In Corporate Cultures (Deal and Kennedy, 1982) Allen Kennedy and I discuss the
difficulty in changing business organizations:
Change always threatens a culture. People form strong attachments to heroes,
kgends, the rituals of daily life, the hoopla of extravaganza and ceremonies
all the symbols and settings of the workplace. Change strips down these
relationships and leaves employees confused, insecure, and often angry. For
example, the simple installation of a computerized inventory system can
dramatically alter work rituals and can cause great anxiety..
Many times the hidden cultural barriers to change are overlooked. New
CEOs may realign their organizations, but in the process may topple heroes
that people have revered since the company began. A strategic review may
launch a new business strategy or new acquisition, but may miss the fact that
these new initiatives undermine important values that have guided a company
for years and years. Unless something can be done to reduce such threats and
provide support for transitions from old to the new, the force of the culture can
neutralize and emasculate a proposed change. (pp. 157-8)

The Hidden Problem of Change

In those two short paragraphs my coauthor 2nd I introduced a germ of an important idea:
cultural change typically creates significant individual and collective loss. We did not then
fully realize the power of the idea. The deeper realization came during a presentation to a

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 Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart

Bell operating company shortly after the announcement of the divestiture of American
Telephone and Telecraph (AT&T). Addressing an audience of 200 Bell managers, I talked
about corporate culture and the potential impact of its loss. I amplified the points from the
book without fully knowing the situation or the sentiments within the group. In the
midst of the session I realized that this was not a typical presentation to a detached crowd.
Most of the people in thc audience had tears in their eyes. The room was painfully hushed.
At the end of the presentation several of the participants lined up to continue the
conversation; they wanted to tell me how the chance was affecting them personally. Many
were visibly anguished. All reported the agony of 'being pulled apart
inside'. I was
overwhelmed with the pain the people reported and very concerned about how their loss
might be resolved.
My experiences in subsequent years, as I visited hospitals, companies and schools
across the country, have revealed even more dramatically the deeper issues of cultural
change. AT&T, because of its strong culture nourished over more than 100 years, offers a
most poignant example:
A large division of AT&T. Several hundred people attending an occasion to
mark the transition from comfortable tradition to an uncertain future. The
final night was an elaborate ceremony of food and frolic. At the height of the
festivities, a group entered wit:. a small coffin with the words 'Ma Bell'
written on the outside. The reaction was electric, but unspoken. Some
laughed, some cried. That night I had a death dream. Hearses carrying loved
ones I'd known passed in review, each person waving goodbye. I had
somehow internalized the colkctive sentiments. (Deal and Kennedy, 1984,
p. 16).
But other organizations in the aftermath of mergers, executive succession, innovation,
growth or decline have shown that the power of cultural change is not confined to the Bell
system, as the following experience shows:
A superintendent retired from a large school system. He refused to have a
going away party in his honor a wake to mark his departure. A visit to the
district six months iater revealed a large number of people who still had not
come to terms with his departure. This successor was not really the
superintendent even though the torch formally had been passed. People were
hanging on when they needed to let go and move on. They conspired to bring
him back, so they could mourn his passing.
As part of the district-wide consolidation plan, an elementary school in a
southeastern school district was to be closed and torn down. On the school's
last day, a formal ceremony brought teachers, students, administrators,
parents, graduates, and former employees, together for the final rites. During
the ceremony, teachers, students, and others shared favorite memories of the
school. The principal then gave a signal and the custodial staff wrapped a large
red ribbon around the school's entire brick walled perimeter. The entire event
was videotaped, including aerial shots of the ribbon-wrapping, taken from a
helicopter. The next day, the school was demolished. Later each participant

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received a video-tape of the closing event along with a brick from the school
wrapped with a red ribbon.

Wounds and Healing: The Chapter's Themes

In these examples the two themes of this chapter begin to crystallize. The first is the deep
sense of individual and collective loss and grief that lurks below the surface of cultural
change. Death or life without meaning are fundamental fears of the human species
(Becker, 1973). Cultural change can tap into both. The second theme is the need for
cultural rituals collective events that assuage deep fears, heal wounds, mend tears in the
fabric of shared meaning and graft onto old roots new forms equal to contemporary
challenges. Historically rituals and ceremonies have helped humans create and celebrate the
social fictions culture expresses. Symbolic events create collective energy that heals and
bonds (Katz, 1982). Their absence in modern society and organizations has thrust the
brunt of creating meaning onto isolated individuals, a task to which only the most talented
and heroic among is are equal.
This chapter will attempt to develop both of these themes: change as loss, and ritual
as respite or repair and relate them to changes in education. Although we have been
trying to .change schools for decades, the patterns and practices seem strikingly familiar.
But below the surface, on the cusp of consciousness, efforts to improve schools may have
caused them harm. If so, we need to recognize and repair the damage. The discussion will
draw from several bodies of literature as well as from the author's experience in working
with businesses, hospitals, schools and other organizations. It will attempt to fuse
organizational theory with the phenomenology of organizations, to link the literature
with clinical observations. A moral emerges from the fusion: ignoring the silent, deep
consequences of cultural change causes unnecessary personal suffering and pain. Over time
a successinn of unresolved changes and experiences can unravel the fabric that holds a
society or its schools together. Even in a culture like America's, where innovation is a core
value, too much change too fast can sever the connection between past nd present and
future. In the absence of social devices to reconnect roots with immediate experience and
long-term vision, a people can falter or fall. The negative effects of change are particularly
disturbing in educational organizations. School are society's institutions for developing
future generations. Weakened by decades of change, schools may lose their moral fiber,
ultimately wvering the connection between America's generations and its future.

The Carousel of Change

For the past two decades most American organizations have conducted business or
rendered services in a fast-moving, turbulent environment. This is not surprising, given
America's preoccupation with new things and the challenge of new frontiers. But the
ongoing cultural press for newness and growth has fused with some sharp new economic,
demographic and political developments. These contemporary shifts are not confined
within the boundaries of the United States; they are global trends that affect organizations
throughout the world.

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The result is what many commentators describe 2S a dizzying carousel of

circumstances. Among these are technical adva -ices, new government policies, soaring
inflation rates, fierce competition and a new breed of employers and managers. The
revolution brewing since the introduction of computers into the workplace and the
confusion caused by government deregulation provide striking examples. But countless
numbers of equally powerful events have created a topsy-turvy world outside
organizations that requires constant attention within (Toffler, 1970).
Educational organizations have been buffeted by the waves of change and external
pressures for reform seemingly forever. But the intensity of the past three decades seems
particularly significant. The 1950s brought pressures for differentiated staffing, modular
scheduling and variable class groupings. During the 1960s open space, team teaching.
individualized instruction and alternative education were among the desired changes. The
1970s corcinued many of these innovations and added vouchers, computers and modern
management approaches. The 1980s has pulled from the previous decades, recycling
changes into a national reform movement, now entering its second 'wave'. In its wake the
decades of change, improvement and reform have left many educators consciously or
otherwise confused, exhausted and disillusioned.
There would be some solace if the turmoil were temporary. But if the predictions of
John Naisbitt (1982) arc even roughly on target, we can expect the future to be even more
tumultuous than the present or past. Naisbitt's key points suggest that this is only the
beginning:

We have changed to an economy based on the creation and distribution of

information (even though we think otherwise).
We must now acknowledge that we are part of a global economy. We have begun to
let go of our ideas and must remain an industrial leader as we move on to other tasks.
We are restructuring from a society run by short-term considerations and rewards to
one that emphasizes long-term considerations.
We have rediscovered the ability to act innovatively and to achieve results from the
bottom up.
We are shifting from reliance on institutional help to self-reliance.
We are giving up our dependence on hierarchical structures in favor of informed
networks.
More Americans are leaving behind the old industrial cities of the north in favor of the
south and the west.
From a society confined by the limited range of personal choices embedded in the
narrowly defined world of the city, state or other political entity, we are exploding
into a free-wheeling, multiple-option society.

All of these predictions imply that what we are experiencing now is only the tip of the
iceberg underneath. These trends suggest a major restructuring of all organizations,
including schools. These trends require a major revolution in our thinking and behavior.
We seem to be on the brink of having to transform ourselves and the cul:ure of our

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'2:hools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

organizations and society. This is not a task that human beings have ever relished, let alone
enthusiastically embraced.

Culture and Change: A Basic Contradiction

It is often easier to meet unique challenges with fresh, new institutions. New organiz-
ational forms bring new ways, unencumbered by assumptions and patterns of the past.
Tandem and other newly formed computer companies, for instance, have set examples for
both productivity and innovative ways of organizing work; Nissan of America has shown
in its ..ew automobile factory in Smyrna, Tennessee, that Americans can meet and surpass
Japanese standards of autormabile quality. Alternative schools of the 1960s demonstrated
their ability to deal with student needs more effectively than their traditional counterparts
(Deal, 1988).
Unfortunately, however, the opportunity to start organizations has to begin where
they are, with what they already have. They will, of necessity, face new challenges with
traditions developed and nourished under different conditions. The old ways will not be
transformed easily, unless the old ways are clearly inadequate for a majority of people. Lee
laccoca did not inherit a vigorous and productive company (Iaccoca, 1984); Chrysler was
in a crisis, and most inside the company knew it. Chrysler was certainly more malleable
than the Bell System, a company that over a long period delivered successfully the most
advanced telephone service in the world (Tunstall, 1985; Von Auw, 1983). The difference
between Bell and Chrysler was the strength of the existing cultures. Weak cultures are
tough to change; strong cultures :re nearly impossible. Schools seem to move as easily as a
large oil tanker at dock can be pushed by someone standing on a pier. They change so
slowly that it almost requires a Rip Van Winkle figure to witness a complete turn-around.
The difficulty and pace are predictable. Changing any organization runs afoul of the very
human creation that provides stability and contributes to success: its culture. The deep
symbiotic relations between schools and external constituencies such as parents or alumni
mio!s the problem even more difficult (Clark, 1975).
Organizational culture is not a new concept. The symbolic side of organizations has a
long tradition in the literature and lore of organizational studies under a variety of names:
climate (Halpin and Craft, 1962), institutions (Selznick, 1949), ideology (Weber, 1946),
saga (Clark, 1975), ethos (Rutter et al., 1979) or clans (Ouchi, 1980). Culture is a concept
that captures the subtle, elusive, intangible, largely unconscious force that shape a society
or a workplace. Culture is a social fiction created by people to give meaning to work and
life (Barnard, 1938). It is a potent shaper of human thought and behavior within
organizations and even beyond its boundaries.
Others, including Allen Kennedy and myself, have offered definitions of culture.
These range from more scientific definitions (Schein, 1985), on the one hand, to
commonsense definitions on the other: 'the way we do things around here' or 'what keeps
the herd moving roughly west' (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). At the heart of most of these
definitions of culture is the concept of a learned pattern of unconscious (or semiconscious)
thought, reflected and reinforced by behavior, that silently and powerfully shapes the
experience of a people. Culture provides stability, fosters certainty, solidifies order and

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 Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart

predictability, and creates meaning. Change, on the other hand, creates instability and
ambiguity and replaces order and predictability with disharmony and surprise (Hoffer,
1963). Even in organizations such 2S Digital Electronics or Antioch University, where
innovation is among the core values, how far an individual or group may deviate from 'the
way we do things around here' i constrained by other shared values and norms.
Culture is the human invention that Creates solidarity and meaning and inspires
commitment and productivity (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Peters and Waterman, 1982). It
actively and forcefully begins to work against an organization when changes become
necessary for survival. All human beings have a basic need to make sense of this world, to
feel in control and to create meaning (Kegan, 1982). When events threaten meaning,
human beings react defensively. When events rupture meaning, people will do almost
anything to recapture the status quo, to restore their existential pillars. A simple example
can be found in perception experiments where suits and colors are altered on playing cards:
red clubs and spades, 'pia} diamonds and hearts. As people are shown the cards quickly on
a screen, they become uncomfortable. As the sequence of cards is slowed, most reverse the
colors in their minds. As the sequence is slowed still further, discomfort increases some
people even leave the room (Kuhn, 1970). We see in this simple example the human
relation to change even in 2n innocuous belief such as the color of suits of cards. Much
stronger relations occur when core values or beliefs 2re threatened or challenged for
example, when scientists are required to question paradigms (Kuhn, 1970), when people
are asked to change eating or smoking habits, when new educational practices are
developed to replace old ones, or when the techniques of modern management are
substituted for intuition or judgment. On the positive side of organizational change lie
some institutional patterns far superior to their predecessors in confronting the challenges
of tomorrow and possibly even those of today. The inefficiencies of the classroom
lecture, for example, are well documented, but the practice goes on. Professors read their
old notes to students who copy them in new notebooks. After the exam, the notebooks
,ae stored, saved and restored each time a student moves. Why? Lurking on the negative
side of change is the reality of human suffering and turmoil and the possibility that natural
reactions to uncertainty and loss may prevent u., from ever moving far beyond ourselves or
our institutions. Unless we understand the process of cultural change and recognize that
many of the changes we seek will result in the loss of existing cultural patterns of
individual or collective meaning, we may never fully attain the organizational forms
necessary to meet modern challenges. Because of their vulnerability to pressures from
outside, schools will find the pathway from old patterns to new ones especially volatile.
Schools must deal with sentimental attachments of parents, alumni 2nd others as well as
those of insiders.
Reconsider the language of John IsLisbitt in Megatrends (1982) from this perspective:
'We have changed (even though we think otherwise) ... "We are moving .. . "We
must let go . . "We are restructuring form in favor of . "We have rediscovered . .
'We are shifting . . . "We are giving up . . . "More Americans are leaving behind .
' . from narrow city/state into a multiple option society ... Each prediction is
prophesy of transition, and each transition means the loss of tradition. Moving on always
involves giving up and letting go. The phrases embedded in the predictions of Megatrends
underscore the challenges of the next decade: (1) How can we deal with the uncertainty of

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

transition? (2) How can we cope with giving up what we need to in order to move on?
These issues strike at the very heart of the key existential dilemmas of the human species.
That is one of the reasons why we have not dealt with loss as the core issue of change
(Becker, 1973; Marris, 1974). We attribute resistance to a lack of needed skills, problems of
coping with new role expectations or conflicts arising from shifts in power (Bolrnan and
Deal, 1984). We have defined resistance as a fundamental barrier to change without
realizing what the resistance is all about. We forget the epicenter of change: shifts in
cultural patterns values, heroes and heroines, rituals, ceremonies, priests and priestesses
that create existential loss and pose a threat to meaning. From the perspective of
culture, schools need to attend to transition issues, to find ways of moving effectively
through the rough waters of change. If they do not, most will either become stuck in an
unworkable past or mired in a meaningless present. The lessons of the past few decades
provide support for a less than optimistic prophecy. Many schools are already (and
unknowingly) caught in the double bind of hanging on while letting go. Many of the
most embittered teachers are the ones that have been hurt the most by change.

Change as Loss: A Brief Synopsis of the Literature

Attachment is a fundamental human tendency (Freud, [1915] 1937). We attach ourselves

to other people, to places, to possessions, to roles, to relatives, to pets, to cars, to work
(Bolman, 1980). We form attachments for a number of reasons: attachments bring
happiness and fellowship; they confer status and power; they head off lonelir.ess; but in the
most profound sense attachments create meaning, without which people lose their
existential orientation and their will to go on. They lose 'heart'. When attachments are
broken, we lose important objects, and even more importantly we often lose what these
objects represent. Attachments make meaning; loss creates disequilibrium and grief. The
process is rarely acknowledged or discussed. Marris (1974) documented the sense of loss
and grief among widows and city dwellers displaced by urban renewal projects. He
generalizes from these studies, arguing that similar reactions occur in response to other
social or personal changes.
Change stems from different sources, each with its own set of challenges. One of the
most widely documented life changes is death unanticipated or otherwise. Death as loss
of life is a moot issue for the victims (Weisman, 1976), but it is a significant issue for the
survivors. Their bubble of meaning temporarily bursts. Marris' (1974) study of grieving
widows illustrates how survivors react to the rupture of existential reality. They are
caught between two primary impulses: one to follow the victim into the grave (clinging to
the past); the other immediately to embrace the present (denying the loss). Either impulse
reduces the ability of the survivor to resolve the loss of the spouse and to move ahead.
Studies of other life changes reveal similar patterns. The process of individual
development or growth moving from one ego state to another involves letting go of
one conception of the self and moving on to another. In the process people become
ambivalent, alternating between ego levels until the transition is made (Kegan, 1982). In
the later stages of human development aging (Neugarten and Weinstein, 1976; Warren,
1976), retiring, and entering a retirement home (Hughes, 1976) raise disconcerting

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 Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart

transition issues. Again the key issue is how a person moves from one state to another,
how the process of letting go and moving ahead proceeds. As one man recently put it: 'I
wondered why I got so depressed during my fortieth birthday party. I saw my youth
slipping away and I didn't want it to pass. So many memories. I find myself holding back
from aging. At the same time, I'm looking forward to the first Christmas my
granddaughter rides her new bike.'
Think of othcr life transitions:
Educational transitions moving from elementary school to high school to college
to graduate school involve leaving one life (or one institution) behind and adapting
to another (Signe ll, 1976).
Adoption (Kadushin, 1976), living together (Lobsenz, 1976), marriage (Raush,
Goodrich and Campbell, 1976), parenthood (Dyer, 1976) happy events in one
sense involve significant changes in life circumstances. Less happy events
divorce (McDermott, 1976) or other broken relationships create equally significant
transition crises. Many people are simply unable to come to terms with the fact that
an important relationship has been lost. They either deny that it is lost or quickly find
a replacement.
Moving (Fried, 1976) or changing a place of residence (Levine, 1976) causes extreme
disorientation. When the move is involuntary and the transition is to an unpleasant
set of drcumstances, the transition can be particularly painful, as studies of prisoners
of war (Spaulding and Ford, 1976) and concentration camp inmates (Chodoff, 1976;
Dinsdale, 1976; Ostwald and Bittner, 1976) dramatically document; and often the
readjustment following release is as difficuh as the initial adjustment (Spaulding and
Ford, 1976).
Man-made disasters, such as the explosion of the atomic blmb in Japan (Janis, 1976),
and natural disasters, such as tornadoes (Schanche, 1976) and floods (Birnbaum,
Cop Ion and Scharff, 1976), create multiple losses for survivors. Adjustments after
skyjacking incidents (Jacobson, 1976), the isolation of duty on a nuclear submarine
(Earls, 1976) and rape (Sutherland and Scherl, 1976) are comparable.
Through all of these transitions, the core proposition stands out: change produces loss, and
the loss creates grief.
Individuals respond to change and loss in predictable ways. Kubler-Ross (1969) has
outlined the sequence of responses of survivors in situations where someone has died:
1 Denial a psychologically cushioning reaction that avoids confronting the
reality of the loss.
2 Anger the response immediately following deniai: Why did this happen to
me (or us)? How could the person have done this to me (or us)?
3 Depression once the anger subsides, the reality of the loss begins to sink in,
producing waves of anguish and depression.
4 Bargaining the psychological struggle to recapture or return to the lost state
or object.
5 Acceptance -- coming to terms with the loss and moving ahead.

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There are several explanations of why people react so negatively to change First, change
produces loss, and loss creates wounds.
When an ultimely death penetrates our sense of reality, we often respond like a
micro-organism punctured by a painful injury. We withdraw, finding a
psychological counterpoint to physical avoidance in denial. By denying a
painful portion of immediate reality, we protect our own presence and
consciousness. We simply disbelieve, repudiate anything that would threaten
our enduring assumptions about reality and its key relationships. Denial is an
emergency response that closes off further perceptions by means of physical and
psychological numbness. Quite literally, we are wounded, having come to
grief before we are prepared to mourn. (Weisman, 1976, p. 267).
Second, change shatters reality, causing us to feel out of control and undermining our
sense of efficacy. Under normal drcumstances most people create for themselves a feeling
of psychological control. We feel that we are in control and that we can affect our
surroundings. Change often creates a sense of being out of control and undermines our
feeling of being able to make any difference. Thus we often withdraw from change and try
to shrink our psychological space in order to recapture feelings of control and efficacy. In
concentration camps, for example: 'Each [person] seemed to have constructed a small
world within which he could live with a sense of native autonomy and security precisely
because of its narrow boundaries' (Ostwald and Bittner, 1976, p. 369).
Third, change alters our relationships with objects, activities and symbols that give
meaning to our lives and create a world that makes sense to us. In reaction to the
announcement of the death of the mother cited at the beginning of this chapter the teenage
son replied, ' "You know, Dad," . .. in a clear, steady voice and with his clear blue eyes as
dry as a bone, "if we think long enough and hard enough about this, I suppose some day it
will make sense". His statement was in reference to his mother's death also his feelings
about his world' (Lindeman, 1976, p. 279).
Victor Frankl (1963), whose experiences in Auschwitz represent the most wrenching
loss imaginable, suggests the fundamental reason why change is so disorienting: 'the
striving to find a meaning of one's life is the most profound motivational force in
man . .Man is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values. Man is a
.

being whose main concern consists in fulfilling meaning and in actualizing values, rather
than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of desires and instincts .. . (pp. 154-64).
The bedrock of our lives is the symbols we create to give life meaning: 'Rob the average
man of his life's illusion and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke' (Ibsen, [1884]
1967, p. 217).
When attachments to objects or symbols are broken, people experience deep feelings
of hurt, loss of control and an existential vacuum that threatens their toehold on life's
meaning. But the impact is more than psychological. A scale of social readjustment also
links change to physical illness (Holmes and Masuda, 1974). In this schema life changes are
assigned numerical values (life change units) based upon estimates of the degree of
readjustment required: death of a spouse MO units, divorce 63 units, marital
separation 65 units, jail term 63 units, marriage r. 50 units, change in line of work 36
units, son or daughter leaving home 29 units, begin or end school 26 units, change in

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residence 20 units, and so forth. High scores are highly predictive of the onset of disease.
Thus change not only causes psychological pain; it can also trigger disease and other
pathologies such as excessive drinking or mental illness.

Change and Lou in Organizations

The literature links change to loss, loss that results in some sort of human
reaction. In
theory, when symbols, activities or objects are changes in organizations, collections of
people experience loss, but their feelings are unconscious and usually unacknowledged or
displaced. In our society, more than in many others, the existence of loss and grief
tends to
be denied (Becker, 1973).
The change-loss-reaction sequence is especially applicable to cultural changes.
Culture's primary function in organizations is to give meaning to human activity. The
elements of culture values, heroes, rituals, ceremonies, priests, priestesses, stories
are
important as tangible expressions, representations and symbols of deep, unconscions
thoughts and assumptions (Jung, 1958; Langer, 1951). People become
attached to the
elements of culture as the foundation of individual and collective meaning. When
cultural
elements change or are changed, people experience loss and react in much the
same way as
they would to the death of a spouse or the loss of a home (Marris, 1974). A shift in
organizational philosophy, a succession in upper management, the
alteration of
management techniques or work procedures, the cancellation of an annual conference or
the retirement of a number of old-time employers silently place individuals,
divisions or
,!ntire companies in grief without anyone recogni7ing or understanding the symptoms.
Consider some examples of cultural changes in schools:

Values

Core values, expressed in symbols and slogans, provide a shared sense of what an
organization stands for. As schools have embraced new responsibilities, their sense of
mission has often been diluted or forgotten. One large school system recently produced
a
video account of its history. Interviews with old-timers, photographs and
film footage
were interwoven into a decade by decade review. At the end of the program several people
remarked, 'we had forgotten why we are here!' In another school district
a large group of
administrators was asked, 'what does this school system stand for ?' After a long silence a
principal remarked, 'we pass the torch of knowledge from one generation to another!' He
later apologized for being too sentimental. Accountability pressures have often equated
education with achievement test scores. But test scores are not values and high
test scores
(or low ones) are not substitutes for a shared sense of mission and meaning.

Heroes and Heroines

Every culture needs heroes and heroines who embody values and provide tangible role
models of virtue and vision. On a national level Mr Chips, Our Miss Brooks and
Miss
Dove once reminded everyone of the deeper values of teaching and education.
Few such
figures, in fact or fiction, are portrayed today. Even more troublesome, in
many schools

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heroes and heroines teachers, administrators and others depart without a trace. For
example, an elderly teacher remaiked a year after her retirement, 'The least they could
have done is hung my picture in the faculty room.' Her colleagues shared her sentiments,
`It's not the same without Mrs Jones around here.' In another school several principals
have come and gone, resulting in a cynical sense among teachers: 'We never really loved
Mr Martinez and Miss Smith and we don't want to get involved again.' In the absence
of heroes or heroines some schools create devils usually administrators who provide
cohesion by giving everyone someone to hate and rally against.

Rituals
Rituals are physical expressions of cultural values and beliefs a dance people do to bond
together and experience their common quest. Rituals do not accomplish, they express.
Physicians and surgical teams scrub for seven minutes even though germs are destroyed,
by modern germicides, in thirty seconds. The ritual galvanizes the team and prepares the
people for doing precision surgery. In :any schools rituals have been neglected or have
disappeared. In one large high school, for example, the joking and teasing around sign-in
and sign-out as well as the weekly TGIF parties that once made the school a lively and
meaningful place have fallen by the wayside. Although no one consciously recognizes the
loss, the absence of ritual has contributed to the school's existential deterioration. Once
considered a sacred ritual, the act of teaching is now labeled a task. Time on task has
become a standard criterion for effective teaching. The countless innovations designed to
make teaching more technical have undoubtedly weakened its symbolic importance as an
act repeated agair and again, stylized and full of meaning.

Ceremony
Ceremonies are episodic occasions when the culture is put on display. Values are reasserted.
Heroes and heroines are annointed, reannointed and remembered. Stories are told and
retold. Symbols are exchanged. In some schools ceremonies are held at the beginning and
closing of the school year. In many, however, there is not a collective occasion where
values and symbols are the central focus. Gatherings are held for a purpose and the purpose
is often administrative detail or t-chnical information. In one school system a new
superintendent reconvened an an aal gathering of the school community that had been
disbanded by her predecessor. Although nearly everyone complained initially about losing
a day's work at the busiest time of the school year, the unanimous conclusion at the day's
end of looking backward and forward was: 'We've really missed this.'

Stories
Stories carry values and provide people with direction, courage and hope. In many schools
stories have been replaced by facts or have become negative accounts of gloom and doom.
One school district astonished itself by telling people, at the annual retreat, to spend an
hour telling each other stories. The teachers and administrators were grouped by decade.
At the end of the hour each group had its designated storyteller tell the best stories. A look

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of delight in everyone's face confirmed how much the stories had been missed. Several new
teachers remarked, 'now we know why we became teachers.'

Priests, Storytellers and Other Characters

The informal network of priests and priestesses, storytellers, gossips and spies is well
known in most organizations especially schools. The collective informal responsibility
of their people is to carry on and protect the culture. Their importance goes beyond their
formal role in the organization. That is why the departure of a secretary or cafeteria
worker can be a more poignant occasion than the departure of a principal or central office
administrator. The departure of a beloved cultural player leaves a tear in the fabric of
meaning. In Southern California a patio commemorates a custodian who was, for years,
the school's high priest. In another school a teacher lamented the loss of a librarian: 'The
TGIF will never be the same without Grace. We never appreciated her stories enough
while she was here. Now that she's gone, we realize how much her stories meant. There's
no one that can take her place.'

Symbols
Logos and other symbols often condense the deep existential meaning of an organization.
One principal recently discovered the importance of a school mascot when she removed
`Mr Many' a figure inconsistent with her vision of the school from the wall by the
trophy case. She put it in the basement and although no one said anything, inexplicable
conflicts between students, faculty and her soon revealed the significance of her act.

The Legacy of Change

As is evident in all of these examples, char 7,es in the elements of culture create a deep sense
of personal and collective loss. The feelings are usually unconscious; the anguish churns
well below the surface of a school. Explicit discussions about the relationship between
change and loss typically trigger an 'Ala!' or 'oh, my God!' response. When the link is
called to their attention, people often break through their denial and become conscious of
the hidden impact of cultural change. They are often surprised that they had not seen what
was going on before. 'I knew something was wrong; I just couldn't put my finger on
what it was'. Figure 1, used in presentations with Bell operating companies, graphically
depicts the wholesale shifts among the elements of the culture of AT&T. When shown to
groups, the slide visibly involves an emotional reaction. A personnel manager, reviewing
the slide prior to a presentation, held the slide up to the light and winced, lowered the slide
and with tears in his eyes remarked, 'My God, that's powerful'. But a similar figure could
be constructed for the field of education in general (see Figure 2).

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Old New
Values Universal Service
Heroes The Committed Installer
Ceremonies The Operation's Conference
Rituals The Budget
Communications The Memo
Symbol The Bell

Figure 1. Cultural Change at Bell: Defining the New

But a similar figure could be constructed for the field of education in general (see Figure 2).

Old New
Values 'reading', 'Ming, and *rithmetic.
Heroes and Heroines Mr Chips, Miss Dove
Ceremonies Convocation, Graduation
Rituals Saluting the Flag, TGIF, Calling Roll
Communications The Blackboard
Symbol The Apple

Figure 2 Change in Education Defining the New

Our failure to associate cultural change with loss and to help teachers, administrators and
students move through the stages of grief has created a legacy of emotional baggage in
many schools. Wounds from changes of decades past fester or lie open. People struggle to
find meaning in a situation that changed several years ago. People shrink their world to
find contr i they once had and lost. Some people find comfort in memories; others find
solace in the pell-mell of the present on the job or in their personal lives. Change can be
a silent killer; its effects gnaw at the marrow of American schools. As the pace of change
increases, what can be done to help schools and educators change without incurring such
significant hidden costs?

Death and Bereavement: Transition Rituals

After about 2 half hour or so, a few of the abangans began to chip half-heartedly
way at pieces of wood to make grave markers, and a few women began to
construct small flower offerings for the want of anything better to do; but it
was clear that the ritual was arrested and no one knew what to do next.
Tension slowly rose .... The first requisite was stripping the corpse (which
was still lying on the floor, because no one could bring himself to move it). But
by now the body was rigid, making it necessary to cut the clothes off with a
knife, an unusual procedure which deeply disturbed everyone, especially the

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women clustered around . . Before the washing [of the body" began,
however, someone raised the question as to whether one person was enough.
Wasn't it usually three? (Geertz, 1973, 156-8).
The confusion underlying this account of a burial service for a young Javanese boy was the
result of a divisive, countrywide political feud. Because of the political beliefs of the boy's
family, the local Modin (holy man) would not supervise the burial preparations. The boy
was finally buried in the appropriate manner, but tht disorganized ritual left his relatives
and the community confused and divided long after the event was over.
Death as the ultimate transition is marked by ritual in all cultures. In the ritual the
community comes together to grieve the loss and to reinforce the symbolic bond among
the living. Without bereavement it would be impossible to accept loss or to find real
meaning in the present or the future: 'The process of bereavement is a problem 4 coping
with a wounded reality. Its aim is to facilitate healing namely, resolution, relief, and
restoration of a corrective equilibrium between reality sense and reality testing' (Weisman,
1976, p. 267).
Every culture specifies a process of bereavement, In Japan, for example, grieving
widows go daily to the household altar. On the altar is a picture of the deceased and an urn
holding the ashes.
In Japan, the deceased become ancestors who are fed, watered, given gifts,
talked to, and so the tie between the widow and the dead husband remains
through the concrete medium of the husband's picture on the altar. The family
altar is almost universal and is a cultural cultivation of the idea of the presence of
the deceased. The rituals appeared to aid the widows, and although they are
acutely grieving, they seemed to be adapting to the loss. They certainly
required no special fantasy making since they could literally look at the picture
and feel that he is alive and look at thc urn of ashes and realize that he is dead.
Over time the regular reminder of both the presence and departure of the
husband helps the widows to adjust to the loss. (Yamamoto et al., 1976, p. 302)
Loss, as noted, triggers two ir..pulses. One is to hold onto the past, the other is to rush
headlong into the present to avoid the anguish. In ritual the prescribed physical alteration
between the two impulses helps people to fuse past and present and to move into a
meaningful future. The bereavement ritual heals, unites, repairs and transforms.
'Bereavement has become an individual matter, with an attendant deritualization of
mourning. As institutional patterns diminish, the bereaved are left increasingly to fend for
themselves, with concomitant growth of uncertainty' (Harrison, Davenport and
McDermott , 1976, p. 85).
Studks of death and bereavement document the importance of having small children
regularly visit the grave sites of lost parents and of having widows and widowers go
through the rituals of wake, funeral and resurrection (Lindeman, 1976). When the loss of
a loved one is not marked by ritual, survivors become stuck between the disorganized state
of wanting to recapture what they have lost and wanting to move ahead. The example of
the disjointed Javanese funeral rite is applicable to our own culture. Here, however, it is
not political turmoi! that typically mars the bereavement process; it is our own culture's
denial of death and loss (Becker, 1973),
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Loss from death, however, is not the only transition that needs to be marked by
ritu.21. Differences between the long-term reactions of Korean prisoners of war and those
of the imprisoned crew of the USS Pueblo were traced to the way in which the two groups
re-entered the culture (Spaulding and Ford. 1976). Korean POWs were sent home on a
ship, a process that lasted for weeks. The Pueblo crew was flown home immediately and
thereby deni:d the opportunity symbolically to let go and move on. The same pattern was
noted am mg concentration camp inmates who immediately re-entered their society
following their internment (Hunter. 1976).
Whether the loss is the result of a move (Fried, 1976), a disaster (Janis, 1976; Schance,
1976; Birnbaum, Coplon and Scharff, 1976). a graduation. a terminated relationship, or
the natural process of human development in which a person 'loses one self and replaces it
with another' (Kegan, 1982), it must be accompanied by an individual or collective process
of mourning. The old is grieved at a wake and laid to rest, and after a specified time a new
reconnection is celebrated. The process keeps the past and present connected as movement
into the future evolves.

Cultural Change

Within rituals rules specify particular sequences of events and often call for different
behavior on the part of different participants (Moore and Meyerhoff, 1977). The physical
action and underlying sentiments objectify and reinforce collective beliefs and values. In
mouining rituals, for example, the events and symbols are designed to evoke sadness
(Weisman. 1976). As people cry together over their loss, they come together in the will to
go on, to enter a future of new meaning. In death and other losses, bereavement rites are
either specified or arise spontaneously. Where ultimate loss is not collectively mourned,
the survivors either cling to the past or spin frenetically in a meaningless present. Much
change in organizations is typically not defined as loss. Even when change is experienced as
loss, the feelings are repressed or denied. As a result, rituals seldom develop to transfigure
change. When rituals arise spontaneously. they are often discounted or aborted.
A central point of this chapter is that unless transition rituals permit participants to
mourn loss and to transform old meaning into new, schools unknowingly become stuck in
the past or mired in the meaningless activity of the present. A vital leadership task is
consciously to plan rituals and to encourage ritualistic activities that arise from the
spontaneous actions of individuals or groups as they struggle to come to grips with the
ambiguity and loss that change produces.

Transition Rituals: Some Contemporary Examples

In the past two years this author has had the opportunity to be part of transition rituals in
companies, hospitals and schools. The events usually are not labeled formally as transition
rituals or funerals. They are labeled more conventionally as meetings. management
retreats, executive seminars or annual conferences. The stated purpose is to accomplish
some task; their implicit, unstated purpose. however, is to deal with the psychological

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aftermath of significant change. The events begin to depart from typical retreats, seminars
or conferences in the early stages of planning. There is an unspoken tension and an
underlying sense that the event is something special. While this is rarely addressed directly,
the planning process is filled with an air of drama that is evident to a sensitive outsider, if
not to the participants themselves. Even when the underlying issue of loss is explicitly
addressed, participants seldom anticipate the dramatic character of the event they are
planning.
A group of administrators attending z two-week institute for public school principals
held a closing ceremony after discussing the theory of cultural change and loss. They were
losing the temporary culture created during the institute. The principals covered a table
with a bedspread from one of the dormitory rooms and set two candles on it. They seated
the faculty behind the table and grouped themselves in front. The room was darkened.
Two people came forward to light the candles, and a tape recording of Pachelbel's Canon
was turned on. Two other individuals walked to the back of the room and took down a
large banner that read, 'Principals' Institute, 1984'. The banner was unfurled across the
table, and the participants arranged themselves in a circle, each ceremonially donning his or
her official Principals' Institute cap. Each person then 'passed in review', signing the
banner. When the procession was finished, the banner was folded and given to the
Director of the Institute. During the event everyone became aware of the rwer of the
ritual. People were obviously moved and touched. The luncheon that followed seemed like
an after-funeral gathering. Voices were hushed. People finished lunch, hugged or shook
hands and left. The event was dramatic and unforgettable. Those who planned it had not
anticipated the power of a well designed transition ritual.
Although the meaning of such events can often only be inferred from participants'
conversations immediately afterward, follow-up conversations usually reveal that the
interpretation of these events as important transition rinals is shared by others.
Some examples from schools reveal the benefits of transition rituals in dealing
successfully with change in education.
A taxpayer revolt in Massachusetts resulted in an elementary school losing seven of its
youngest teachers. In the school's opening faculty meeting the principal asked his
teachers to list on butcher paper those aspects of the school that were dying, dead,
emerging, and alive and well. Initially the teachers focused on the dead and dying:
teachers, programs, and hope. The room was hushed, tears were shed. After a half
hour of sadness, the group suddenly shifted to the emerging aspects of the school.
They changed to excitement and enthusiasm. The faculty and principal ended the
meeting with a celebration of their spirit and high hope for the coming year.
All transition events in schools are not planned by adults. In another Massachusetts
elementary school where teachers were let go in the wake of the reduction funds from the
same taxpayers revolt, the students convened the transition rites.
On primary paper with its wide lines the students in their primitive second and third
grade printing wrote the names of the departed teachers. With the proper ceremonial
flourish a piece of paper with each teacher's name was taped to the walls of a hallway
in the school. The students named each hallwry in memory of teachers who were let

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During a meeting of the principals cabinet of a large newly built high school the
question was asked: 'when you moved here from the old school, what was left
behind?' After a stunned silence, the principal remarked, 'Oh my God, that's what is
behind all of our troubles this fall. None of us really let go of the old building.' The
principal and her staff worked with the principal and the student council to plan an
event. On a fall evening the fa,ulty, parents, students and administrators gathered at
the old high school two blocks away. The history of the old school was told along
with recollections from many of the people iu attendance. Several mernentoes from
the school were loaded on a cart including the cornerstone. In the candlelight
parade the entire group returned to the new school, put each memento in a visible and
permanent place and dedicated the new school.
A principal replaced a man who had been fired for incompetence. Although the
predecessor had served as principal of the school for several years, his performance
deteriorated in the last two. After six months in the new position, his replacement
sensed that something was wrong. Although it was unspoken, there seemed to be a
pall hanging over the school's spirit. A new gymnasium was just about to be
completed. The principal put a committee of teachers, faculty and students together
and asked them to consider naming the gym after the departed principal. This
committee solicited money from the community and invited the old principal back
for the dedication ceremony. The ceremony was emotional the old principal did a
masterful job with his part of the ceremony as well as did the new principal. The
next day, the school was a different and more positive place.

Managing or Dancing? Alternative Approaches to Transition

The tranquillity of an unchanging status quo is a state few people experience anymore.
Whether one is the president of a business, the principal of a school, the superintendent of
a school system or the head of a household, the key challenge today is how to cope with
changing circumstances. Struggling with transition is a central feature of life in any
organization. Most predictions suggest that social and technological innovations as well
as external demands for reform will continue and intensify in the years and decades
ahead. Rather than slow down, the scope and pace of change will quicken.
This endless series of transitions has two dimensions. One sio.: of change is positive:
by changing, human organizations continue to evolve, adapt and rethink old ways. On
many fronts we have come a long way in the past decades, and the potential for progress in
the future is limited only by our ability to imagine the possibilities. Change is an
ideological and managerial preoccupation in America. As a people, we are continually
engaged in improving, reforming, renewing, transforming and tinkering with
organizations of all kinds. We enjoy the excitement and adventure of changing. We seek
new forms with enthusiasm, hope and an optimism that innovations will make our work
lives more productive and enjoyab;e. We long for the opportunitics that line the future.
The other side of change, however, is less obvious and less positive. Its negative
effects are hidden beneath the newness and sense of progress that change brings. We rely

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on sodal and cultural patterns for stability and meaning. Work whether in a factory,
hospital, government agency, school or business becomes an extension of our identities.
We expect and need to be able to count on organizations like the telephone company,
family, local pub, Marine Corps or neighborhood school. As circumstances shift, our
individual and collective equilibrium is upset. Change wounds, both spiritually and
physically. Change results in loss and calls life's meaning into question. Even change
agents those members of organizations who support the change process feel this
effect of transition.
Our natural reaction to transition has become a modern epidemic for which we have
no ready remedy. We cannot be inoculated against the effects of change; there is no pill
available to mute or cure the symptoms. Often we cannot even label the feelings or
pinpoint the sources of this discomfort. Excitement can temporarily mask the effects of
change. As modern people, we believe we should be on the cutting edge, forever in flux.
We deny or avoid the deep suffering that accompanies transitions.
Consequently, as organizations change, we unknowingly become stuck either as
whirling dervishes caught up in the high-speed carousel of change or as nostalgic
anachronisms who hunker down and cling to the past. In either case we cause problems for
ourselves and for organizations. We need instead to move ahead without losing our roots,
to transform old forms and practices into new ones without jeopardizing individual or
collective meaning. How to do this is one of the most significant challenges of our century.
Introducing computers into the workplace, women and minorities into the mainstream.
cost consciousness into medicine and risk taking into banks and insurance companics are
necessary initiatives that trigger unwanted reactions. We need to pay attention to the
process of .-hanging and to find ways of moving ahead without accumulating the residual
effects of transitions.
How do we do this? There are unlimited numbers of experts who appear to have the
answers. Their answers typically are managerial recipes that outline how changes should
be made. The problem is that most of the recipes will not work. Recipes fail because they
do not take into account either the working mental maps of educators responsible for
transitions or the local terrain in which the changes are being made. All strategies reflect
the assumptions of the people who develop them. We need to begin our search for better
approaches to change with an examination of the various perspectives that influence our
initial questions, our formulation of key issues, our remedies and our assessment of how
well changes have worked. The critical issue is how managers think about change and how
well their images capture the essence of transition. Becoming more conscious of our
images of change is a necessary first step toward developing more effective strategies
(Baldridge and Deal, 1975; Deal, 1988).
One popular approach looks at how change can be managed. This view relies heavily
on the rational assumptions and techniques of modern management. Changes can be made
successfully if we define the objectives clearly, plan sufficiently, control the process
carefully, monitor the progress systematically and assess the outcomes objectively.
From the earlier discussion it should be clear that this approach is not equal to the
challenge. The heavy emphasis on rationality minimizes the symbolic aspects of change.
Why should people become disturbed when transitions are designed to move toward
exciting new horizons and opportunities? Managerial ernr isis on control discourages

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events that become too messy and emotional. It is not wise to let things get out of hand.
The emphasis on instrumental logic rules out expressive events that may be required to
deal with existential, symbolic issues. 'Get the job done, we'll talk about it later', is the
attitude often taken.
There are times when management practices may unknowingly ameliorate the
trauma of change. Specifying objectives may induce a temporary vision to bolster
confidence and hope. Planning may implicitly provide occasions where people can vent
their grief. Task forces and meetings may help recreate shared meaning. Reports may
reduce ambiguity and symbolize that changes are on the right track. But the benefits are
not intended; they are accidental. When drama begins to encroach on the task at hand,
many educators rush quickly to restore order and return to their main agendas. In short,
managing while changing may be counterproductive.
A second approach is re-emphasizing the symbolic side of change, leaving modern
management tools behind and rediscovering more fundamental structures. Flowing with
transitions may symbolically be more important than trying to manage or control change.
A shift in language is important. Leaders need to think about how they can convene,
encourage and become active participants in rituals, social dramas and healing dances as a
means of transforming modern organizations.
Ritual arises around the boundaries of the unknown. In organizations rites take
several forms: rites of passage (induction), rites of degradation (firing), rites of renewal
(annual retreats), rites of enhancement (seminars), rites of conflict reduction (collective
bargaining) and rites of integration (birthday or holiday parties) (Trice and Beyer, 1984).
Ritual has several important properties: repetition, acting, stylized behavior, order,
evocative presentational style and a collective dimension of shared meaning (Moore and
Meyerhoff, 1977). Ritual also has consequences. In rituals we experience a transpersonal
bonding essential to the human species (Rappaport, 1978). Ritual is particularly important
in transitions because of its ability to repair, soothe and transform (Langer, 1951). Ritual is
never imposed; it arises naturally. Leaders can convene occasions and encourage symbolic
transformations; they cannot make them happen independently of the collective will.
Social drama offers still another means of expressive and effective transition activities
(Turner, 1982). A social drama begins with breach of the norm. A crisis follows in which
antagonisms become visible. To limit the crisis, adaptive and redressive mechanisms
spontaneously emerge. The conclusion is a reconciliation, a rapprochement among the
conflicting parties. Social dramas arise naturally around transitions. They need to be
choreographed and dramatized to work. Leaders need to be both directors and actors to
move effectively from breach to reconciliation.
A final means of symbolic transitional activity is the dance. In Boiling Energy Katz
(1982) describes the healing dance of the Ikung, a tribe in the Dobe area of Africa
straddling the borders of Namibia and Botswana. Dances are held regularly for the tribe to
promote wellness, and more frequently when someone is sick. The healing dance centers
on the concept of Num, a spiritual energy that can heal. Num is activated by the dance and
intensified through an altered state of consciousness called Kia. With healers as media,
Num becomes available to the tribe in the dance. As Katz notes: 'The healing dance is a
way to deal with transitions, and the uncertainties as well as opportunities they release.
Whether a person seeks to transit from sickness to health or from a known state of

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 Healing Our Schools: Restoring the Heart

consciousness to a unknown one' (p. 300). Those who manage change in modern
organizations need to learn to dance, to become healers capable of releasing collective
energy to heal the wounds of change.
The clinical observations cited earlier document how rituals, social dramas and
healing dances arise spontaneously around transition events. In these experiences a script
emerges, behavior becomes stylized, emotions rise and a drama unfolds. The experiences
seems to have a life of their own, a momentum that individuals unconsciously follow, a
scenario that is larger than the sum of the individual parts. It is a cocoon of human
experience that produces a metamorphosis of past, present and future. Within the
behavioral cocoon the organization is transformed, wounds are healed, new meaning is
grafted onto the old and a new organization emerges. It is a natural process that is neither
consciously planned nor formally controlled. It begins on a signal; it ends on a cue.
Thereafter, the organization is `never the same'. Social dramas, human dances, cultural
rituals all have the power to heal and transform the issues around change.
When these processes arise spontaneously, they can be orchestrated and encouraged.
Many school administrators undoubtedly try to be in control, but sr -rill events require an
ability to be temporarily out of control and a faith that everything will be all right.
Changing and managing are incompatible. But dancing and changing may be
complementary: the change requires the dance; the dance transforms the change. For
many, this proposition will sound preposterous, but keep in mind that Thomas Watson,
Sr., the founder of International Business Machines, once remarked, 'You must put your
heart into the business and business into your heart.' Heart is not an integral part of the
modern management lexicon. Yet it helps to crystallize what happens when organizations
change. To lose heart is to lose confidence and meaning. For many teachers and
administrators, the rapid pace of change has torn the heart out of schools. Heart will not be
restored by knowledge; it can only be restored by dancing and healing. But this will
require a significant shift in our thinking about how schools can be changed. At the very
least we can stop running them by promoting change and reform that weakens the moral
fiber of schools, thereby dampening the promise for the future ahead.

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 PART III
Changing the Roles, Relationships and the
Culture of Schools

15s
 Chapter 8

The Social Realities of Teaching*

Anr Lieberman and Lynne Miller

Whatever contributes to understanding also contributes to reconstruction.

(Willard Waller, 1967)

The Nature of Teaching

We have developed a set of understandings about the nature of teaching as a profession

based on the literature, current research, our work with teachers and reflections on our
own experiences. We label the set of phenomena we are about to describe as social system
understandings' because they reflect the interplay between individual teacher experiences
and the social context of schools. These understandings serve as a basis for discussing
generalizations about the way teachers learn their jobs, become teachers and forge a
professional identity.

Style Is Personalized

Teachers are faced with a central contradiction in their work, a contradiction that makes it
incumbent upon each one of them to develop a style that is individual and personal. The
contradiction stated simply is this: teachers have to deal with a group of students and teach
them something and, at the same time, deal with each child as an individual. The teachers,
then, have two missions: one universal and cognitive; the other particular and affective.
The cognitive mission demands a repertoire of skills in moving a group and making sure
that knowledge builds, extends and is learned. The affective mission requires that teachers
somehow make friends with their students, motivate them, arouse their interest and
engage them on a personal level. To deal with this contradiction, teachers dtvelop all kinds
of strategies and then meld them together into a style that is highly personal, if not
idiosyncratic. This style, forged in the dailiness of work developed from trial and error,

'This chapter was published originally in Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller (1984) Trodiers, Their World, and
Their Work, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA: 1-15,

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

becomes one's professional identity and. as such. may be militantly protected and
defended.

Rewards Are Derived from Students

The greatest satisfaction for a teacher is the feeling of being rewarded by one's students. In
fact. most of the time the students are the only source of rewards for most teachers. Isolated
in their own classrooms, teachers receive feedback for their efforts from the words,
expressions, behaviors and suggestions of the students. By doing well on a test, sharing a
confidence. performing a task, indicating an interest and reporting the effects of a teacher's
influence, students let teachers know that they are doing a good job and are appreciated.
Unlike other professionals who look to colleagues and supervisors for such feedback,
teachers can only turn to children,

"reachin.i; and Learning Links Are Uncertain

Dan Lortie (1965) has said that teaching is fraught with 'endemic uncertainties', No
uncertainty is greater than the one that surrounds the connection between teaching and
learning. A teacher does his or her best, develops curricula, tries new approaches, works
with individuals and groups and yet never knows for sure what are the effects. One hopes
the children will get it, but one is never sure. A teacher operates out of a kind of blind faith
that with enough in the way of planning, rational schemes, objectives and learning
activities some learning will take place. But a teacher also knows that some !earnings
happen that are significant and never planned for and that other !earnings never take hold,
despite the best of professional intentions.

'rite Knowledge Base Is Weak

Throughout their careers teachers seek professional knowledge. In preparation a teacher-

to-be takes numerous courses in the theory and the practice of education most of which
are judged as irrelevant upon entering teaching. As a bona fide teacher. one takes even
more courses to earn permanent certification. In addition there is a plethora of 'staff
development' offerings made available and often mandated on the district level. With
some exceptions this in-service work is given the same low grades for relevance and
helpfulness as is early pre-professional preparation. The sad fact is that, as a profession. we
have not been able to codify teaching under a variety of contingencies in a way that is
satisfying to practitioners. The knowledge base in teaching is weak; there is simply no
consensus (as there is in medicine and law) about what is basic to the practice of the
profession.

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Goals Are Vague and Conflicting

Although there is much talk of late about goal specificity and accountability, it is still the
case that the goals of education are vague and often in conflict. Are we out to impart basic
skills or to enrich lives? Do we concentrate on the individual or concern ourselves with the
development of the group? Are we teaching to minimal levels of competence, or are we
working to develop a wide range of talents and possibilities? Do we most value discipline
or learning, order and control or intellectual curiosity? Are we socializing students, or arc
we educating th, The answer to these questions and to others like them is usually, 'Yes,
we are doing both.' The result is that individual teachers make their own translations of
policy and that. in general, the profession is riddled by vagueness and conflict.

Control Norms Are Necessary

Daily teachers make an assault on gaining some sense of direction, control and movement
of their classes. Teachers work hard to develop a set of norms and rules that both they and
their students can live with. This happens as teachers move through a cycle of giving
orders, threatening, being tested and finally reaching some standards that are accepted and
move the class along. While this is being carried out in individual classrooms, schoolwide
norms are also being tried and established. The setting of control norms is a necessary part
of teaching; it satisfies the need for certainty in an otherwise ambiguous and uncertain
world. It also assures teachers ( their place in the organization of the school. No matter
how effective teachers are in the Jassroorn, all that is ever really known about them in the
general organization of the school is whether they keep their classes in line or whether the
students are in control. Control precedes instruction; this is a major shibboleth of
teaching.

PNiessional Support Is Lacking

Seymour Sarason has written that 'teaching is a lonely profession' (Sarason et al., 1966), a
characterization that is indeed apt. Unlike other professions, teaching does not provide for
a shared culture based on the movement from knowledge to experience in the company of
one's peers. Doctors, for instance, learn their profession through a graduated set of
experiences, all shared with others. Not so the teacher. Once graduated from a preparation
program. teachers find themselves alone in the classroom with a group of students without
peer or supervisor in sight. The neophyte teacher is left with degree in hand, high
expectations internalized, a fistful of untried methodologies and few adults rith whom to
share, grow ;Ind learn.

Teaching Is an Art

Teaching is an art, despite current efforts to scientize it. Some parts of teaching may lend
themselves to programming and rationalization, but in the long haul more artistry than

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science or technology is practised as teachers struggle to adjust and readjust. to make

routines and establish patterns, only to recast what has been done in a new form to meet a
new need or a new vision. Teachers are best viewed as craftspeople; the reality of teaching
is of a craft learned on the job. This understanding is perhaps our most important; that is
why we saved it for last. When viewed as a craft, teaching makes sense as a messy at d
highly personal enterprise, for it concerns itself with the making and remaking of an object
until it satisfies the standards of its creator.
In codifying what we have called the 'social system understandings' of teaching, we
have attempted to impose some order on what is admittedly a disorderly landscape. As we
do this, we are well aware that generalizations no matter how grounded in the realities
of practice somehow always 'miss the niark'. While useful as guidelines for discussion
about our craft, they fail to capture the flesh and blood of teaching. to call up its dailiness.
In ,he section that follows we try to capture some of that dailiness as it is experienced by
public school teachers and to build on some of the understandings we have presented here.

The Daainess of leaching

In this section we move from understandings to themes. Specifically, we explore notions

of rhythms. rules, interaaions and.feelin.ils as they are played out in the day-to-day work of
teachers in public schools.

Rhythms

A teacher's professional life is measured in terms of year, of wrvice. Each of those years is
cyclical, mediated by the rhythms of days. of weeks. of months and of seasons. Teachers'
days begin early, before the din of the rush hour has peaked, often before the sun has risen.
Once sign-in procedures are completed, greetings exchanged with colleagues, the last sip
of coffee downed in the teachers' room and the warning bell sounded, the classroom
becomes a teacher's total world. It is a world that is unique and separate from the world of
other adults. For six hours a day, five days a week, teachers live in an exclusive and totally
controlled environment. For the majority of the day they are bound in space and time. In
most instances teachers need the permission of the principal to leave the building during
school hours. 'Whoever heard of a profession where you can't even go to the bathroom
when vou have to?'
Each day has its rhythm. For elementary teachers the lunch hour divides the day into
morning and afternoon activities, each marked by a recess and perhaps some instructional
time with an itinerant teacher. They may spend an entire day in one classroom with one
group of students. They create routines and patterns that give the day form and meaning.
'I live in my own little world in my classroom. Sometimes I think that my children and I
share a secret life that is off limits to anyone else. We just go about our business, like so
many peas in a pod.' For secondary teachers the daily rhythm is more externally
determined. Bells ring to signal the passing of classes, each of which will spend some parcel
of time with the teacher in his or her classroom. Though students may move throughout
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 The Social Realities of Teaching

the building, high school teachers often never leave their rooms in the course of a day. For
every 'period' or 'hour' there is a routine: taking attendance. continuing from vesterda.,..
introducing today's material, winding down and making an assignment for tomorross .
Repeated five times a day, such routines become fixed and life becomes predictable.
In the course of a day, activities and interactions multiply, energy fluctuates.
Elementary teachers may organize activities to accommodate the ebb and flow of the
students' and their own energies. There are quiet times and active times, time set aside for
individual attention, large-group instruction, small-group work and seatwork. Secnndary
teachers may acknowledge that they are less effective during the first and last hours and
more energetic during the middle of the day. The pace and depth of instruction are altered
accordingly. For both elementary and secondary teachers the ,chool day is punctuated by
interruptions: PA announcements, telephone calls and messages from the office, minor
crises that need attending. All these becom: incorporated into the pattern of the day.
Without missing a step experienced teachers pick up where they left off.
Days merge into weeks. Monday is always difficult. So is Friday. but the difficulties
are softened by the promise of the weekend. Midweek is optimal for teaching. The process
review, teach. test fits neatly into the natural pace of weeks. Weeks become months
and months become seasons. Each has its rhythms. Fall is the time of promise; new
beginnings always bring hope. As the seasons progress, there is a downward spiral of
energy until Thanksgiving, a perfectly timed and well deserved break from the routine.
There is a resurgence of sorts between Thanksgiving and Ch:istmas. the most harried
three weeks on any calendar. The Christmas break brings relief and buoys teachers and
students for the onslaught of the semester's end. January ;:: linef. February is not: it is by
far the longest month by anv emotional measure. al Nays th.:n1- of changing professions
in February.' By March the end is within sight and energies surge until the spring break.
anticipated as much as the Christmas holiday and wtAi appreciated. Then time passes
quickly. There is the last-minute rush to get even thing in and to meet the promises made
in September by early June. The final weeks are filled with act;-ities final testing and
grading. promotions, graduation. end-of-the-year events. Then, quite arbitrarily, on a
Friday in June it all stops. Teachers and students go their separate ways. For ten weeks
there are no routines, no shared rituals, no school. The patterns that were learned and
shared rudely come to an end, to be recreated in the fall when the cycle begins again. Such
are the rhythms of teaching.

Rules

Like any profession. teaching has its rules sonic codified and formal, others tacitly
accepted and informal 'rules of thumb'. Two such rules may be simply stated: he practical;
he private. Some further elaboration aids us in understanding the effect of these simple rules
of behavior for teachers.
After years of formal academic preparation. mos', teachers enter teaching and
experience a common jolt. Equipped with theoretical understandings, they lack the
practical knowledge that thev need for survival. 'Education courses in and of themselves
are quite theoretical. To be sure. they are helpful as far as background material goes, but
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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

there is no substitute for actual practical experience ... My three year stint of duty as a
housemaster and teacher. . .. gave me a great deal of practical experience in learning more
about young people and how to handle young people' (Lortie, 1965). Practical knowledge
in schools is defined in terms of its opposites. Being practical is the opposite of being
theoretical; being practical is the opposite of being idealistic. University professors are
theoretical; inexperienced teachers arc idealistic. New teachers in search of practical
knowledge. then, must reject the university professors who trained them as well as their
own tendencies to seek ideal solutions to difficult problems. Practical knowledge is lodged
in the experiences and practices of teachers at work in theii classrooms. It is to other
teachers and to oneself that the novice must turn for practical ideas.
What makes an idea practical? First, it develops from the circumstance of the school.
Second, it has immediate application. Third, it is offered by practical people. Finally, it
addresses practical problems. Practical people are those who are or have recently been
teachers. Practical school problems include discipline, attendance, order, achievement.
Practical ideas require little additional work or preparation; they fit into the existing
rhythms of the school. Practical ideas are immediate and concrete and can be effected with
the resources and structures that currently exist. 'No teacher ever does what he or she
thinks is best. We do the best we can in the circumstances. What you think is a good idea
from the outside turns out to be impossible in the classroom.' To be practical means to
concentrate on products and processes; to draw on experience rather than research; to be
short-range and not predictive in thinking or planning.
As an opposite to idealism, practicality values adjustment. accommodation and
adaptation. Idealism is identified with youth; it does not wear well in the adult 'real world'
of teaching. New teachers are initiated into the practicality ethic during their first year on
the job. They learn their 'place' in the school organization, to keep quiet when private
principles are violated by public practices. and to be politic about what they say and to
whom they say it. To be practical, in this sense, is to accept the school as it is and to adapt.
Striving to change the system is idealistic; striving to make do is practical. Concern for
each student's well-being and optimal learning is idealistic; acceptance of limitations of
student potential and teacher influence is practical. Reflective self-criticism is idealistic;
expressing the belief 'I do the best I can; it's just that the kids don't try' is practical. Being
open to change and to outside influences is idealistic; being self-sufficient is practical. Being
practical saves one from shame and doubt. It is a USeftll rule to follow.
The practicality rule has a corollary; that is, be private. In effect, it is practical to be
private. What does being private mean? It means not sharing experiences about teaching,
about classes, about students, about perceptions. 'I don't know what it's like in business
or industry. It may be the same. I don't know how friendly co-workers are, how honest
they are. It just seems that in teaching, teachers really are unwilling to be honest with each
other, I think, to confide with each other about professional things and personal things.'
By following the privacy rule teachers forfeit the opportunity tl display their successes;
but they also gain. They gain the security of not having to face their failures publicly and
losing face.
Being private also means staking out a territory and making it one's own. For most
teachers that territory is the individual classroom. 'Teachers have a sense of "territoriality"
and an "ideology" [which] includes a belief of the inviolability of a teacher's classroom'

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(McPherson, 1972). To ensure their claim, teachers seldom invite each other into their
classes. Observation is equated with evaluation, and evaluation violates one's sense of place
and position in the world.
In being private, each teacher makes an individual and conscious choice to go it alone.
'Mc? You get to a point. I madel personal decision. I know a lot of teachers have done the
same thing. You seal off the room and you deal with the students. You say, "you and me
and let's see what we can do alone".' Most schools do not provide meaningful
supervision, and most teachers do not ask for it. The very act of teaching is invisible to
one's peers. 'It is safer to he private. There is some safety in the tradition, even though it
keeps you lonely.' Loneliness and isolation are high prices to pay, but teachers willingly
pay them when thc alternatives are seen as exposure and censure. When asked in whom he
confides about his days, one man replied with sonic sense of irony and sadness, 'My wife.'

Illfera4-601.5

Given the power of classroom territoriality, it comes as no surprise that the most
important and immediate interactions that teachers have are with their students. 'You
work with kids. That's what you do. And a school is a place that will allow you to do
that.' Since, as noted earlier, almost all rewards come from students, relationships with
them are primary in the constellation of interactions in a school. For elementary teachers,
the focus on children is a taken-for-granted phenomenon. 'I'm with my children all day
long. I watch them change by the moment. Some days they'll tell me all of their secrets.
Other days, they withdraw into their own little shells. Whatever they do. I'm there to see
and hear it, and I take it all to heart.' For secondary teachers relationships with students are
more fragmented and are mediated through the subject matter. 'It is the subject matter
and the kids. I love the subject matter and naturally you need an audience for that. The
kids are the audience and they're important to me. I can't teach my subject matter without
touching the kids in some way.' In either case, relationships with students are daily, direct,
sometimes conflicturil, but always central. 'I dream about them. I have nightmares about
them. I can't lose them. It is worse on vacation. When I'm in school and it's late October
and I've accepted that I'm really back, then the dreams finally stop.'
For most it is the personal interaction rather than instructional interaction that is
most valued. This is true on the secondary as well as on the elementary level. 'If someone
told me that my job is just to teach math. I would quit. I couldn't stand to see myself as
someone who teaches skills and nothing else. I have to feel that I am doing something
more lasting.' What is that 'something more lasting'? It has to do with influencing and
guiding children toss ird adulthood, with serving as a moral presence, with having a stake
in the future. 'When you realize that what you say in the classroom --- even though you
think no one is listening has an effect on your students, you realize that You are a role
model, even if yor. don't see yourself that way. The kids take what I have to say, think
about it, and made decisions based on it. I have that kind of influence .. it's scary but it
.

makes me feel good. It's a big responsibility.' Such involvement has its rewards both in the
present and in the futurz. 'I like to see them when they come back, so I can see how
they're doing. how they're turning out. I love to watch them grow. terrific. It's true

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

with any age group you can see the growth and development. Let's hope it continues.
They're so cute. They are all individuals and they bubble about certain things. Some of
them, my God, are so brave
We cannot overstate the importance of teacher-student interactions. When the
rewards from these interactions are pkntiful, teachers are energized and thrive. When the
re- iards from these interactions are diminished, teachers lose that part of themsdves that is
most self-sustaining and most central to the well-being of the profession.
If teaching is to be understood as a 'lonely profession', then the source of that
loneliness lies outside the realm of children. It is posited in the realm of interactions with
other adults, especially one's peers. While rdations with students tend to be immediate,
direct and engaging, relations with peers may be characterized as remote, oblique and
defensively protective. The rule of privacy governs peer interactions in a school. It is all
right to talk about the news, the weather, sports and sex. It is all right to complain in
general about the school and the students. However, it is not acceptable to discuss
instruction and what happens in classrooms as colleagues.
If I were to go into the lounge and say, l'ye had a great class. The kids are
reallv interesting. They were on the board, asking great questions, and they
really got from me what I wanted them to,' no one would respond.
I have never heard another teacher say, 'I have a problem.' You just don't do it.
You solve the problem on your own, or you pretend that you don't have one.
You never open up to anyone about anything important.
For most teachers in most schools, teaching is indeed a lonely enterprise. With so many
people engaged in so common a mission in so compact a space and nine, it is perhaps the
greatest ironv and the greatest tragedy' of teaching that so much is carried on in self-
imposed and professionally sanctioned isolation.
Our discussion of interactions is not complete until we consider the rdation between
teachers and principal in a building. Although face-to-face interactions with the principal
may not be common, especially in a large urban high school, the relationship with one's
principal is of paramount importance in a teacher's work life. A principal sets a tone. 'I
think a principal can make or break a school in terms of not even the day-to-day
functioning but in terms of the umbrella of attitudes and emotions.' That umbrella
covers a wide area. The principal has the power to make working in a school pleasant or
unbearablc; that is quite a bit of power. A principal who makes teaching pleasant is one
who trusts the staff to perform classroom duties with competence, and who deals with
parents and the community in a way that supports teachers' decisions and safeguards
against personal attacks,
Teachers avoid 'getting on the bad side' of a principal; such a position makes hfe
unbearable. The principal has the power to make extra duty assignments, to criticize
classroom practices, to assign undesirable class schedules. More importantly, on an
informal level being disliked by the principal carries with it distinct psychological
disadvantages. 'If I see him in the hall and he doesn't smile or look at me, I'm upset all day.
What did I do wrong? Why doesn't he like me? Will he listen to me if there's a problem?
I know it shouldn't affect me, but it does.' When teachers view a principal as critical or

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punishing, they are less likely to take risks and try new approaches. When teachers view a
principal as supporting and rewarding, they are able to approach the principal for
support in trying something new, in securing resources, in gaining permission for special
undertakings.
The relationship of teacher to principal is one of gaining access to privilege, and
almost all privileges are arbitrarily in the hands of the principal. This is especially true for
teachers who themselves aspire to administrative positions. The principal's recommen-
dation about the administrative potential of teachers is taken seriously. While many
teachers profess that they avoid the principal and learn to work around him or her, the
importance of that office is always felt in the daily life of the school.

FeelinRs

Strong feelings accompany intense and varied interactions. The feelings of teachers about
their work and their lives are complex, characterized by conflict, frustration, satisfaction
and joy.
When we characterized teacher-student interactions as the major source of rewards
for teachers, we placed great emphasis on feelings of genuine satisfaction that accrue from
these relationships. The other side of those feelings, of living one's professional life always
in the company of children, is also quite powerful for teachers. These other feelings are
more negative and often come to light in the company of other adults who work in 'the
real world', not the world of schools.
I had a disagreement with my mother-in-law the other day. I don't remember
what it was about taxes or something that is being voted on. Every time I
started to talk, she would disagree and then tell me that I didn't live in the real
world, that I spent all of my time with kids, and that I just didn't know about
business and other things. I felt very angry. That kind of thing happens now
and again. I feel that I do live in the real world, hut people who don't teach
don't think that's true.
To the rest of the world teach( rs often seem to be living in a child's reality and are viewed
as not being able to function ; s adults in an adult world. This perception leaves teachers
uneasy at best, defensive at worse, almost always self-doubting and characteristically
ambivalent about their roles aad their constant relationship with young people.
Feelings of self-doubt -.Le exacerbated by the absence of a standard by which one can
measure one's professional competence. The lack of peer support and interaction makes it
difficult to develop a clear sense of the quality of one's own teaching. Teaching skills are
evaluated by the students, whose judgment is not always trustworthy, and by oneself. 'It
took me ten years to feel that I was a good teacher. In fact, I would try very hard not to
miss a day of school. I thought if a substitute came in and taught my classes that all the
students would find out how bad i was and how good someone else was.' There is a
general lack of confidence, a pervasive feeling of vulnerability, a fear of being 'found out'.
Such feelings are made worse because of the privacy ethic. There is no safe place to air one's

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uncertainties and to get the kind of feedback necessary to reduce the anxiety about being 3
good teacher, or at least an adequate one.
One way a teacher may gain some confidence is to define a sphere of control. For mc
that is the classroom. It becomes essential to gain and maintain dominance if one is to
survive. 'When I'm in my classroom, I know I'm in control. I can teach the way I want to
teach, do what I want to do.' Once inside the classroom, a teacher knows that all control is
tenuous. It depends on 3 negotiated agreement between students and the teacher. If that
agreement is violated, a teacher will subordinate all teaching activities to one primary goal:
to regain and maintain control. Keeping a class in order is the only vkible indication to
one's colleagues and principal that one is, in fact, a good teacher. When one loses control,
one loses everything.
Feelings about control are made more problematic by the awareness on the part of
teachers that once outside the classroom, their control is severely limited. Within the
formal organization of the school, teachers have little authority in making decisions that
affect their environment. Teachers, then, move from a level of almost complete authority
to a level of powerlessness. This being in-and-out-of-control leads to feelings of frustration
and resignation to the ways things arc and will always be.
The feelings that surround issues of always being with children, of professional
competence and of being in-and-out-of-control are highly charged and little
acknowledged. They should not be underestimated; these feelings often block a teacher's
:mpulse to work to improve one's teaching or to influence what happens in the school.

Rhythrns, Rules, Interaaions and Feelino

In this section we have tried to present a view of some of the day-to-day realities of schools
for the teachers who work there. We have concentrated on rhythms, rules, interactions
and feelings as a way to gain some insight into schools and how to make them better. We
may summarize by saying:
By understanding rhythms, we come to realize that years are cyclical; that time in
schools is finite; that patterns often supplant purpose; that what has been done may be
undone in the seasons that follow; and that what has not yet been done is still in the
realm of the possible.
By understanding rules, we come to accept the limits of rational plans, the
inevitability of resistance, the power of collective sanctions and the inviolability of
individuals and their classrooms.
By understanding interactions, we come to an awareness of the centrality of children
in teachers' lives, of the unrealized potential of colleagueship and of the power of a
principal to make school better or wotte.
By understanding feelings, we appreciate ambiguity, vulnerability and defensiveness
as camouflages for commitment, concern and hope; and we come to value patience
and realism as guideposts for our own actions.

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References

BENTZEN, M. (1975) Chaqing the Magic Feather Principle. New York: McGraw-Hill.
DOYLE, W. and PONDER, G. A. (1977-78) 'The Practicality Ethic in Teacher Decision Making.'
haerchangc, 8(3) pp. 1-12.
EMRIcK, J. and PETERSON, S. (1978) A Synthesis of Findings: Five Recent Studies of Educational
Dissemination and Change. San Francisco, CA: Far West Laboratories.
GEOFFREY, W. (1968) Complexities of an Urban Classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston,
GOODLAD, J.1. (1975) The Dynamics of Educational Change,. New York: McGraw-Hill.
GROSS, N., GIACQUINTA, J. B. and BERNSTEIN, M. (1971) Implementing Organizational Innovations.
New York: Basic Books.
JACKSON, P. (1968) Life in Classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
LORTIE, D.C. (1965) 'Teacher Socialization: The Robinson Crusoe Model,' in The Real World of
the Classroom Thacher, Report of the 1965 National TEPS Conference. Washington, D.C.:
National Education Association.
MCPHERsoN, G. (1972) Small Town Thacher. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
SARASON, S. B.. LEVINE, M., GOLDENBER.G, 1., CHERLIN, D. and BENNETT, E. (1966) Psychology
in Community Settings. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
SHIMAN, D. A. and LIEBERMAN, A. (1974) 'Non-Model for Schools; Educational Fotum, 38(4),
pp. 441-5
SMITH, L. and KEITH, P. (1971) Anatomy of an Educational Innovation. New York: Wiley.
SUSSMAN, L. (1977) Tales Out c!1. School: Implementing Organizational Change in the Elementary Grades.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
WAL1 ER, W. (1967) The Sociology of Teaching. New York: lohn Wiley.

163
 Chapter 9

Teachers as Colleagues*

Judith Warren Little

Research has yielded rich, detailed descriptions of the work of teachers. These descriptions
present two quite different portraits of teachers' professional lives. In large numbers of
schools, and for long periods of time, teachers are colleagues in name only. They work out
of sight and hearing of one another, plan and prepare their lessons and materials alone, and
struggle on their own to solve most of their instructional, curricular and management
problems. Against this almost uniform backdrop of isolated work, some schools stand out
for the professiwal relations they foster among teachers. These schools, more than others,
are organized to permit the sort of 'reflection in action' that Sykes (1983a, p. 90) argues
has been largely absent from professional preparation and professional work in schools. For
teachers in such schools, work involves colleagueship of a more substantial sort.
Recognition and satisfaction stem not only from being a masterful teacher but also from
being a member of a masterful group.
This chapter examines the possibilities and limits of collegiality among teachers. In
framing a view of collegiality, I have relied primarily on three groups of studies. Studies of
the professional 'workplace' character of successful schools have drawn attention to
collegial relations among teachers and to the ability of administrators or teacher leaders to
foster those relations. Studies of organized teacher teaming have underscored some of the
benefits of teacher collaboration but have also raised questions about the stability and
continuity of work groups in schools. The teaming studies help to place face-to-face
cooperative work amid a wider spectrum of joint action by teachers. Finally, studies of
school improvement, teacher preparation, professional development and the implemen-
tation of innovations have all identified certain inescapable and consequential relations
among teachers and between teachers and administrators that spell the difference between
success and disappointment.
The accumulated research has made obvious the contrast between the conditions of
professional work that prevail in most schools and the conditions that have been achieved

'This chapter was published originally in V. Richardson-Koehler (ed.), Educators Handbook: A Research
Perspective (New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 491-518. The author is indebted to Tom Bird for his part in
formulating many of the ideas reflected in this chapter and to Patrick Shields for his assistance in
reviewing the literature.

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

in a much smaller number of schools or districts. Side by side with a devastating picture of
professional isolation among experienced teachers and trial-and-error survival of beginning
teachers are descriptions of institutions that have organized to promote professional
collaboration and to give assistance to those lust learning to teach.
These latter schools, in which collegial relations prevail, are urban and rural, large and
small. They are more often elementary and middle-level schools than they are high schools
(Cusick, 1980), but not exclusively so (Bird and Little, 1985). In them ordinary people,
relying on ordinary budgets and confronted with the ordinary ebb and flow of energy,
goodwill and creativity, accomplish extraordinary things. As a basis for action, the
differences in sheer numbers between the many isolating schools and the rare collegial
schools are of less moment than the differences in their organizational character.
This is a literature of school life. Granted that there are larger phenomena at sta!-.e,
requiring a broader sweep, it remains true that the educational goals we hold for our
children and our communities are achieved, or are compromised, one school at a time.
Taken together, recent studies have generated an increasingly sophisticated grasp of the
professional structure of teaching in schools. The discoveries of the 1970s and 1980s make
our understanding of collegiality less crude, our enthusiasms more carefully tempered.
Finally, this literature is theoretically, methodologically and practically rich. It
promises a conceptualization of conditions in schools that plausibly support learning to
teach and the steady improvement of teaching over time. It draws on the perspectives and
methods of several academic disciplines. Its questions, methods and findings engage the
intellectual curiosities, day-to-day experiences and professional aspirations of teachers and
others with whom they work.

What Difference Do Colleagues Make?

The reason to pursue the study and practice of collegiality is that, presumably, something
is gained when teachers work together and something is lost when they do not. The
teachers who put aside other activities in order to work with colleagues, the principals
who promote and organize such work, the superintendents who endorse it, and the school
boards that pay for it must all be convinced that the benefits are substantial; in effect, the
perceived benefits must be great enough that the time teachers spend together can compete
with time spent in other ways, on other priorities that are equally compelling or more
immediate.
Teachers' professional encounters with one another assume greater importance when
placed against future demands on schools and on the teaching profession. At stake is a
profession that attracts able and talented candidates by affording them work that is
intellectually stimulating, personally meaningful, economically rewarding and well
regarded in the larger community (Lyons and McCleary, 1980; Sykes, 1983a). Equally at
stake is an image of schools organized to improve steadily (or to adapt rapidly) by tapping
the collective talents, experience and energy of their professional staffs (Bird and Little,
1986; Little 1985; Glickman, 1985; Lieberman and Miller, 1984).
Emerging visions of the teaching profession and of the school as a professional
environment are in tension with inherited traditions. On the whole, tenacious habi.s of
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mind and deed make the achievement of strong collegial relations a remarkable
accomplishment: not the rule, but the rare, often fragile exception.

Do Students Benefit When Teachers Work Together?

The teacher-student relationship is both the major obligation to which teachers are held and
the primary source of rewards in teaching (Ashton, Webb and Doda, 1982; Mitchell, Ortiz
and Mitchell, 1983; Lortie, 1975). The relations that teachers establish with fellow teachers
or with other adults will and must be judged by their ability to make tea:hers'
relations with students more productive and more satisfying.
Some studies offer vivid accounts of the classroom payoffs that follow teachers' joint
efforts. Teachers who have worked together closely over a period of years celebrate their
accomplishments by pointing to gains in the achievement, behavior and attitude of
students. In one study of six urban schools, teachers in an elementary school atrributed
schoolwide academic gains and improvements in classroom performance to the fact that
they had worked in grade-level teams once a week for two years to tie their curriculum and
instruction to principles of mastery learning (Little 1981). Teachers in a junior high school
traced both their remarkable gains in math achievement and the virtual elimination of
classroom behavior problems to the revisions in curriculum, testing and student placement
procedures they had achieved working as a group (Bird and Little. 1985). In the eyes of
these teachers, the benefits of working together have outweighed the advantages of
working alone. The quality of program in which students participate, the sense of
program coherence and faculty cohesivencss that students detect, and the consistency in
expectations that students encounter all figure prominently in teachers' descriptions (see
also Rutter, et a/., 1979).
By other accounts, however, the classroom benefits of shared work are not so readily
apparent. Fledgling team efforts founder when participants find them too thin a resource
for rneeting the daily pressures of the classroom. Observing the apparent instability of
teaming efforts in sixteen elementary schools, Bredo (1977) speculates that the
`immediacy' of classroom tasks places a premium on rapid decision-making, close
coordination of activities and basic agreements about standards and procedures.
Unaccustomed to planning curriculum together or to arriving at collective agreements
about instruction or management, teachers often find their first efforts clumsy and
unrewarding. The time spent in meetings appears to be time lost in meeting the
requirements of lesson planning and instruction. Predictably, 'unproductive' meetings are
abandoned in favor of more familiar and satisfying routines. In one elementary school only
teachers' commitment to try a pilot program for a full two-year term saw them through
the first six months of learning to work productively together (Little, 1981).
Skeptics doubt the benefits of teacher collaboration. Sonic protest that extensive out-
of-classroom time is suspect. Others maintain that th, press for cooperation may lead
individual teachers to succumb to peer pressure, leading to compliant implementation of
ideas with little merit or to robotlike activity that stifles variety.
The influences that shape students' learning, attitudes and actions are interwoven and
cumulative. Productive peer relations among teachers, where they exist, are difficult to
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

disentangle from the many other contributors to the classroom environment and student
success. The composition and character of a class, the quality of a teacher's moment-by-
moment decision-making in the classroom, the latitude for teachers to make curricular and
instructional choices, the school's allocation of time and other resources for joint work,
and the stability of the general environment all enter into the equation.
We know relatively little about the specific mechanisms by which collegial relations
among teachers operate to the benefit of students. Is it that !esson planning improves as
people press each other to say not only what they do with students, but why7 Is it that the
toughest, most persistent problems of curriculum, inst-ucion and classroom management
get the benefit of the group's experience? Is it the combined sense of confideace and
obligation that teachers carry into the classroom? Is it the peer pressure to live up to
agreements made and ideas offered? Is it that in making teaching principles and practices
more public, the best practices are promoted more widely and the weakest ones are
abandoned? Is it simply that close work with colleagues affords a kind of stimulation and
solidarity that reflects itself in energetic classroom performance and holds talented teachers
longer in the profession? Are the rate and quality of classroom innovation higher? Or does
the sheer visibility of teachers at work with on :. another, or closely in touch with one
another throughout the day or week, deliver its own message to students?
In the eyes of enthusiasts, the answer lies in some complex and elusive combination of
all these possibilities. Each of these and several more possible interpretazions are threaded
throughout the available literiture. They read as plausible explanations for the way
collegial influences might operate, but they have not yet been subject to systematic
inouiry.

What Do Veteran Teachers Gain from Close Colleagues?

The advantages of c3Ilegial work, as experienced teachers describe them, center on one
theme: breaking the isolation of the classroom. Over time teachers who work closely
together on matters of curriculum and instruction find themselves better equipped for
ciassroom work. They are frequently and credibly recognized for their professional
capabilities and interests; and they take pride in professional relationships that withstand
differences in vi,wpoint and occasional conflict.

Instructional Range, Depth and Flexibility

The relationship between teacher collaboration and instructional quality has been
examined in series of studies by Elizabeth Cohen (1981) and her associates at Stanford. In
early stagPs of the work they found significant correlations between teaming arrangements
and teachers' capacity to accommodate new curriculum. Cooperation served teachers well
as they worked to understand and apply new ideas, methods and materials. In subsequent
phases of work the Stanford gronp posed this question: do teaming arrangements in turn
expand schools' and teachers' ability to achieve even greater complexity? Questionnaire
data from teachers in sixteen elementary schools produced mixed results. Members of
teams begun in 1973 did not report appreciably greater variation in classroom materials by

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1975, leading the research group to doubt whether team structures operate to enrich an
instructional or :auricular repertoire. Yet there was some evidence that teaming did
enhance reflective ckcision-making in the classroom. In one substudy, li (1977) found
strong relationships between all her measures of reflective decision-making by teachers and
their participation in cooperative group that met often and worked together intensively
(see also Cohen et al., 1979; Bredo, 1975).
This is fundamentally a question of what teachers can and do achieve by working
together. Is collaborative work productive mainly for responding to shifts in external
circumstances? For organizing to understand and apply ide_ developed by others, or to
regroup when the community population or preferences si,ift? Or is a team-based
organization a resource for development? Preliminary assessments of what a team can
accomplish were based on a readily measurable but narrow definition of 'greater
complexity', that is, variation in instructional materials. The Stanford studies examined
how teams accommodated the demands of new curriculum, requiring new methods mei
materials in the classroom; the very circumstances may thus have acted to limit the volume
of instructional variation among the team members, making it appear that the team
structure served only to manage existing requirements but did little to foster new
alternatives.
Recent studies have enlarged our view of the complex tasks that draw teachers into
work together and of the range of benefits that their work may yield. Ihe complexities
,troduced by a new curriculum create one compelling reason for teachers to work
Logether; an even more complex challenge, it appears, is to examine and refine the existing
cut riculum and instruction of a group and to select and implement improvements on a
continual basis.
In schools where teams have seen as their obligation to propose new ideas and
methods or to continue the developmen: of a curriculum over time. there is persuasive
evidence that complex variations in materials, instruction and classroom-based social
organization have developed as a consequence of joint effort (Bird and Little, 1985). In one
junior high school two of the four 'core' academic departments worked together closely
over five years with the explicit aims of improving students' academic achievement and
enriching the learning environment of classrooms. Originally convened by the principal as
a study group, the teachers' task was to examine their present practices in the light of
available classroom research and to develop alternatives consistent with the principles they
discovered. Over time they revised their own approach to curriculum development, lesson
planning, testing and student placement. They expanded their instructional repertoire by
relying less on whole-group direct instruction and by introducing selective use of
cooperative or stude:n team learning.
In the two 'active' departments teachers argued that their collaboration produced an
expanded pool of ideas, materials and methods and a collective ability to generate higher-
quality solutions to problems. The evolving coherence and vitality in the curriculum, the
rate of instructional innovation, the frequency and depth of discussion about instructional
and classroom management issues and the demonstrated academic, social and affective
gains among the students all far outstripped the two other academic departments in the
same school whose members lacked the same shared purposes and engaged in far less
collective action. The habits and structures of group work have enabled teachers to
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

attempt innovations in curriculum and instruction that they could not have Implemented
as individuals, for example, a full-scale field experiment to test curriculum alternatives in
social studies.
In sum, the early Stanford studies credited team work with easing the burden of new
external demands but left it uncertain that teachers who work together will achieve a level
of instructional sophistication that they would not ordinarily reach by working alone.
Subsequent in-depth case studies have confirmed the finding that team structure alone is
insufficient to advance instructional practice; crucially, however, they have also expanded
our view of the potential conse4uences that may flow from joint action and have
underscored the importance of a group's perceived purposes and obligations in shaping its
tasks and probable outcomes (Little and Bird, 1984a). The conclusions that one draws
from the experiences of closely orchestrated, task-oriented groups in schools are consistent
with conclusions drawn from other studies of organizations: the accomplishments of a
proficient and well organized group are widely considered to be greater than the
accomplishments of isolated individuals (Blau and Scott, 1962).

Influence and Respect

The more 'public' an enterprise teaching becomes, the more it both requires and supports
collective scrutiny. Among the most public environments for teaching has been the open-
space school, and it is from studies of open-space schools that many of the insights about
teacher-to-teacher interaction and influence have been drawn. Meyer and his colleagues at
Stanford found that teachers in open-space schools exerted more influence on others and
accorded their colleagues more influence on their own teaching than did teachers in
conventional settings (Meyer et al., 1971; Bredo, 1977). Teachers in open-space schools
were more likely to believe that their peers' evaluations of them were important and were
well founded (Marram, Dornbush and Scott, 1972).
In open-space schools teaching is made public bv circumstance. Sheer visibility creates
a degree of mutual dependence and influence not required by more conventional single-
classroom arrangements. But visibility has its limits. Even (or especially) in open
environments, teachers inevitably concentrate their attention and energy close at hand, on
their own students. Even in opeo-space environments, something more is needed to
convert mere attentiveness to a systematic, reciprocal influence on the conceptions and
practices of teaching. The highest levels of reciprocal influence reported by teachers were
reserved for schools in which teachers were both routinely visible to one another (i.e.,
open-space) and were routinely and intensively involved in teams; in these settings
teachers' knowledge about and reliance upon one another were most essential (Meyer et
al., 1971). The greater the opportunities for involvement (e.g., the more 'balanced' the
participation in group meetings), the greater the influence felt by the participating
individuals and the higher their satisfaction with the team (Molnar, 1971). Summing up
these findings, Cohen (1981) observes: 'Two very different kinds of team interaction are
taking place in these ... schools; one produces many influential teachers and the other
produces few'. (p. 182).
A combination of visibility (teaching planned for and done in the presence of others),
shared responsibility and widespread interaction heightens the influence of teachers on one

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another and on the school as a whole. In the 1970s the open-space movement promoted
precisely that combination. In the 1980s. when open-space schools have diminished in
popularity, it is a combination harder to find. The developing enthusiasm for peer
observation and peer 'coaching' provides one surrogate for day-by-day visibility; what
peer observation cannot achieve in daily contact it gains in concentration (Showers, 1985).
This is a scenario in which both teachers and principals stand to gain. Joint work
offers a form of professional autonomy that is not protection from scrutiny or freedom
from external demand but is instead heightened control over work that resides in the
group. Based on an investigation of teachers' and principals' influence over decisions
relating to pupil management, curriculum, teaching methods and other aspects of school
and classroom life, Johnson (1976) developed a typology of extensive and intensive
collaboration. In the schools with the highest levels of extensive collaboration (many
people) and intensive collaboration (frequent interaction on key decisions), both principals
and teachers felt more influential than either group felt in less interactive settings (see also
Barnett, 1982).

Career Rewards and Daily Satisfactions

Through work with others teachers shape their perspectives on their daily work aud revise
or confirm their assessments of their career choices. Teachers in schools known for high
rates of innovation and team work distinguish carefully between end-of-year weariness and
career burnout. Some teachers say they require periods of 'on-thejob sabbatical to slow
the pace of constant innovation, to consolidate gains and to ensure that multiple
innovations form an integrated whole in the classroom. Their enthusiasm for teaching,
however, has been sustained in large part by collective efforts to learn and apply new ideas
(Little, 1981; Bird and Little, 1985).
Working together to understand and improve life in the classroom, teachers reduce
the 'endemic uncertainties' (Lortie, 175, p. 134) that ordinarily make a teacher's hold on
success so tenous. Instead of grasping for the single dramatic event or the special
achievements of a few children as the main source of pride, teachers are more able to detect
and celebrate a pattern of accomplishments within and across classrooms.
Virtually no research has been conducted on the long-term effects of teacher
collaboration on career commitment or orientation. In an occupational and organizational
culture that makes intensive collaboration hard to find, teachers who value shared work
may find themselves less rather than more satisfied in teaching, ready to leave rather than
stay. In the short run professional recognition, professional involvement and professional
influence prove to be powerful substitutes for less accessible rewards (see Ashton et al,.
1982).

Do Beginning Teachers Benefit Jrom Close Colleagues?

Virtually all teachers in American schools assume full responsibility for student learning
and for the independent management of a classroom from their first day on the job. Unlike
the more gradual, incremental introduction that newcomers receive to other occupations,

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entry into teaching has been labeled 'abrupt', 'unmediated' and 'unstaged' (Lortie. 1975:
Nemscr, 1983). Asked how they have learned to teach, teachers over and over report that
they have learned 'on my own', 'by trial and error' or 'it was sink or swim' (Ryan, 1970;
Little, 1981; Fuchs, 1969). A prevailing belief that teaching is learned by independent trial
and error is reflected in (and sustained by) norms that constrain the interaction between
experienced and novice teachers and by the relative scarcity of organizational arrangements
for assistance and support by universities, districts or schools (Doyle and Nespor, 1984).
Critics of this short, survival-oriented induction period argue that it serves neither
teachers nor students well. Mutual assistance, they propose, would make new recruits less
isolated, more self-confident, more proficient in the classroom and more inclined to
continue in teaching past the first one or two years (Copeland and Jamgochian, 1985). By
this view a first-year teacher might properly be described as a 'well-started novice' (Clark,
1984) for whom the subtleties and complexities of masterful teaching are introduced
gradually.
A distinction is in order between the social support that puts newcomers at ease and
the professional support that advances one's knowledge and practice of teaching. Many
beginning teachers are indeed made welcome in their first assignments. Experienced
teachers take newcomers 'under their wing' and show them around the building,
introduce them to faculty members and other staff, show them where to locate books and
supplies, and offer to be available for help: 'Ifyou need anything, just ask.' Other first-year
teachers are not so fortunate, of course, and remain as socially isolated as they are
professionally unsupported. In neither case, typically, is a beginning teacher's relationship
with other teachers systematically directed toward learning to teach (or learning to teach in
this school, in this community, with these students).
Without diminishing the import of moral support and emotional solidarity, the
central issue here is one of professional relations that go well beyond the usual 'buddy'
arrangement. The classroom successes and failures of novice teachers arc little affected by
the general friendliness of the staff or by broad school philosophy (Veenman, 1984). Less
common and arguably more critical are professional encounters ant bring
experienced teachers and beginning teachers close to the classroom together and that
plausibly influence the competence and confidence of the beginning teachers.
Organized assistance may permit beginning teachers to achieve a balance between
practical fluency and conceptual understanding, between the press to accumulate the
'tricks of the trade' (Lortie, 1975, p. 77) and the opportunity for slowly evolving
understanding of underlying conceptual principles (Nemser, 1983, p. 161). Recent
research provides insight into two possibilities. First, research into the character of the
mentor-protégé relationship (Gehrke and Kay, 1984) examines the part that senior
colleagues play in offering direct assistance to beginning teachers. Second, research on
school-level norms of collegiality (Little, 1982) provides a basis for examining the ways in
which schools are organized or not as environments for learning to teach.

Traditions of Apprenticeship or Mentoring

Meaningful rnentoring relations between experienced and beginning teachers are the
exception rather than the rule. Such relations are applauded by a few teachers who have

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experienced them and are widely considered to be a superior but uncommon arrangement
for learning to teach. The admiration that teachers express for the basic concept of
mentoring stands in sharp contrast to a furdarnelital reality in the culture of teaching:
teachers learn to teach not only through experience but through solitary experience. In
addition, the available evidence on the dynamics and consequences of mentoring and other
organized support is meager and uneven. Reviewing the records of supervised internships,
McDonald (1980) was unable to deteci: any differences in the evaluations received by first-
year interns and those received by beginning teachers in more conventional arrangements.
McDonald's findings serve to curb unwarranted enthusiasm. Nonetheless, they deserve
some closer scrutiny. In reading the program reviews one is reminded that we have little
data on potentially consequential variations in the scale and intensity of assistance. We still
know little about the ability of supervisors to assist first-year teachers or to construct
evaluations that well represent their development (but see Wilburn and Drummond,
1984). We apply few methods, either in research or practice, that help us to detect evolving
approaches to teacher planning and reflectivity. These developments in the way teachers
think about and plan for their work with students may not be highly visible in a beginning
teacher's behavior, particularly in the first few months of teaching, when the translation of
intent into practice is often unpolished. Recent studies centering on the 'prideful occasion'
in learning to teach (Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann, 1985) or on student teachers'
reflective examinations of their unsuccessful lessons (Borko et al., 1985) hold promise.
Lortie's analysis of socialization and induction into teaching, published in 1975. still
rings true. However, in the dozen or so years since Lortie's landmark work, researchers
have chronicled three developments that have prospects for altering professional
relationships between the beginning teacher and experienced colleagues.
First, pre-service teacher education programs have been examined for the pattern of
beliefs, habits and skills they convey with regard to learning to teach and for their
contributions to the socialization of teachers into the beliefs and customs of an occupation
(Lacey, 1977; Feirnan-Nemser and Floden, 1986). Some institutions have revised entire
curricula to tackle the commonly held perception of teacher education students that they
have nothing to learn from their formal preparation programs (Book, Byers and Freeman,
1983). Others have launched programs designed to introduce the perspectives and habits of
collegiality by organizing support teams that make prospective teachers mutually
responsible for one another's learning (Copeland and Jamgochian, 1985). Still others have
acknowledged that encounters between beginning teachers and their assigned supervisors
are typically infrequent, unfocused and uncoordinated (Griffin et al., 1983) and have
concentrated on strengthening the quality and frequency of assistance from university and
school-based supervisors of student teachers (California State University, 1984) or first-
year teachers (Wilburn and Drummond, 1984; Tisher, 1980). Schools that are deliberately
and thoughtfully organized to accommcdate the interests and requirements of student
teachers have been described (Lanier, 1983; Weyand, 1983; Bird and Little, 1985).
Second, improvements in teacht.r evaluation policies and procedures have increasingly
been targeted to the first-year teacher (Darling-Hammond, 1984). Based in part on a
progressive apprenticeship model, these district evaluation policies have combined frequent
observation with consultation and assistance.
Finally, the expanded professional opportunities and rewards that accrue to

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exemplary teachers under the terms of various state and local initiatives have routinely been
accompanied by new professional obligations. Such initiatives explicitly alter the expected
professional reiations between experienced teachers and beginning teachers. In a variety of
career ladder plans, in the California Mentor Teacher Program and in other master teacher
or teacher adviser programs, experienced and highly regarded senior teachers are asked to
assume the obligation for assisting new teachers (Schlechty, 1984; Career Ladder Research
Group, 1984; Wagner, 1985; Southern Regional Education Board, 1984).
The expanded professional roles introduced by these initiatives and by other
Incentives programs constitute a radical departure from historical precedent in the teaching
occupation. While master or mentor teacher designations give credit to superior
knowledge, skill and energy, they aiso fly in the face of longstanding precedents of 'non-
interference' (Pellegrin, 1976). Experienced teachers ordinarily refrain from intervening in
the struggles of novice teachers, while those same novices request assi3tance with specific
problems only when certain that their basic competence is not in question (Newberry,
1977). In the absence of formal supervisory authority, even the most accomplished teachers
are reluctant to assert their own knowledge and experience with fellow teachers. Among
the 180 teachers who responded to Gehrke and Kay's (1984) survey on career issues, almost
60 per cent claimed to hzve had some kind of `rnentoring' relationship in learning to teach,
but only three teachers named a fellow teacher is a mentor (p. 22).
The precedents of non-interference are powerful, and claims to individual autonomy
are closely guarded. Even teachers designated as master teachers, mentors or advisers are
humble about their expertise and uncertain about how to enter into relations .that will be
both rigorous and respectful. (Little, Galagaran and O'Neal, 1984; Bird et al., 1984).
Teachers who were designated as 'assisters' precisely because of their knowledge and skill
still 'struggled with the "collegial/expert" dichotomy' in their relations with teachers
(Goodman and Lieberman, 1985, p. 8). Yet teachers accustomed to well supported
collaborative work more readily accorded to one another the right to take the lead on issues
of curriculum and instruction (Schmuck, Runkel and Langmeyer, 1971). In teacher
surveys aimed at uncovering teachers' right.; of initiative on matters close to the classroom,
teachers routinely approved of greater professional assertion by teachers and administrators
than they were accustomed to seeing in practice (Bird and Little, 1985).
The conditions, forms and consequences of mentor-protege relations in learning to
teach deserve closer attention, not only because of the inevitable costs associated with
altered induction arrangements but also because the relevant outcomes go well beyond
ensuring adequate technical performance in the classroom. The wider set of outcomes
includes beginning teachers' sense of personal and institutional efficacy, their capacity to
grapple intellectually with crucial substantive problems in education, their inclination to
work and learn with colleagues, and their professional commitment to teaching as a career.

Learning to Teach in a 'Collegial School'

As environments for learning to teach, highly 'collegial' schools offer an alternative to the
'sink or swim' image of learning to teach Nonetheless, 'collegial' schools do not
necessarily make hospitable settings for novice teachers. Schools that are well organized to
foster (and benefit from) the continued development of experienced, pedagogically

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sophisticated teachers are not necessarily well organized to assist beginning teachers.
While the two environments are not mutually exclusive, neither are they identical.
A faculty accustomed to team work may nonetheless prove ill equipped to receive
novice teachers. Established collegial teams have a standard of productivity, a fast pace, a
shared language and an accumulated knowledge base that may prove hard for beginning
teachers to assimilate. A student teacher placed in one highly teamed school was impressed
by the 'constant exchznge of ideas and careful planning for the team's rnix of students but
was 'ambivalent about the pressure she feels when the whole team is working together on
a unit' (Lipsitz, 1983, pp. 150-1). Teachers working together to improve their work
provide a good model of professional relations but create a demanding situation for first-
and second-year teachers.
Newcomers to a highly coordinated faculty may unwittingly jeopardize the
agreements and achievements of a group. In one recent study experienced middle-school
teachers acted in concert on hard-won agreements about curriculum instruction and
classroom management but found their agreements difficult to maintain when the rights
of eight student teachers to 'experiment' outweighed the rights of the experienced group
to state expectations and preferences (Little and Bird, 1984h).
Still, schools with habits of collaboration appear well equipped to adapt quickly and
systematically to assist beginning teachers. In the study just described the experienced
teachers, accustomed to group problem-solving, met to share their impressions of the
student teaching program. The meeting uncovered the frustrations of individuals but also
revealed commonalities of circirnstance and purpose among the master teachers; it ended
with an agreement to 'get organized' with respect to student teaching. Within the first
eight weeks of school in the fall, seven master teachers met twice on their own and twice
with a university supervisor to arrive at a policy to govern student teaching in the

I have concentrated on the significance of collegial support for novice teachers. But
veteran teachers also periodically find themselves in unfamiliar and challenging situations
that test the limits of their knowledge and experience. The special advantages (and special
difficulties) of the mentor-proiege relation and the well established collegial group are no
less significant to experienced teachers who, after several years in the classroom, must now
tackle new subjects, new grade levels or new instructional methods. Finally, overt
guidance (mentoring) and involvement in a support group have been described as crucially
important features of programs that prepare skilled teachers to adopt leadership roles in
teaching (Kent, 1985; Goodman and Lieberman, 1985).

Benefits to the School

Increasingly, schools must bolster public faith and enlist public support by showing that
thcy are capable of meeting complex demands with an ever more diverse student
population. Yet the twin requirements that schools show steady improvement and that
teachers 'be professional' cannot plausibly be satisfied by the individual efforts of even the
most capable. energetic and dedicated teachers.
One feature of steadily improving schools is that they are organized to influence

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teaching (Bird and Little, 1986). Teaching in such schools is a public enterprise. The broad
values that guide daily decisions, expectations for student learning, ideas about how
children learn and what we as a society wish them to learn, the planning and conduct of
instruction, recurrent dilemmas in fostering student motivation and judging student
progress, the principles for organizing life in classrooms all receive the collective
attention, scrutiny, insight and refinement of peers acting as colleagues.
Schools stand to benefit in three ways from promoting closer collegial ties among
teachers. Schools benefit first by simply orchestrating the daily work of teaching across
classrooms. Teachers, students and parents all gain confidence in their knowledge of what
is taugh. throughout the program and why. Teachers are better prepared to support one
another's strengths and to accommodate weaknesses. Second, schools that promote
teacher-to-teacher work tend to be organized to examine and test new ideas, methods and
materials. They are adaptable and self-reliant in the face of new demands; they have the
necessary organization to attempt school or classroom innovations that would exhaust the
energy, skill cr resources of an individual teacher. Finally, schools that foster collegiality
are plausibly organized to ease the strain of staff turnover, both by providing systematic
assistance to beginning teachers and by explicitly socializing all newcomers to staff values,
traditions and resources (I ittle, 1985).

Colleagues and the Teaching Profession

Members of a profession are colleagues not merely in name but also with regard to the core
ideas, principles and practices of their work (Etzioni, 1969; Marram et al., 1972). Judged
by this standard of strong peer rel2tions, teaching is at a disadvantage. Teachers have prided
themselves on theik individual accomplishments; the 'culture of teaching' is grounded in
values of independence (Feiman-Nemser and Floden, 1986). Strong peer relations are not a
treasured part of an occupational culture. Nor does a set of core ideas and practices form a
body of discplined knowledge upon which daily action and judgment rest (Schlechty,
1985). Unlike medicine, in which daily uncertainties and ambiguities are eased by an
accepted body of practice (Fox, 1957), teaching celebratcs no body of accepted pedagogical
pract ice.
Even now the terrain that is usefully mapped by research on teaching is small.
Teachers' practical knowledge has been disparaged as idiosyncratic and atheoretical
matter of style'), treated as having little value as a basis for collective scrutiny or action
(Buchmann, 1983; Feiman-Nemser and Floden, 1986). Relations among teachers, either in
or out of school, have not been organized to promote inquiry or to add to the intellectual
capital of the profession' (Lortie, 1975, p. 56).
Responsibility for accumulating, evaluating and disseminating knowledge about
teaching and learning has not been vested in teachers. Teachers have few mechanisms for
adding to the knowledge base in teaching and leave no legacy of insights, methods and
materials at the close of a long career (Little, 1985). The knowledge base in teaching, such
as it is, receives neither the close attention nor thr loyalty of those who teach or those who
are preparing to teach (Lanier and Little, 1986; Book et al.. 1983; Feiman-Nemser and
Floden, 1986).

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Recent analyses suggest that the traditional attractions to teaching have diminished,
confronting prospective teachers with 'uncertain rewards in a carcerless profession' (Sykes
1983b, p. 110; see also Sykes and Devaney, 1984; Lortic, 1975). Neither the opportunity
for more shared work with fellow teachers nor expanded career advancement possibilities
will be substitutes for public esteem, adequate salaries and satisfactions in the classroom.
Yet we would make too little of the drawing power and holding power of strong collegial
ties if we failed to take account of the way teachers themselves speak of their most
productive work relations.
In the past neither obligations held in common nor achievements rewarded in
common have bound teachers as a group. The alliances forged by the union movement
have concentrated on protecting teachers against abuses in personnel practice. The
obligation that teachers owe to onc ar.tly 1,as yet to encompass matters of professional
practice on any large scale. What is rom current research findings is perhaps as
telling as what is present: no one is ev IL aced, either positively or negatively, on the basis
of contributions they have made to the knowledge base of the profession or to the teaching
proficiency of others.
Recent state initiatives to expand professional opportunities and rewards in teaching
(e.g., Wagner, 1985) suggest that a tightened set of collegial ties and a heightened set of
collegial controls may be in the offing. These developments, both political and
professional, have prospects for altering relations among colleagues in major ways. Career
ladder and other incentive plans have highlighted teachers' demonstrated expertise as a
basis for introducing status differences into a traditionally egalitarian profession (Bird,
1985). Under the terms of such plans, experienced senior colleagues acquire both the
obligation and the opportunity to assert leadership in the improvement of teaching.
Whatever efforts may be made to soften the implications (e.g., by labeling master and
mentor teacher positions as 'more work fa: more pay'), the basic assumptions seem
inescapable (Bird et al., 1984). In addition, the rapid developments in classroom-based
research since the mid-1970s, combined with an economic and political climate that presses
schools to demonstrate 'excellence', have drawn the attention of policy-makers to the
essential competence of teachers. Debates over the 'knowledge base in teaching' are no
longer academic.

What Teachers Do as Colleagues

Like most broad images. collegiality shows its peculiar architecture only close up. In some
schools collegiality among teachers is an inescapable fact of life and work (Little, 1982). In
those schools certain critical practices are clearly in evidence.

Talle about 7-,:ching

Colleagues talk to one another about teaching often, at a level of detail that makes their
exchange both theoretically rich and practically meaningful. While teaching is not the
only topic of their conversation, it is a prominent one. No visiting stranger or new

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teacher would have to search long to uncover it. Discussions are heard in the faculty
lounge, in hallways, in the office, in workrooms, in unused classrooms. The teachers'
lounge is not reserved for 'letting off steam' or for 'jousting and griping' (Lieberman and
Miller, 1979, p. 61; see also Woods, 1984; Hammers ley, 1984).
Colleagues' efforts to speak clearly, fully and concretely about their work help to take
the mystery out of teaching without diminishing its essential artistry. This helps to make
clear the understandings that teachers hold about connections between their actions and
student learning (Bussis, Chittenden and Amarel, 1976). It illuminates underlying
principles and ideas in a way that allows teachers to understand and accommodate one
another, to assist one another and sometimes to challenge one another. Productive talk
about teaching is not mere shop talk. The standard of productive talk is not satisfied by
casual 'war stories' or 'experience swapping' (Rosenholtz and Kyle. 1984). It requires
familiarity with and high regard for principles and conclusions derived not only from
immediate classroom experience (Hargreaves, 1984) hut also from the thinking, experience
and observations of others (Weyand, 1983).

Shared PlanninR and Preparation

Together, colleagues plan, prepare and evaluate the topics, methods and materials of
teaching. Working in concert, they reduce their individual planning time while increasing
their pool of ideas and material. In grade-level or subject-area groups, or in interdisci-
plinary teams, they arrive agreements about curriculum emphasis, pace and sequence.
They work together to des.,411 and prepare the content of teaching: course outlines, unit
objectives, tests and other materials. They meet to evaluate the progress of students and to
decide or recommend student placements. They take joint responsibility for a group of
students, though instances of actual joint teaching are less common (Cohen, 1981). In all
these ways they build program coherence, expand individual resources and reduce
individual burdens for planning and preparation (see also Barnes and Dow, 1982).
Examples of shared planning and preparation are frequent and varied at the
elementary and junior high or middle-school levels (Little, 1982; Little and Bird, 1984a:
Lipsitz, 1983) but are less evident in high school. In a fruitless search for staff networks in
two large mid-western high schools, Cusick (1980) encountered a well established pattern
of individual entrepreneurship among teachers. Competition over student enrollments and
a premium on securing students' attendance and cooperation led to a proliferation of
electives that gave teachers little to discuss (or plan) with one another. (Indeed, the
rewards attached to individual entrepreneurialism made more for competition than
cooperation among teachers.) Teachers' involvement in student sports or other activities
cut into time for shared work with other teachers, and a host of out-of-school
commitments further eroded teachers' opportunities and interests in collegial pursuits.
While examples of shared work are not unknown at the high school level (Bird and Little,
1985), and individual departments or small groups may prove highly cohesive (Ball and
Lacey, 1984), schoolwide patterns of collegiality are far more prevalent at the elementary
and middle levels.

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Classroom Observation

The presence of observers in classrooms is a common event in schools that promote

collegial work. Administrators in these schools devote the time and study necessary to
make their own observations fruitful (Little and Bird, 1984a) and free up observation time
for teachers working together on improvement projects of their own (Weyand, 1983).
Increasingly, classroom observation has developed as a professional development resource
for teachers at work with teachers; descriptions of peer observation, peer coaching and
targeted videotaping now appear in both the research and practitioner literature (Showers,
1985).
We can distinguish between sheer 'visibility', as a fact of life in some schools, and
systematic observation, as an organized practice of administration or professional
development. By teaching within sight and sound of one another, as in open-space plans,
teachers are made attentive to the judgments and preferences of their peers (Meyer et al.,
1971). By engaging in systematic observation, teachers explore central issues in student
learning and consider teaching practices and their improvement (Bird and Little, 1985).
For both administrators and teachers, the requisite incentives, skills, habits and
opportunities associated with good observation appear hard to come by. One recent study
prompted this description:
In one of five schools, classroom observation is so frequent, so intellectually
lively and intense, so thoroughly integrated into the daily work and so
associated with accomplishments for all who participate, that it is difficult to
see how the practices could fail to improve teaching. In still another school, the
observation practices approach this standard. In three of the five schools,
however, the observation of classroom life is so cursory, so infrequent, so
shapeless and tentative that if it were found to affect instruction favorably we
would be hard-pressed to construct a plausible explanation. (Little and Bird,
1984a, p. 12).

Training Together and Training One Another

Colleagues teach one another about new ideas and new classroom practices, abandoning a
perspective that teaching is 'just a matter of style' in favor of a perspective that favors
continuous scrutiny of practices and their consequences. Without turning creative
individuals into robots who all teach precisely the same way, teachers view the practices of
teaching as professional practices, open to scrutiny, discussion and refinement. F^ mal
occasions of in-service training are organized so that teachers can train together and train
one another, with opportunity for follow-up in classrooms. Informal study groups provide
an opportunity for teachers and administrators to 'get smarter together' and to develop
small-scale experiments in curriculum, instruction and classroom management (Weyand,
1983).
A record of classroom success earns teachers in collegial schools the right (or even the
obligation) to teach others, either informally through a peer-coaching arrangement or

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formally in in-service workshops (Bird and Little. 1985). (Talented teachers in less collegial
settings are made acutely uncomfortable at the prospect of teaching their peers; described
by admirers as 'prophets without honor in their own land', such teachers confine their
energies to their own classrooms or conduct in-service workshops in far-flung schools or
districts.)
Each of these practices and perspectives brings teachers close to one another's work
with students. Together, such views and habits have been summed up as norms of
collegiality and continuous improvement (Little, 1982). They make up a pattern of joint
action that relies in part on face-to-face team work and in part on other forms of
coordination and mutual accommodation.
A lot of what passes for collegiality does not add up to much. When teachers meet
only occasionally on questions of logistics, broad curriculum outlines or school-level
matters, they are unlikely to engage in close mutual examination of how they think about
teaching, plan for teaching or handle teaching demands in the classroom. Closer to the
classroom is also closer to the bone closer to the day-by-day performances on which
personal esteem and professional standing rest. The prospects for conflict are high (Martin,
1975; Metz, 1984).
The closer one gets to the classroom and to central questions of curriculum and
instruction, the fewer are the recorded instances of meaningful, rigorous collaboration. In
case narratives of exemplary middle schools, for which interdisciplinary teaming is a
central philosophical tenet, Lipsitz (1983) describes closely int,:grated team work in oniy
one of four schools. In that school teachers hammer out agreements about curriculum
emphasis and instructional approach and develop materials jointly. So crucial is teaming to
the daily work that team members rarely miss a day's work and have been known to give
'calamity day' awards to individuals who were not devoting a full measure of time,
thought and energy to the group effort. In the remaining three schools, however, teams
met infrequently and team decisions had less immediate bearing on teachers' classroom
decisions.

Supporting Teachers as Colleagues

The key practices of colleagues are most likely to make a difference where they are a
patterned, integral, inescapable part of day-to-day work.

I IOU' COMMOti Is C011qial 14/Ork?

Overall, collegiality is rare. Most teachers can point to a treasured colleague, hut few work
in schools where cooperative work is a condition of employment. Many teachers are
satisfied with their peer relationships, but few claim that those relationships make their
way into the classroom. Many schools offer congenial work environments, but few offer a
professional environment that makes the school 'as ed=ative for teachers as for students'
(Shulman. 1983).
Pellegrin (1976) describes an effort to uncover the extent of perceived into dependence
among teachers. Teachers were asked to create two lists. On the first they were to name

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persons other than students on whom they depended most heavily to perform their job
effectively. On the second they were to name any person whose job was so closely related
to their own that the two jobs must be performed collaboratively for each to be effective.
The first set was termed 'dependence relationships', and it was small (a mean of 4); the
second set was labeled 'essential relationships', and it was smaller still (a range from 0 to
2.5, with a mean of 1.). Pellegrin elaborates; 'These data show that the types of
relationships specified by teachers consist primarily of those that deal with the provision of
resources (facilities and materials), psychological and social support, advice, and exchange
of ideas. It is quite rare for task interdependencies to be mentioned' (p. 368; emphasis in
original).
Characterizing schools as places with 'a division of labor low in interdependence'
(p. .63), Pdlegrin emphasizes that teachers rarely inter.ict with one another to complete
the main obligations of their work. Similarly, only one-quarter of the teachers surveyed by
Lortie (1975, p. 193) reported having frequent contact with other teachers for purposes of
jointly planning classes, reviewing student work or sharing responsibility for classes.
Lortie concludes that task-oriented cooperation among teachers is likely to be 'permissive
rather than mandatory' (p. 194; see also Cohen, 1981). Special programs (such as federally
funded categorical programs) have been credited with promoting or requiring close
cooperation among teachers (e.g., McLaughlin and Marsh, 1979), but most alliances
among teachers appear to be informal, voluntary and distant from the real work in and of
the classroom.

flow Stable is Collegiality in Schools?

Collegial relations and structures have proved relatively fragile (Cohen, 1976; Cohen et al.,
1979). A shift in building leadership can alter the governing values and priorities, the
opportunities created in a master schedule, and the incentives and rewards associated with
collaborative work. Relationships, habits and structures that have taken years to build may
unravel in a matter of weeks (Little and Bird, 1984b; Little and Long, 1985).
A fairly constant refrain in the literature and in the field is that cooperative work
among teachers is scarce, fruitless or hard to maintain. Organized work groups come and
go, or their membership changes drastically over time. When one team of researchers
returned after two years to schools in which more than half the faculty had been actively
involved in school-level curriculum implementation teams, they found less than 15 per cent
still participating (Cohen, 1976. p. 59).
Although the term 'collegiality' may at first bring to mind face-to-face interaction
among teachers, concentration on formally organized teams may have led researchers to
overestimate (or wrongly conceive) the problem of instability. An example serves to
illustrate. Eight middle-school teachers were intent on making the annual influx of student
teachers a more productive experience. They formed a group, confirmed a group leader
and met four times early in the school year to arrive at a policy to govern the involvement
of university supervisors, student teachers and school-based master teachers. When they
had completed their work, they Leased meeting, having agreed that each would use the
policy to govern his or her own work in the student teaching program. Judged strictly by

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a set of measures limited to visible face-to-face teaming, the group might have appeared
'unstable' when it ceased to gather regularly after four meetings. In fact, the group was
better organized at the end than at the beginning to achieve its teacher training goals and
to preserve the integrity of valued approaches to curriculum and instruction (Little and
Bird, 1984, p. 13).
The problem of stability can be pursued as a problem of sustaining a pattern of
cooperative work among a 'reciprocally interdependent staff' (Cohen, 1981, p. 188). The
central question about collegiality thus becomes, 'under what conditions would we expect
to find relations among teachers that were rigorous enough and durable enough to have
any demonstrable effect on conceptions and practices of teaching?' (Little and Bird, 1984b,
p. 8). Two fundamental conditions appear crucial to joint action among teachers:
interdependence and opportunity. Shifts in either condition may produce a fluctuation in
visible group effort ('instability').

Interdependence

Teachers are interdependent when they must depend on one another, regardless of personal
preference. Interdependence is not chosen but is imposed by circumstance. It is one thing
for teachers to depend on each other to observe the bell schedule. It is quite another for
them to depend on each other for information about good teaching practices or for lesson
plans designed according to shared pedagogical principles. To be relevant to their joint
action, interdependence must be perceived or felt in some way by teachers. The perspective
taken here is consistent with Pellegrin 's (1976) orientation to essential relationships but
differs from the stance taken in some of the earls' teaming studies, in which the term
'interdependence' is used interchangeably with 'interaction', 'cooperation'. or 'co-
presence' (Bredo. 1977: Cohen, 1981).

Opportunity
Joint action cannot occur where it is impossible or prohibitively costly in organizational,
political or personal terms. Bureaucratic conditions such as schedules, staff assignments and
access to resources may or may not be conducive to shared work among teachers. Cultural
conditions, including beliefs and norms of interaction among teachers. may permit,
support or discourage close collaboration.
Interdependence and opportunity have no necessary relation. Persons can understand
fully that they are dependent on one another in some crucial ways that affect their
respective reputations and fortunes hut still have no opportunity to work together for
mutual benefit. Persons may have subtantial opportunity for work together but be at a
loss to understand why it is important that they should or what would be sacrificed if they
did not.

How Are Collegial Relations Supported in SchA?

The habits and skills of colleagueship cannot be mastered alone. Further, they are not
readily introduced by the initiative of a single teach, , however skillful and well

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intentioned. This may seem a painfully obvious point, but it is meant to underscore the
organizational as well as professional character of collegiality. Six dimensions of support
are prominent in the literature: (1) symbolic endorsements and rewards that place value on
cooperative work and make the sources of interdependence clear; (2) school-level
organization of staff assignments and leadership; (3) latitude for influence on crucial
matters of curriculum and instruction; (4) time; (5) training and assistance; and
(6) material support.

Public Endorsements and Institutional Policy

Principals and others in positions of influence promote collegiality by declaring that they
value team efforts and by describing in some detail what they think that means. A teacher
leader in one school emphasizes, 'It's important to say the words,' while a teacher in another
school laments. 'They m:f believe it's important. and I agree, but that's never been
communicated (Little and Long, 1985). Among Lipsitz's (1983) successful middle schools
the most heavily teamed school was one in which the principal and team leaders conveyed
their own faith in the power of interdisciplinary teams to make the school better for
students. In schools where teaming came lower on a principal's list of priorities,
cooperative efforts were less frequent. less focused on fundamental questions of curriculum
and classroom instruction, and less binding on the decisions of individual teachers in
classrooms.
High levels of joint action are more likely to persist where there is a 'policy' in favor
of teamirig, in v,hich the reasons for interdependence are articulated by both district-level
and school-L;el leaders, and Opportunity is afforded by the routine organization of staff
assignments. tie and other resources (Cohen, 1981). In a study of adminsitrators'
influence ot. teachers' collegiality and innovation Bird and Little (1985) confirmed earlier
speculation that school-level support for teaming required a combination of public
endorsements. material and technical support. opportunity and reward. Districts promote
teaming (or not) in part through the policies and procedures they employ for selecting,
placing and evaluating principals Little and Long, 1985). Together, districts and schools
where shared work prevails have a policy of teamed work explicitly tied to improvement
goals. Working together is 'the way we do things here.'

School Organization and Teacher Leadership

Cooperative work among teachers, as a matter of 4,cganizational principle or institutional

priority, is the exception rather than the rule in American sch ols. One might be led to
ask, 'What have the environment and norms of schools to do with teachers' performance
as ... colleagues and leaders in the advancement of teaching?' (Bird and Little, 1985b.
p. 13).
School-level reorganization into teams has bk,..-n found to increase interaction,
collegial influence and reciprocal influence (Cohen, 1981). In one of four middle schools
portrayed by Lipsitz (1983), each of eight academic teams is responsible (as a team) for the
learning experiences of approximately 150 students. Each team has relative autonomy with
respect to scheduling, grouping assignments, staff assignments and the development of
curriculum units or instructional approaches. With the encouragement of the principal,

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

and led by assigned team leaders, these academic teams take full advantage of
organizational resources. They use their common planning times to arrive at agreements
about curriculum, instruction and the organization of students. In this case, the opportunity
to work together afforded by the schedule and by the staff organization is matched by
teachers' felt obligation to work together on behalf of students.
Team-based staff organization goes a long way toward permitting cooperative work
but does not guarantee it. In yet other middle schools studied by Lipsitz, for example,
teachers assigned to the same teams or 'houses' met only in a perfunctory manner to
resolve routine matters of scheduling or student placement and had little to do with each
other on issues that strike close to the heart of daily classroom experience. Even in the one
highly teamed school, commitment to the team ethos is uneven. In contrast to the eight
academic teams, the unified arts team in the same building has neither a small community
of students to call its own (student loyalties are to academic teams), nor a compelling
interest in producing a coordinated curriculum, nor daily common planning periods in
which to develop any version of a combined program. The experience of teaming has been
far less rewarding (and rewarded) for the unified arts teachers than for teachers on the
academic teams.
One aspect of a team work policy appears to be a form of organization in which
leadership is broadly distributed among both administrators and teachers, who in turn
provide groups with direction, continuity and support. In schools where teaming has been
well established, a common pattern has been to invest team leaders, department heads,
grade-level chairs or resource teachers with special authority for organizing and leading
work on curriculum and instruction (Lipsitz, 1983, Little and Bird, 1984b). The main
contribution of the principals in team-oriented middle schools has been `to make the school
larger than one person' (Lipsitz, 1983, p. 284).
Although the assign,nent of teachers to formal leadership positions is a departure
from established precedent in the teaching profession, it is an accepted tradition in some
schools. Lipsitz describes a group of team leaders who, with reduced teaching loads, are
responsible for leading curriculum development and other improvement-related work in
an exemplary middle school; they receive no more pay than their colleagues, but receive
reduced teaching loads and other perks of status, such as dinner with out-of-town visitors
at a good restaurant (Lipsitz, 1983). A study of leadership in junior and senior high schools
provides still other examples (Bird and Little, 1985). Informal teacher leaders in a _junior
high school receive no more money than their colleagues but 'settle for fame'.
Increasingly, they are called on to conduct in-service training in their own and other
schools and to consult with administrators, policy-makers and researchers. In a senior high
schoo! the role of department head has been moved steadily away from book ordering
and
other paperwork toward responsibilities for curriculum development, program evaluation
and consultation with teachers.
Establishing effective team leadership and cultivating reciprocity and
respect among
team members turn out to be complex tasks in their own right. Most school-based teams,
unlike work groups in industry, tend to be equal-status groups in which leadership roles
arc rarely assigned and in which professional deference is simply assumed ('you just have to
be a decent person'). The equal-status assumption is compelling. Even when principals
speak of team leaders, teachers may deny their existence (Cohen, 1981) or their

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 Teachers as Colleagues

effectiveness (Arikado. 1976). Other studies have demonstrated that there are almost no
mechanisms by which teachers can emerge as leaders for purposes of leading work on
teaching, even when they have been acknowledged as exemplary classroom teachers (Bird,
1985).

Latitude for Influence

Teachers' investment in team planning appears to rest heavily on the latitude they have to
make decisions in crucial areas of curriculum, materials selection, student assignments,
instructional grouping, classroom activity and the assessment of student progress. One
junior high school principal supported curriculum projects and study groups on
instructional research as the vehicles for building teachers' involvement with one another
and their collective attention to program improvement (Wevand, 1983). In another school
fiercely committed to a team structure, the principal negotiated with district curriculum
supervisors to win his teachers the right to design and use their own curriculum units
(Lipsit z. 1983).
Work together requires some topic of compelling importance to work on. (Teaming
for the sake of teaming is predictably short-lived). Teams arc more likely to form when the
work at hand is complex enough to nuke two (or six) heads better than one and to make it
probable that the reflected glory of the team will outshine success that each member could
expect from working alone. According to Cohen (1981), complex tasks generate
uncertainty. for which lateral rebtions between teachers serve as a source of problem-
solving, information processing and coordination.
Forces outside the school curtail teachers' latitude and incentive to act. Some are the
legacy of a 'feminized' occupational culture in which teachers (mostly women) nurture the
young and administrators (mostly men) tend to issues of policy. pmgram and management
(Feiman-Nemser and Floden, 1986; Boston Women's Teachers Group, 1983). Other
forces reflect the battle currently being waged over the control of teaching and teachers. As
states specify curriculum standards and as districts move toward uniform curriculum
content, teachers have less apparem room to explore curriculum alternatives. The
proliferation of classroom-based research has spawned efforts to create ever more
prescriptive, technically precise requirements for effective teaching. eroding still further
teachers' latitude or obligation to exercise professional judgment or to articulate
professional values. As a decade of research on effective teaching and effective schools
makes its way to state legislatures and local school boards, research discoveries are
converted to evaluation criteria and competency standards. In the view of Sara Freedman
and her colleagues this increasingly prexriptive stance echoes the oineteenth century.
when, ironically, 'the highly prescriptive nature of teaching in which neither teacher
nor student could deviate from a set norm exonerated both of them from responsibility
for upgrading the education of pupils' (Boston Women's Teachers' Group. 1983, p. 277).
In some states simultaneous efforts to expand teacher incentive plans and to control the
quality of instruction and curriculum are in considerable tension. Such forces operate in
ni.ny respects from a distance. They are necessarily mediated by the day-to-day forces that
operate closer to the school and the classroon,, but they cannot be ignored.

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Time and the Master Schedule

Common planning periods, regularly scheduled team or subject-area nice, ;.;gs and the
judicious use of release time all support cooperative work among teachers (Weyand, 1983:
Little and Bird, 1984h). The opportunities for collaborative work among teachers are
enhanced or eroded by the school's master schedule. The master schedule determines
whether rny two teachers who have students, subjects or other interests in common will
have time together during the school day. The master schedule makes room, or not, for all
teachers to be available for a block of time each day or each week. The master schedule
gives reason, or not, for teachers to work together on a program for a group of students
taught in common. Differences in scale are crucial. 'Morning meetings,' made possible by
an all-school early-morning planning period, allow teachers to work on problems of
curriculum and instruction with the persistence and regularity needed to achieve
continuity and depth or to resolve disagreements. Monthly or quarterly meetings, say
teachers, cannot have the same effect.

Training and Assistance

To forge a group that lasts through time (and through tough times) and that creates
achievement worth celebrating is no small challenge. Most teachers can imagine an 'ideal'
team: many have been part of at least one group that has taken pride in its
accomplishments. Most can also tell tales of teams gone awry, situations in which they
have given more than they have received or have been bored, frustrated, confused.
overburdened, insulted or insulting.
Cooperative work places unfamiliar and pressing demands on teachers. In an
environment where teachers work mostly with students. mostly out of sight and sound of
others, cooperative work among adult% is often less polished and practiced. In a profession
in which the norm of not interfering with another teacher's views or practices is powerful,
serious and sustained collaboration with regard to curriculum and instruction represents a
radical departure.
Teachers work groups succeed in part by mastering specific skills and by developing
explicit agreements to govern their work together. I. observer of team work comment.
'Team meetings have been observed where no one has helped team members with such
simple techniques for saving time as using an agenda' (Cohen, 1976, p. 61). Task-related
training and assistance bolster the confidence that teachers have in one another for work
outside the classroom, as in long-term planning. curriculum development or peer
observation. Assistance in effective group process and group leadership has helped teaclACTS
master the routines of scheduling regular meetings. using an agenda, prioritizing issues,
facilitating discussion and reaching closure on decisions and tasks. The ability to
distinguish issues that deserve group attention from those that can be handled by kt,gam
leader or can be left to individual prerogative can keep a group from becoming bogged
down in an 'overreliance on consensus' (Cohen, 1981. p. 186). Participants in groups with
clear internal policies regarding participation have consistently been more satisfied with
their work together (Bredo, 1977).
Even in less formal collaborations, specific skills and perspectives of working with a
colleague are critical. In effect, teachers count on their collective ability to do good work

186
 Teachers as Colleagues

on the problems of teaching without doing damage to one another as teachers. They suni
up their accomplishments as 'trust', Recent portraits of collegial relations among teachers
have shed some light on the mysteries of trust (Little et aL, 1984). Lacking the intimacy
that confirms trust among family members or long-time friends, team members must rely
on other evidence that they do not intend harm to one another, They create trust as the
consequence, not the precondition, of close interaction by displaying professional
reciprocity clearly and concretely in each small exchange.
Among the guarantors of reciprocity are (1) shared language for describing and
analyzing the problems of curriculum and instruction; (2) predictability in group deahngs.
including rules for group process and especially for airing and resolving disagreements;
(3) talk that concentrates on practices and their consequences rather than people and their
competence; and (4) sharing equally in the obligations to work hard, to credit one another's
contributions, and to risk looking ignorant, clumsy or foolish.

Material Support
The quality and availability of reference texts and otlwr materials, 3dequate copying
equipment, consultants on selected problems and other forms of material and human
support appear to be crucial but often under estimated contributors to teachers'
ability and willingnes to work successsfully together. In one study (Bird and Little, 1985)
teachers in one junior high school and one high school regarded themselves as well
supported (as entire faculties) in part because they had large, multicapability copying
machines staffed by aides. In these schools teachers had both time and inclination to plan
together. In two other high schools, where WO teachers competed for time at two small
and fragile copiers, entire planning periods were spent standing in line; time and
inclination for group work were in short supply.
At its strongest most durable, most -igorouslv connected to problems of- student
learning, most commanding of teachers' e;iergies, talents and loyalties cooperative
work is a matter of school policy. Team efforts receive public endorsements and accolades:
are supported by time, space, materials and staff assignments; and are demonstrably tied to
the school's ability to educate the young. Teachers tackle tasks of adeouati: complexity to
require and reward individuals' participation. Team leadership dequatt: to ensure
continuity, direction and full participation. Together. these aspect policy and support
may lend stability and continuity to joint action among teachei . equipping them to
orchestrate the daily work of teaching, to get better at their work over time and to provide
adequate support to inexperienced teachers.

Conclusion

Serious collaboration, by which teachers engage in the rigorous mutual examination of

teaching and learning, turns out to be rare. Teachers create realistic, insightful chronicles
of the difficulties they encounter. Collaborative efforts run counter to historical precedent,
tending to be unstable, short-lived and secondary to other priorities. Compromises in
substance are made to preserve camaraderie (or camaraderie alone is mistaken for sturdier

187
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

stuff). As teachers probe issues close to the classroom, they generate heat as well as light.
An emphasis on cooperation may place a premium on coherence and uniformity at the
expense of individual inventiveness and independent initiative. Cooperation on any
meaningful scale will almost certainly require rethinking the present organization of
human and material resources.
Yet the enthusiasms expressed by teachers about their collaborations are persuasive.
When schools are organized to promote joint action, the advantages of collegial work
groups are varied and substantial. Teachers' work as colleagues promises greater coherence
and integration to the daily work of teaching. It equips individuals, groups and
institutions for steady improvement; and it helps to organize the schools as a:r
environment for learning to teach.
The professional relations that we might legitimately describe as collegial are neither
mysterious nor subtle. Colleagues stand out. They can be seen and heard. The value placed
on joint action is heard in the talk among teachers who pursue questions or joint projects
even in odd moments during a crowded day. It is evident when teachers invite
observation, seek opportunities to watch others at work or coach one another to master
specific new classroom approaches. It is evident when teachers organize to 'get smarter
tog( her.' Colleagues can he found before and after school, with materials spread out on a
table and chscussion in full swing; individuals argue some prefei ices fiercely and put aside
others, with the intent of arriving at agreements they can live with. Finally, colleagues
make themselves felt by organizing to make the study of teaching and the work of
teaching public, to learn from and with one another.
The institutional supports for collegiality, where they exist, are, like the practices
themselves, neither subtle nor mysterious. Humans are remarkably sturdy and stubborn
characters. No one can make anyone do much of anything, whether it's to teach well or to
work well with others. Both, at bottom, are labors of love and skill. Neither can be
coerced, but both can be supported. Faculties who work together are by nature no more
generous in spirit, quick in mind, lively in humor or inventive in action than faculties in
other schools, but by habit and interaction, they come to appear so.
For teachers to work often and fruitfully as colleagues requires act'-in on all fronts.
The value that is placed on shared work must be both said and shown. The opportunity for
shared work and shared study must be prominent in the schedule for the day, the week,
the year. The purpose for work together must be compelling and the task sufficiently
challenging. The material resources and human assistance must be adequate. The
accomplishments of individuals and groups must be recognized and celebrated.
The press toward steady improvement of schools, teaching and teacher education
lends urgency to the continuing study of professional relations among teachers as
colleagues. Research since the mid-1970s liPs come close to the internal lives of classrooms
and schools, with substantial gain. Foremost in the gains we can expect in the 1980s and
1990s will be new understandings of how, and with what effect, schools promote
leadership in teaching by teachers.

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 Teachers as Colleagues

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LITTLE, J. W. (1985) 'Schools' Contributions to Teaching as a Profession.' Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago. April.
LITTLE, J. W. and BIRD, T.D. (1984a) 'Is There Instructional Leadership in High Schools? First
Findings from a Study of Secondary School Administrators and Their Influence on Teachers'
Professional Norms.' Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, New Orelans. April.
DTTLE, J. W. and BIRD, T. D. (19846) Report on a Pilot Study of School-level Collegial learning. San
Francisco, CA: Far West Laboratory.
LITTLE, J. W. and LON(;. C. (1985) Portraits of School-based Collegial Teams. San Francisco, CA. Far
West Laboratory
LITTLE, J. W., GALAGARAN, P. and O'NEAL, R. (1984) Professional Development Roles and
Relationships: Principles and Skills of Advisin,g. San Francisco, CA: Far West Laboratory.
LORTIE. D. (1975) Schoolteacher: A Sociologkal Study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
LYONS, G. and MCCLEARY, L. (1980) 'Careers in Teaching,' in E. HY1F and J. MF.GARRY (eds.),
World Yearbook of Education 1980: Professional Development of Teachers. London: Kogan Page.
MCDONALD, F. J. (1980) Study of Induction Programs for Beginning Teachers. Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing Service.
MCLAUGHLIN, M. W . and MARSH, D. D. (1979) 'Staff Development and School Change,' in
A. LIEBERMAN and L. MILLER (eds.), Staff Development: New Demands, New Realities. New
Perspectives. New York: Teachers College Press.
MARRAM, G. D.. DORNBUSH, S. and SCOTT, W. R. (1972) The Impact of Teaming and Visibility of
Mailing in the Professionalism of Elementary School Teachers (Tech. Rep. No. 33). Stanford, CA:
Stanford University, Center for Research and Development in Teaching.
MARTIN, W. B. W. (1975) 'The Negotiated Order of Teachers in Team Teaching Situations.'
Sociology of Education, 48: 202-22.
METZ, M. H. (1984) 'Faculty Culture: A Case Study.' Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Sociological Assocation. San Antonio, TX, August.
MEYER, J.. CoHEN, E.. BRUNETTI, F., MOLNAR, S. and LEUDFRS-SAI MON, E. (1971) The Impthr
of the Open-space School upon Teacher Influence and Autonomy: The Effects of an Organizational

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Innovation (Tech. Rep. No. 21). Stanford, CA: Stanford 1.2-'versity. Center for Research and
Development in Teaching.
MiTCHFIL, D., ORTIZ. F. and MITCHELL, T. (1983) Wirk Orientation and Job Performance: The
Cultural Basis of Teaching Rewards and Incentive.- (Report prepared for the National Institute of
Education, Grant No. N1E-G-80-0154). Riverside: University of California.
MOLNAR, S. (1971) Teadiers in Trams: Interaaion, Influence and Autonomy (Tech. Rep. No. 22).
Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Center for Research and Development in Teaching.
NEMSER, S. F. (1983) 'Learning to Teach,' in L. S. SHULMAN and G. SYKES (eds.), Handbook of
Teachirw and Polky. White Plains, NY: Longman.
NEWBERRY, J. M. (1977) 'The First Year of Experience: Influences on Beginning Teachers,' Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New
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PELLEGRIN, R. J. (1976) 'Schools as Work Settings,' in R. DUBIN (ed.). Handbook. of Work
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Thousand Hours: Secorulary Schools and 7-heir EPcts on Children. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
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SCHLECHTY, P. (1985) 'Teaching as a Profession: What We Know and What We Need to Know
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SHOWERS, B. (1985) 'Teachers Coaching Teachers,' Educational Leadership, 42(7): 43-8.
SHULMAN, L. S. (1983) 'A Perspective on Effective Schools.' in Making Our Silloob _ore rrE
Proceedings of Three State C.tnferences. San Francisco: Far West Laboratory.
SOUTHERN RE(;IONAI EDUCATION 13()ARD (1984) State Actions: Career Ladders and Other Incentive
Plans for School Dilaters and Administrators. Atlanta, GA: Southern Regional Education Board.
SYKES, C. (1983a) 'Contradictions. Ironies and Promises Unfulfilled: A Contemporary Account of
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SYKES, G (1983b) 'Public Policy and the Problem of Teacher Quality: The Need for Screens and
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SYKES, G. and DEVANEY, K. (1984) A Status Report on the leaching Professim. Prepared for the
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VEENMAN, S. (1984) 'Perceived Problems of Beginning Teachers,' Review of Educational Research,
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 Teaches as Colleague

WEYAND. J. (1983) Reflections on Getting Good. Prepared for the Far West Laboratory for
Educational Research and Development, San Francisco. Loveland, a): Thompson Valley
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WILBURN. K. T. and DRUMMOND, R. C. (1984) 'Peer Supervision: A Study of Peer Teachers in
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(eds.), Classrooms and .Staffrooms: The Sociology of "leachers and Teadiin.i!. Milton Keynes: Open
University Press.

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 Chapter 10

Leadership for Curriculum Improvement:

The School Administrator's Role*

Gary A. Gnffin

The role and function of school-level administrators in curriculum improvement provide

the focus of this chapter. This emphasis rests on the belief that the school is the logical unit
for improvement in terms of planning, implementing, studying, revising and institution-
alizing curriculum change) It also builds from the understanding that the contact between
the curriculum and the student takes place in classrooms and in schools. Therefore,
although the district level of leadership is important for thinking about policy, providing
support for curriculum improvement, ensuring material support for school-level work and
monitoring the process of school change, the work of curriculum change is logically the
work of teachers and administrators in schools and classrooms.
The point of view taken here is somewhat different from what has become typical in
exhortations for principals, for example, to be 'curriculum leaders'. The usual claim for
such leadership emphasizes curriculum planning skills, knowledge of bodies of curri-
culum-related literature, maintaining an up-to-date understanding of advances in
curriculum materials and so on. In other words, suggestions about what the principal's
role in curriculum improvement ought to be have rested mainly upon knowledge and
that is inherent in being a curriculum expert.
I take the position in this chapter that the claims for leadership noted above are
unrealistic and very wide of the mark in terms of making significant school-level
curriculum changes. They are unrealistic because of the competing claims for principals'
intellectual, personal and emotional energy. If the principal is expected to be an expert in
curriculum, is it not also logical that the principal should be an instructional expert, a
testing and evaluation expert, a pupil personnel expert, a school-community relations
expert and an expert in the fiscal management of a big business? Clearly, the levels of
expertise required across the multiple components of the school as a complex organization
cannot be located in every principal in every school. When one makes such claims for
expert status in curriculum, one must recognize that there are equally pressing claims for
that status in other aspects of the operation of an effective school.

"This chapter was published originally in Critical Issues in Curriculum: Eighty.seventh Yearbook of the National
Society for the Study of Education, (NSSE. 1988), pp. 244-66. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

The principal must be sensitive and skillful in manipulating a complex environment,

one part of which is the curriculum enterprise.2 Knowledge and skill related to the doing
of curriculum development and implementation are important, but they are not sufficient
to successful curriculum innovatioa at the school level. The principal, in this case, should
know the rudiments of the curriculum planning process, have a set of criteria against
which to make judgments about curriculum-in-use and be able to engage in curriculum-
related discourse and debae. But he or she need not be the theoretical and technical expert
that has often been assumed by those concerned with curriculum improvemet,t.
The persistent belief in the expert status position for school principals derives, in part,
from a conception of teaching and schooling wherein principals are 'management' and
teachers are 'labor'. In this conception thttre is a hierarchical system of power and
authority, with the concomitant feature that the needed expertiy is passed from the
manager to thc worker. In other words, management needs the knowledge and skill to
direct the activities of the workers.3
It has become increasingly clear from the past two decades of research on what
constitutes effective schools and effective teachers that a conception of schooling quite
different from the labor metaphor is consistently associated with outstanding schools and
teachers. This emerging set of understandings considers the teacher as a classroom
executive, a professional whose responsibilities and functions center on convincing
students to learn as a consequence of the exercise of options through complex classroom
decision-making in an uncertain environment, and who participates in the decision-
making that affects both the daily activities and future work of the school.4
The distinctions between the two !netaphors, teachers as workers and teachers as
classroom executives, have significant consequences for the ways that principals and
teachers interact, for how principals select objects for their work and for how curriculum
improvement, in terms of the purposes of this chapter, is carried forward.
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to an explication of how school principals
would promote curriculum work if the metaphor of teacher as classroom executive were
used as a basic guide for leadership. Research evidence to support the use of this metaphor
is included. The chapter ends with a set of recommendations about how principal
preparation programs might be reconceptualized to make the use of the classroom
executive metaphor more prevalent in schools.

The Teacher as Classroom Executive and School Leader

TIE: way that a leader conceives of his or her role in relation to colleagues is dramatically
influenced by the explicit or implicit view that is held about those colleagues. A school
principal who thinks of teachers as subordinate workers will more than likely engage in
activities that promote centralized decision-making, following rules and regulations,
adherence to fairly inflexible expectations for teacher behavior, little widespread inquiry, a
top-down evaluation and assessment scheme and a traditional management orientation to
accomplishing the work of the school. There will be little sharing of decision-making, few
opportunities to collaborate across conventional grade-level or subject boundaries, little
variation in teaching in the school and few rewards for experimentation. picture is
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 Leadership for Curriculum Improvement: The School Administratoes Rok

probably more true of schools in the United States than some of us would like to believe.
Of course, other views of teaching and teachers have made modest appearances in the
past several decades. During the heyday of the open education movement, teachers were
often thought of as 'gardeners', people who tilled the academic soil, made certain that the
intellectual and affective seeds were planted and tended to the natural intellectual and social
growth that was expected to occur with young people. Another metaphor that was
prevalent for a time W2S what might be considered 'teacher as travel guide', someone who
took children and youth on journeys of the mind and spirit, pointing out to thcm the
highlights of the cultural panorama while allowing the learning outcomes of the students'
contact with the environment to be directed largely by the students themselves.5 These
two metaphors for the central functions of teachers, as gardeners or as travel guides,
emerged from a point of view and a body of knowledge about the nature of childhood.
They gained their status from a set of understandings and beliefs about how children and
youth learn. In effect, they were responses to what we know, or think we know, about
the healthy learning and development of the young in our culture.
However, the most dominant and persistent metaphor, again derived from ways of
thinking about learning, was and is teacher as 'storyteller'. Although the word
'storyteller' may suggest somewhat frivolous activity, just the opposite is the case. Because
students do not know what they need to know, it is believed, it is the duty and
responsibility of the teacher to make present what teachers and other authorities in the
culture believe is necessary knowledge and disposition for a satisfying and productive life.
In this view curricula are developed apart from students, modest attention is paid to
standardized growth and development patterns, instruction is judged for goodness based
upon its efficiency in accomplishing determined objectives and the teacher is the repository
of what is to be presented to and known by children.
Independent of and in contradiction to many aspects of these conceptions is the
persistence of the already mentioned teacher-as-worker orientation. Although there have
been some significant attempts to restructure schools such that teachers share in the
leadership functions with principals and other administrators (the teacher center
movement comes to mind) these organizational experiments most often are additions to
rather than dramatic changes in schools as organizations.6 For example, the teacher centers
that have been institutionalized around the country are usually the result of an often uneasy
agreement between a teachers union and a school district to put together a resource for
teachers that is planned and managed by teachers but exists relatively independently from
the school workplace. Leadership certainly is vested in the teachers in these instances, but
that leadership is exerted away from schools.
Despite a small number of exceptions, schools in general are hierarchical
organizations in which the principal and perhaps his or her immediate administrative staff
are expected to provide leadership and direction while teachers are expected to do the work
of teaching such that it 'fits' the expectations of the leadership cadre. It is in these very
typical school situations that teachers either accept their worker status, often making
alterations around the margins of practice, or where they begin to express to themselves
and, increasingly, to others their dissatisfaction with what have come to be called
'conditions of work'.'
Too often we think of conditions of work in schools solely in terms of the physical

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

environment and student poplation factors. The phrase conjures up broken windows,
graffiti-laden hallways, trash piled up in corners of schoolyards and other examples of a
harsh institutional environment. It also stereotypically brings to mind recalcitrant children
and youth who combine the problematic features of reluctance to learn with bringing
about through their own misbehavior dangerous conditions for peers and adults alike.
When one moves bcyond these stereotypes, however, it becomes sharply apparent that the
phrase 'conditions of work' refers to a large set of personal and professional variables. It
includes teachers' personal feelings of indignity, sometimes outrage, at being excluded
from decision-making about school practices.8 It stands for the re:ognition that
preparation for a profession. often a significant human and material investment, often leads
only to a job, one that has few institutionalized choice points for taking a path that leads to
increased status and greater responsibility (Teachers. for thP most part, must move out of
teaching to achieve career advancement within educational organizations.) Also
'conditions of work' refers to the presence or absence of real or ceremonial rewards for
exemplary service.
It is not necessary to elaborate further. The present times are witness to calls for major
reform in these and other conditions of work. The central theme of the reform agenda
seems to be paying serious intellectual and practical attention to increasing the status of
teachers toward that of true profe.,sionals. To some, this movement seems to diminish the
role of the principal. A particularly dramatic example of this perception is the confusion
surrounding the Carnegie recommendation to establish a 'lead teacher' role and the
Holmes Group's call for preparation of 'career professional teachers', both proposals
firmly rooted in a conception of teaching as professional activity that includes expectations
and rewards for leadership functions.9
These and other professional orientations to teachers and their work suggest that, on
the one hand, the teachers can and should be expected to exert considerable authority on
life in classrooms, and, on the other, should also be central participants in the life of the
school. This executive status alters in many major ways how a school functions. At the
classroom level it is assumed that teachers' knowledge and skill, particularly in terms of
decision-making about relationships between individuals and groups of students and
curriculum requirements, can be exerted with minimal external direction. It assumes that
the primary external linkage is with technical and intellectual assistance, to be used at the
discretion of the teacher because of h:s or her deep understanding of the chief elements of
the learning situation. Because it assumes that the teacher has been and will continue to be
a participant in decisions about evaluation expectations and procedures, the conception of
teacher as executive calls for teacher evaluation schemes that question the degree to which
the teacher accomplishes those goals that he or she has had a part in determining rather
than being rated on whether he or she is responding to the will of others.'°
We are considerably more knowledgeable than we were a decade or so ago about the
uncertainty that is built into the teaching-learning act. Part of our knowledge is rooted in
the understanding that, although many classrooms appear to naive observers to be alike,
situations are sharply different. Those situational differences require that teachers engage in
pedagogy that is very different from 'teaching by the numbers'. When we move beyond
that simplistic notion of teaching, the issue of how leadership can support a more advanced
conception becomes central.

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 Leadership for Curriculum Improvement: The School Administrator's Rok

The Executive Teacher, the Principal and Curriculum Improvement

There is a growing body of research evidence that can give direction to school leaders,
principals and teachers, as they create the conditions that support school change, in this
instance, curriculum improvement. In contrast to the rather fuzzy notion that principals
should be 'facilitators', however that term is defined, recent research has uncovered a
number of school variables that can be shaped by a thoughtful school leader such that the
school demonstrates conventional effectiveness, most often in the forms of student scores
on standardized achievement tests, as well as in less conventional measures of success, in
the forms of teachers' morale and beliefs about their own efficacy.
Because it is assumed here that teachers will continue to spend the major portion of
their professional time with children and youth, it is also assumed that the school principal
is the person who can and should take the responsibility for creating an environment,
through the manipulation of critical school variables, that supports meaningful curriculum
improvement. This view promotes thc conception of the school principal as someone who
undertakes the responsibility for ensuring that school conditions promote the activity of
curriculum development as a school-level focus and who understands that the typical
school-level constraints must be reduced or eliminated for this activity to take on current
and future meaning. Most importantly, this view distributes responsibility for the
curriculum work across the teacher executive cadre rather than reserving it only for
administrators.
Although there is a long history to the commonsense rhetoric that 'involvement
promotes ownership' and 'participation guarantees implementation', thc instances of
these and other slogans taking hold in schools are rare. Most often, teachers are called
together to provide advice about textbook selection, for instance, or to develop a
curriculum during a summer, work for which they are paid a stipend. It is seldom that the
advice can be Lady infomative rather than impressionistic, given the sporadic nature of the
opportunity, or for the curriculum to take hold in schools, given the practice of its
development taking place apart from ongoing school situations. Rather, teachers feel
betrayed when their advice is not followed by decision-makers and, alternately, feel
annoyed at having another curriculum guide placed on their library shelf or disappointed
that other teachers do not use the products of ti.eir sumi ser work. Because school
principals are equivalently separated from these curriculum ventvres, they have little vested
interest in moving the curriculum into place or in supporting tea.:"-i who are frustrated
at advice given but not taken.
If, however, we take the view that curriculum improvement is largely a school-level
activity, that it is dependent upon broad and deep participation by professionals in the
school, and that it must take into account situational variables, then the roles of the teacher
and the principal assume sharply different characteristics. For the purposes of this chapter,
particular attention is given here to the school principal's contribution to curriculum
improvement.

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Schools as Colksborative Cultures: Creating the Futun Now

The Principal and the School Context

We are increasingly aware of the complexity of the school as 3 human organization, and
that awareness has sharpened our understanding of which school variables can be altered
toward accomplishing positive ends." Certain context features appear to be particularly
relevant to supporting school change and improvement, including curriculum develop-
ment. These features, furthermore, appear to be ones over which the school principal has
some considerable influence. I have selected for inclusion here thosc features that seem to
be conceptually and intuitively realistic in terms of curriculum improvement work in
schools.

Teacher Participation in DecipOn-rnaking

In the conception of teaching as labor, as noted above, it is not only unimportant but
probably heretic to consider that teachers should have major participant roles in decision-
making about school policy, expectations, practice and evaluation. lf, however, the irw
of teacher as executive is adopted, it flows naturally that the teacher should be a part of the
decision-making process, partly because it is natural for executives to be so, but largely
because of the knowledge and disposition the teacher can bring to the process. This view
adopts the belief that teachers' contributions will enrich and sustain decision-makihg and
the subsequent events and activities that result from it.
When one examines typical elementary and secondary schools, however, one notes
that teachers are most often central participants only about decisions in their own
classrooms (and often only on the fringes of curricular issues even there), but are seldom
major parties to xhool-level decision-making. It is a common litany among teachers that
their voices simply are not heard, that administrative and organi7ational structures stand
between them and opportunities for participation, that they are seldom consulted about
major curricular or other alterations in practice, and that in the end they feel more like
automatons than professionals. (Recent developments in teacher education, pai ticularly
those aimed at new teachers, reinforce a dominant view of teaching as paraprofessic.nal
activity, something that can be readily taught, easily learned and quickly remediated if
found wanting.)
An imaginative, knowledgeable and thoughtful principal, however, can bring to the
teacher cadre for deliberation and decision-making those school-level issues that are
considered important at any given time.12 A typical and long-standing example might be
the articulation problems that persist across curricular areas. It is seldom that there is
smooth or easy transition from grade to grade or from subject to subject, even when the
grades and subjects arc contained in the same elementary or secondary school. The
principal can bring this issue to the attention of the school faculty at large (rather than let it
rest as a point of contention within individua! teachers), use it as a focus for thinking
together and coordinate the activities and events necessary to its resolution. Rather than
dealing in public only with what have come to be termed 'administrivia', such as
schedules, bulletins from the central office and the like, the collective profes;ional body

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 Leadenhip for Curriculum Improvement: The School Administrktor's Role

deliberates and makes decisions together about issues of major importance to senool success
and professional expectation.
Although there have been a number of formulations of the process of participat;on in
schools, an apraling one continues to be Bentzen's dialogue, decision-making. action and
evalliation.'3 Using the example of curriculum articulation above, the principal would
ensure that there was sufficient time to talk togethet about both perceptions and technical
knowledge regarding problems and prospects (dialogue), would work with teacher
colleagues toward tentative resolution of the protAm (decision), would support and
monitor the implementation of the resolution (action), and engage with the faculty in
determining the consequences of their work together (evaluation). Naturally, this
sequence is not as neatly observed in practice as it is prestFted here, but the research base is
solid and the intuitive appeal of the process is considerable. Further, it is within the realm
of a school principal's authority to create the conditions necessary for its introduction into
the school organization.

Time and Schedules

Schools are busy places, and a gooci deal of the busyness is regulated by how time is spent
and by where people are expected to be. Unfortunately, teachers in the typical school in
the United States are controlled by time and scheduies that, in extraordinarily lockstep and
effective fashion, keep them apart from one another, offer little professional relief from
practical activity and pror tote the sense of isolation that has received so much attention and
so little resolution. The school as an 'egg crate', a 'cottage industry' and a '2 by 4 by 6'
environment will do little to promote widespread curriculum improvement.
There are time and schedule dimensions of school life that principals can orchestrate to
bring about the time and space opportunities for the participatory decision-making noted
above." Most teachers have 3S part of the contractual agreements with school systems one
or more professional periods each day, time that is expected to be devoted to professional
activity. Principals can arrange for these times to coincide for certain groups (for example,
teachers in the same subject fields or grade levels) so that opportunities to engage together
about curriculum become a reality in the school culture. Principals can act as advocates
with district officers to make available professional days for teachers, days in which there
can be relatively sustained dialogue. Principals can arrange for substitute teachers so that
teachers assigned to the school can observe exemplary curricula in use. Principals can
arrange for large-group students events, thereby freeing numbers of teachers to work
together toward an improved curriculum.
Interestingly, there are few instances of shifts in time and schedules that can be
observed in large numbers of schools. When such shifts are suggested as reasonable ways
to create conditions for working on school issues, including curriculum, the problems
associated with altering business as usual come to the forefront of attention. Yet in effective
schools, schools where important teaching and learning are taking place, such flexibility is,
in fact, a new order of business as usual. This flexibility is essential to promoting school-
level deliberation and action that are systematic, ongoing and developmental.

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 Schools as Collahorathw Cukres: Creating the Future Now

Reit rds

Although conventional wisdom would have it that teachers primary preoccupation is

with salary. as det.A collective agreements with boards of education, it is
increasingly apparent that teachers' conceptions of rewords are considerably 1110Te
comprehensive and thoughtful than is sometimes beheved. Teachers. as is true for most
adults in our society. recognize that rewards c mlic in many torn)s other than the financial.
Rewards tor doing well the work of the teacher can be tangible and they can he
symbolic.'' The tangible rewards range from stipends for assuming extra responsibility (a
common feature of summer Curriculum development work) through access to
unconventional or typically unavailable curriculum resources to that most precious of
teacher commodities, time. One of the most common teacher litanies is the lack of time to
do good work, whether that work is conventional teaching or providing well tested
curriculum proposals for consideration by faculty colleagues. Time is eaten away by the
bureaucratic nature of schools and the concomitant need to complete a variety of forms and
other paperwork. It is also eroded by the dailiness of schooling. exemplified most
dramatically by the notion that teachers are not doing the work of teaching unless they are
nweting with students. Although thoughtful teachers and administrators know that
teaching involves a wide variety of non-instructional tasks such as planning, evaluating,
assessing curriculum materials. reflecting upon one '. practice. the time to engage in these
important activities is too often unavailable in the stereotypical school day and must be
squeezed out of teachers' evenings, weekends and vacations.
The principal is in a prime position to study and act upon the issue of time and how it
is expected to be spent in whools. As noted above, largely in terms of students. time is a
manipulable variable, at least the expectations for time use. A principal who adopts a
school model that has at its heart teacher participation in decision-making and
decision
implementation must alter the conditims of the school such that time for these activities is
made available in 3 systematic fashion. Such a principal would use non-instructional
persons to complete the myriad paperwork connected to school recordkeeping. would
invest in the computer technology required to minimize data storage and retrieval, would
experiment with patterns of large- and smdl-group instruction, would test a number of
flexible scheduling patterns, would work toward the institutionalization of a community
and/or parent volunteer cadre of school workers and would be an advocate of these time-
use patterns in negotiations with school system administrators and policy-makers.
In terms of symbolic rewards schools are remarkably barren in this regard. In the
same ways that teachers and the public have conic to accept, if not believe fully in, the
notion of 'a teacher is a teacher is a teacher', it is also apparent that this dictum has
contributed to the absence of symbolic occasions that suggest that some teachers, or most
of the teachers in some schools, deserve special recognition for the
excellence of their
contributions to classrooms and schools. Where are the celebrations of outstanding
professional behavior and consequences of that behavior? Where are the recognition
points
in a teacher's career? Where do teachers who provide curriculum leadership, for example.
receive their emotional and intellectual sustenance for continuing to lead?
Only recently, and in connection with various plans for teacher career ladder schemes.
have we seen any serious attention paid to systematic celebration of teachers' important

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 Leadership for Curriculum Improvemunt: The khool Administrator's Role

work.'f. The school principal. because of proximity and ongoing opportunities to observe
and participate with teachers in a building, has ample opportunity to engage M symbolic
rewarding behavior. This might include such minor events as making sure that all teachers
in a school are aware of the school-level leadership of a kw. This can he done publicly and
systematically in both print and oral forms. It might also include making opportunities
available for teachers to publish in local or national outlets the products of their curriculum
work. It might also include the designation of teacher leaders. relatively independent of
principal interaction who are in full charge of important school functions. (This last is
seen by some as yet another way to coerce teachers into doing the work of the principal.
What is not recognized in this perception is that a conception ot teaching as professional
activity, executive decision-making, also calls tor teacher leadership. Professional teachers
are eager to assume that leadership. providing, of cour+e, that it does not turn into vet
;Mot her set of hollow or pro forma ploys to increase involvement without expectations for
real ao-omphshment

raj hJ ty

Curriculum improvement is an ongoing. developmental activity. It requires reasoned

deliberation, testing of ideas in small- and large-scale ways, a thorough understanding of
the institution, the growth of technical aiid conceptual skill and understanding. and a
continually deepening sensitivity to what is working and what may need adaptation or
dramatic revision, These elements of curriculum work can seldom. if ever, , be
accomplished in a school environment that is characterized by a revolving door policy or
practice, an uncertainty about which teachers will be there tor the next year or, as Is true in
some especially difficult schools, even who will be there next month.r.
The principal can be the key to statT stability. This stability is partly the consequence
of the principal haying a clear vision of what the school is all about, the school's mission. If
You will. This expectation can guide the selection of taculty, can provide absolutely
essential bases for working with those faculty over time, and can give a teacher candidate
the understanding necessary to make a decision to join or not to join the school. Except in
rare cases where faculty appointments are the responsibility of teacher% already in the
school, the principal is the person who has both the most contact with prospective teachers
for the school and the decision-making responsibility to accept and reject from t he pool of
candidates.
Although it has been widely believed that the principal sets the general 'tone' of a
school, it is only recently that we have become aware of how this complex set of actions
has an impact on staffing. Teachers will travel many miles each day, seek out and work in
schools that have the reputation for being difficult and go well beyond conventional
expectations for performance in schools where the principal has demonstrated sensitive and
strong leadership." (Somewhat counter to the argument for stability but important in
terms of aggregating the most effective faculty group. outstanding principals are known to
be successful in ensuring that teachers who somehow do not fit the school's mission find
other places to teach, even within the constraints of system or union rules and regulations.)
Much of the content of this chapter provides the background against which staff

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creatitt,i; the Future Nmv

stability is attained and maintained. and the prineipal is the key agent in realizing these
participatory norms and. ultmutelY. in guarameeing staff stability tor curricular and other
school improvement goals.

Pre.1011.11 COlh'04111ty

An attribute of effective school mg:my/anon. is that there is 3 professional atmosphere. a

shared understanding that the members are there because ot their expectation that they
will accomplish the purposes of the organization. 'I his is sharply different front,
although not completely contradictory to, a sense ot social and personal well-being where
people enjoy one another', company' because of some non-professional atfuntv.
The principal is a particularly important figure in establishing and sustaining collegial
norms that focus on professional activity, intetactions and productivity. He or she can
contribute to the school's more social dmiensions as well, but an essential element in
making schools work is giving continuous attention to the norm of professional
collegiality'. This attention is directed toward making certain that the preoccupations of
educators m the schools are with the tasks of teaching and schooling, that teacher time is
spent well in accomplishing those tasks and that there are ample opportunities for both
tormal and informal deliberation around schooling issues, possibilities and dilemmas.
Curriculum improvement provides an ideal focus for professional collegiality. It
brings to the forefront ot attention of the partners in the schooling enterprise the content
and nature of instruction. It provides a natural forum for deliberations across subject .
matter boundaries and age-level assignments. It calls into question the human resources
that can IN: discovered or developed in the school to bring about desired changes in
students' behavior. It is a pervasive and deep-seated elenwnt of the school culture.2"
The principal who uses the curriculum as the object of attention, in short, has the
opportunity to infuse the school environment with occasions where professional
collegiahtv can be called forth, systematically demonstrated over time and rewarded. The
presence of 3 professional collegial norm in the school is probably as predictive of school
success as any other variable that can be acted upon by a principal.

Ink.'ilty .1scigatwe

It is tempting to believe, in the face of incredible odds against it, that teachers are well
connected wit h the knowledge and skill required not only to do the work of teaching well
but to gain ever more effective control over teaching throughout a career. Unfortunately.
such appears not to be the case. Teachers, quite justifiably, are often very insecure in their
command over their work and. equally justifiably, resentful of school systems' provision of
what are often seen as trivial or meaningless opportunities to grow and develop
professionally. The repetition of so-called 'in-service days' during which little if anything
is learned, the provision of workshops as independent events unconnected to a broad vision
of what teaching is. the in-one-day-and-out-the-next visits of so-called experts are quite
rightly disdained by teachers as impositions upon their valuable time and energy and as

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 Leadership Curriculum Improvement: The School A dminis tra r 's Role

expressions of low expectations for their competence and sense of professional purpose.
A school principal who cares deeply about the work of the school and who respects
teachers as growing professionals will, on the one hand, recogni7e that teachers, even in
the best of circumstances, are often isolated from intelketual stimulation and, on the other
hand, work to open up windows of opportunity such that the stimulation can occur.21 He
or she will make available new ideas on a regular and sustained basis, ideas that are not
presented as prescriptions for practice hut for dialogue and ddiberation. perhaps even
debate. There will not be a sequence of fad, of the moment but there will be attention
given over tune to intellectually and practically sound propositions for alternation of
practice. Probably as a consequence of participatory decision-making, these propositions
will be selected because ot their natural relationship to the shifting priorities of the school.
Perhaps in no school arena is it more important to have sustained linkage with
technical assistance than in curriculum improvement. Because ot the historical dependence
upon textbooks for curriculum knowledge and process. teachers are seldom as thoroughly
understanding ot the complexity ot the curriculum development process as is needed for
meaningful change to take place. Too often, teachers are exposed only to curriculum
planning as a day-to-day event, not as a flow of decisions over periods of months and
vears.2.' Schools. departments and colleges of education tend to reserve tor graduate
programs any deep exploration and understanding of various paradigms of curriculum
discourse. (This. of course. fits the teacher-as-worker conception in that it withholds from
teacher preparation programs the knowledge and skill believed to be important only for
the designated authorities in the system, that is, administrators and supervisors.)
The principal who want% to work with teachers toward curriculum change will need
to take very seriously the issue of how the school's capacity for planning and implementing
change can be increased. In some cases technical assistance can be secured from the central
office of the school system. But, if the other content of this chapter is taken to heart. the
primary purpose of this relationship will be to transfer the knowledge to the school on a
permanent basis, implying the need to help one or more teachers become the school-level
equivalent of the central office curriculum expert.

Teacher Evaluation

One of the most powerful context variables that is subject to principal influence is the
evaluation of teachers. Unfortunately, teacher evaluation is often fragmented, :acking in
specific focus and considered by teachers and administrators alike more of an interruption
in the business of schooling than as a valued instrument of the school culture. It is more
typical of teacher evaluation for it to be seldom practised than for it to be a systematic and
ongoing feature of the school. New teachers, as a consequence of local and sometimes state
regulations, are evaluated more frequently than experienced teachers, many of whom
report never being evaluated by their building-level administrators.
Although it may be conventional wisdom that teacher evaluation is a process fraught
with anxiety and antagonism between the primary participants, such need not he the case.
Teachers, new and experienced, report that, under fair and well understood conditions,
evaluation practices provide a valuable focus for continuing to learn to teach and for

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Futurr Now

understanding their contributions to the school.23 Rather than resenting evaluation.

teachers in general consider it very useful to have a mirror against which to measure their
own effectiveness and their perceptions about the consequences of their work. (Naturally,
when teacher evaluation appears to be capricious, unconnected to a public understanding
of what is valued in teaching and driven by favoritism rather than fairness, evaluation is
perceived to be a regative influence in a school.)
The evaluation of teachers can be an important aspect of promoting teacher growth
generally, and of focusing on curriculum work specifically. If the norms of a school, as
demonstrated by its mission and its decision-making structure, are centrally concerned
with improving the curriculum, the teacher evaluation scheme can include that dimension
directly. Too often, teacher evaluation procedures examine only the most stereotypical of
teacher behavior, interactions with students. Although these interactions make up the
heart of teaching activity, it is well known that teachers' work extends well beyond
'meeting with students'. In the most effective schools teachers are constantly involved in
the goal-setting and decision-making components of school life (see above). It is reasonable
to assume that a signficant number of goals and decisions are directly associated with the
school curriculum, in terms of planning, implementation and evaluation. If such is the
case, it is also reasonable to assume that the evaluation of teachers will give considerable
emphasis to the teacher's contribution to the school's curriculum enterprise.
Whether for an inexperienced or veteran teacher, it is useful to know how one's
work is perceived by one's chief administrator. This knowledge helps to shape decisions
about altering the amount and/or quality of that work as well as to provide information
about whether one wishes to remain in a given school. After all, it is certainly possible that
a teacher's particular view of schooling or perspective on appropriate pedagogy may not
'fit' certain school cultures. This can be revealed in positive as well as negative ways by
participation in a well conceptualized and appropriately conducted evaluation system. If
the evaluation procedures focus upon contribution to curriculum improvement and
experimentation as a valued aspect of teacher behavior, and a teacher does not believe that
this kind of contribution is a worthwhile competitor for other teacher activities, there is
the possibility for either renegotiated expectations or relocation.
Teacher evaluation, then, can support the development and maintenance of school
norms related to participation in curriculum work as a consequence of making public
expectations for this participation as well as providing ongoing and systematic data
regarding its degree of presence. Further, teacher evaluation data can be used as important
decision information about necessary and desirable professional development opportunities
for teachers and administrators.

Professional Growth Opportunities

A building-level administrator has explicit responsibility for ensuring that teachers are
provided access to and opportunities for professional growth.24 (This, of course, is also an
organizational responsibility of the school system as a whole.) The intensity that the
principal brings to this important function, as well as the discrimination regarding its

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focus, can influence significantly not just the teachers as individual professionals but the
school as a social organization.
The recent past has demonstrated the tendency for professional growth to be
conceptualized as remediation and be firmly embedded in issues of minimum competence.
This stance has resulted in putting in place procedures that reflect a deficit model of typical
in-service education, a means less to guarantee excellence than to be certain that teachers do
as little harm as possible.25 It is intuitively appealing to believe that professional growth
opportunities, to be influential upon teachers and upon the workplace, should be pointed
toward ambitious rather than minimal goals. At issue for the purpose of this chapter is
the
how to bring together the expectations for staff development as a school convention,
processes of staff development as institutional practices and the content of staff
development as the coherent focus for the processes.
Recent research has identified a set of staff development program variables that are
consistently associated with successful outcomes.26 These variables are particularly well
suited to curriculum improvement in that they accommodate to a high degree the
complexity of curriculum work. They can also be manipulated by a school principal
through acting upon many of the issues noted already in this chapter.
The variables associated with successful professional development programs are (1)
context-sensitivity (giving careful attention to curriculum improvement in relation to the
nature of a particular school); (2) knowledge-based (using appropriate research, theory,
proposition and values in deciding curriculum issues); (3) ongoing (recognizing that
curriculum work is cumulative over time); (4) developmental (ensuring that the curriculum
work is not just a set of independent events but, instead, is a consequence of logical and
intellectually sound relationships among components); (5) participatory and collaborative
(involving most, if not all, of the school's professional staff in curriculum improvement
activities); (6)purposeful (basing the curriculum developmcnt firmly in well articulated and
public expectations for learning); and (7) analytic and reflective (providing frequent
opportunities for participants to think together about their work and to make adjustrnents
as 2 result of their deliberations).
These staff development program features can be influenced greatly by the manner in
which a school principal provides professional growth opportunities for teachers (and,
indeed, for school administrators including the principal himself or herself). They also
match conceptually the picture of the school culture that is presented in this chapter.
Importantly, they are amenable to manipulation by the principal as he or she works with
teachers toward consideration, alteration, improvement and assessment of a school's
curriculum.

Summary

The view of curriculum work as a schoolwide activity and how that activity can be
influenced by building-level administrators has provided the content of this section. This
conception of the school as an organization, however, is dependent in large measure upon
a reconceptualization of the role of the teacher, a shift from believing and acting as if the

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

teacher is a worker, guided in large part by administrative decisions, to considering the

teacher as a school-level executive and professional colleague. This move toward executive
status for teachers suggests that principals must involve teachers systematically in school
decisions, consider them as partners in program and curriculum planning and implemen-
tation, focus evaluation goals and processes on the degree to which the teachers function as
participating executive professionals, and identify the school culture variables that must be
in place for the vision to be accomplished.

The Dilemma of the Professional Preparation of Principals

The description of the principal as an organizational architect who works primarily on the
creation of context conditions that will support curriculum improvement has taken up the
bulk of this chapter. This view is validated by research evidence, has intuitive appeal and is
conceptually relevant to thinking of schools as human organizations. Further, this view is
consonant with conceptions of curriculum work in regard to complexity, the need for
multiple human resources, the requirements of continuity over time and the belief that the
closer one is to the student and teacher populations, the more meaningful the curriculum
implementation will be.
Unfortunately, this picture of the school principal is seldom reflected in programs
designed to prepare people to assume a school administrator role. Typically, a graduate
program for principal preparation gives serious attention only to conventional
administrative objects of study. A prospective principal usually will be exposed to courses
in school law, finance, management techniques, personnel issues and the like. There might
be some attention to teacher supervision and the inclusion of a requirement for a school-
based internship of approximately a semester. Seldom is there any systematic and serious
study of curriculum or of pedagogy. As problematic, from the perspective taken in this
chapter, is the relative absence across graduate programs of disciplined attention to the
context variables in schools that have been shown to be influential upon school success,
whether success in the form of curriculum improvement or some other valued school
activity.
The end result of such principal preparation programs is that school principals are
most often unaware of the influence they could have on the school culture and ovedy
dependent upon prescriptions for practice that are firmly based in conventional perceptions
of administrative competence. The dominant pattern of school leadership appears to be
managerial. Although there are definite aspects of schooling that require skill in
management, dependence upon a management oricntation for bringing about school
improvement, curricular or otherwise, is more than likely insufficient to the task at hand.
What is required to accomplish the relationships, processes and outcomes described in
this chapter is a dramatic shift in how principals are prepared, and, concomitantly, in how
the role of the teacher is conceptualized.27 If teachers are to realize their ambitions for
professional status, the work they do and the processes that support that work will be
removed from preoccupation with 'teacher as worker'. Professional teachers will assume
much greater responsibility for the life of the school, rather than only assume responsibility
for life in a classroom. They will be supported in this and helped to be effective only if

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 Leadership for Curriculum Improvement The School Administrator's Role

buiiding principals have the necessary knowledge and skill to create the contexts for it to
happen. Principals will be empowerecho be organizational architects largely because of the
nature of their preparation.
Principal preparation programs should maintain some measure of preoccupation with
conventional topics as noted above. They must also include significantly more attention to
curricular issues, paradigms and dilemmas. They must focus on thc nature of teaching as
professional activity, including the work of teaching that takes place apart from students
and individual classrooms. Preparation programs must attend to conceptions of schools as
human organizations, ones that are malleable and susceptible to planned change by
thoughtful alterations in business as usual. There is sufficient evidence to support this view
over one that promotes management orientations as ways to bring about significant
changes in educational institutions.

Conclusion

If schools can be reconsidered as places where everyone learns, students and teachers and
administrators, and where learning across the community is a valued and supported
activity, many of the goals for schooling that have eluded all but a few schools may have
greater chance for realization.28 For this to happen, principals must take far more seriously
than is typical the curriculum enterprise as a schoolwide focus for professional interaction.
They must understand how they own behavior adds to or detracts from that focus, how
they contribute through their manipulation of the environment to the development of
norms of professional collegiality, participation in valued activity and investment in the
future of the school. Principals, to be successful leaders, must develop the habits of mind
and practice that promote interaction over isolation, goal clarity over ambiguity, public
rather than private understanding of rewards and sanctions, wise rather than trivial use of
time, meaningful rather than incoherent professional development, and linkage with
rather than isolation from the assistance that is necessary to engage effectively in schooling.
If we have learned anything during the past two decades of inquiring into schooling
practice, we have learned that the power of the school context is extraordinarily strong.
We have also learned that the school principal is a primary influence on the school context.
This knowledge should be used to support curriculum improvement as a central function
of professional educators in schools.

Notes

1 John I. Goodlad, 'The School as a Workplace,' in Staff Development; Eighty-second Yearbook of the
National Society for the Study of Education, Part 2, ed. Gary A. Griffin (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 36-61.
2 Susan J. Rosenhokz and Otto Hassler, Organizational Conditions of Teacher Learning, Interim
Report to the National Institute of Education, Grant I/ NIE-G-83-0441, 1983, unpublished
manuscript.
3 Talcott Parsons, 'General Theory in Sociology,' in Sociology Today, ed. Robert K. Mcrton,
Leonard Broom and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr. (New 'York: Basic Books, 1959), pp. 3-38.
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

4 I am grateful to David Berliner who coined this insightful title for the teacher who engages
systematically in executive decision-making in tht complex environment of the classroom. This
conception, although not so named, also guided the selection of guidelines contained in Gary A.
Giffin and Phillip S. Schlechty, 'Recommendations to the Mississippi Department of Edu-
cation,' unpublished manuscript. 1984.
5 Gary A. Griffin and Louise L. Light, Nutrition Education Curricula: Relevance, Design, and the
Probkm of Change (Paris: UNESCO. 1975).
6 Judith Schwartz, 'Teacher Directed In-Service: A Model That Works,' Teachers College Record.
86 (Fall 1984): 223-49.
7 Susan J. Rosenholtz, Otto Bassler and Kathy Hoover-Dempsey. Elementary School Organization
and the Constniction of Shared Reality. Interim Report to the National Institute of Education.
Grant # NIE-G-83-0041, 1983, unpublished manuscript.
8 At the inaugural meeting of the Holmes Group in Washington. D.C. on 30 January-1 February
1987 Albert Shanker and Mary Hatwood Futrell presented a set of views regarding teazhers'
views of their workplaces that questioned seriously the degree to which schools could improve
as a consequence of more rigorous preparation of teachers if the schools where they eventually do
their teaching do not become more receptive environments for truly professional practice.
9 Holmes Group. Tomorrow's Teachers (East Lansing, MI: Holmes Group. 1986); Carnegie Task
Force on Teaching as a Profession. A Nation Prepared: Teadiers for the 21st Century (New York:
Carnegie Corporation, 1986).
10 Arthur Wise, Linda Darling-Hammond, Milbrey McLaughlin and H.T. Bernstein, Teacher
Evaluation: A Study of Effiytive Practices (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1984).
11 Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller. 'School Improvement: Themes and Variations,' Teachers
College Record 86 (Fall 1984): 4-19.
12 Judith Warren Little. 'Norms of Collegiality and Experimentation: Workplace Conditions of
School Success,' American Educational Research Journal, 19 (Fall 1982): 325-40.
13 M. Maxine Bentzen. Changing Schools: The Magic Feather Principle (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1974), pp. 77-108.
14 Judith Warrcn Little. 'Professional Development in Schools.' address to the Chicago Area
School Effectiveness Council, Chicago, 10 February 1987.
15 Phillip C. Schlechty and Ann Walker Joslin, 'Images of Schools,' Teachers College Record. 86
(Fall 1984): 156-70.
16 ibid.
17 Susan J. Rosenholtz. (1989) 'Workplace Conditions of Teacher Quality and Commitment:
Implications for the Design of Teacher Induction Programs.' in Gary A. Griffin and Suzanne
Millies (eds). The Initial Years of Teaching: sckground Papers and Recornmendatioru, (Chicago, IL.:
University of Illinois at Chicago,).
18 Beatrice A. Ward, 'Professional Development of Teachers and School Effectiveness,' address to
the Chicago Area School Effectiveness Council, Chicago. 9 May 1986.
19 Judith Warren Little, School Success and Staff Development: The Role of Staff IT melopment in Urban
Desegregated Schools (Boulder, CO: Center for Action itesearch. 1981).
20 A major curriculum and staff development effort took place in the Yonkers (NY) Public Schools
during the period 1978-83. At first conceived as primarily curriculum development, the work
took on the character of a systemwide school improvement strategy as large numbers of teachers
participated directly as curriculum writers and less dimctly as both critics and experimenters as
pieces of the new K-12 curriculum became available. The implementation of the new curriculum
became the focus of staff development activities for all teachers in the system. In this example the
opportunities for making signficant changes in schooling appeared to be the consequence of the

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 Leadership for Curriculum Improvement: The School Administrator's Role

complex and continuous interactions between curriculum development and professional growth
activities.
21 See, for example, Gary A. Griffin and Susan Barnes, 'Using Research Findings to Change
School and Clas: room Practices; Results of an Experimental Study.' American Educational
Reseanh journal, 23 (Winter 1986): 572-86.
22 Gary A. Griffin. Student Teaching and the Commonplaces of &hoofing (Austin. TX: Research and
Development Center for Teacher Education. University of Texas at Austin, 1983).
23 Linda Darling-Hammond, 'A Proposal for Evaluation in the Teaching Profession.' Elementary
School Journal, 86 (March 1986): 531-52.
24 Griffin and Barnes, 'Using Research Findings to Change School and Classroom Practices.'
op. ca.
25 Examples of the usc of minimum standards to guide how teachers are judged can he found in
several of the new state-level teacher Programs. The consequences of this perspective about
teachers seem to be a lowering of expectations, not only by those charged with evaluating
teacher competence but by the new teachers themselves. This is discussed in Gary A. Griffin,
'The Paraprofessionalization of Teaching,' Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the
American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1985.
26 These features were the result of extensive reanalyses of three large-scale studies of teacher
education programs. lt was found that the successful instances of professional development
strategies included these features in interaction. The model that emerged and hypothetical
descriptions of how it might appear in practice are found in James V. Hoffman and Sara A.
Edwards (eds), Reality and Reform in Clinical Teacher Education (New York: Random House.
1986).
27 An extremely thoughtful picture of the dilemmas and rewards of being a school principal is
found in R. Bruce McPherson, Robert L. Crowson and Nancy). Pitner, Managing Uncertainty:
Administrative Theory and Pracace in Education (Columbus. OH: Charles E. Merrill. 1986).
28 Susan Rosenholtz reports that in the relatively ineffective schools in her sample teachers report
that it takes approximately one and a half years to learn to teach. In modestly effective schools
teachers report that it takes about five years to learn to teach. In the most effective schools
teachers report that one never learns how to teach because becoming a teacher is a continuous
process. There appears to be a strong relationship between good schools and the context feature
of a community of learning.

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 Chapter Ii

Staff Development and School Change*

Matey Wallin McLaughlin and David D. Marsh

The desultory status of staff development as education's neglected stepchild is changing.

Until recently there was little interest in the professional development of experienced
teachers. Teacher training institutions were preoccupied with pre-service education and
local school districts were struggling to accommodate burgeoning student enrollments
and build new schools. But now issues related to staff development have moved to center
stage. One reason for the new status of staff development is the recognition that many of
the 'Great Society' education reform efforts fell short primarily because planners seriously
underestimated teacher training needs. In retrospect it was unrealistic to expect that
classroom teachers could bring about significant change in the services provided to such
special student groups as the disadvantaged and the bilingual without substantial in-service
education. In the absence of such training it is not surprising that the result of many reform
efforts was, disappointingly, more of the same. An important lesson of the so-called
'Decade of Reform' (1965-75) is that even the 'best' educational practice is unlikely to
fulfill its promise in the hands of an inadequately trained or unmotivated teacher. We have
learned that the problem of reform or change is more a function of people and
organizations than of technology.
A second reason for the current interest in staff development is that the unprecedented
growth of the 1970s has been followed by an equally dramatic decline in pupil enrollment.
The market for new teachers is practically non-existent and for the first time in nuny
years local school districts find themselves with a stable, and tenured, staff. Thus teacher
training institutions are confronted with the need to move from a fOCUs on pre-service
education; local school districts can no longer rely on 'new hires' to bring fresh ideas into
district classrooms and must face the problem of how to upgrade the skills of the teachers
they already have.
However, the only consensus that appears to exist about staff development is that
what we have now is ineffective and a waste of time. The general feeling is that most staff
development programs have benefited neither teachers nor students. If effective staff
development is not an isolated workshop or an evening extension course. What is it ?

This chapter was published originally in Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller (eds), Stair Develapme-nt: New
Demands, New Realities, New Perspectives (New York: Teachers College Press, 1979), pp.69-94.

21 3
 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Rand's study of federal programs supporting educational change looked closely at the local
process of change and at the factors that support teacher growth.1 The Change Agent
study deals with a number of issues that are central to the design and
implementation of
staff development programs: for example, what motivates teachers to acquire new skills?
What helps teachers to retain these skills? What can the principal do to support and sustain
teacher change? What is the role of the central administration in the efforts of classroom
teachers to improve their practices? This chapter draws on the Rand Change Agent study
to suggest issues that will be central to rethinking both the nature and the role of staff
development programs.

The Rand Findings

The Rand study examines staff development in the context of broader changes
in schools
associated with various types of federally funded projcs..ts. The study is rich
in implications
for in-service education for several reasons. The study used 'outcome' measures that
correspond directly to the anticipated results of in-service education. These
outcomes
include change in teacher practices, pupil growth and the retention of
teacher change in
the form of continued use of project methods and materials following
termination of
federal funds. The study also included many of the process variables considered in in-service
education such as teas.her commitment and involvement, staff reward
structures, skills
training and classroom follow-up and the role of the principal or school climate in teacher
growth and the maintenance of change. Finally, in the view of the study's
respondents
'successful change' and 'staff development' were essentially synonymous.
The Change Agent study identified four clusters of broad factors as crucial to the
successful implementation and continuation of local change efforts: institutional motivation,
project implementation strateqies; institutional leadership, and certain teacher characteristks.
This
section will discuss each of these clusters of factors and examine its relationship to the
extent of project goals achieved, the extent of teacher change, the extent of student
growth and the continued use of teacher methods and materials following
termination of
federal funds.2

Institutional Motivation

Institutional motivation is the first cluster of factors that the study found to be critical to
project outcomes. A school district may undertake a special project, and a school or teacher
may agree to participate in the project, for very different reasons. A district
may initiate a
change agent project to address a high priority need or it may start a project to
ameliorate community pressures, to appear 'up-to-date', or simply because the
money is
there. Similarly, teachers participate in a special project effort because they are 'told to',
because it is their own idea, because of collegial pressure, or because they
see the project as
an opportunity for important professional growth. The institutional motivations that
characterize a planned change effort significantly influence both project implementation

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 Stair Dewlopment and School Change

incorporated into
and the e:ctent to which project methods and strategies arc eventually
regular school or district practice.
Not surprisingly, the commitment of project teachers is very important. The Rand
Change Agent study found that teacher commitment had the most consistently positive
relationship to all the project outcomes (e.g., percentage of project goals achieved, change
in teachers, change in student performance. continuation of project methods and
materials). The importance of teacher commitment to the achievement of project goals is
make it happen.
axiomatic: project success is unlikely unless teachers want to work hard to
Though few disagree that teacher commitment is a necessary ingredient to project
success, there is debate about the extent to which the commitment of teachers can be
affected by policies or program strategies. A number of practitioners and planners
perhaps turned somewhat cynical by a parade of disappointing change efforts have come
teachers are eager to
to believe that teacher commitment is essentially 'immutable': some
of such a
change and learn new practices, and some simply are not. The policy implications
that is, efforts to improve educational practice should be
perspective are discouraging
limited to those teachers who evidence strong initial interest and motivation. The Change
Agent study suggests a much less deterministic view. Both the fieldwork and the survey
analycis suggest that teacher commitment is influenced by at least three factors: the
mot,vation of district managers, project planning strategies, and the scope of the proposed
change agent project. How does each of these factors affect teachers commitment?

Motivation of District Managers

The attitudes of district administration about a planned change effort were a 'signal' to
teachers as to how seriously they should take a special project. The fieldwork offer%
many of whom supported the project rals who
numerous examples of teachers
decided not to put in the necessary extra effort simply because they did not feel that district
administrators were interested. In the absence of explicit district support for their efforts
many teachers felt that the personal costs associated with a
change effort were not in their
professi..nal self-interest and were unlikely to make a difference in
the long run.
Consequently. few of the projects that wer :. initiated by the district primarily for
opportunistic or political reasons were effectively implemented; none was officially
continued after the end of federal funding. A-. one respondent put it. 'The superintendent
had better believe in the project give it his personal backing and support. Teacher
confidence is essential; teachers should see in the beginning that top administration believe
lin the project) and arc committed to it.'
The Change Agent study further suggests that administrative support must be
generated at the outset. Given the multiple demands facing district administrators, local
project planners cannot expect to secure this interest and backing once the project activities
arc under way. But even were this possible, the initial disinterest of the district leadership is
likely to leave a negative legacy upon the commitment and attitudes of project teachers.

Project Planning Strategies

The commitment of both district administrators and teachers was also influenced by the
way the project was planned initially. Four general patterns of project planning
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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

characterized change agent projects and had very different implications for staff
commitment and project outcomes. One could be called a 'top-down' strategy: project
plans were made almost entirely in the central office and announced to would-be
implementors. A second pattern, 'grass-roots planning', was just the opposite: plans were
devised by teachers or school-based project staff with little involvement of district
administrators. A third planning strategy was one of essentially 'no planaing': a project
plan and project funds were imported into the district with little or no involvement from
district staff at any level. 'Collaborative planning' characterized the fourth general
planning strategy. In this mode project plans were made with equal input from teachers
and district managers. Although this style was rarely characterized by conscious notions of
'parity', participants at all levels in the system were treated as partners in the process of
planning for a special project effort. Of these four planning strategies, a collaborative
planning style was necessary to both the short-term and long-term success of a planned
change effort.
Top-down planning strategies typically resulted in indifferent implementation and
spotty continuation even when district officials were committed to project goals and
serious about the change effort. Top-down planning usually met with indifference or
resistance from the school staff. Teachers felt that such projects were not 'theirs' but the
central administrators' and had little personal investment in project objectives or success.
Top-down planning strategies often resulted in disappointing projects for another
reason: central office staff were insufficiently aware of the needs and practices of particular
schools, classrooms and teachers. One teacher made this revealing comment:
This project hasn't worked out and its main effect has been to cause a close,
well-organized faculty to turn to distrust each other. This was the result of
forcing a program on a school, using an outside coordinator unfamiliar with
the school and faculty, and not having the full support of teachers. I personally
felt the project ideas were good and could have worked if the teachers in our
school had been involved in the planning.
Another teacher in an unsuccessful project complained. 'The pioject was planned and
designed without the knowledge and consent of the teachers at the school .. . the planner
had hardly ever been to our school.' Top-down planning generally fails even with the best
of intentions both because it cannot rnerate the staff commitment necessary to project
success and because this planning style does not incorporate the special knowledge and
suggestions of the staff who will be responsible for project implementation.
The second planning strategy, grass-roots planning, was only a little more successful.
Projects that were conceived and planned at the school level with only cursory review by
central office staff often evidenced high initial teacher commitment. But, in the absence of
explicit support from district managers, that commitment waned over the course of
project implementation. Project teachers found it difficult to sustain initial enthusiasm and
motivation when there was little indication that district officials also cared. In the long run
grass-roots projects generally disappeared as completely as top-down projects. Though
teacher-initiated project practices and methods could be found in isolated pockets of the
district, without district support even successful projects withered away because of factors
such as staff turnover, indifference or lack of information on the part of building principals.

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Only the fourth (and more time-consuming) planning strategy, collaborative

planning, generated the broad4ased institutional support necessary to effective implemen-
tation and to the continuation successful practices. Projects adopting this planning style
actively engaged both teaching and administrative staff from the pre-proposal period
through implementation. thereby gaining consensus and support from teachers, principals
and central office personnel. Evidence of the Change Agent study on this point gives the lie
to the conventional wisdom that teacher-initiated projects are usually more successful than
are those conceived downtown. 'Who' originated a project did not matter. For example,
teacher change and the continuation of project strategies were not significantly different in
schools that had originated the project from what they were in schools that had been asked
to participate. What did matter was 'how' project planning was carried out, regardless of
the source of the idea.

Scope of Changc
A third factor that influenced teacher nmtivation is the scope of change proposed by a
project. The Rand study found that the more effort required of project teachers, and the
greater the overall change in teaching style attempt xi by the project, the higher the
proportion of committed teachers. Complex and an6itious projects Wcfe more likely to
elicit the enthusiasm of teachers than were routinc and limited projects. The reason for
this, we believe, is that ambitious projects appeal to a teacher's sense of professionalism.
Evidence horn the Change Agent study indicates that a primary motivation for teachers to
take on the extra work and other personal costs of attempting change is the belief that they
wi:1 become better teachers and their students will benefit. Fieldwork observation and
interviews with practitioners suggest that the educational promise of an innovation and
the apparent opportunity for pre Tessional growth are crucial factors in generating teacher
commitment.
The importance of professionalism, or intrinsic motivation, to teacher motivation
(and thus to project success) raises questions about the utility of extrinsic rewards as a
project strategy. Many groups have proposed extrinsic rewards credit on the district
salary scale, extra pay and so on as possible solutions to the 'problem' of teacher
motivation. Although the Change Agent study did not consider this issue comprehen-
sively, it did examine the effects of extra pay for attending staff training sessions. Some-
times this strategy was used 'to get the teachers to go along' with a project, or to 'sweeten
the pill'. Teachers who received extra pay for training (about 60 per cent of thc sample)
were less likely than others to report a high percentage of project goals achieved. These
teachers also reported less improvement in student performance, especially academic
performance, than did other teachers in the study.
These findings support the idea that instrinsic professional rewards such as those
implicit in the proposed scope of change are far more important in motivating teachers.
Some project directors commented that although the teachers appreciated the extra pay,
the pay alone did not induce teachers to work hard to learn new skills if professional
motivation was absent. As one teacher remarked, 'I'll go Ito the training session(, and I'll
collect my $30, but I don't have to listen.'

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Project Implementation Strategies

The second critical factor affecting the outcomes of local change efforts was the project
implementation strategy. Among the most important choices made during the initial
planning period were those about how to put the project into practice. Local planners had
considerable discretion in selecting project implementation strategies. For example, similar
reading projects utilized very different staff training strategies and project governance
procedures. The most important of those local choices were those that determined the
ways in which the school staff would be assisted in acquiring the new skills and
information necessary to project implementation staff development strategies.
Project strategies that fostered staff learning and change had two complementary
elements: (1) staf training activities; and (2) training support activities. The study found that
well conducted staff naining and staff training support activities improved project
implementation. promoted student gains, fostered teacher change and enhanced the
continuation of project methods and materials. These training and support variables alone
accounted for a substantial portion of the variation in project success and continuation.
This in itself is not a surprising finding. After all, teachers have to acquire new skills
or behavior if project-related changes are to influence student performance and if project
strategies are to be continued. But the yerv different contributions may be these two
activities staff training and support activities furnish important insights for staff
development planners.

Staff Training
Staff training activities were typically skill-specific instruction in how to carry out a new
reading program or introduction to new mathematics materials, for example. As such, this
component of a project's implementation strategy corresponds most directly to the
traditional focus of many in-service teacher education efforts. Skill training usually
involved project workshops. and could occur prior to project implementation, during the
first year of project operation or after the first year. By themselves, staff training activities
had strong, positive effects on the percentage of project goals achieved, and on student
performance in the areas of both achievement and behavior. However, skill-specific
training had only a small and not significant effect on teacher change and on the
continuation of project methods and materials. In other words, skill-specific training alone
influenced student gains and project implementation only in the short run.
This finding is puzzling at first glance. After all. if staff training activities significantly
and positively affected student performance during the period of project operation, why
didn't this effect continue after special funding was terminated? The Change Agent study
results suggest a straightforward explanation for this apparent anomaly. Skill-specific
training activities only have transient effect because, by themselves, they do not support staff
learning and teacher change. Skill-specific training enabled teachers to implement new project
methods and materials under the aegis of special project operation. But this
implementation was often mechanistic and did not necessarily constitute teacher
assimilation of the new techniques and procedures. Thus, when the supports of the funded
project operation were removed, teachers discontinued using the practices that apparently

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enhanced student performance because they had never really learned them in the first place.
Skill-specific training, in short, can affect project implementation and student outcomes,
but it does not affect the longer-term project outcomes of teacher
change and
continuation. Staff Fupport activities are necessary to sustain the gains of how-to-do-it
training.

Staff-Support Activities
Projects pursued a number of activities to support teacher assimilation of the skills and
information delivered in training sessions. In particular, the study examined the
contribution of classroom assistance by resource personnel, the use of outside consultants,
project meetings and teacher participation in project decisions. Taken together as a support
strategy, these activities (whe.. they were seen as useful by the school staff) had a major
positive effect as did staff training on the percentage of project goals achieved and on
student performance. But in contrast to staff training activities, these support activities also
had strong positive and direct effects on the longer-term project outcomes --- teacher
change and continuation of project methods and materials. Well conducted staff support
activities not only reinforce the contribution of staff training. but they also make their own
important contribution to promoting teacher change and to supporting staff assimilation
of project practices.
Training is essentially an information transfer providing teachers with necessary
techniques. But, as the first phase of this studv found, the process of implementation is a
process of mutual adaptation in which teachers modify their practices to conform to project
requirements and project technologies are adapted to the day-to-day realities of the school
and classroom. Staff support activities, in particular classroom assistance from resource
personnel and project meetings, can provide the feedback project staff need to make these
modifications. Through these support activities, skill-specific training can be 'individual-
ized' for project teachers in terms of timing and content modification.
Staff support activities can also aid teachers in understanding and applying complex
new strategies in ways that standard training in terms of both form and content
usually cannot do effectively. For example, even a carefully planned staff training provam
usually cannot anticipate the nature or the timing of project staff assistance requirements,
especially as they relate to particular classroom problems. Likewise, staff often cannot
perceive what they need to know until the need arises. For both reasons the needs of
project staff arc not always predictable or synchronized with scheduled training sessions.
The utilization of local resource personnel or consultants to provide 'online' assistance can
help remedy these inevitable deficiencies. However, it is important to note that the quality
of this assistance is critical. The study found that the amount of classroom assistance from
local resource personnel did not matter when teachers perceived their help as useful or very
useful. But the frequency of classroom visits did have an effect whcn it was not perceived as
helpful. Numerous visits to the classroom by district or project staff were counter-
productive when teachers did not feel they were being helped. This assistance actually
interfered with project implementation.
Similarly, it was better for projects to use no outside consultants than to use poor ones
and much better than to use poor ones often. Good consultants helped by providing

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concrete practical advice to project teachers showing them how to adapt project
methods or materials to their own situation. Good consultants assisted teachers in learning
how to solve problems for themselves, rather than by solving problems for them.
Ineffective consultants often furnished advice that was too abstract to be useful. In making
a recommendation for improving project implementation, one teacher advised, 'Be sure
consultants know (the project] goals and some specific things to tell the teachers and not a
lot of worthless generalizations and theory.' Another teacher remarked, 'I found most (of
the consultants) to be completely lacking in their exposure to, familiarity with, and
willingness to come in and work with young children. Many were good philosophically,
but not practically, in the day-to-day approach and follow-up.'
Ironically, even 'good' consultants diminished project outcomes in some cases.
Consultants often unintentionally pre-empted staff learning opportunities and prevented
teachers from learning to implement project strategies for themsleves. One superintendent
attributed the failure of a project to this factor: 'The firs, year, teachers came in from other
communities and worked with our teachers. The folk wing year, our teachers were alone
and it was impossible to fully implement the program. The negative effects of consultants
that appear in the Change Agent data can be interpreted as a result of both too little and
too much help from consultants.
Frequent project meetings were another support strategy that aided teacher efforts to
adapt project precepts to their classrooms and assimilate new strategies. Project meetings
provided 3 forum whereby teachers could learn from one another's experience. Project
meetings also supported the affective needs of teachers as they attempted to implement
change. As one teacher commented, 'Regular monthly meetings are absolutely critical for
reinforcement and building interpersonal relationships for co-workers.' However, like
consultants and classroom assistance, if meetings were not perceived as useful, they had a
detrimental effect on project operations. Frequent meetings that were not judged useful by
teachers were strongly associated with less successful projects in the survey sample. The
fieldwork suggested that meetings were unproductive when they dwelled primarily on
details of project administration and record-keeping and rarely included opportunities for
staff to share their problems and reports on process. Such meetings did little to enhance
classroom implementation. and teachers found them irritating.
All of these projects activities to support training classroom assistance, outside
consultants, frequent meetings contributed to project outcomes in yet another and
equally critical way. These support activities were necessary for the development of clarity
concerning the goals of the project and the implications of project strategies for ongoing
classroom practices. It is important to note that clarity was not the same as prograrnmatk
specificity, nor were these factors necessarily related.
The analysis showed that specificity of goals had a major effect on implementation:
the more specific the teachers felt the project goals were, the higher the percentage of goals
the project achieved, the greater the student improvement attributed to the project, and
the greater the continuation of both project methods and materials. Program planners and
grant-makers. hoping to enhance special project outcomes, have placed increasing
emphasis on the careful specification of project objectives. However, such programmatic
specificity is only one component of the broader specificity so important to project success.

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Even more important is the second component of specificity namely, conceptual clarity,
or the extent to which project staff are clear about what they are to do and understand the
rationale underlying project activities.
Programmatic specificity is fundamentally a project design issue and, by itself, does
not guarantee staff clarity about project operations. There were many projects in the study
in which even clearly stated project objectives made little sense to project staff in terms of
their day.to-day responsibilities. Furthermore, programmatic specificity of the type
advocated by grant-makers and planners is often not feasible for many ambitious projects,
such as projects that focus on change in classroom organization. Conceptual clarity may be
fostered but cannot be assured by specific project goal statements or by the use of
packaged materials or by lectures from outside consultants. The conceptual clan 7.s, critical
to project success and continuation must be achieved during the process of project
implementation it cannot be 'given' to staff at the outset. Frequent staff meetings and
timely classroom assistance by resource personnel are strategies that provide staff with this
practical understanding concerning the project goals and methods promulgated in training
sessions and project designs.
The effectiveness of both training and training support activities was enhanced by
another project implementation strategy: teacher participation in project decision-making.
Decisions and choices during implementation would not be necessary if projects were
always carried out as originally planned. Most projects, however, particularly successful
projects, underwent modification in their initial plans and objectives, and these adaptations
were almost always positive improvements.
The strong, positive effect of teacher participation on the percentage of project goals
achieved suggests that teacher inputs can significantly improve implementation. Teachers,
because of their day-to-day involvement with project operations, are ;t1 a much better
position than district specialists or even the project director to identify problems and
recommend feasible solutions. One elementary school principal advised, 'Give the
classroom teacher a strong role in planning any project that he or she is going to be
working with. Then listen and change when things do not go as planned on paper.'
Teacher participation in decisions about the project had an important instrumental
value: teacher suggestions improved the implemented project, and staff participation in
reviewing and modifying project procedures significantly enhanced staff clarity. Teacher
participation also made an important affective contribution to project implementation.
namely, development of teachers"sense of ownership'.

Institutional Leadership
Institutional leadership is a third important factor for the successful implementation and
continuation of a local change project. Indeed, the Change Agent study suggests that
project planners need to enlarge their notion of the leadership critical to project outcomes.
District planners invest considerable time in identiying competent, enthusiastic leadership
for special project efforts, because their concern about leadership typically focuses on the
project director. Research underscores the importance of project director leadership to
project outcomes. The Change Agent data show that the more effective the project

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director (in the view of teachers), the higher the percentage of project goals achieved, and
the greater the student improvement observed as a result of the project. An effective
project director has significant instrumental value to project implementation: a director's
special skills or knowledge can foster staff understanding of project goals and operations,
minimize the day-to-day difficulties encountered by classroom teachers, and provide the
concrete information staff need to learn during the course of project operations.
The data also indicate, however, that effective project leadership plays only a short-
term and circumscribed role in the outcome of local change agent projects. The
effectiveness of a project director had no relationship to project continuation or to teacher
change. Both the fieldwork and the survey analysis point to other components of school
district leadership as critical to these important longer-term project outcomes.
The support and interest of central office staff was, as suggested earlier, very
important to staff willingness to work hard to make changes in their teachig practices.
Though a skilled and enthusiastic project director may be able effectively to implement a
special project in the absence of explicit support from 'downtown', project staff are
unlikely to continue using project strategies unless district administrators express interest.
The attitude of the building principal was even more critical to the long-term results
of a change agent project. The support of the school principal for a special project was
directly related to the likelihood that staff would continue to use project methods ano
materials after special funding is withdrawn. Furthermore, principal support positively
affected project implementation. The Phase II survey asked teachers to indicate the attitude
of their principal toward the project. Few of the projects in which the principal was
perceived to be unfavorably inclined toward the project scored well on any of the study's
outcome measures percentage of goals achieved, teacher change. student improvement,
continuation. Some pro;?cts with neutral or indifferent principals scored well, particularly
in the percentage of goals achieved, but these projects typically focused on individualized
instruction or curriculum revision activities that could occur almost completely 'behind
the classroom door' and in which highly effective directors could compensate for
lukewarm principals. Projects having the active support of principals were most likely to
succeed, and to be continued.
Why is the principal, not the project director, so important to long-term project
outcomes? At the end of federal funding the principal must take a stance toward the
project and make a variety of decisions that explicitly or implicitly influence what happens
to project methods and materials within the school. In partiailar, the principal is chiefly
responsible for establishing the school's educational policie, mid philosophy. A project that
is in agreement with the school's general operating style would he more likely to be
sustained than one that was not. For example. the fieldwork examined an open-classroom
project that operated in a very traditional school as part of a district-wide project. Once the
umbrella of project authority was removed, the principal made it clear to project teachers
in the school that he wished to see their classrooms returned to the traditional pattern; he
also strongly discouraged non-project teachers who expressed interest in trying some of
the project ideas in their classrooms. In the same district, however, the principal at another
school strongly supported the open-classroom approach. After the project ended, this
principal encouraged the use of project methods in other classrooms and allocated
discretionary money to purchase the necessary materials.

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In short, the building principal gives subtle but nonetheless strong messages
concerning the 'legitimacy' of continuing project operations in the school a message
that teachers cannot help but receive and interpret in terms of their professional self-
interest. Support from the principal is also important to the longevity of special project
strategies because of the staff turnover experienced by most schools. If project methods are
not to dissipate over time, the princiril will have to familiarize new teachers with project
concepts and techniques. As one superintendent observed: 'A large turnover in staff
[makes it hard to] sustain volunteer activities. If you get a principal who isn't in agreement
with project philosophy, it can be difficult to keep a program in a school.'3
One way in which principals demonstrated their active support for project activities
as well as gained the information necessary to promote r.mtinuation of project
strategies was to participate in project training sessions. Involvement in project training
updated their classroom skills and knowledge, and equipped them to lend advice and a
sympathetic ear to project teachers. But equally as important, the attendance of principals
in project training imparted some important messages to teachers notably, their
personal commitment and their view that the project was a school effort in which
everyone was expected to cooperate and work hard. In this way principal attendance at
project sessions helped undermine the 'deficit' model that sometimes colors staff training
activities and builds resentment of the project as something done 'to' teachers.
In sunnnary, the quality of the leadership available to project staff was critical to the
successful implementation and continuation of change agent project efforts. However, it
was not enough simply to provide the special project with a skilled and enthusiastic project
director. The efforts of even a talented director were likely to be ephemeral unless central
office leadership supported the efforts of project staff and unless the school principal
activity engaged in project activities. Evidence from the Change Agent study suggests that
the task confronting planners in establishing effective leadership for project activities must
be construed in broad institutional terms, not in narrow, special project terms.
The study found that the school climate was as important as the principal as an
influence on continuation of project methods and materials once federal funding was
terminated. The Rand data indicate that good working relationships among teachers
enhanced implementation and promoted continuation of project methods and materials.
Good working relationships and teacher participation in project dee: ;ons were correlated:
the development of the one helped the development of the other. k addition, the quality
of the school's organizational climate whether teachers felt their school was a good
school to work in, had esprit de corps, was efficient and was managed effectively by the
principal influenced the quality of project relationships. The correlation between
participation in project decisions and good staff working relationships draws attention to
the implementation strategies chosen for the project; in particular, the influence of the
general school climate a background factor not directly related to project operations
underlines the significance of district site selection. Good project working relationships
could develop in 'average' schools when teachers participated in project decisions;
conversely. 'good' schools could develop good project working relationships without
a supportive
teacher participation in decisions. However, projects combining
organizational environment with a strategy of teacher participation in project adaptation
were most able to implement effectively and continue their innovations.
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Teacher Characteristics
The fourth general factor that the Rand study found had
major influence on the outcome
of planned change efforts is teacher characteristics: the
attitudes, abilities and experience
teachers bring to a special project effort. A 'conventional
wisdom' has developed
concerning the effects of various teacher attributes: that older teachers
are less willing to
change, that the best ideas come from young teachers, that teachers with
high verbal
ability are more able to achieve gains in student performance
and so on. Such beliefs
suggest that the personal characteristics of project teachers could have significant
import
for the outcome of planned change efforts. The study collected
information on several
teacher attributes most often cited as significantly influencing both student performance
and the outcome of innovative projects: age, educational background,
verbal ability, years
of experience, sense of efficacy.
Three teacher attributes years of experience, verbal ability, sense of efficacy had
strong and significant, but very different, effects on most of the project
outcomes.
Specifically, the number of years of teacher experience was nqatively
related to all of the
dependent variables, with the exception of teacher continuation of
where there was no relationship. In other words, the project techniques
more experienced the project
teacher, the less likely was the project to achieve its goals, and the less
likely was the project
to improve student performance.
These relationships in large part are attributable to the fact that the
more experienced
teachers also were less likely to change their practices as
a result of project participation.
Moreover, both the fieldwork and the survey analysis
suggest that teacher tenure has a
curvilinear relationship to project outcomes. That is, teachers
seem to 'peak out' after five
to seven years of teaching either maintaining their level of effectiveness (in the best
cases) or becoming less effective. For many teachers in the Rand
study, the passage of time
on the job seemed to diminish their capacity to change and to dampen their enthusiasm
for
innovations and for teaching. This 'calcifying' effect seemed less
an intrinsic characteristic
of teachers or of the teaching role than testimony
to the way schools are managed and the
way professional development activities arc provided for staff.
In particular, the professional development needs of experienced
teachers are different
from those of new teachers. For example, the workshop
approach that may be useful for
teachers still mastering the classroom craft is
not sufficiently relevant or challenging to
more experienced teachers. After several years in the classroom, teachers
want to explore
new areas and take more responsibility for their professional growth, District-wide
even school-wide or
in-service education activities that only elaborate on present practice
usually are seen as a waste of time by experienced
staff. But few schools or districts
explicitly address the professional development needs of their tenured
staff. Thus it is not
entirely surprising that experienced teachers sometimes feel
there is little challenge left for
them and 'turn off' from teaching.
A second teacher characteristic, verbal ability, was significantly
related to only one
outcome measure: total improvement in student performance:* However,
when student
performance was broken down into its cognitive and affective
components, the data
indicate that teacher verbal ability affects only achievement; it
apparently had no significant
effect on student affective development.
The most powerful teacher attribute in the Rand analysis
was teacher sense of efficacy
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a belief that the teacher can help even the most difficult or unmotivated students.5 This
teacher characteristic showed a strong, positive relationship to all of the project outcome
measures. Furthermore, the effects of a sense of efficacy were among the strongest of all the
relationships identified in the analysis. Teacher sense of efficacy was positively related to the
percentage of project goals achieved, the amount of teacher change, total improved
student performance and the continuation of both project methods and materials.
Teachers' attitudes about their own professional competence. in short, appear to have
major influence on what happens to change agent projects and how effective they are!'
An important question for planners is the extent to which a teacher's sense of efficacy
can be affected by project design choices, or whether teacher perceptions about their
competence is simply a 'given'. The study did not measure this teacher attribute before
project activities began. and so cannot report 'before and after' findings. However, the
information that was collected furnishes important insights for planners of in-service
education. first, teacher sense of efficacy was not significantly related to ;ears of
experience or to verbal ability. In other words, a highly verbal, experienced teacher is no
more or less likely to feel a sense of efficacy than are other teachers. Second, teachers haying
a high sense of efficacy tended to be part of projects that placed heavy emphasis on the staff
support activities discussed earlier. That is, projects that involved teachers in project
decision-making, that provided timely and ongoing assistance in the classroom and that
had frequent .taff meetings were more likely to have teachers with a high sense of efficacy
than were projects with narrowly defined goals, that had little teacher participation or that
relied heavily on the use of outside specialists to implement the project.
An obvious question is whether low efficacy and high efficacy teachers were 'selected
into' these different project types. Did project directors, based on their assessment of a
sense of competence on the part of project teachers, encourage or discourage teacher
participation in the project? Or did 'low efficacy' teachers tend to avoid projects in which
they would have to play a major role? Though such self-selection undoubtedly occurred to
some extent, the fieldwork suggests that project training support activities functioned to
enhance teacher efficacy. Staff support activities seemed to promote teacher efficacy in
several ways. They provided timely assistance to teachers and a forum in which teachers
could talk through project strategies in terms of their own classrooms and thus feel
confident in utilizing new ideas. Furthermore, they allowed peer encouragement and
development of a sense of ownership in project activities. Staff support activities provided
teachers with crucial collegial support in their efforts to change and grow.
Projects that sought staff participation and involvement in project decision-making
also conveyed the message to teachers that school administrators viewed them as
competent professionals able to make important decisions about project activities and
objectives. A 'Pygmalion effect' of sorts may operate in projects where teachers are given a
responsible role. Teachers who are given an opportunity to make decisions about project
activities and take responsibility for the substantive direction of their decisions soon acquire
such skills.
In summary. the Rand study confirms much of the conventional wisdom concerning
the importance of teacher characteristics to the outcome of a planred change effort. But,
more importantly, this study also suggests ways in which project design choices and
district leadership can influence these important factors.
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Implications

The Rand study presents a fundamentally different viw of staff development or in-service
education from that typically found iT, the literature or in practice. The study moves away
from a traditional view of staff deveh qiient as a concern about the governance, financing,
staffing, delivery and reward structures for 'those workshops' or as a problem of
technology transfer. Instead, the Rand study emphasizes learning for professionals as part
of ongoing program building in an organizational context. This view of staff development
is one of.the most important implications of the study.
As part of this view of staff development, the Rand study suggests a number of new
assumptions to guide the design and implementation of staff development activities. First.
the study suggests that in terms of knowledge about the practice of teaching, teachers
often represent the best clinical expertise available. For example. in teaching. as in other
clinical settings, the appropriate strategy to resolve problems is unclear. The state of
educational research is such that is is difficult to reach consensus concerning the value of
almost any set of teaching strategies. For teachers, tlw learning task is more like problem-
solving than like mastering 'proven' procedures. Consequently, outside experts and
tightly structured training are relatively less helpful than they are in technology-dominant
activities such as industry. The instrumental value of involving classroom teachers in
identifying problems and solutions is clearly expressed in the Rand study.
Second, the Rand study describes the process by which an innovation comes to be
used in a local setting as adaptive and heuristic. This mode of implementation exemplifies
the professional learning process for the projects in the Rand study. In a sense teachers and
administrative staff need to 'reinvent the wheel' each time an innovation is brought into
the school setting. Reinventing the wheel helps the teachers and administrative staff
understand and adjust the innovation to local needs. Learning occurs throughout this
adaptation process as staff come to understand their own needs for additional information.
Even clarifying the purpose of the innovation is a learning process in itself. Conceptual
clarity about project goals in the study evolved as staff learned to understand the
implications and nuances of the innovation.
Besides having training that is individualized according to learning rate and learning
style, the study found that training and staff support play different roles in this professional
learning process. Skill training typically provides the cognitive information and general
skills, which then must be adapted within individual classrooms. Outside consultants
typically had a difficult time in meeting the learning needs of staff within the training and
support staff framework. Whether intentional or not, consultants typically upstaged staff.
A third and related assumption communicated by the Rand study is that professional
learning is a long-term, non-linear process. In the study innovation sometimes took one or
several years to achieve full implementation. Over this time teachers and administrative
staff needed to learn what innovation was needed and what the innovation ought to look
like in their particular school setting. They needed to learn what help was needed to
implement the innovation as well as the new ideas and skills contained in the skill training.
They also needed to learn how to apply these skills or ideas in their classrooms and even
how to retain these skills or materials once federal funding had terminated. The
continuation of project methods and materials can be seen as a learning problem where the

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methods and materials are used under new conditions the absence of the supporting
structure provided by federal funds.
A fourth assumption suggested by this study concerns viewing staff development as
part of the program building process in whools. In the Rand study the process of adoption
of a specific innovation helped define the program improvement goal for teachers.
adniinistrators and project staff. It helped to coalesce the commitment and energies of these
groups around the implementation of this innovation and focused the resources and
expertise needed to complete the learning process. The three groups teachers,
administrators, project staff did not necessarily see the goals of the project ii: congruent
terms for several reasons. Moreover, as described above, conceptual clarity evolved as
people came to understand the innovation more thoroughly. Consequently, the
innovation process helped to focus the energy, commitment, resources and expertise for
staff development even though the perception of the project evolved over time and
differed. to some extent. by role group. But it was important that professional learning be
related to ongoing classrooni activities. Staff development activites undertaken in isolation
from teachers dav-to-dav responsibilities seldom had much impact."
Viewing staff development in the context of program building also helped to shift
staff development from a deficit model where teachers are seen as needing in-service
because they lack professional skills. In general, the deficit model of staff development is
chamterized by the view of other educators that teachers need staff development because
they lack the necessary skills to teach successfully. This characterization has several
elements that neec: to be understood lithe deficit model approach to staff devdopment is to
be changed. First, the deficit model is a collective view supported by members of diverse
rok groups such as principals, school district administrators, university professors. state
department of education officials and legislators. This leaves teachers with the belief that
everyone is critical of them. Second, these outside groups bring to bear administrative
regulations, credential requirements. university degree requirements and state law as a
network of reinforcement for their belief: th critical view of other educators is being
powerfully communicated to teachers. Third. eachers have typically been excluded from
any discussion of their 'deficit' or any discussion about how to carry out its removal.
Finally, the deficit model is based on the dogmatic belief of other educators that they
know, and can justify, their statements about what constitutes good teaching. Though
educational research developed over twenty-five years has not resolved the dilemma of
what constitutes good teaching. deficit model outside experts or central office specialists
often act as though they know.
A number of features of staff development as part of program building at the school
site help to displace the deficit model view of staff development among teachers and
administrators. In the Rand study staff development became part of a program
improvement process where many role groups needed new skills; teachers were not the
only group involved in project skill development activities. Such an approach helped to
spread and lessen the psychological risks of change. Teachers also were major decision-
makers about the innovative process; outside groups were no longer deciding what
teachers ought to know. Moreover, teachers perceived that change was possible on a
broader scale because the implementation process itself brought about changes in
administrative structures, curriculum and instructional materials strategies as well as in

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

teacher behavior. In fact, integrating teacher improvement with other aspects of school
change such as curriculum development and administrative reform increased the effective-
ness of the staff development efforts.
In this context the intrinsic motivation associated with teacher professionalism was
fostered. This is in sharp contrast to traditional thinking about staff development where
the debate seems to focus on which form of extrinsic motivation should be used to get
teachers to attend one-shot workshops of other almost ritualistic forms of staff
development. In the context of staff development to support the innovation process the
Rand study found that the teacher motivation issue was no longer one of persuading
teachers to attenci staff development meetings to remedy their deficiencies.
A fifth broad assumption suggested by the Rand study concerns the importance of
seeing staff development in the context of the school as an organization. Within the most
successful projects, the project was not a 'project' at all, but an integral part of an ongoing
problem-solving and improvement process within the school. In a sense good staff
development never ends; it is a continual characteristic of the school site.
1 !le importance of the organizational context was apparent in all phases of the change
process. Projects that sought federal dollars to address zn important concern in the entire
school were much more successful than were those that were more opportunstic in their
search for money. Successful implementation was also dependent upon the organizational
climate and the leadership of the school, as well as upon implementation strategies that
provided staff with new skills and information but also provided classroom follow-up and
other staff support. Extensive teacher participation and critical mass of school staff needed
to bring about change were also necessary ingredients.
Yet it was at the continuation phase of the project where the linkage between staff
development activities and the organizational characteristics of the school became most
important. In successful projects continuation was a dynamic process that helped maintain
changes in teacher practices. Active involvemem of both the principal and school district
leadership was vital to the maintenance of these changes. Contrary to the common belief
that the availability of district funds is the main factor in determining whether successful
innovations are retained, the Rand study found that dist ict and school-site organizational
factors were more important than were financial factors. From the initiation to the
effective institutionalization of an innovation, organizational factors play a vital role. The
implementation and especially the long-term effectiveness of in-service efforts are very
much influenced by these same organizational 'orces.
In summary, the Rand study suggests Lhat effective staff development activities
should incorporate five general assumptions about professional learning:
l Teachers possess important clinical expertise.
2 Professional learning is an adaptive and heuristic process.
3 Professional learning is a long-term, non-linear process.
4 Professional learning must be tied to school-site program building efforts.
5 Professional learning is critically influenced by organizational factors in the
school site and in the district.
These assumptions support a view of staff development emphasizing learning for
professionals as part of program building in an organizational context.
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The broad view of staff development given by the Rand study has a number of
implications for teachers, teacher organizations, school and school district leadership and
universities. For teachers, this approach to staff development implies long-term teacher
responsibilities, collaborative planning and implementation of significant change in
schools. In many ways this is the positive opportunity teachers have asked for for some
time. Yet in the past the invitation for teachers to participate in collaborative planning and
implementation of significant change has been a mixed message. Teachers were invited to
participate without haying cignificant decision-making power and without time being
given for them to participate meaningfully. Moreover, school district administrators and
colleges often set up a host of burean-Jatic regulations that made authentic teacher
participation quite difficult. The current financial, legal and political tension within school
districts means that the invitation for teacher participation is a complex one. The spring of
each school year is better symbolized by dism'ssal letters and budget cuts than it is by
opportunities for new collaborative planning around program improvement.
Teachers will also have to overcome a resulting tendency to feel that they are the
victim of external forces. Teachers seem impatient with the long and often arduous process
of collaborative planning. learning and adaptation necessary to make innovations
successful. Ironically, teachers want to give priority to their role as classroom tezchers
when the Rand study suggests that their role as collaborative planners has become
increasingly important in the context of creating ongoing problem-solying
within schools.
The Rand study also suggests that more experienced teachers may need a different
approach to their professional growth than is contained in staff development as part of the
implementation of innovations. Some experienced teachers continue to grow personally
and professionally, and their contribution as teachers is well respected. In general,
however, the Rand study suggests that teachers with many years of experience find it
more difficult to bring about change in their own teaching behavior and to maintain the
use of new teaching strategies and new teaching materials over time. Lortie also found that
many older teachers had shifted a good deal of their energies to family or other outside-
school interests, either out of frustration or weariness!' A more personal approach to
professional growth may be important for more experienced teachers. This approach
should emphasize new cognitive frameworks for looking at teaching practice and at their
effectiveness as teachers, The apparent mutability of a teacher's sense of efficacy suggested
by the Rand study suggests that experienced teachers need not peak out, but can continue
to learn and grow.
The Rand study has several implications for the teacher center movement. Our view
of staff development emphasizes professional learning as part of program building in an
organizational context. Current thinking about teacher centers emphasizes many of the
qualities and many of the characteristics of professional learning described above. Yet sonic
of the writing about teacher centers lacks sufficient concern about program building
within schools or the organizational context for staff development, which may hinder the
ultimate effectiveness of teacher centers as vehicles for staff development. However,
teacher centers have very attractive features. The insistence on extensive teacher
participation, the call for practical training that is perceived as useful by teachers, and the
linkage of teacher behavior and curriculum materials are all strongly supported in the R and
findings.
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Schools as CollaboratWe Cultures: Creating the Future Now

The Rand research has implications for the roles of principals and school district
leaderhip. The Rand study gives new meaning to the role of instructional leadership for
school principals. This instructional role usually connotes activities such as clinical
supervision with individual teachers or conducting staff meetings at the school site. The
Rand research sets the role of the principal as instructional leader in the context of
strengthening the school improvement process through team building and problem-
solving in a 'project-like' context. It suggests that principals need to give clear messages
that teachers may take responsibility :or their own professional growth. The results also
emphasize the importance of principals and school district leadership giving special
attention to the task of continuation of teacher change and innovation at the school.
Administrative involvement for such continuation includes early support for the
continuation phase of the innovation cycle, administrative participation during the
implementation of the innovation, and attention to the organizational as well as financial
consideration for program continuation. Innovation is more a learning plocess than a
systems design problem. Administrators enamored with a systems design or technology
transfer notion of change will find little encouragement in the Rand research. On the
other hand, the role of administrator was not merely managing the educational enterprise
in a static fashion. SucceAful local projects were part of a dynamic, problem-solving
organizational framework headed by a committed administrator.
The Rand research also points to the need for staff development for principals and
district administrators. Ironically, these groups have been ignored in federal legislation
concerning local educational reform in part because staff development for
administrators would make the federal government appear to be taking too heavy an
intervention role in local district affairs. The staff development needs of middle-level
managers are usually ignored in most school districts as well. The Rand study suggests
that staff development for principals is critical. It is needed to strengthen their ability to
carry out the many facets in the innovation process in the context of building an ongoing
problem-solving capacity at the school.
Finally, the ineffectiveness of outside consultants in the implementation process raises
serious questions about the roles that universities can play in school-based staff
development programs. Packaged in-service programs, especially those offered without
extensive classroom follow-up and teacher participation, are not likely to be effective
according to the Rand research. In turn, however, universities could play several creative
roles. First, they could prcpare administrators and other school leaders who are able to
carry out the innovation process as described in this study. Second, in their pre-service
teacher education programs they could prepare teachers to play the secondary role of
collaborative planner within a problem-solving dynamic organization. In any role that
universities are to take in support of school-based staff development programs it is clear
that they need to be part of the ongoing developmental process at the school. This means
that they will need to be a part of the collaborative planning and implementation process at
the school site. They would need to provide concrete, timely training that is perceived as
useful by the teachers and be willing to help in the classroom follow-up process. University
faculty would also need to be credible in the school setting and themselves be willing to
undergo an adaptation process as they take on these new roles. In short, the Rand study

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 Staff Development and School Change

suggests that universities will have to implement significant change themselves if they are
to be effective partners in school district staff development efforts.

NB This article was written over ten years ago.. There arc now wrions teacher shortages in many states.
It is still true that a large majority of the teaching force is stable and tenured.

Notes

1 In 1978 Rand completed, under the sponsorship of the United States Office of Education
(USOE), a four-year, two-phase study of federally funded programs designed to introduce and
spread innovative practices in public schools. This study of federal programs supporting
educational change is often referred to as the 'Change Agent Study'. The first phase of the study
addressed those factors affecting the initiation and implementation of local 'change-agent'
projects. Thc second phase examined the institutional and project factors that influenced the
continuation of innov.:_ions after special federal funding terminated. The study collected
extersive information from superintendents, district federal program officers, project directors,
principals and teachers about the local process of change. In the first phase of the study, 293 local
projects were surveyed and fieldwork Was conducted in twenty-four school% districts. The
second phase of the study involved a survey of 100 projects in twenty states and fieldwork in
eighteen school districts. The results of the first phase of the study are summarized in Paul
Berman and Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin, Federal Programs ..;upporting Educational Change, Vol.
IV: The Findings in Review (Santa Monica, CA.: Rand Corporation IR-1589/ 4-HEW I. April
1975). The findings of the second phase arc reported in Paul Berman and Marcy Wallin
McLaughlin, Federal Prqrarris Supporting Educational Change, vol. VII: Factors Affecting
Implementation and Continuation (Santa Monica, CA.: Rand Corporation IR-1589:7- HEW I,
April 1977). See also Making Change Happen?. a series of articles on the Phase I study in "leachers
ColleRe Record, 7 (3) (February 1976).
These five dependent measures as discussed here (percentage of project goal% achieved, total
teacher change, total student performance gain, continuation of teacher methods, continuation
of project materials) were continuous variables derived from the teacher questionnaire. Berman
and McLaughlin. Federal Programs Supporting Educational Change. /V, Ch. 4 describe these
measures and their validity in detail.
3 The enthusiasm of principals is also an important element in introducing project methods to
additional school sites. A si4perintendent commented, 'This project has really been sustained
through the direction and enthusiasm of principals. They were tremendously ent:Iused, at first
particularly, and so the project spread to other schools.'
4 Teachers' verbal ability was measured by a selfadministered Quick Word Test consisting of a
fifty-question, multiple-choice, vocabulary-type test. The test, developed by Edgar F. Borgatta
and Raymond Corsini (Quick Word Test !New York: Harcourt Brace Joyanovich. ndl', as a
measure of verbal abilities, has high reliability and is correlated highly with more complex
measures of intelligence. See Berman and McLaughlin, Federal Privarns Supporting Edwational
Change, Vol. VII, op. cit., p. 137.
5 The measure of teachers' sense of efficacy Was based on two questions. One asked whether the
teacher felt that 'when it comes down to it, a teacher really can't do much because most of a
student's motivation and performance depends on his or her home environment.' The other
asked whether the teacher thought that 'if I really try hard, I can get through to even the most

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

difficult or unmotivated students.' Responses to these two questions were combined into a
single measure of efficacy: the extent to which the teacher believed he or she had the capacity to
affect student performance (Berman and McLaughlin, ibid.).
6 A Rand study of the School Preferred Reading program in Los Angeles drew heavily on the
instrumentation and design of thc Change Agent study and reached similar conclusions.
Specifically, it concluded that 'the more efficacious the teachers felt, the more their students
advanced in reading achievement.' See David Armor et al.. Analysis of the School Prefer-red Reading
Program in Selected Los Angeles Minority Schools (Santa Monica, CA.: Rand Corporation
112-2007-LAUSDI, August 1976). This study used, as the dependent variable, the change in
individual students' scores on a standardized reading test.
7 See especially Appendix A in Peter W. Greenwood. Dale Mann. and Milbrey Wallin
McLaughlin. Federal Programs Supporring Educational Change, Vol. The Process of Change
(Santa Monica, CA.: Rand Corporation (R-1589/3-HEW I, April 1975.
8 Dan Lortie, School Teacher (Chicago, IL.: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

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2:4 5 ,
 Chapter 12

Schools for the Twenty-first Century:

The Conditions for Invention

Phillip C. Schlechty

It is becoming clear that the fate of the education reform movement in America depends
upon the willingness of public school educators to understand and embrace the proposition
that nothing short of fundamental restructuring of schools will suffice if the continuing
vitality of public education is to be assured. Repair of existing structures is not enough.
This is the message underlying what is coming to be called the 'second wave of school
reform', and it is a message with which I am comfortable.
The Carnegie Task Force report contains some of the strongest rhetoric regarding the
need for fundamental restructuring, but this task force is not alone in the view that
restructuring is essential. Writers like Boyer, Goodlad and Sizer have arrived at similar
conclusions, and other commissions have made recommendations quite similar to those of
the Carnegie Task Force. For example, the Holmes Group report on needed reform in
teacher education implicitly assumes a fundamental restructuring of schools, as do various
segments of the National Governors' Association Task Force rcport.
Just as I am comfortable with the general notion that nothing short of fundamental
restructuring of schools will suffice, I am also in general agreement with the proposition
that the appropriate target for the second wave of school reform is what goes on inside the
schoolhouse and the classroom. Lengthening the school day is not likely to have desired
effects if what goes on during the school day is not changed. More is not necessarily better.
I am, however, more than a bit concerned with the fact that most proponents of
restructuring schools overlook or look past the roles of district-level personnel and
the functions of district-level variables in shaping the conditions under which reform in the
schoolhouse and the classroom can and will occur. Principals cannot share authority that is
not theirs to share any more than teachers can carry out functions the union contract
precludes them from carying out. So long as board policy and the procedures by which
principals are evaluated tolerate, if they do not encourage, principals behaving in
authoritarian ways, then teacher empowerment is totally dependent on the personal
orientations and needs of each building principal in a school district. These, and related
matters, have had little attention in the present discussion on school reform.
The purpose in this chapter is to call attention to the real and potential linkage
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

between district-level concerns and efforts to restructure schools

at the level of the
schoolhouse and the classroom. The reader who is seeking
a detailed description of a
preferred form of building-level school organization will be
disappointed. We know far
too little to prescribe precisely how individual schools should be
organized, how new
technology should be used, or even how the school day should be
spent. These are matters
that need to be addressed, but those who should address them
are teachers and building
administrators. The critical question is: how can district-level
leaders assure that these
issues will be addressed in each school building, and how they
can assure that the manner
in which these issues are addressed will result in schools that produce
'better performance
by students and more sensible conditions of work for teachers'
(Sizer, 1986, P. 38). This
chapter is intended to contribute to the discussion of this
important topic.

Vision at the Top

If educators learn nothing else from the recent literature

on America's best-run businesses,
they should learn the importance of strong and visionary
leadership at the very top of the
organization. Principals are at the top of the schools they lead,
of the school system of which they are a but they are not at the top
part (except in very small school districts).
Without strong and visionary leadership, businesses have
a difficult time maintaining
direction, and so do school districts. Furthermore, even failing businesses,
large businesses, so have some pockets of excellence (educators especially failing
schools) that seem to produce quality while the overall
would call these 'outlier'
business is deteriorating. Thus the
conditions of business are not dissimilar from the conditions of
education, where failing
school systems have some successful schools. Unfortunately,
the significance of district-
level leadership to the continuing health of the reform
movement in education has all but
escaped the attention of reformers and those who write commission
reports.
Few who are presenting analyses and prescriptions for
school reform have given
careful attention to the fact that in almost all instances
the primary vehicle through which
state policy is made operational in local school buildings and classrooms
is local boards of
education and the offices of superintendent. There is, for example,
a growing concern
among local superintendents and members of boards of education
that the reform
movement has eroded the tradition of local control. There
are various ways in which local
boards of education and superintendents can react to this perceived threat,
which is to sabotage with paper compliance. Indeed, in not the least of
my work as a consultant, I have
heard two reform-minded governors say specifically that
one of the greatest problems that
they have experienced is that they have vastly
underestimated the capacity of local
administrators and local boirds of education to engage in ritual
sabotage. compliance and explicit
It is difficult to describe how district-level attributes
shape the response to reform
efforts, but it is obvious that such shaping does
occur. If the second wave of school reform
is to be anything more than a manifestation of the
charismatic leadership of a powerful
building principal or the result of the peculiar combination of
sophisticated and rebellious
teachers located in a school building, it will be
necessary for the relationships among boards
of education, school superintendents and other
parts of the school system to undergo at
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 Schools for the Twerurfirst Century: The Conditions for Invention

least 2S fundamental a restructuring and reorientation as is now called for in the more
radical proposals for the restructuring of building-level units.
More importantly, what seems to be missing in much of thc present literature on
reform is recognition that without visionary and enabling leadership at the school district
level, the dual values of equity and excellence are not likely to be pursued. Morc
specifically, if one assumes that the critical determinants of excellence in schools arc thc
personal characteristics of principals and teachers and if one assumes that once outstanding
persons have been recruited all that is needed is to grant them decision-making autonomy,
the pursuit of excellence in schools will be spotty indeed.
No doubt great principals and great teachers can produce excellence, even when
othcrs cannot. The literature on effective schools had its gencsis in thc identification of
such heroic principals and faculties. Unfortunately and hcre I parallel the arguments of
Sykes (Chapter 6, this volume) heroism is not in unlimited supply. If we depend upon
heroic performance for excellence, we will perhaps get excellence for those few students
who are lucky enough to go to those schools that by chance recruited thc right people at
the right timc. Thus the value of equity will be missed.
The idea that the most expedient way to school reform is by getting supermen and
superwomen and freeing them from the shackles of mindless bureaucracies has
considerable ideological appeal. Autonomy, naively conceived, can, however, become
anarchy. Though anarchy may produce excellence for the few, it will produce mediocrity
and worse for the many. One of the arguments for bureaucratization (i.e.,
standardization, centralization of authority, job specialization, etc.) is that while it
suppresses excellence, it does raise the standard by which mediocre is measured.
Neither the first wave nor the second wave of school refoun is likely to produce the
results hoped for and anticipated until and unless we come to understand that the task of
wedding strategy, structures and systems (the hard Ss) with staff, style, skill and
superordinate goals (the soft Ss) cannot be carried out either at the building level or at the
state level. This task must be carried out by boards of education and the administrative
staffs that thcy employ. Whether or not the schools of the future will be intentionally
invented (or simply happen) depends in large measure upon whether these district-level
structures can be reformed and reconceptualized in ways that make it possible to provide
direction and leadership to the difficult task of reinventing public education in America.
The first step in such a reconceptualization is to think through thc assumptions we hold
about schools and school reform. Furthermore, we must consider the images we have of
teachers, students and schools and how these images shape thinking about how school
districts can and should be led.

A Preliminary View

The following discussion is based on two assumptions:

1 The continuing vitality of public education in America depends, in large
measure, upon the willingness of educators fundamentally to redesign and
restructure schools, especially with regard to the way decisions are made, thc

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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating rhe Future Now

way results are viewed and pursued and the way schools are organized and
managed.
2 Whatever form this restructuring takes, it will require a fundamental shifting of
power arrangements within school buildings and among the various
constituencies that provide the context within which building-level faculties
function. More specifically, if public education is to survive as a vital force, the
claims of teachers for increased decision-making authority and the
recommendations of educational reformers and theorists for greater autonomy
at the building level must be respected.

Two Approaches to School System Management

There are basically two ways that schools can be managed: the first is management by
programs; the second is management by results. Management by programs is consistent
with bureaucratic orientations. In bureaucratic management the critical question is, 'Do
those who are assigned to do specific tasks do what they are supposed to do when they are
supposed to do it?' Management by results shifts the focus to outcomes. Instead of asking
the question, `Do those who arc assigned the task do things right?', the question becomes,
'Do those who are assigned the objective, goal and outcome do the right thing?'
Doing things right focuses attention on routinization, standardization and tight
supervision. It encourages conservatism aud discourages inventiveness. An emphasis on
results and doing the right things encourages, indeed requires, independent decision-
making and autonomy, while it increases accountability and requires detailed attention to
the assessment of performance. If schools are to become the adaptive organizations that
they must becGme to respond to the rapidly changing needs of a post-industrial society, it
is essential that they become more inventive. To become inventive, the tendency of schools
toward bureaucratic solutions must be offset. Whether or not these tendencies can be
offset depends in large measure on the willingness of teachers and administrators to
abandon traditional ways of thinking about schooling and schooling processes. Among
other things the men and women who were attracted to and/or learned their trade at a
time when the ability to control schools and to control students through the management
of programs and classrooms must now learn to direct schools and direct students through
conscious and disciplined acts of leadership. As Drucker (1973, p. 30) writes, they 'will
have to learn to lead rather than manage, direct rather than control.'

The Importance of Pewit.

Teachers and administrators are drawn from that class of persons that Kelley (1982) refers
to as gold-collar workers. Unlike the blue-collar worker who works for a living and the
white-collar workers who lives to work, the gold-collar worker expects work and life to
be integrated. The gold-collar worker is not simply interested in a standard of living; the
gold-collar worker is interested in style of life. Among the most important of these life-

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 Schools for the Twenty:first Century: The Conditions far Invention

style values are opportunities for personal growth and development, job variety and
opportunities to engage in creative and meaningful interactions with other adults.
Given present demographic trends and economic developments, it appears likely that
the number of jobs being created which will appeal to the values of the gold-collar worker
is likely to be well in excess of the number of gold-collar workers available to fill those jobs,
especially by the 1990s. Given that public education is a public sector job, it is unlikely that
public education can ever directly compete with the private sector in terms of absolute
salary and absolute standard of living. Thus, if public education does not compete with the
private sector on the life-style dimension, it is doubtful that schools will be able to attract
enough talented people to maintain the quality of schools, let alone increase that quality.
One of the keys to the quality of life in the workplace is the ability to feel that one is in
control of one's own destiny and that one is making a special contribution in a word
'empowerment'.
One of the unfortunatc consequences of the early debate regarding empowering
teachers is the assumption that the phrase means taking power away from principals and
other administrators. This is nonsense. Leaders who lead leaders are inherently more
powerful and necessarily will be more capable than are managers who control the
powerless and disenfranchised. Leadership generates power by transforming the
environment and those who are led. Weak organizations provide little decision-making
authority, even for the top leaders. Strong organizations increase the potential autonomy
of all who are associated with them.
The ability of education to attract, retain, develop and motivate high performing
teachers and administrators will be seriously compromised (even more so than it is now) if
the status, authority, honor, recognition and responsibility of the position of teacher and
principal are not greatly enhanced.

The Professionalization of Teaching

Medicine and law stand as the archetypes of professions. When one speaks of teaching as a
profession, there is a tendency to compare the conditions of teaching to the conditions of
medical and legal practice. Such comparisons usually lead to the conclusion that teaching is
a semi-profession and sometimes to the conclusion that teaching can never be a profession
since many of the conditions that make medicine a profession (e.g., free choice in the
client/practitioner relationship) do not exist in education.
As one who has made considerable use of medical analogies to help gain insight into
the schooling enterprise, I am aware that many educators resist and resent the use of such
analogies, precisely because they know that the conditions under which teaching is
practised and the conditions under which law and medicine are practised are different in
fundamental ways. In spite of this resistance, much of the momentum behind some of the
more recent reform efforts (e.g., national board certification) gains its inspiration from
fields like medicine and law. Furthermore, some of the recommendations regarding how
schools might be organized (e.g.. the Carnegie Commission's suggestions regarding
schools managed by lead teachers, operating with teams of colleagues) are clearly inspired
by insights drawn from an analysis of managerial systems that typify many hospitals.
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

In advocating the professionalization of teaching, I have

frequently used medical
analogies to make my point. For example, I have argued that
teacher education could be
much improved if we were more attentive to the characteristic
patterns by which
physicians are prepared. I have argued for a distinction between
certification and licensure
and for disciplining teaching and administrative practice
with research. I have not changed
my position on any of these matters, and I continue to find medical
analogies useful.
However, I have become convinced that the image of schools
as hospitals and the image of
teachers as professionals in an occupation structured like medicine
and law have taken the
thinking of educational reformers about as far as they can.
It is time to generate a new image, a new vision
one that is more consistent with
the realities of school life, but at the same time bestows
the honor and status on teachers
that is needed if schools are to survive. It is essential that this
new image have intuitive
appeal to those who are making the greatest demands
on public schools and who are also
the potential source for the greatest support for public
school reform (i.e., those business
leaders who are being called on to reinvent America's corporate structures, who
themselves manage professional knowledge workers, and
who theruselves assure
productivity through people). Finally, it is critical that the
new image of schools be such
that it conceptually provides a legitimate place for the influence of
boards of education
(who are not themselves professionals) and a place for the central office
generally shapes the context in which local school reform will apparatus which
occur.

A Place to Begin

In seeking a place to begin to build a new image of schools, I

am persuaded by two facts:
(I) whatever else schools are, they are places where adults endeavor
to get the young to
engage in purposeful activity, i.e., to do work; and (2) the kind of work
that the schools
try to get children to do is strikingly similar to the kind of work
that they will be called
upon to do later in life, for the jobs they will take will require
working with knowledge and knowledge-related products. considerable facility in
In sum, schools are
knowledge-work organizations.
So far as I can determine, Peter Drucker coined the
term 'knowledge worker'.
Drucker was concerned that the nature of the American
economy was (is) shifting. In the
early to mid-twentieth century the primary task of
management was (or so it seemed) to
control, regularize and standardize production
processes, most of which called on persons
to put to work manual skill or muscle. Scientific management,
time and motion studies,
attention to financial controls, performance inspection and
tight supervision (e.g., the
axiom that span of control for any manager should be between five and
all a part of this eight persons) were
management thinking. Unfortunately, what industrial engineers,
industrial psychologists and industrial sociologists
came to know, or think they knew,
regarding management procedures had more to do with controlling the
unskilled or semi-skilled workers who activity of
were working on a relatively clearly defined
product or using relatively clearly defined processes.
What was happening, however, was that American
business was shifting from an
industrial based to an information-based economy. What was called for
was a type of
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 Schools for the Twenty-first Century: The Conditions for Invention

management that could manage in turbulent times, for technological advances were
proceeding at a more rapid rate than current theories and conventional strategies could
embrace. What was called for was a manager who could manage people who perhaps
knew more about their jobs than the leader (manager) knew.
In brief, Drucker (1973) suggested that managers must confront the problem of
managing people who work primarily with concepts, ideas and theories rather than with
tools, equipment or brawn. Furthermore, these managers must be concerned with
products yet unknown, produced by processes yet to be created. Drucker summarized as
follows:
1
'Management will, therefore, have to run at one and the same time an existing
managerial organization and a new innovative organization' (p. 31).
2 Management 'will have to learn to lead rather than manage and direct rather
than control' (p. 30).
3 'Knowledge work cannot be productive unless the knowledge worker finds out
who he is himself, v hat kind of work he is fitted for, and how he works best'
(p. 33).
4 'There can be no divorce of planning from doing knowledge work, On the
contrary, the knowledge worker must be able to plan himself' (p. 33).
5 It is not possible to 'objectively determine one best way for any kind of work to
be done. There may be one best way, but it is heavily conditioned by the
individual and not entirely determined by the physical or even by the mental
characteristics of the job. It is temperamental as well' (p. 33).
6 'Making knowledge work productive will bring about changes in job structure,
careers, and organizations as drastic as those which resulted in the factory from
the application of scientific management to manual work' (p. 33).

Students as Knowledge Workers

that
Children come to school with knowledge, and while they are in school, it is assumed
they will gain more knowledge. How do they gain knowledge? By working on
knowledge and knowe,'e-related priducts. Whether the reader is a behaviorist or a
Gestalt psychologist, he or she will surely agree that learning is an active process.
Furthermore, schools are designed to make learning happen on purpose rather than by
random chance. Indeed, if schools cannot produce learning that would not occur without
them, then why have them (except, of course, as a custodial service for working parents).
Thus schools are places where children are induced to engage in purposeful activity (a
dictionary definition of 'work' is 'purposeful activity') which in turn is expected to result
in (or produce) learning (i.e., to gain knowledge and skill). In other words, schools are
places where children are expected to work on, with and for knowledge. Both logic and
and children are
common sense suggest that schools are knowledge-work organizations,
knowledge workers.
The idea of the student as worker is not novel. Educational researchers (e.g., Bossert,
Doyle) have frequently made use of the image of students as workers in conceptualizing
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 Schools as CollAknuive Cultures: Creating the Future Now

their own research tasks and analysis. Furthermore,

those who fear that the conception of
student as worker is inherently anti-intellectual should consider
the work of Theodore
Sizer. One of the chief criticisms of Sizer's recommendations for school
reform is that his
image of the desirable high school too closely parallels the image of the Elite
New England
academy. Yet Sizer is comfortable with recommending that
workers. students should be viewed as
Unfortunately, and in spite of the work language surrounding
school (who has not
heard of home work, class work, busy work, seat work?), there remains
a residue of anti-
intellectualism in the American education establishment. Part
of the resistance to the idea
of students as workers must surely lie in the
assumption that doing things with ideas,
symbols and concepts is inherently purposeless
or certainly non-productive. If this were
not the case, few could argue with the simple proposition that students are, indeed,
knowledge workers.

The Teacher as Executive

Conceptualizing the student as worker has important

consequences for the way schools are
viewed and the way the problems that schools
must confront are framed. First, it brings
the student clearly inside the school as an active and responsible member of
organization as opposed to passive 'raw material' that teachers the
and shape into an acceptable product. Second, it shifts are supposed to work on
attention away from selecting,
sorting and grading and focuses attention on motivating, instructing
and leading. Finally,
and perhaps most importantly, it requires the teacher
to shift from the role of information
processor and inspector to the role of manager and leader.
The parallels between the role of the teacher as manager/leader (i.e.,
the role of executives in the business sector have as executive) and
not completely escaped the attention of
educators. Indeed, David Berliner (1983) has done
developing this concept. To date, however, the conception
a considerable amount of work in
of the teacher as executive has
not enjoyed a prominent place in the thinking of reformers.
The cause of fundamental
reform in schools could be much advanced if the
image of the teacher as executive had a
more prominent place in shaping the thinking of boards of education
administrators. and top line school
First, the conception of the role of teacher
as executive enhances the role of teachers
and implicitly argues that teachers, like other executives,
must have considerable decision-
making autonomy if they are to be effective. Second, the image of
the teacher as an
executive recognizes that teacher productivity is achieved
through other people. Thus
arguments about the evaluation of teachers shift from inspecting
evaluation of results. Similarly, products to the
the image requires both teachers and administrators to
understand that there is no one best way to teach, just
as there is no one best way to lead.
The context, the nature of the task and the intellectual
and emotional maturity of the
workforce all must be taken into account in making
executive decisions regarding how to
lead, just as these things must be taken into account in making
teach. decisions regarding how to
Finally, conceiving teachers as executives, rather than
as members of a free-standing
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profession like medicine, acknowledges and legitimizes the 'corporate nature' of public
education. For example, like corporations (at least like successful corporations), schools
must be attentive to the conditions of the market. Teachers and school administrators must
help shape school goals, but in the end schools will survive only if they effectively pursue
goals (i.e., produce results) that are valued by the communities which support them.
Though some find it ideologically repugnant to acknowledge that it is so, the fact remains
that schools are not established solely to meet the needs of students. Schools are established
to meet societal needs as well. As Durkheim (1956, p. 123) has put the matter, 'education,
far from having as its unique or principal object the individual and his interests, as above all
the means by which society perpetually recreates the conditions of its very existence.'
Executives know that they must satisfy the needs of the workforce if they are to
produce products that will satisfy customers. The executive, like the teacher, must
constantly be negotiating the goals, aspirations, needs and talents of those who work for
them and the goals of the organizations of which they are a part. I seriously doubt that
many children can be motivated to learn to read on the basis that if they fail to learn to
read, American business will be unable to compete. On the other hand, failure to take into
account the needs of our economy for an intelligent and highly motivated workforce is a
failure that cannot be endured. Furthermore, it must be understood that in the broadest
sense almost all school work is, or should be thought of as. vocational education, since
most of the vocations that children of the twenty-first century will enter will require them
to do knowledge work.

The Principal as Leader of Instngtors

As executives, teachers are, or should be, the primary instructional leaders in the school.
Does this mean that the role of the principal should be abandoned? I think not, but it does
Mean that the role of the principal should be fundamentally reconceptualized. Rather than
being required to manage and control, the principal will need to learn to lead. More than
that, the principal will need to learn to lead persons who are themselves conceived to be
leaders and to develop leadership among those he or she leads. Leadership development is
the primary task of a leader of leaders (see, for example, Grove, 1983).
As indicated earlier, empowering teachers does not disenfranchise principals: rather, it
empowers principals. For example, 2S a leader of leaders, the principal is less concerned
with whether a teacher implements the principal's decision in the 'right way' than with
whether the teacher makes the right decision and then implements it. This suggests. of
course, that the principal must understand that 'the right decision' is not always the
decision that he/she would have made, but it is the decision that produces the results that
both the teacher and the principal agree should be produced.

The Superintendent as Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

The emerging literature on effective corporations gives considerable attention to the role of
the chief executive officer in shaping the values of the organization, articulating those
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

values and inspiring and supporting others to pursue those values. However, the literature
on effective schools, indeed most of the literature on school reform, is largely silent
regarding the role of the superintendent.
Since we are largely ignorant regarding the specifics of the superintendency and the
dynamics of effective school systems. we can only assume that the characteristics of
effective superintendents and effective school systems are not too dissimilar from the
characteristics of effective leaders in knowledge-work organizations generally.
If this assumption is granted, a cursory glance at how typical school systems are
organized and a cursory view of the roles of school superintendents make one wonder
whether we can possibly have any effective school systems at all. First, effective CEOs
seem to be persons of vision and passion. They are constantly pushing for innovation and
change and are persistent in identifying and announcing problems and inspiring others to
invent solutions to them. One could characterize effective organizations as places where
trouble-making is centralized and problem-solving is decentralized.
The idea of the superintendent as a problem-identifier and trouble-maker is anathema
to most school systems. Superintendents are expected to be problem-solvers, not trouble-
makers. For example, a superintendent who announces that 'we have a dropout problem'
is as likely to be fired for not having solved the problem as he is to be applauded for
trying
to get others to solve it for him. Indeed, many superintendents spend much of their time
convincing board members and the press that 'we're no worse than anyone else' rather
than setting in motion programs and activities that will assure that 'we're better
than
everyone else.' As I have indicated elsewhere (Schlechty, 1985). the structure of school
finance and the lack of long-term developmental funds makes it difficult, if not impossible,
for superintendents to engage in long-term, visionary thinking about school improve-
ment.
Put directly, the knowledge-work conception of schools requires
that the
superintendent be a strong and forceful leader, an educator of the community about
education and its problems and an inspirer of decisions rather than a decision-maker.
More
than that, the knowledge-work conception of schools requires that the office of
the
superintendent be viewed as the moral and ethical center of the organization. For this to
happen. it is essential that the superintendency be reconceptualized. It will require
a
relationship between superintendents and boards of education which is more like the
relationship between CEOs and boards of directors than is now the case. It will also
require considerably more fiscal autonomy than typical patterns of state and federal
categorical funding now permit. If teachers are to be empowered, principals must be
empowered, and if principals are to be empowered, superintendents must be empowered
as well.
One of the most critical problems to be addressed over the next decade is the problem
of reforming thc superintendency so that the occupants of this office
can provide the vital
leadership that a sustained school improvement effort will require. A second
critical
problem is identifying, developing and motivating men and women of stature and vision
to lead school systems into the twenty-first century. If we want to invent schools where
ordinary people can give extraordinary performances, then we must have extraordinary
men and women to lead them.

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 Schools for the Twettryfirst Century: The Conditions for Invention

Developing a Clear Image*

to
For school reform to be anything more than the result of idiosyncratic responses
that superintendents
national reports by individual principals and faculties, it is essential
clear leaders in the effort
and boards of education see themselves, and be seen by others, as
leadership could be to develop clear answers
ti improve schools. The first act in asserting
to the following questions:
I How do we view students; what is their role in the education enterprise?
and other
2 Given this view of students, how do we view teachers, principals
employees of the school system?
of management
3 Given this view of teachers, students and schools, what kinds
systems are appropriate to assure that this view or image will be consistently
reinforced throughout the school district?
schools that I believe should
1 have already suggested the image of teachers, students and
did not mention at least
guide our thinking about school reform, but I would be remiss if I
product of the school system; the
two other possibilities. The first is the student as a
second is the student as a client or customer.
commonplace in our
The idea of the student as a product has the advantage of being
school as a factory, the
present thinking. It is perfectly consistent with the idea of the
teacher as a member of a relatively
unskilled workforce and the principal as a shop foreman.
materials) and rigorous
Tight supervision, carefully prescribed curricula (teacher-proof
testing and inspection flow naturally from such a view. of
Viewing students as products removes students from the accountability structure
they are shaped, not led).
the system (products are passive; they are worked on, not with;
for teachers which are
Viewing students as products also suggests working conditions
that is
unlikely to be attractive to gold-collar workers and suggests a form of management
'getting others to lead'.
not likely to inspire principals who see their major task as
Viewing students as clients or customers does offset some of the more bleak qualities
viewing students as
suggested by the image of the student as a product. Furthermore,
potential of doing ;-,0.
clients does enhance the status of teachers; at least it has the
Specifically, if students are clients to be served or customers to be serviced, it becomes
client image
possible to view teachers as 'professionals'. Unfortunately, the customer or
embraces some of the more
only partially addresses the issue of professionalism, unless one
schools attended, teachers assigned
or less radical forms of 'student choice' with regard to
overlooks the fact that
and so on. More importantly, however, the client view totally
base. Schools are
education has 3 cultural and social base as well as 3 psychological
established to serve the ends of society as well as the ends of children and their parents.
sophisticated adults believe is
Schools provide not only what is wanted, but also what
is inherently
needed. One of the functions of education is socialization, and socialization
non-voluntary. assigned to the
Obviously, I have overlooked many positive attributes that could be
far in describing
image of students as products or students as clients, and I have not gone
Schlechty, 1985).
'Some of the ideas and materials presented here appear in an earlier version (see
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

the management implications of each of these images.

The reason is that I have chosen my
image, and the space left to me seems more wisely used in
providing a detailed description
of the implications of the image than in building up and tearing down straw
men.
The image suggested (of students as products or clients) has considerable appeal.
Indeed, many of the decisions policy-makers take
are implicitly based on assumptions that
derive from such views. For example, many
current systems for evaluating Leachers which
are 'based on the research on teaching' are strikingly similar
to evaluation systems used in
factories where 'scientific management' relies heavily
on the time and motion studies of
industrial engineers for guidance and direction. What is critical
is that those who run
schools and those who work in them must fully understand
the images that shape their
thinking and appreciate the consequences of embracing one image
or the other. No choice
is more important than the choice of the way the school
leaders view the position of the
student in the system of things, for that choice,
more than any other, will determine the
direction school reform will take in a given school district.

Implications of the Knowledge.Work Metaphor for District Local

Leadership

Having suggested the knowledge-work metaphor to numerous audiences,

I am aware that
some readers will find the ideas presented here disquieting. For example,
that the fundamental purpose of school is to get children I have suggested
to do school work. Such a
suggestion will immediately conjure up the image of the
autocratic teacher putting
powerless students through numerous rote drills, filling out workbooks,
and other banal forms of activity. It is true that school work memorizing lists
can be busy work. It is also
true that school work can be non-product:ve work. It is equally
schools cannot systematically produce learning if children
true, however, that
cannot be brought to do school
work. The first and most necessary condition of effective schools
resides in their capacity to
get children to do school work. Perhaps a distinction between
clai4y this point. purpose and goals will

Purpose and Goals

Purpose refers to the functions that must be fulfilled on a daily basis

to achieve goals; goals
indicate the intended results of acting with a clear
purpose in view. For example, the
purpose of every business is to get and keep customers. The goals of
usually include making a profit, producing products that businesses vary but
customers will buy and providing
employees with working conditions that
create commitment and inspire high quality
performance. Purpose suggests what must be done today; goals
indicate the intended consequences of
what is done. More than that, goals indicate how
purpose should be pursued. Without clear
goals, the pursuit of any purpose is likely to be meaningless.
Conversely, without a clear
understanding of purpose, goals are not likely to be achieved.
The purpose of schools is to induce students to do those forms
teachers and administrators assume will result in (proiuce) the of school work that
students' acquiring the
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 Schools for the Twenty-fint Century: The Conditions for Invention

knowledge and skills that the goals of the school and the school system suggest should be
acquired. The nature and form that school work takes will depend upon the goals that the
community assigns to the schools. Furthermore, the way school work is designed, the
ways schools motivate students to do school tasks, and the quality of the instruction the
students are given regarding the content of the tasks that they are assigned are primary
determinants of the success the students have in doing school work. Effective schools not
only assure that students do things right, but they also assure that students are called on to
do the right things. Thus schools arc not simply organizations designed to manage
students; they are organizations which are called upon to lead students as well. As Bennis
and Nanus (1985) observe, 'Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing.'

Off Doing the Right Things

Embracing the notion that the student is a knowledge worker, and thus an active and
accountable participant in the life of the school, does not shift the responsibility of student
productivity from school officials to the students or to the students' parents. Indeed, the
reverse is the case, for inherent in the knowledge metaphor is the idea that in the long run
the quality of a leader's performance can be no higher than the quality of the performance
of those who are led. The productivity of the leader can be no higher than the productivity
of the subordinate, and the success of the executive in the long run is to be judged by the
success of those over whom the executive exercises authority. It is apparent that getting
students to 'do things right' is important, but deciding 'what is the right thing to get
them to do' is equally important. Indeed, a school district could be very efficient (i.e.,
getting students to do things right at the lowest possible cost) and at the same time be very
ineffective (i.e., fail to produce results that are valued by the constituencies whose support
must be maintained if the school system is to survive). Once the knowledge worker image
is embraced, board members and superintendents must be especially attentive to assuring
that the systems they lead are doing the right things. In seeking guidance in this regard,
there are three key questions that system-level policy-makers must constantly ask:
1 What is our school system about (i.e., what are its binding goals and
commitments)?
2 If we continue to do what we are now doing, what will our school system be
about in five to ten years?
3 What should our school system be about?
Answers to these questions are not easy to come by, but they are impossible to come by
unless one is attuned to the notion of measurable results. For example, if one wanted to
know what a school system is about, a way to begin to answer this question would be to
examine the school system's budget. When additional resources become available, where
are the funds allocated? (It is likely that boards of education that evenly distribute budget
cuts or budget increases across all programs and projects often do so because they do not
know, cannot agree or will not acknowledge what their school system is about.) Another
way to determine what a school system is about is to measure the way time is allocated. To
whom do principals most frequently talk, and what do they talk about? What groups,

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Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

constituencies and items command the superintendent's attention? To what subjects or

activities do teachers give their time in classrooms, in faculty meetings and in the lounge?
What items dominate the attention of the school board? The way money is allocated and
the way time i allocated are both results which are measurable. Furthermore, these results
give a clear indication of the operational goals and priorities of the system. Thus, one
could, through a process of induction, gain a relatively clear image of what the goals and
priorities of a school system are by examining how resources (money, time, personnel,
etc.) arc allocated.
It can be argued that such results are far removed from the results of the school (i.e..
student achievement). Perhaps. but o le of the most effective ways of increasing student
achievement is to induce students to concentrate energy and attention on worthwhile
school work. Similarly. it would make sense that the principal who is effective at leading
instructors would spend more time in instructional activity than the principal who is not
so effective. This is common sense, but, unfortunately, common sense is not cc aimon
knowledge or common practice.
To gain a sense of what 3 school system might be about if the system continues to
function over the next five to ten years as it is now functioning, one needs to look at
trends. For example, one could look at budgets over the past five to ten years to determine
changes which have occurred. Data could be collected to determine whether teachers were
spending more or less time on any given activity than they did in the past. Such an analysis
could go far to help policy-makers determine where they are and where they are likely to
be headed. But there is more here that is even more critical. To give meaning to the
measure of present results, policy-makers must have a clear image of where they want to
go as well as a detailed knowledge of where they are and where they seem to be going.
Perhaps the most useful element of the effective schools and effective teaching
literature is that it provides a focus for serious discussions among policy-makers regarding
where they want the systems they manage to go. For example, the literature indicates that
teachers and schools which spend more time on academic tasks increase the amount of
academic learning that occurs. The easy logic would be to suggest that what must be done,
therefore, is to lengthen the school day or lengthen the school year. Perhaps this is so, but
there are other alternatives. For example, one could imagine a scenario where the academic
learning time could be increased by developing policies intended to reduce the number of
interruptions in schools and classrooms. Other alternatives might include making the
decision that academic programs would take precedence and priority over all other
programs in the school system and that when choice points occur (e.g.. attending a history
class or football practice during the last period of the day), the academic program is given
precedence.
These options are suggested as points of illustration rather than as points of advocacy.
They illustrate that careful consideration of what school is about and what the priorities
should be is a paramount responsibility to top-level decision-makers in every school
system. Admittedly, articulating a clear goal is almost certain to generate value clashes and
disagreement. Many school boards carefully attempt to avoid such open values clashes
(Vidich and Bensman. 1957). It takes considerable courage for superintendents to foster
such potentially tension-producing discussions. However, unless school boards and
superintendents are willing to take such riskA there is little likelihood that the school

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 Schools for the Twenty-first Century: The Conditions for Invention

reform movement will have any systematic effects. What effects the movement has will be
left up to chance encounters by dynamic principals or virtuous preformances by rebellious
faculties. If the literature on effective schools and on America's best-run businesses verifies
anything, it verifies most clearly the old adage that 'people who know where they're
going are more likely to get there.'

Management by Results

One of the happy outcomes of the effective schools literature is that the findings seem to
coincide with what management theorists like Drucker (1973) suggest to be the case in
other organizations. Simply put, organizations which use measurable output as a means of
directing individual and collective action are more effective than arr- organizations which
use other criteria for direction (e.g., the whims of administrators or the personal
preferences of employees). One of the unhappy outcomes of the effective schools literature
may be to encourage education policy-makers to confuse results which are easily
measurable (e.g., standardized test scores) with measurable results. At the risk of seeming
pedantic, I would suggest that if there is a single most important lesson that educators
could learn from the studies of America's best-run businesses (e.g., Peters and Waterman,
1982; Grove, 1983), it is that there is a difference between management results and the
results of management. Furthermore, the results by which managers should manage are
management results rather than the results of management.
Management results refer to events over which the manager (in this category I include
teachers as well as principals) has some direct control and the possibilities of direct
influence. For example, the effective teaching literature indicates that teachers have
considerable control over how time is used in their classrooms and that teachers vary
considerably in the way they allocate ?nd manage time. The allocation of time is a
management result, and as such, it is a result for which the teacher as executive can
reasonably be held accountable. Similarly, the effective schools literature indicates that
principals vary considerably in the extent to which they are visible in the school, the extent
to which they visit classrooms, and the frequency with which they hold job-oriented
conversations with teachers. Increasing or decreasing the frequency of such occurrences is a
matter which is generally under the control of principals. It is a management result and a
result for which a principal can justifiably be held accountable.
The effective teaching and effective schools literature also suggests that when
principals and teachers produce management results like those indicated above, the results
are likely to be improved test scores. However, neither teachers nor principals have direct
control over test scores, and one of the first axioms of sound management theory is that
persons should not be held accountable for events over which they exercise little or no
control.
The key, of course, is that school boards and top leaders must have a clear notion of
what they expect students, teachers, principals and others to do; they must communicate
these expectations clearly, check to see if those things are being done, provide corrective
action and support where they are not being done, and then assess whether the doing of
these things produces the end results that are intended.
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 Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

It is critical, however, that policy-makers not confuse results with the way results are
achieved. Process should not be confused with product. For example, one principal might
assure effective leadership by conducting in-service workshops for faculty which focus on
adult leadership and then delegate leadership responsibilities to faculty members. Another
principal might have an uncanny knack for identifying and recruiting personnel who have
the requisite leadership skills. In both instances the management results could be essentially
the same (i.e., the presence of strong and effective instructional leadership). The
management result is what is important, and these results can be measured. Designing
schools for the future should not be viewed as a quest for a cookbook or recipe. Research
and prescriptions can provide preliminary statements of some measurable management
results which seem to be associated with student achievement on some very narrow
measures. It is up to policy-makers to determine what other results they wish to pursue.
Once such decisions have been made, it should be possible for researchers to provide
assistance and guidance in determining what types of management results are most likely
to produce the end results (i.e., the results of management) that policy-makers desire. For
example, it may be that a very different approach to te iiing is required to increase student
problem-solving skills than is required to help students master the basic skills needed to
decode the printed word (just as managing unskilled workers requires different leadership
styles than does the management of skilled workers). This is not to suggest an either/or
situation but rather that those who decide what management results they wish to pursue
and those who have the power to enforce these decisions are the only persons who can and
should be held responsible for the results of management. Boldly stated, it is time to
acknowledge that boards of education and superintendents of schools are, in the long run,
the primary accountability points for such results as test scores, just as corporate executives
are the primary accountability points for long-term growth and profit. Holding teachers
directly accountable for test scores is no more defensible than is holding a first line
supervisor at General Motors accountable for the profit of the corporation. What teachers
can and should be held accountable for is engaging in those practices that most effectively
produce the management results that research and theory suggest to be most closely
associated with the outcomes desired of the schooling enterprise. Research provides some
strong hints about what some of these management results might be, but board members
and superintendents who endorse these management results should do so in the full
knowledge that they alone are accountable for the results of what they endorse.

'Centralized Decentralization'

Naive interpretations of the literature on e:fective schools could lead one to the conclusion
that the question of centralization versus decentralization has at least been resolved. For
some, the effective schools literature suggests that every school building is a kingdom unto
itself and that effective kingdoms are those having strong kings. This is a mistaken
interpretation of the literature. Strong leadership at the building level is a critical
determinant of an effective school. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the
principal is or should be the only, or necessarily the best, source of strong leadership. What

248
 Schools for the Twenty-first Century: The Conditions for Invention

the effective schools literature demonstrates is that effective principals are those who
provide or cause others to provide strong leadership.
The obligation of system-level policy-makers, therefore, is to assure the presence of
strong leadership in each school building. Fostering the emergence of such leadership
through the assigning of principals, the training of principals and the training of teacher
leaders (e.g., department chairpersons or lead teachers) is a central responsibility of school
superintendents and their staffs. (Grove, the CEO of Intel, regularly teaches a class for
beginning managers of his corporation; see Grove, 1983). It is also a responsibility that
should not be delegated to a building-level unit. One of the most critical decisions district-
level policy-makers must make concerns the development of clear and explicit statements
of what is meant by effective leadership. Equally important, they must decide what kinds
of indicators are to be used to show that effective leadership is present. For example, some
boards of education implicitly define effective leaders as those who have little or no trouble
with staff or parents. The indicators of effectiveness are frequently nothing more than the
rate and frequency of staff and parental complaints. Though one might argue with this
definition of effective leadership, the point is that most definitions of effectiveness can and
do have measurable indicators.
In addition to the identification, placement and development of building-level
leadership, there arc other functions that cannot and should not be decentralized. Chief
among these are: (1) the development and articulation of the guiding goals of the school
system; and (2) the development and specifications of the indicators that would be used to
assess the effectiveness with which goals are pursued. Such processes should be diffuse
throughout the system. All should participate, but it is a central responsibility to assure
that the processes go on.
If both equity and excellence are ends worthy of pursuit, then determinations of the
goals to be pursued and the standards of performance to be acceptable in this pursuit of
goals cannot be left up to individual building units. Ironically, it is the failure to
understand this basic fact that has made the effective schools literature possible in the first
place. Indeed, it was the wide variance in the performance of students in the same school
system on measures of achievement of basic skills that led to the notion of 'outlier' schools
and thus to the notion of 'effective schools'.
In the area of basic skills, the attainment of which is so critical to future life, individual
faculties and individual principals should not be permitted to choose whether they will
pursue such goals or choose what standards will be used to determine the effectiveness
with which these goals are achieved. Such decisions must be made collectively, with
significant contributions from all concerned constituencies, but the ultimate authority for
making such decisions lies with the community and those who represent the community.
Given this seemingly strong argument for centralization, the argument will now be
reversed. Just as there are some things that cannot or should not be decentralized, there are
some things that cannot be or should not be centralized. Chief among these are:
(1) identifying and clarifying those conditions and factors that impede the effectiveness
with which the building unit and/or classroom teachers pursue the goals they are assigned;
(2) the development and implementation of plans and programs intended to address the
problems that may have been identified; (3) decisions regarding what resources and

249

252
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

personnel are needed to implement plans; and (4) decisions regarding how such resources
should be assigned.
In summary, while it is the function of the central administration to determine what
goals are to be pursued and to establish indicators for measuring the effectiveness of goal
pursuits, it is the function of those directly responsible for implementing programs to
design and manage those programs in ways that their understanding of the local situation
indicates to be most effective.
There are many grey areas regarding what should be centralized and what should be
decentralized. For example, some educators argue that personnel assignment, including
who should be employed and under what conditions, should be strictly a building-level
concern. Some argue that the building-level units should have considerable fiscal
autonomy. However, such decisions can only be made on a case-by-case basis. For
example, if one of the goals of a school system is to pursue the concept of a unitary school
district to the point that both teachers and administrators would place their loyalty to the
total school system above their loyalty to a building-level constituency, then centralized
control of personnel assignments and transfers would make considerable sense. On the
other hand. if it is held that each building's student constituency is unique and that only a
cohesive faculty with intimate knowledge of that constituency's peculiarities could serve
them effectively, then it might make sense to give the building-level unit considerable
autonomy in personnel assignment and placement.
Issues related to centralization are more than political issues. What should and should
not be centralized is a pedagogical issue as well. What should be centralized and to what
degree is a critical decision; and once made, the decision may need to be re-examined if
circumstances change, new problems emerge and different goals gain emphasis.
Furthermore, such decisions should always be made against a single criterion: what will be
the impact of the capacity of the school to develop and maintain the human resources it
now has to recruit and attract the kind of human potential likely to be needed in the
future?

Problems and Growth

One of the most interesting lessons taught by both the effective schools literature and the
literature on America's best-run companies is that problem-identification and problem-
solving cannot be separated. As Drucker (1973) points out, there can be no divorce of
planning from doing. Tacitly, wise teachers and administrators long have understood that
the master curriculum guide served more to satisfy the needs of the central office and
regional accrediting offices than it served to direct activity in the classroom.
Furthermore, it is well and good to suggest that teachers and building-level
administrators should actively involve themselves in problem-identification and problem-
solving, but such an activity can only become productive in an environment in which it is
all right to have a problem in the first place. For example, many teachers and building
principals rightly fear the growing tendency to publish test scores in local newspapers
precisely because they perceive such activities as blame-placing strategy rather than as
problem-identification strategy. What school board members and superintendents must
250

245-3
 Schools for the Twentrfirst Century: The Conditions for Invention

understand is that F thools with the lowest test scores do have problems, but it is in no way
clear what those problems might be or how they might be resolved. Furthermore, it does
no more good to tell a building principal and his/her faculty that they will be held
accountable for improving test scores than it does to tell the weakest hitter on a baseball
team to quit striking out. What is needed is help, encouragement, support and incentives,
not blame.
Outside a specific context it is difficult to suggest specific policies that school boards
might institute to foster creative problem-identification and creative problem-solving, for
these are more matters of tone and texture than policy. Yet such matters cannot be or
should not be too easily dismissed. The creative capacities of teachers and building
administrators cannot be liberated in an atmosphere of fear and threat. If nurturance and
suppori are expected at the bottom, then an attitude of nurturance and support must start
at the top. The creation of such attitudes is a result of management and, as such, is a result
for which superintendents and school boards are most accountable.
Local policy-makers should recognize that change aid improvement are a non-linear
process. Sometimes specific change efforts will produce what appear to be undesirable
outcomes in the short run. For example, except in unitsual cases, the short-term
consequences of moving a faculty which has grown comfortable with a bureaucratic
structure to the more collegial and non-bureaucratic forms of governance suggested by the
idea of teacher as executive, are likely to include a temporary decrease in faculty morale, an
increase in faculty turnover and an increase of complaints that the administration is not
doing its job. What policy-makers must keep in mind is that the norms and values which
give high priority to disciplined problem-solving and continuous improvement are
substantially different from the norms appropriate to routinization, to standardization and
to the maintenance and defence of the status quo. In a hostile environment problems are
perceived as threats to the social order. In beleaguered and threatened organizations
problems are to be coped with, dealt with, hidden or submerged as quickly as possible so
that the real business of the organization can continue (i.e., the business of doing business
as usual). In effective knowledge-work organizations, including effective schools,
problem-seeking and problem-solving are the lifeblood of the organization. Problems are
accepted as normal events and not as signs of organizational pathology. Failure to solve
problems is tolerated in the short run, just as success in solving problems in the long run is
rewarded.
In summary, if boards of education and administrators are serious about encouraging
the restructuring of schools, they must be willing to do some things which are not
characteristic of boards of education and managers of public bureaucracies. Most of all,
they must be willing to tolerate problem-causing as well as problem-solving, and they
must recognize that change and improvement cause problems as well as resolving
problems. Thus policy-makers and other administrators must develop a long-term view
and the patience that such a view suggests. At the same time policy-makers and top
administrators must choose and emphasize key results that convey impatience and an
action orientation.

251
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

Continuity of Development

Promoting and developing the conditions described in the preceding sections of this
chapter are critical if the intent is to foster the systematic restructuring of schools.
However, clear goals, measurable results, a commitment to the development of human
resources and a problem-solving orientation are likely to have little significant impact if
school boards and superintendents fail to appreciate that school improvement is a long-run
developmental process rather than a short-term result. Effective schools are not simply
good schools. Effective schools are schools in which there is a strong commitment to
getting better and being more effctive, and this commitment is shared by almost all who
participate in the life of the school. Somehow thc persons who function in these schools
have, in Drucker's terms, 'learned to run at one and the same time an existing managerial
organization and a new innovative organization' (Drucker, 1973, p. 31). To achieve this
end, they have learned to think in terms of effectiveness rather than efficiency and in terms
of the long run as well as the short run.
It is one of the unfoaunate facts of public life that political realities are such that
efficiency (i.e., productivity at the lowest cost in the shortest time) rather than
effectiveness (i.e.. increasing that capacity of the organization to meet fUttire demands as
well as present needs) is likely to be a prime value. Furthermore, there is a strong drive for
short-term, quick-fix answers rather than long-term fundamental solutions. There are
many reasons for this condition. For example, school systems that experience high
turnover in the superintendent's office have a difficult time maintaining continuity of
direction. Faculty turnover and school board elections cal. have similar effects. However,
one of the greatest barriers to the establishment of the norms of continuous improvement
(Little. 1982, pp. 325-40) is the uncertainty of continued funding and continued support
for projects once started. One of the greatest sources of resistance to change in schools and
one of the greatest barriers to the developm,:nt of commitment to the change process is the
generalized view among teachers and building-level administrators that those who manage
school systems and the boards that set policies for schools are unable or unwilling to sustain
the momentum that is required to assure continuous improvement (Schlechty and Joslin,
1986).
Many of the factors which create the conditions that discourage continuous
improvements are, in the short run at least, beyond the control of local boards and local
superintendents. The introduction of a newly elected board member or the employment of
a new superintendent will and should bring some changes in direction. The tendency for
schools to be budgeted on an annual basis and the lack of assured dollars (especially in the
areas of research, staff development and program development) are realities that cannot be
avoided. In spite of these realities, there are actions that can be taken by school boards and
superintendents which could serve to offset some of the negative consequences that these
conditions produce.
1 Existing school boards working with the present superintendent, the existing
staff and perhaps outside consultants could develop in advance a systematic
orientation program for a new superintendent and perhaps for new board
members. The development of such an activity should probably not occur at the

252
 Schools for the Twenty-first Century: The Conditions for Invention

time new board members are being installed or when a new superintendent is
being employed. Rather such an activity should be undertaken in a period of
relative stability on the board and when the tenure of the present superintendent
is relatively secure. Planning for the identification and/or development of one's
own replacements is a critical activity. Furthermore, such planning, and the
thought that it requires, should cause present board members and superinten-
dents to take seriously the charge of identifying and articulating the image they
hold of their school system.
2 Local school boards and superintendents should seriously consider the prospect
of establishing an endowment fund targeted specifically for the support of
school improvement projects. Such a fund, once established, could be used to
provide individual teachers and school faculties with small grants to support
local school initiatives. The same funds might be used to reward faculties far
inventions they produce and to support activities aimed at sharing the
inventions with teachers and administrators in other schools. Perhaps the most
important addition of an endowment would be that it would make it possible, if
only in a small way, for the school system to foster and encourage long-term
development and to supplement these long-term commitments with whatever
short-term funding might be available.
3 Schools boards could and should establish policies, procedures and programs
which make it possible for local school faculties to induct new teachers into the
culture of the school. Faculty stability appears to be closely associated with
effective schools (Purkey and Smith, 1983). Unfortunately, given the
demographics of the teacher workforce, it appears likely that teacher turnover
wil: increase dramatically over the next decade (see Schlechty and Vance, 1983;
Darling-Hammond, 1984). Careful and systematic induction into the existing
culture of the school is one of the most promising ways to assure the continuity
of experience that will be required when demographic forces aye fostering
discontinuity of experience.
The critical point is that those who run schools and those who make policies for
schools, if they want to encourage fundamental restructuring of schools, must carefully
weigh the impact of every decision they make on the ability of local schools to maintain
continuity of experience. It is this continuity, coupled with the emergence of a school
culture which honors, rewards and inspires outstanding performance, that is the critical
component of the second wave of school reform.

Personnel Policies and Issues

Conceiving of the teacher as an executive, the principal as a leader of leaders, and the
superintendent as the CEO could cause us to reconsider the nature and function of teacher
education and administrator preparation. Indeed, if the images of schools characterized
here were to be embraced, it would probably cause a revolution in the areas of staff
development, personnel hiring and job placement and would refocus reform proposals

253
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

regarding teacher education as well. Teacher education might well be conceived as

management development. Arguments regarding certification and alternative certification
would be fundamentally reformulated. For example, it might be that one function of
teacher education should be to certify that teacher candidates can learn how to te.h rather
than that teacher candidates know how to teach. Both the preparation of teachers and the
preparation of administrators would be based on the assumption that what is necessary is
that they be prepared as leaders.
This is not to suggest that teachers and administrators would abandon the idea of
be,ag part of a knowledge- and research-based profession. On the contrary, it is to suggest
that continuity of experience and continuity of careers would be greatly enhanced if they
were based on core understandings regarding management and leadership in environments
where the primary task is to work on knowledge.
Perhaps more importantly, viewing the school as a knowledge-work organization
and the superintendent as the chief executive officer in such an organization should cause
state-level policy-makers to be at least as attentive to issues related to the identification,
development and continuing support of top-level school district administrators as they
have become with the recruitment and training of teachers and building principals. Gary
Sykes has referred to teacher education as higher education's 'dirty little secret'. As a
former chair of a department that prepared administrators, a premit member of a
department of school administration and one who has had the opportunity to interview
numerous deans of schools of education and many superintendents, I feel screnre in saying
that one of the differences between the perceived quality of teacher educatiol, and the
perceived qua' 7 of administrator preparation (i.e., the preparation of :op-level
administrators) is that there are no secrets. Most agree that there is much need for
improvement in the kinds of training and support provided for superintendents, or
teachers would become superintendents.

Conclusion

This chapter has not offered a blueprint for schools of the future; rather, it has presented a
vision of how schools might be reinvented so that they might become learning
organizations, what Sizer (1984) has referred to as essential schools. Some will insist that I
have rushed the business metaphor too far. just as I have been accused of pushing the
medical metaphor too far. Perhaps. However, I am not convinced that viewing students as
workers, teachers as executives, and principals as leaders of instructors is argument by
analogy or analysis by metaphor. Rather, I believe that schools have long been the original
knowledge-work organizations, and businesses are simpl- becoming more school-like.
Indeed, one of the fundamental problems confronting American business is how to
motivate, manage. lead and direct irdividuals whose primary task is to work on and with
knowledge and knowledge-related products. This does not seem dissimilar from the
fundamental problem which confronts those who must invent schools of the future.
There is the danger that too close an adherence to the knowledge-work model could
cause education to subvert its critical function (i.e.. the function of producing citizens

254

25 7
 Schools for the Twerurfirst Century: The Conditions for Invention

whose knowledge is critically held) and to subvert the liberating functions to reactionary
ends. All visions are dangerous and can lead to excess, but without vision, the future will
happen to us. With a clear vision, we are in position to help invent what happens.

References

W. and NANUS, B. (1985) Leaders. New York: Harper and Row.

BENNIS,
BERLINER, D. (1983) 'Executive Functions of leaching', Instructor. 93: 28-33.
DARLING-HAMMOND, L. (1984) Beyond the Commission Reports: The Coming Crisis in Teaching.
Washington, DC: Rand Corporation.
DRUCKER, P. (1973) Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Praakes. New York: Harper and Row.
DURKHEIM, E. (1956) Education and Sociology. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
GROVE, A. (1983) High Output Management. Westminster, MD: Random House.
KELLY, R. (1982) Cold Collar Worker. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
LITTLE, J. W. (1982) 'Norms of Collegiality and Experimentation: Workplace Conditions in
Schools', American Educational Researdi Journal 19: 325-40.
PETERS, T. J. and WATERMAN, R. H. (1982) In Searrh of Excellencr. New York: Harper and Row.
PuRKEY, S. C. and SMITH, M. S. (1983) 'Effective Schools: A Review'. Elementary Schooljournal 4:
427-52.
SCHLECHTY, P. (1985) 'District Level Policies and Practices: Supporting Effective School
Management and Classroom Instruction' in R.M.J. KYLE (ed.) Reaching for Excellence: An
Effective Sdtools Ilandlwk. Washington, DC: National Institute of Education, 117-29.
SoiLECHTY. P. and jOSLIN, A. (1986) Planning and Implementing a Teacher Career Development
Program: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina Case. Unpublished report on NIE Project:
Washington. DC.
SCHLECHTY, P and VANCE, V. (1983) 'Recruitmenz. Selection and Retention: The Shape of the
Teaching Force', Elementary School Journal 83: 409-87.
SIZER, T. (1984) Horace's Compromise. Boston: Houghton-Mii-flin.
SIZER, T. (1986) 'Rebuilding First Steps by the Coalition of Essential Schools', Phi Delta Kaman 68:
38-42,
V1DICH. A .J. and BENSMAN (1957) Small Thum in Mass Society: Class, Power. and Religion in a Rural
Cc imunity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

255
 Notes on Contributors

Phillip Schkchty is the President of the Center for Leadership in School Reform in
Louisville, Kentucky. Schlechty has published numerous books and articles on topics
related to school reform and has received the AERA Professional Service Award and the
AFT Quest Citation Award.

Larry Cuban is Professor of Education and Associate Dean for Academic and Student
Affairs at Stanford University. He has initiated an ongoing Superintendents' roundtable
for school superintendents in Santa Clara County to discuss policy issues and currently
heads Stanford School Collaborative. He is the author of many books and articles, among
them The Managerial Imperative: The Practice of Leadership in Schools.

David L. Clark is William Clay Parrish, Jr. Professor of Education in the Curry School
of Education, University of Virginia. He has also served as professor at Ohio State
University and Indiana University. His research studies and publications have included
work in organizational theory, policy studies, teacher education, and the change process in
education.

Judith M. Meloy is in the Office of Research and Evaluation. Connecticut State

Department of Education, Hartford. Connecticut. Before this appointment, she was at
Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, researching leadership and the change
process in schools and colleges.

Susan J. Rosenholtz is associate professor of education at the University of Illinois,

specializing in the sociology and social psychology of education and the sociology of the
classroom. Her written work is extensive with her most recent book being Teachers'
Workplace: The Social Organization of Schools.

Judith Warren Little is assistant professor of education at the University of California at

Berkeley. Her major interests are in the school as a professional environment for teachers
with special attention to teachers relationships as colleagues, the workplace influence on
teachers' commitment to teaching and their conceptions of a career.

Linda Darling-Hammond formerly of the Rand Corporation, is professor in the

Curriculum and Teaching Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. In 1987
257
Schools as Collaborative Cultures: Creating the Future Now

she was the recipient of the AFT's Quest Citation Award given in recognition of her
'outstanding contributions to education'. Her numerous articles and research on teaching
policy have been very influential in the United States in the movement to professionalize
teaching.

Gary A. Griffin is professor of education at the University of Arizona. His interests

:nclude school improvement, expanded leadership roles for teachers and curriculum
development. He has made significant contributions to our understanding of the initial
years of teaching exemplified in the publication The First Years of Teaching.

Milbrey W. McLaughlin is associate professor at Stanford University. She is the

Director of the Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching. Her
policy analysis and research is concerned with planned change and the secondary school
context.

David Marsh is professor of education in the Departmem of Teacher Education at the

University of Southern California. His most recent work has been concerned with state
policy on staff development and school reform.

Gary Sykes is assistant professor of education at Michigan State University, where he also
serves on the staff of the Holmes Group. He also consults regularly with the recently
formed National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. His research includes the
policy effects on teachers and teaching, teacher education, and the assessment of teaching.

Ann Lieberman is professor of education at the University of Washington, on leave as

Visiting Professor at Teachers College. Columbia University. She has written widely on
collaborative research, the social realities of teaching and the expanding role for teachers.
Her research, development and policy interests are with restructuring schools and the roles
of teachers.

Terry Deal is professor of education and human development at Peabody College of

Vanderbilt University. His major research interests include: organizations, change and
leadership with a particular focus on the role of symbols in the human experience. His
forthcoming book is to be published by Jossey-Bass with a working title of Rqraming
Organizations: The Artistry of Leadership with Lee Bolman.

Seymour Sarason is professor of psychology at Yale University. is founder and former

director of the Yale Psycho-educational Clinic. He is the author of numerous books,
including The Psychological Sense of Community and The Culture of the School and the Problem
of Change.

Lynne Miller is associate professor of education in the department of professional

education at the University of Southern Maine and Director of the Southern Maine
partnership. Her major research interests include staff development, school reform and the
restructuring of schools.

258

2G
 Index

Absenteeisni of teachers 89. 104. 117, 118 curriculum 4, 34-5, 47, 117, 119. 121. 168,
alternative schools 15. 131. 132 195-209
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) 129. change 71, 73-7, 222, 227-9, 243
139 development 10, 14, 20, 31, 40-3, 154
autonomy MCT 81-4, 87, 97
fiscal 242. 250 standardized 26-8, 44. 45, 12.0. 250
of teachers 25, 33-4, 37. 108, 120-2, 174. 235-7 teamwork 167-71. 173-4, 178-87
and CLPs 89. 90
and MCT 80. 82. 83. 87 dailiness of teaching 153, 156-62. 202
death as life change 127. 130. 134-7, 140-2
Basic Skills Program 82. 85-8. 93, 97 'Decade of Reform' (1965-75) 213
beginning teachers 35, 36, 171-6 Department of Mental Health 67
Bell System 128-9, 132, 139, 140 desegregation 67
boards of education 45-7, 92 Dewey, john 26. 27, 58. 60. 66
schools reform 234-5. 238. 240. 242-3. 245, dropouts 25. 26. 29, 44, 242
248-9, 251
see also school boards Education for All Handicapped Children
Act (1975) 73
Canada 106 Elementary arid Secondary Education Act
career ladder plans (CLPs) 17. 80, 86, 88-97. 110, (1965) 73
122, 174. 177. 202-3 evaluation 4. 31-3. 47-8, 73. 77. 196. 198. 205-6.
careers of teachers 14. 112, 154, 107-8, 204, 254 244
advancement 36, 43, 198 beginning teachers 173
colleagues 171. 174. 177 of curriculum 200-1
effects of v. ar 52, 54, 56-8 in effective schools 117-19
Carnegie 27, 198, 233, 237 as intrusion 159
ceremonies 128-30, 134. 137-40, 143-4 in orn-space schools 170-1
certification 11, 32-3, .36-7. 237, 238, 254 hy peers 17. 20. 36. 38-42, 108. 116
Challenger Space Shuttle 72 pre-tenure 43
Change Agent Study see Rand Study of principals 233
Chrysler 132 standards 79, 91-5
class size 37. 76. 109. 114, 115. 122 by students 161
concentration Cam ps 135, 136, 142 team teaching 185

259
 Index

faculty 14, 42. 178, 181, 187-8, 203. 216, 230 parents 25-6, 40-1, 44. 105, 106
beginning teachers 172, 175 ceremonies 129, 144
CLP 89, 90 expectations 28, 30, 48
curriculum 200-2 relationship with school 132. 133. 243. 245, 249
gender 120 responsibilities 45, 47
goals 117, 119, 235 volunteer helpers 87, 202
resources 44 war 52, 53
responsibilities 47, 66-7 pay of teachers 71, 88, 108, 110-12. 217
ritual and ceremony 138. 139, 144 see Aso salaries
school reform 243. 246-53 principals 42-5, 47, 71. 73. 117. 160-1
war 54 CLPs 88-9. 93-4
first-order changes 72-7 curriculum 195-7, 199, 205, 207-9
First World War 52. 56 evaluation 38, 41, 93, 94, 233
Rand Study 216. 217. 221-3
GI Bill of Rights 52, 54, 56, 59, 60 ritual and ceremony 129, 138-9. 143-4
Gibson. James 'Ground Theory' 64 role 4, 6, 9-11, 20, 77
gold-collar workers 236-7, 243 school reform 233-5, 237, 241-3, 245-51.
Great Depression 54. 56. 59 233-4
'Ground Theory' 64 staff development 214, 227. 230-1
team teaching 166, 169, 171, 183-5
Holmes Group 37. 198, 233 turnover 118-19
prisoners of war 135, 142
induction of teachers 35-6. 39, 42-3, 253 pri iate schools 15. 25, 106, 112, 237
in-service programs 108, 117. 179-80, I8J, 230. probationary teachers 88. 89
248 promotion of teachers 14. 20, 27
CLPs 89, 90 Public Law 94-142, 67
education 204, 207, 213-14, 218, 224-6. 228
relevance 154 quality circles 17, 19
isolation 159, 227
beginning teachers 172 racism 55. 56
principals 209 Rand Study (Change Agent Study) 214-18.
teachers 38. 40-1, 108. 154, 165-6. 205 220-32
recruitment of teachers 14, 36, 104, 116, 122
Japan 40, 132. 141 rituals 128, 130. 134, 137-8, 140-3, 146-7, 157
and war 53, 135
job security 108. 114 salaries 14. 20, 36, 43, IC 122, 177. 202
CLP 92, 94
life change units 136-7 differentials 114-15. 122
Lortie, Dan 106-8. 113, 154, 172-3, 181, 229 first-order change 73. 74. 76
incentive 114-16
merit pay 16, 74, 108. 122 private schools 106, 237
minimum competency testing (MCT) 28, 80-8, see also pay
92, 96-7 SAT scores 115
morale 86, 93-5, 199, 251 school boards 10, 13, 41-2, 166
reform 246-7. 250-3
National Commission on Excellence team teaching 185
in Education 79 see alsoboards of education
National Defense Education Act (1958) 73 Second World War 52-60, 63. 64
National Governors' Association Task secondary jobs for teachers 112
Force 233 second-order change 72-7
National Institute of Mental Health 55 shortages of teachers 32, 37, 79, 109

260

2G2
 Index

Sputnik 51 tuition tax credits 105

State Education Agencies (SEA) 93 T.rinessee 80-2, 84, 92, 93, 98, 132
status tenure of teachers 14, 20, 39, 41, 48, 213, 224
CLP 88 test scores of students 29, 48, 118, 247-8, 250-1
differences 177 Theories X, Y and Z 6-9, 11. 13-19
prir.cipals 196 truancy 44
staff development 213 turnover of teachers 104, 112, 115, 118-19, 176,
teachers 25, 38-9, 79, 107-8, 197-8, 208, 223, 251-3
237-8, 243
team teaching 184-5 vandalism 25, 44
verbal ability of teachers 79, 224, 225, 231
teachers' learning opportunities 89-91, 117, 220 Veterans' Association 55
teacher-run schools 73, 76 voucher plans 73, 76, 105, 131
team teaching 108, 131, 165, 167-71, 175, 180-8

261

f;
 School Development and the Management of Change Series
Series Editors: Peter Hotly and Geo. Southwortb
Cambridge Institute of Education, Cambridge, CB2 2BX, UK

THE DEVELOPING SCHOOL

Peter Holly and Geoff Southworth, Cambridge Institute of
Education, UK

HERE COMES THE ASSEMBLY MAN

A Year in the Life of a Primary School
Fred Sedgwick, UK

SCHOOLS AS COLLABORATIVE CULTURES

Creating the Future Now
Edited by Ann Lieberman, University of Washington, USA

PRIMARY EDUCATION
From Plowden to the 1990s
Norman Thomas, Honorary Professor at the University of Warwick, UK

THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL

Implementing the National Curriculum in Science and Design
Technology
Anne Pennell and David Alexander, Bsdfordshire Education
Service, UK

SEMI-DETACHED TEACHERS
Building Support and Advisory Relationships in Classrooms
Colin Biott, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, UK

Schools as Collaborative Cultures is a collection of essays by some of the best com-

mentators on school reform that American education has to offer. It provides rich
testimony to the power of teacher collaboration within school development. As Holly
and Southworth maintained in the lead volume to this series (Holly and Southworth,
1989), teacher collaboration is a key activity in the developing school. Thc contributions
offered here provide a set of improvisations on the same theme; that each school needs
to establish a collaborative culture as a precondition for its own development. Associated
themes touched upon include: bureaucratic schooling (the antithesis of collaborative
schooling); democratic leadership; teacher professionalism and teacher leadership;
teacher invoivement in decision-making and 'colleagueship' (or collegiality). Moreover,
many of the authors represented here equate teacher collaboration with teacher
empowerment, an enhanced sense of professionalism and, indeed, the restructuring of
schooling.

Ann Lieberman is professor of education at the University of Washington, on leave u

Visiting Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has written widely on
cohaborative research, the social realities of teaching and the expanding role for teachers.
Her research, development and policy interests are with restructuring schools and the
roles of teachers.
Cover design by Caroline Archer
ISBN 1 85000 673 3
BEST COPY AVAILABLE 264