Abstract
This study examines the reflections about changes to work-related beliefs and practices of 24 American teachers and school leaders. The changes resulted from their experience of a 3-year school-based literacy teacher learning and development experience, The Learning Network, between 1992 and 2002. Four aspects of theoretical discussion were considered as background to studying the teacher change process including teacher learning and development, teacher beliefs, learning and teaching as cyclic activities, and the teacher change implications of school development.
The Learning Network evolved from introductory 4-day summer teacher workshops in 1989 marketing and explaining the New Zealand developed early reading series, Ready to Read. The workshops, later renamed teacher institutes, were based on a constructivist view of learning to read, familiar to many American teachers but requiring different approaches to implementing classroom pedagogy than conventional whole class teaching from basal texts. The challenge of differential teaching approaches to student literacy learning resulted in the evolution of the 3-year, school-based programme, The Learning Network. Key to the programme was a rigorous, consistent, and regular teacher experience of the change mechanism of classroom-based observation, feedback, reflection, and planned action with the support of a skilled mentor. The change process developed a mix of approaches that supported teachers’ development of content knowledge, instructional skill, and classroom practices that built a learning-based classroom environment to manage the classroom range and diversity of students.
The 24 members of the study cohort were interviewed in 2024. A reflexive thematic analysis of interview data revealed three phases of change through which the study cohort traversed. Their data also revealed three key themes that shed light on the nature of the belief and practice changes the cohort experienced. One theme related to the quality of the participants, their sense of altruism, their mission as teachers to improve outcomes for all students, and their later willingness to lead change. A second theme related to reluctance, resistance and an unwillingness to accept the challenges of change some teachers and school leaders faced among colleagues. Lastly, a theme emerged about how the change programme had influenced the language of change, the culture, and the relationships among the study cohort.
An examination of the programme’s effectiveness as a measure of the quality of teacher change suggested the programme met recognised criteria for effective teacher learning and development. Several studies of the programme in schools and school districts in which the study participants had teaching and leadership roles suggested the programme model had a positive impact on student learning. This suggested also the change programme also had a positive influence on developing teacher quality. For the purposes of the thesis, developed teacher quality was defined as teachers who have the knowledge, skills, and classroom practices to progress the learning requirements of each of their students on a continuum of literacy learning toward certain achievement expectations.
The broad study outcome proposes teacher learning and development was likely to be more effective if it was considered part of a teacher’s job and offered in the context of the classroom and school through a rigorous programme for change involving self-reflection and the ability to act on it.