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In-service program documentation
Clarifying expectations for the field experience (D6.1)
Logistics and scheduling information (by Judith Fonzi)
As previously discussed in Section C of this package, we have implemented this professional development framework under three quite different sets of circumstances. Each of these situations presented its own unique opportunities and constraints which significantly effected how we designed the field experiences. While each of the implementations shared the same general framework and philosophy the extent to which we could impose requirements and the level of work we could expect was quite different. As was also mentioned in Section C 3, we continue to feel that Implementation A more closely reflects our ideals with respect to the field experiences and we have therefore relied heavily on the data from this implementation to illustrate the activities of this section as well as Sections 7 and 8. In what follows we describe the decisions and rationale for implementation A and then briefly explain the modification and results for other implementations so that the reader can see how we chose to modify the framework and can benefit from what we have learned. (Note: As you read it may be helpful to refer to the program announcement for each implementation of the field experience provided in the instructional materials of this activity.)
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| Rationale for the general design of the field experience |
| Choices made for each phase of the field experiences |
| -- First phase of the field experiences - implementing the illustrative unit |
| -- Second phase of the field experience - implementing a second illustrative unit |
| -- Final phase of the field experience - implementing a unit of their own design |
Rationale for the general design of the field experience
The general framework for our field experiences was informed by the current literature regarding the implementation of field experiences as a professional development practice and what we had learned from our own previous work supporting teachers to make changes in their practice. All of the decisions regarding the specific requirements for the field experiences for Implementation A were made in light of the fact that: a) we had a small number of participating teachers (2-4) from only five different schools; b) we had grant funds to provide a reasonable stipend to support teachers' commitment of additional time; and, c) we had sufficient funding to offer substantial support from the project staff.
Due to the conditions of our funding, we were limited to developing a professional development program that lasted a maximum of 1 year, as we had committed to both develop and field test the program in a three-year period. Heeding the cautions reiterated in all of the available literature we began with the assumption that a 1-year field experience could only hope to begin the long-term process of instruction change. At the same time, we made the assumption that we would be able to continue working with these participants in the subsequent year when additional teachers from their schools participated in the next implementation of the program (we had hoped to build a cadre of teachers within a school who were working towards implementing an inquiry approach to teach mathematics). Even so, we knew that sooner or later our staff support would have to end so these teachers needed to develop strategies so that they could continue their process of change on their own
For all these reasons, we decided to set a series of requirements which would provide a scaffolded field experience intended to help the participants begin to develop the necessary skills to plan, implement, and evaluate inquiry experiences independently. This set of requirements included the implementation of three different inquiry units and the preparation of detailed documentation of each experience. In addition, participants were required to attend the weekly "school-based support team" meetings and 4 project wide meetings. We essentially broke the academic year up into three sections, each corresponding to a phase of the scaffolded experience.
First phase of the field experience - implementing an illustrative unit
In the first phase participants were required to implement one of our illustrative units as their very first unit of the school year. The intent was to create a new environment and set of practices (for both the teacher and the students) which could continue and be refined throughout the year. We believe that it is much easier for teachers to implement a new practice from the very beginning than it is to change an already established practice in midstream. The decision to require the use of one of our illustrative units, in addition to the reasons articulated in the "rationale and scope of this component" (which centered around the individual teacher's having developed considerable knowledge of the unit and the availability of supporting materials) made it possible for the school facilitator, support team members, and other participants to more fully understand and support the participants in their first endeavor.
We decided to concentrate a substantial amount of our resources, financial and human, on this phase. During this time participants were expected to meet 2 or three times with the school facilitator to work on their unit plans. This allowed the school facilitator an opportunity to engage the participants in discussions about their specific goals and choices of activities and both participant and school facilitator always came away with a deeper understanding of what they were trying to achieve and better orchestrated activities to do so. The planning meetings also provided an opportunity for the school facilitator and participant to begin to develop a working relationship which could be carried into the classroom as the school facilitator provided in-class support to the participant.
We decided to offer considerable in-class support during this first implementation despite the high cost in terms of manpower and time. We believe that when teachers are focusing on their own practice (as they must when trying to make such radical changes) they frequently need and "extra pair of eyes" to help them see what they students are doing and how they are reacting (not to mention an extra pair of hands to help carry out some of the activities !). School facilitators were expected to be in the classrooms of participants several times during the implementation and each visit was to culminate in a discussion reflecting on the class and revising / refining subsequent lessons as a result.
During this time, all participants were also expected to attend the weekly "support team" meetings. These meetings provided participants with an on-going opportunity to discuss their experiences, raise questions, share their AHAs and disappointments and think about their own practice in light of what others were sharing. In addition to their participation in the meeting, participants were expected to write a shared journal each week. This provided an additional opportunity for dialogue as well as a permanent record of their thinking throughout the experience that they could refer to as they prepared their unit documentation.
The documentation requirements for this field experience were quite demanding. Participants were required to keep careful documentation of the entire experience including their preliminary plans, the details of the actual implementation, samples of student work, and their (participants) immediate reactions and overall reflections. We believe, and the artifacts confirm, that participants benefit the most when they take the time to reflect on both the daily experiences and the unit as a whole. This documentation, however, requires time and effort well above the normal expectations for any teacher and we therefore felt the need to provide stipends. The school facilitator is also expected to help by at least providing copies of the notes taken during the planning and in-class support sessions.
We scheduled two project wide "Follow-up" meetings during this phase of the field experience. The first was scheduled early in October, in the hopes that most of the participants would still be implementing their first unit. The goals were to make public the overwhelming positive feelings being heard in the individual schools, to get the concerns out in the open so they could be addressed and to continue the discussions of assessment but now in the context of their own classroom experiences. The second meeting was scheduled in early November after the completion of the first unit implementation. This meeting was intended to provide a forum for sharing overall reflections on the first implementations and to engage the participants in an "experience as learners" based on the Understanding area through investigations unit to provide an image of this unit prior to their second implementation of an illustrative unit. (The summer institute of Implementation A only included an "experience as learners" of the tessellation unit and not surprisingly all the participants chose it as their first unit.)
Modifications made for other implementations of this framework
This phase of the field experience requirements in subsequent implementations of this framework (i.e., Implementations B/C and D) were essentially the same. However because of reduced funding, the school facilitator could not provide the amount and concentration of support to individual participants nor could we provide stipends for additional work. We therefore were forced to eliminate the requirement of a weekly shared journal for "support team" meetings and reduce the documentation requirements to a request that they submit a report which would enable someone else to plan a similar experience. Needless to say, though the participants still reported that this first implementation was a powerful experience in helping them understand, appreciate and put into practice an inquiry approach, we can see (in the artifacts and the practice) the difference in the depth of their knowledge and their change.
Second phase of the field experience - implementing a second illustrative unit
Participants were required to implement a second illustrative unit in the late Fall or early winter. There were several reasons why we felt the implementation of yet another illustrative unit could provide the next step in the "scaffold". First of all, these participants had only a very limited exposure to the other illustrative units (at the time there were two, Understanding area through investigations and a thematic unit on "remodeling") so they would necessarily have to do more independent work to understand and plan this unit. In addition, all of the participants had identified several practices that they felt went quite well during their first implementations but they also identified many things that they wanted to change, work on, or try as a result of their first experiences. Since we wanted to keep the momentum going, and we felt that there would still be time to implement a unit of their own design, we felt implementing a second illustrative unit was a good next step. Though we continued to require some collaboration on the unit plans and in-class support during the implementation of the second unit there we assumed there would be fewer meetings of the school facilitator and individual participant. However, the weekly "support team" meetings continued and the expectation was that team members would begin to rely more on each other for support.
We scheduled one projectwide meeting at the completion of this implementation. The purpose was to share the results of the second implementation and identify the topics being considered for the final unit. Since this third implementation was to be an "original" unit developed by the individual participants we devoted a substantial amount of this meeting to a discussion of specific topics and planning issues more generally.
The requirements for documenting the units remained the same.
Modifications made for other implementations of this framework
Since Implementation B/C was "officially" only a one-semester field experience the second unit implementation could be either one of our illustrative units or a unit of their own design. However, because we felt strongly that participants needed to develop the skills necessary to design their own inquiry units if they were to continue to move towards implementing an inquiry approach throughout the curriculum, school facilitators urged the participants to design their own second unit - all of them took this option. (See the details for the next phase of the field experiences for a discussion of the support for designing one's own unit.)
Since Implementation D took place a few years later and was the introductory piece of a larger 3-year NSF funded "Local systemic change project" (LSC) the condition were quite different. Though we feel strongly that all teachers should experience the first phase of the field experiences essentially as they have been described for all of the reasons previously mentioned, there were several reasons for modifying the remainder of the field experiences for this implementation. First of all, the participants in this group were the remaining teachers in the LSC schools (those who had not previously chosen to participant in Implementation A, B or C) and therefore may not be "ready" to commit to implementing three inquiry units in one year (and there are two more years of funding for in the LSC project!). Also, because several of the other teachers in their schools have been implementing the illustrative units for a couple of years, their students may have already been exposed to the units. In addition, since our last implementation several new "reform oriented" comprehensive middle school curricula have been developed which provided potential resources not previously available. Therefore, in this implementation participants were only asked to implement two units during the first year with the second being their choice between one of our illustrative units or one of their own design. The project wide meetings, after the first sharing meeting, were devoted to exploring specific math topics and becoming familiar with the new middle school curricula materials. And, we chose to limit the number of project wide meetings and to eliminate the project imposed documentation requirements in favor of developing school wide experiences designed to support the individuals' and the schools' efforts towards change.
Final phase of the field experience - implementing an inquiry unit of their own design
Finally, with the continued support of the school facilitator and the "support team" participants were required to design and implement their own inquiry unit. Since we felt that it was crucial for participants to develop strategies for designing inquiry experiences so as to be able to continue their efforts towards instructional change independently school facilitators were again expected to provide substantial support during this phase. However, the support was to be primarily in the planning stage. School facilitators were expected: to act as collaborators, participating in discussions and explorations in an attempt to identify the essence of what is important about the mathematical topic to be taught; to act as sounding boards for participants as they test out ideas for activities which would foster and support appropriate inquiries; to help the participants identify and include the key components of an inquiry cycle in their units; and to make the process they were engaging in explicit so that participants could reflect on it an use it in the future.
We scheduled the final project wide meeting to take place after all of the unit implementations were complete. Though the goal for this meeting was to celebrate the group's accomplishments and look to the future there were two very specific things we wanted to do. First we wanted to provide an opportunity for participants to share their experiences and the essence of their units with each other. By this time the group had become quite comfortable with sharing their successes and their failures and we felt it was important for them to know that they all had both and that we all still have a lot to learn ! The second was to initiate the process of engaging in an overall reflection. We invited teachers to look back over their year and talk about the experiences and where they would like to go from here.
There were two pieces of documentation required for this phase of the field experiences. One was the documentation for the third unit and the second was a final written reflection of the entire professional development experience.
Modifications made for other implementations of this framework:
Implementation B/C was essentially the same as the one described above with the reduced shared journal and unit documentation requirements. Once again we felt, and the artifacts confirm, that though this group of participants certainly demonstrated a great deal of growth in their understanding and ability to implement an inquiry approach it is still not as deep or as accomplished as that of the participants in Implementation A.
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