The Work of Reform in Teacher Education: Lessons from the Holmes Group

• In Event: Redesigning Teacher Education: Learning From the Past

Abstract

For more than half a century, analysts have pointed to inadequate teacher education as one of the primary causes of failing schools in the United States (e.g., Ball & Forzani, 2009; Carnegie Forum, 1986; Conant, 1963; Goodlad, 1990; Holmes Partnership & Lanier, 2007; Koerner, 1963; Levine, 2006). Their criticisms span every element of the enterprise of preparing teachers, from the qualifications of education faculty members and students to the features of the institutions in which teacher education takes place (Lanier & Little, 1986; Levine, 2006). In the first decade of the twenty-first century, calls for change have only grown stronger, with both policy-makers and professional bodies within the field vigorously advocating revisions to teacher preparation (e.g., Duncan, 2009; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010).

Yet deliberate efforts to improve teacher education have started and stalled throughout the history of professional education for teachers in the United States and few have had any lasting impact. After several major attempts to implement institution-wide reforms, such as competency-based teacher education, the Holmes Group, and recent residency models, the curriculum for learning to teach has changed little in this country. Scant formal knowledge exists about what makes change difficult and what resources could support the enterprise.

This paper investigates an instance of significant reform in teacher education –the Holmes Group’s work at Michigan State University (MSU) (its flagship campus) in the 1980s and 1990s – in an effort to identify some of the problems of reform and factors that might improve the likelihood that future reform efforts will be successful. Methods include analysis of interviews with faculty members involved and of documents –– from the Holmes Group as a national entity and from the reform at MSU. The analysis is informed by theories of reform as an interactive process in which practitioners and their capabilities and inclinations are key resources for interpretation and enactment (e.g., Berman & McLaughlin, 1974; Cohen & Hill, 2001; Dow, 1991; Lin, 2000; Lipsky, 1980; Sarason, 1996).

The paper identifies “constrained capability” as a core problem in teacher education reform and one for which leaders of improvement efforts must deliberately design. Although faculty members involved with the Holmes Group effort at Michigan State had great interest in improving teacher education and many resources for the work, collective uncertainty across the field about what teaching is and what is required to learn it and to teach it slowed and impeded their efforts. Lacking were learning opportunities that might have provided knowledge and skill essential for the work and channels through which new knowledge being developed at the time might inform the change effort. Although the faculty did alter the structure of teacher education at MSU and achieve several substantive changes, they did not fundamentally redesign the core curriculum for learning to teach. This analysis suggests that change efforts in teacher education must attend directly to enactors’ extant knowledge and skill and create organizational learning mechanisms to support collective learning from and for the work of reform.

Author

• Francesca Forzani, University of Michigan