Developing and Supporting Infrastructures for Teacher on-the-Job Learning: Dilemmas of Scale, Sustainability, and Coherence

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Transforming Educational Systems to Support Organizational Learning and Improvement: A Cross-National Comparison of Opportunities and Obstacles (Table 36)

Abstract

Objectives:
Ambitious and equitable instruction – instruction that is attentive to student thinking and flexibly adapts to all students’ developing cognitive, emotional and social needs – requires considerable teacher professional expertise and judgment (Horn & Garner, 2022). One promising means of facilitating the development of such professional expertise is to transform schools into learning organizations where teachers collaboratively investigate problems of practice to develop their professional sensitivity, repertoire and judgment (Lefstein, Vedder-Weiss & Segal, 2020). However, such a transformation is a radical departure from the existing policy environments, organizational structures, and cultural norms in most school systems. This paper explores central dilemmas that arose in the design, implementation and ongoing development of a large-scale Israeli initiative to encourage and support teacher on-the-job learning through investigating problems of practice.

Theoretical perspective:
This paper is framed by sociocultural theories of learning as mediated by material, social, and cultural tools (Wertsch, 1998). In particular, the paper focuses on the design, development, and uses of infrastructures for teacher collaboration and learning. Following Star and Bowker (2002), I approach infrastructures as platforms and resources that enable and constrain activity; such platforms are embedded in institutions and social arrangements, are linked with norms and conventions, are learned by users, embody values and standards, and become visible upon breakdown.

Research context, methods and data:
This paper draws on data from a research-practice partnership in which we supported two large Israeli school districts in the design, development and enactment of a teacher leadership initiative intended to support teacher learning in school-based collaborative teams. The initiative involved designing school and district infrastructures, training teacher leaders, and researching enactment to inform ongoing design and improvement. The program expanded rapidly, from 11 teams in 4 schools in the first year to 458 teams in 158 schools in the fifth year. We collected data through ethnographic participant-observation and audio-recording of training events, district management and teacher team meetings, teacher surveys, and interviews with teachers, coaches and policy-makers.

Findings:
Interventions that rely heavily on external resources tend to disappear when funding ends. For the sake of sustainability, we sought to build on existing infrastructures and capacities within schools and districts. Such a strategy also facilitated rapid scaling up, upon which the districts insisted. We relied upon and adapted existing district management and coaching structures, leadership roles in school, professional development structures, and funding mechanisms. However, these existing infrastructures were poorly equipped to support the collaborative learning processes we sought to cultivate. Moreover, they embodied values, incentives and understandings that contradicted those of the initiative. For example, we sought to promote professional learning as a flexible organizational process, embedded within work routines; but the funding stream available to the initiative was designed for fixed-term professional development processes. This subtle shift shaped teachers’ and leaders’ understandings of the initiative, its goals and learning mechanisms, thereby undermining its effectiveness.


Significance:
This paper highlights a critical dilemma facing designers of systems for teacher learning: sustainability and scale necessitate building on existing infrastructures; however, relying on them undermines program coherence.

Author

• Adam Lefstein, Hebrew University of Jerusalem