Developing a Faculty Learning Community for Professional Development, Improvement, and Research in an R1 University

• In Event: 34.049 - Teacher Education Redesign in Research-Intensive Universities: Perspectives From Research and Practice

Abstract

Purpose
This paper develops a model for improving teacher preparation for linguistic diversity through the development of a faculty learning community in the context of a research-intensive university. Over 8 years, the group grew to encompass 18 professors aiming for more than just conversation or knowledge building. It explicitly targeted lasting changes in syllabi, teacher educator commitment, and the larger program in the effort to promote sustainable change. It also aimed to encompass research to make the mission more consistent with and sustainable within our context.

Theoretical framing
Theorizing about communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) conceptualizes learning as the ability to engage in or change practice. We draw on such theorizing both to plan our joint activities in ways that made practice visible and increased the odds we would be able to learn from and alter our own practice.

Method and analysis
A validated instrument, the TELLSES [Teaching English Language Learners Self-Efficacy Scales], helps us show how students in our program made greater gains in self-efficacy for teaching emergent bilinguals as our faculty learning community continued, i.e., to suggest that this approach had impact. Interview quotes and notes from our work help us present the points listed below.

Contributions of the paper

Identifying challenges to faculty and program development in an R1 university

We identify challenges that are likely when teacher education programs in research-intensive universities seek to engage faculty in professional and program development, including traditions of faculty autonomy (Gappa & Austin, 2010), incentives for and prior commitments to research, faculty identity as experts, and varied prior experiences and degrees of commitment.

Identifying strategies to overcome challenges to faculty and program development in an R1 university

We identify strategies to help programs build momentum and support for reform and changes in curriculum and instruction. We discuss starting small with the use of peer coaching and book clubs to build initial understanding and commitment; political strategies for leveraging participants’ varied motivations and levels of initial commitment; and means of building research into such a collective enterprise.

Identifying feasible means of sustaining a collective professional learning community over multiple years in an R1

We briefly describe the kinds of work we sustained over four years among the full group of 18 faculty members, and participants’ own insights into what kept them engaged in this work over that period.

Evidence of effectiveness
We summarize very briefly some evidence that this approach worked, and refer our audience to other research providing further explication of our work and its influence on preservice teachers and on teacher educators.

Significance
Through careful and intentional design, it is possible for a teacher education program in an R1 university to initiate and sustain a faculty learning community that promotes lasting change in courses—in our case, a subsequent redesign has continued to stress and support learning about linguistic diversity across multiple courses—and in programmatic capacity.

Authors

• Thomas H. Levine, University of Connecticut

• Dorothea M. Anagnostopoulos, The University of Connecticut

• Rene Roselle, University of Connecticut