School-based collaborations: Buildign an authentic model for problem-based instructin

Journal of Social Studies Research, Winter 1999 by Saye, John W

Classroom change is further complicated by systemic conditions that dissuade teachers from embracing reforms such as problem-entered instruction (Lortie, 1975; Onosko, 1991; McKee, 1999). Their class sizes are too large and they're teaching loads too heavy. They have limited preparation time, and there are limited materials available for such instruction. They work in isolation without the opportunity to share ideas and problem-solve with peers. In the face of such barriers, is it realistic to expect that a viable problem-based reform model can be nurtured in the schools?

If reform is to have a chance, we must find ways that teacher educators might assist teachers in mitigating institutional barriers. As part of that process, we must recognize the responsibility that university based reformers bear for past failures. A lack of genuine dialogue and interaction between veteran teachers and teacher educators has hampered change efforts in several ways. First, reforms have seldom been grounded in the content of real classrooms (Hertzburg, 1981; Jenness, 1990; Saye, 1994). Idealized reforms have been generated at the university and urged on teachers in their initial training and in-service course. Secondly, reformers have not offered classroom teachers support in dealing with teacher-defined problems-many related to the institutional ) constraints within which teachers must work. Rather than dialogue, teachers have encountered monologues. They feel manipulated by a reform message that has announced what the university will do to them or for them without asking for teacher input. All too often, walls have gone up between the academy and the classroom.

Erecting and maintaining strong walls has required little effort. The separateness of our professional lives has encouraged each treating the other as stranger. When field-based experiences were few, practicing teachers and teacher educators each interacted with their own classes in splendid isolation from the other education culture. Their worlds collided only in the supervision of internships and in oftenperfunctory in-service experiences. More fieldbased experiences have brought university-based pre-service teachers into more contact with real teachers and real classrooms, but serious conversation about reform goals between teacher educators and veteran teachers is still rare. One result is that preservice teachers find little in their lab experiences that match the pedagogical practices they have been taught at the university. There is a disconnect: Teachers are frustrated by the unrealistic expectations of teacher educators who are frustrated by the unrelenting resistance of classroom teachers. Novices-in-training are left confused. They doubt that existing classroom practices are adequate or that reform goals are feasible.

Because our jobs are structured and rewarded in ways that teachers' jobs are not, university reformers must initiate the efforts to tear down the walls. Instead of walls we need bridges. We hypothesize that a collaborative laboratory experience can be such a bridge. But the experience must be truly collaborative. Reforms will continue to founder until we solicit teachers' knowledge of schools and students and blend our understandings into a workable vision of change.