Two frameworks for analyzing relationships among school communities, teacher education, and interprofessional education and training programs

Teacher Education Quarterly, Fall 1999 by Lawson, Hal A

As a new century dawns, revolutionary policy changes are affecting all public sector institutions. While all public sector institutions are affected by this policy environment, arguably public schools are affected more than the others. "One size fits all" may have characterized schooling before, but not anymore. Charter schools, magnet schools, alternative schools, home schooling, private schools, and voucher plans for school choice are increasing. Schools within schools also are being created. School-linked services, community schools, and new approaches to parent empowerment and family support add to this growing variety. Fullservice, community schools are rounding out the list (Dryfoos, 1994; 1998).

A quiet revolution is occurring as educators, social and health service providers, policy leaders, and concerned citizens begin challenging the enclosed boundaries of the school and the education profession. Informed by an emergent social-ecological perspective, these leaders are mapping new relationships and theories of change. They are changing the boundaries of practice and research. For example, the school community, not just the school, becomes the unit of analysis and planning (Lawson & Briar-Lawson, 1997). As with all revolutions, this one also presents challenges, and well-intended innovations are impeded by barriers.

Some school community practitioners view university faculty and professional education programs as barriers to innovation. Simply stated, the universities are having difficulty keeping up with the changes occurring in school communities (Lawson & Hooper-Briar, 1994). Professional education programs and faculty work orientations have been part of an interlocking system, a system that has helped structure standardized and uniform schools. Therefore, when schools change, other elements in the system also must change, at least in principle. In practice, however, change has not been easy to effect. The aforementioned novelty, ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity in today's school practice contexts often have had paralyzing effects. Faculty have had difficulty keeping up because the rate of change has been so fast, and the diversity has been nearly overwhelming.

Change in universities has been constrained by other factors. Strong faculty cultures and university-specific incentive and reward systems are powerful shapers of the status quo. For example, a successful faculty career is individualistic, sometimes entrepreneurial, in laissez faire departmental-disciplinary structures (Lawson, 1998a). In this perspective, school-responsive professional education programs, research, and scholarship are voluntary activities. In other words, faculty cultures and reward systems make it convenient for faculty to excuse themselves from responsive changes in relation to diverse schools. Growing resource constraints in the public universities add to the entrenched and conservative orientations of many faculty and academic administrators. For these reasons and others, gaps among teacher education programs, faculty research, and school-community needs may be widening. Will universities and their faculties be able to catch up? Some school community leaders may wonder if enough university faculty care enough to try.

Interprofessional education and training (IPET) programs are being developed under these challenging circumstances. As with all innovations, identifiable resource requirements, along with technical assistance and capacity-building needs, accompany IPET program development. Pervasive changes may be mapped, and IPET programs may challenge departmental-disciplinary boundaries and "turf " Little wonder that MET programs invite resistance and indifference; that resourcerelated challenges are evident; and that, in many places, MET programs are "addons" reliant upon grants and contracts. Two recent books are especially instructive on these and other opportunities, barriers, and lessons learned (Knapp & Associates, 1998; McCroskey & Einbinder, 1998).

How might changes in school communities and teacher education influence the design, conduct, and evaluation of PET programs? How might IPET programs influence school communities and teacher education? These questions are explored selectively in the following analysis. Its aims are to sharpen dialogue, advance action-planning, and promote more effective partnerships among school communities, social and health service agencies, families, other community stakeholders, and colleges and universities.

Two analytical frameworks are constructed from past-present practices. By drawing contrasts between the two frameworks, key questions, assumptions, and choices are illuminated. Helpful in this way, analytical frameworks may be a problem if they present a dichotomized, frozen, and singular view of social life worlds. Because change is occurring so rapidly in today's policy context, it is essential that these two frameworks be framed in relation to a continuum of practices. In other words, the two frameworks are not dichotomous, or oppositional. Each has merit. Both are needed. The first framework, which is well-developed in many school communities, can pave the way for the second.