Professional development as the pursuit of professional standards

¹eaching and ¹eacher Education, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 127—140, 1998 ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain. 0742-051X/98 $19.00#0.00

PII: S0742-051X(97)00065-6

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AS THE PURSUIT OF PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS: THE STANDARDS-BASED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM LAWRENCE INGVARSON Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton, Australia

Abstract—This paper outlines an emerging system for professional development based on profession-defined standards and values. Over the past ten years or so, teacher associations have demonstrated that the profession has the ability to reach a consensus on teaching standards without imposing uniformity of style. These standards indicate that the profession can lay down long-term professional development goals and priorities for its members. With this capacity, the teaching profession now has the credentials to run its own infrastructure for professional learning, directed to enhancing and rewarding attainment of professional standards. The emerging system has the potential to overcome major limitations in traditional systems of in-service education for teachers: the lack of clarity about what teachers should get better at; the lack of incentives in the form of advanced career steps based on the attainment of high teaching standards and the low level of personal ownership teachers felt for the in-service education system. ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Leadership in professional development is coming increasingly from the teaching profession itself, whereas traditionally employing authorities and universities have assumed this responsibility. As evidence of this trend, teacher organisations are demonstrating a growing capacity to conceptualise their own agendas for professional development, based on new conceptions of high-quality learning and core educational values, such as the promotion of independent learning and reasoning. These agendas transcend those of particular employing authorities. A front runner in this trend was the National Council for the Teaching of Mathematics (NCTM) in the U.S., with its exceptional report, Professional Standards for the ¹eaching of Mathematics (NCTM, 1991), born of frustration with the effects of testing and textbooks on mathematics teaching. The preface of the NCTM standards document states: This document spells out what teachers need to know to teach towards new goals for mathematics education and how teaching should be evaluated for the purpose of improvement. We challenge all who have

responsibility for any part of the support and development of mathematics teachers and teaching to use these standards as a basis for discussion and for making needed change so that we can reach our goal of a quality mathematics education for every child.

The way ‘we’ is used in this quote conveys a strong sense of collective professional responsibility for the goals of professional development that goes to the heart of what this paper is about. Spelling out what practitioners need to know and be able to do is arguably a core function of professional associations, not governments, employing authorities, or universities. But this has not been the case in teaching; at least, not until recently. The NCTM was one of the first teacher associations, in any country, to undertake such an exercise; certainly the first to demonstrate how teaching standards need to be embedded in the teaching of a particular subject if they are to be valid representations of expertise and useful guides to professional development. The recency of teacher organisation initiative in developing standards is a reflection perhaps of the relative powerlessness of teachers’ professional

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organisations, and/or an understandable preoccupation among teacher union leaders with basic industrial rather than quality issues (Kerchner et al., 1997). Standards for advanced teaching will enable the profession to exercise a greater responsibility for the continui-1ng development of its members than in the past. The NCTM’s Professional Standards, together with its earlier Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1989), has radically enhanced the standing of the NCTM and its influence on teacher education policy and practices, as well as its membership. The NCTM’s work shows how the agenda for professional development might be driven by professional knowledge and values, rather than swings in government or employer policy and textbooks and tests (Kilpatrick & Stanic, 1995; Lappan & Briars, 1995; Romberg, 1992). There is better understanding now of the kind of sustained, collegial learning opportunities that even experienced teachers need to keep up with the increasingly ambitious educational outcomes expected from schools (Little, 1993; Borko & Putnam, 1995). This article is based on the assumption that the prevalence of this kind of professional development, with its potential to engage most teachers in significant change in knowledge and beliefs, depends on the development of a new professional development system that is largely under the direction of the profession itself. In-service education has often been criticised for keeping teachers in the role of a passive audience, subject to someone else’s agenda for change (Little, 1993). Teachers have rarely set the agenda for their own development. In-service education has mainly been courses put on for teachers, often by non-teachers. As a result it has tended to infantilise the profession. The profession has not had the growth experience of defining what its members should know and be able to do, or the responsibility for evaluating their practice and certifying their expertise. The profession has yet to build its own infrastructure for defining high-quality teaching standards, promoting development towards those standards and providing recognition for those who reach them; in other words, teaching has yet to build a professional development system based on profession-defined teaching standards.

The Standards-Based Professional Development System The details of the emerging standards-based professional development system are yet to come into focus, but the main foundations are steadily being assembled. In summary, these include: f The demonstrated ability of increasing numbers of teacher organisations to reach a consensus around standards that identify what the profession expects highly accomplished teachers to know and be able to do (e.g. NCTM, 1991; National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), 1994). These standards are enabling the profession to claim the right to exercise greater responsibility in setting a stable, core agenda for professional development, because standards conceptualise what the profession expects its members to get better at over the long term. Standards are rarely attained by means of short, one-time in-service education courses. f The evolution of more sophisticated and searching methods for assessing advanced levels of teacher performance based on a variety of forms of evidence and carefully trained expert peer teacher-assessors (Haertel, 1992; Pearlman, forthcoming). These methods are providing the basis for a professional certification system for teachers who have attained higher standards, a system that both teacher organisations and employers can see as credible and fair, with positive effects on professional development. f The introduction of new pay systems and staged career paths, based on advances in quality of teaching and professional competencies rather than longevity or university credits. These systems provide stronger incentives to attain advanced teaching standards and more tangible forms of recognition for those who do (Bacharach et al., 1990; Mohrman et al., 1996; Odden & Kelley, 1997). Pressure is growing for career structures that attract high-quality graduates and place greater value on good teaching. Valid standards make it possible to justify further career stages and higher salary levels for teachers, as teachers, based on demonstrable advances in the quality of teaching. Career stages based on rigorous teaching standards, and a widening

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conception of teachers’ work with years of experience, are more compatible with the development of professional learning communities. They reduce the negative micro-political effects of traditional career ladder hierarchies on competition for limited numbers of jobs or positions. f An infrastructure for professional learning whose primary purpose is to enable teachers to reach the levels of performance embodied in the teaching standards (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996); Professional learning communities, networks and collaboratives are now seen to be characteristic of more effective contexts for teacher development (Little, 1993, Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992; Huberman, 1995). Standards provide an indispensable basis for deliberation and reflection within these communities, and professional certification provides a goal for development and a context for mutual support. In this conception of a standards-based system, teachers’ professional bodies develop teaching standards for career advancement as practising teachers: for example, from teacher to master teacher and on to lead teacher. These bodies also develop and operate a system for assessing teacher performance for professional certification. Teacher groups and associations at the local level, in collaboration with employers and universities, provide appropriate development opportunities for teachers to reach the standards and, eventually, to prepare for certification by professional bodies. Employing authorities regard attainment of these standards, as validated by performance assessments developed and conducted by the professional body, as a prerequisite for promotion through a series of three to four career stages over the period of a teaching career. The standards-based system is complementary to, not a replacement for, the in-service education that employers should provide to support the implementation of changes and reforms they have initiated. That, properly, should remain the responsibility of employers, but, as in any profession, employing authorities cannot and should not be expected to take responsibility for all professional development. This system also is not a replacement for the

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numerous, valuable short-term training activities that teachers undertake to broaden their knowledge and skills. A standards-based professional development system is an acknowledgment that, as in any profession, professional development is more than keeping up with policy changes made by governments and employing authorities. The Idea of a Professional Development System A professional development ‘system’ can be regarded as a set of answers to the following questions: f Who determines what teachers should get better at? In other words, who determines what the goals and purposes of professional development will be? Who governs the allocation of resources to these various purposes? f What is the basis for determining what teachers should get better at, or what teachers should know and be able to do? How is this knowledge determined? Who is assumed to have the expertise to do this? f Who decides how teachers will learn and what is the basis for their credibility and legitimacy? Who provides the infrastructure for professional learning? Who provides the PD activities and who designs and runs them? Who accredits the providers? How are they funded? Who pays for the courses? f Who evaluates whether teachers have developed and improved the quality of their practice. On what basis and how is this assessment of performance conducted? f What are the incentives and rewards for teachers to invest their time and energy in professional development? What is the relationship between evidence of professional development and career development? What status is placed on high-quality teaching in comparison, say, with career paths in school administration? Every country develops its own distinctive professional development system for enhancing the quality of teaching and the implementation of educational reforms in its schools. The major stakeholders in any professional development system are schools, teachers and their professional bodies, employing authorities, governments

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and universities. A key variable that distinguishes among professional development systems is the balance of control between these bodies over the purpose or goals for the system and the allocation of resources. For most countries, answers to the above questions reveal that the teaching profession has, relative to other professions, little control over its own professional development system. The key features of a standards-based system are that standards are formulated, and reformulated from time to time, by teachers’’ professional bodies and are grounded in professional expertise and research. These standards, in turn, provide goals for professional development that constitute a stable, challenging and long-term agenda for professional development. The standards transcend the policy goals of particular employing authorities. Teachers look to set up learning conditions, within and across workplaces, that suit their need to meet this agenda. When other providers can be helpful, teachers set the parameters for their contribution. By providing powerful extrinsic incentives tied to salary and career progression, the system has the capacity to draw most teachers into professional development. It therebyaddresses directly the problem of ‘getting to scale’ with core educational reforms (Elmore, 1996). It also raises the possibility of lifting the level of professional accountability among teachers for keeping up with best practice within the profession (Darling-Hammond, 1992). It should be clear that a professional development system, as described above, is a much wider concept than a professional development model. Sparks and Loucks-Horsley (1990), for example, describe six basic models of in-service education ranging from action research to skills-training. These models are specific methods or designs for promoting teacher learning. A wide variety of in-service education models might be used within any one PD system. Sprinthall et al. (1996) offer another categorisation of models, such as the craft model and the expert model, based on the source of knowledge underpinning teacher education. These models deal with important components of any PD system, but they do not aim to address overall questions about control over goals, incentives, careers and provision in the system.

¹wo Systems for Professional Development In practice, more than one professional development system will be in operation side by side at any one time. There appears to be a need for at least two systems—one traditionally financed by governments and employers to the level necessary to implement reforms, policies and school improvement efforts they initiate; the other designed to recognise and reward teachers who attain standards for high-quality teaching in their teaching field. Table 1 provides a comparison of the traditional and standards-based systems of professional development. For the sake of discussion, the differences between the two systems have been presented in Table 1 in a more polarised and exaggerated form than would occur in practice. In principle, both systems are essential and each should be complementary to the other, like two pillars holding up the same building; in this case, the quality of learning opportunities for students. The responsibilities are mutual and interdependent. Employers have a responsibility to the public to ensure that schools have the resources to deliver optimal learning opportunities. But teachers also have a responsibility to keep up with standards of professional practice in their teaching field, which are the profession’s responsibility to define and to fulfil. These professional standards, by definition, cannot be specific to particular employers. It is in the interest of employers that teachers feel supported and encouraged to work toward challenging profession-defined standards, such as those of the NCTM. Many excellent professional development programs, of course, have been provided and/or funded by many employing authorities and universities for many years, using effective models of professional development. And the traditional system is indispensable to the achievement of school improvement efforts that must be based on definitions of need made at the local level. However, the horizon of the traditional system is usually only as far away as the next election, especially in countries such as Australia where state governments are also the major employers of teachers. With changes of government often come radical shifts in the objectives of the traditional professional development system.

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Table 1 ¹wo Systems of Professional Development Traditional PD System

Standards-based PD System

Locus of Governance/Control

Employers

Professional bodies

Goals

Based on Government/employer policies/priorities Usually short term

Based on profession-defined teaching standards/expertise Long term, stable

Purposes

Implementation of new employer policies Achievement of local school improvement goals

Lifting general quality of teaching: Implementation of standards Strengthen incentives to engage in PD Attract and retain good teachers— better career path

Providers

Employers/universities/private consultants

Teacher associations District—University collaboratives

Incentives/links to career structure

Weak — mainly intrinsic Compliance with directives Weak links to career stages

Extrinsic and intrinsic rewards Advanced certification linked to career/salary progression Achievement of professional standards Professional/Peer recognition

Links to change in practice

Links between policy and practice often weak-optional

Strong-development must be demonstrated through performance assessments

Role of teacher/subject associations

Marginal, responsive role

Central, initiating, orchestration role

Funding/Who pays?

Employer responsibility

Teacher responsibility primarily

PD methods/role of teacher

Mainly short term Teacher as audience/trainee

Usually long term Based on on-going local networks, school—university consortia & school-based groups Teacher as contributor

The argument of this paper is that the traditional system, while essential, is no longer enough. The second pillar of professional leadership needs to be strengthened. The traditional system cannot help but convey the message that in-service education system is something done for, or to, teachers. It may gain compliance, but the level of commitment may be low. The aim of the standards-based system is to build a system for which teachers, individually and collectively, feel responsible. The point of encouraging teachers to build their own standards-based system is to create a strong sense of ownership for its quality — a system with the potential to influence all teachers and ensure that teachers continually review their practices in the light of

contemporary research and professional standards. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) The key components in a standards-based professional development system were outlined above: teaching standards; valid performance assessments leading to professional certification; an infrastructure for professional learning; and incentives and recognition for professional certification. The best example of such a system, albeit at an embryonic stage, is the NBPTS in the U.S.

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The NBPTS is the most ambitious attempt by any country so far to establish a national professional body for the advanced certification of teachers. Established in 1987, the Board’s mission (NBPTS, 1989), ‘is to establish high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do, and to develop and operate a national, voluntary system to assess and certify teachers who meet these standards’ (p. 1). It aims to build a national certification system for all teachers, one that is recognised by local education authorities for career advancement, and by state licensing authorities for license renewal purposes. Perhaps of even greater significance, the National Board’s certification system has the potential to revolutionise the professional development system for teachers in the US and place its control in the hands of the profession, especially if the Board continues to deepen its links with teacher and subject associations. Although the Board does not aim to fund or build an infrastructure for professional development itself, it expects that its standards and its system of advanced certification will create the context and the incentives for teachers to develop their own. The scale of the work involved in establishing NBPTS system is massive and its annual budget is in the range of $20 m. It is not possible here to do any more than outline the Board’s work in order to illustrate its potential for increasing the quality of, and recognition for, teachers’ professional development.1 Standards Standards development is conducted by committees of distinguished teachers and other educators appointed by the NBPTS to advise its Board of Directors. So far (1997) 17 standards committees have developed standards in 21 certification fields (eventually there will be over 30 fields in all). Each Standards Committee is challenged to set standards that: f highlight specific aspects of teaching that reflect accomplished practice, while emphasising the holistic nature of teaching; f describe how the standard comes to life in different settings; f identify the knowledge, skills and dispositions that support a teacher’s performance at a high level;

f show how a teacher’s professional judgment is reflected in observable actions; and f reflect the five propositions in the Board’’s policy statement, ¼hat ¹eachers Should Know and Be Able to Do (NBPTS, 1989). From the outset, each standards committee interacts regularly with the relevant professional associations, inviting input, advice and commentary. Extensive periods of wide consultation with all stakeholders also accompany the release of draft standards in an effort to ensure the validity of the standards. A typical set of National Board standards is forty to 40—50 pages long. A characteristic of the Board’s standards is that they are embedded in particular subject areas and teaching levels, consistent with recent research on the domain-specific nature of expertise (Leinhardt et al., 1991). A common finding in this research is that teaching for understanding is heavily dependent on sound understanding of the subject matter being taught (Borko and Putnam, 1995) as well as research knowledge about how students learn that subject matter (Franke et al., this issue). The National Board uses a two-part approach to describe each standard. First, a summary of the standard states succinctly one aspect of accomplished teaching. It describes teachers’ specific, observable actions that have an impact on students. Here are two summary statements from the Board’s 13 science standards: VII. Science Inquiry Accomplished science teachers develop in students the mental operations, habits of mind and attitudes that characterise the process of scientific inquiry. VIII. Conceptual Understandings Accomplished science teachers use a variety of instructional strategies to expand students’ understandings of the major ideas of science.

Second, each statement is accompanied by an elaboration which provides detailed texture for the standard along with an explanation of what teachers need to know, value and do in order to satisfy the standard at a high level. These elaborations are usually two or three pages long so extracts will have to suffice here. The elaboration of Standard VII, Science Inquiry, talks about the way accomplished science teachers organise their classrooms around

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frequent, open-ended investigations of natural phenomena in which students assume active roles as investigators in the pursuit of knowledge that is new to them and the kind of criteria these teachers keep in mind when selecting activities. For example, Teachers know that the processes of science are underpinned by habits of mind and attitudes that both describe the ethos and represent the core values of the scientific community. Ideally, these include such qualities as curiosity, openness to new ideas, scepticism, the demand for evidence, respect for reason, honesty and objectivity, the rejection of dogma or authority as arbiters of whose position prevails, the acceptance of ambiguity, the willingness to modify explanations in the light of new evidence, and teamwork. Teachers work to incorporate these values in their classrooms so that students acquire a sense of how science communities function by being part of one.

The elaboration of Standard VIII, Conceptual Understandings, starts off by talking about the need to provide students with access to fundamental facts, concepts, laws and theories of science without burying them under an avalanche of esoteric detail. It then talks about some simplifying strategies that teachers rely on and the way teachers use a variety of instructional strategies to acquaint their students with the major ideas of science. In carrying out [these] activities, teachers adjust their practice, as appropriate, to student performance and feedback. They make mid-course corrections when they see an activity is falling flat and are quick to improvise when an unexpected learning opportunity presents itself. They are willing to allow student thinking to drive the lesson but do so within the overarching conceptual framework. As a result, students have a stake in what is happening in science class, even though their every suggestion may not be pursued. Exemplary science teachers are calculated risk-takers; they are willing to tolerate confusion on the part of students searching for understanding because they realise that students are often in a state of puzzlement before they arrive at a satisfactory solution to a question. Teachers act as facilitators of students’ intellectual explorations and initiatives and help guide them toward scientifically valid mental constructs about how the natural world works.

These are challenging standards, ones that would take most science teachers many years of reflection, training and feedback from colleagues to attain. They make explicit the educational values that science teachers seek to embody in their practice. Professional development plann-

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ing driven by these standards clearly looks to the long term. It focuses on science teachers as persons, where they are and what they might aspire to, not just the current policy change. The standards provide stable long-term goals for professional and career development based on the profession’s assessment of what teachers should get better at. Performance Assessments National Board certification is based on an assessment of teacher performance against Board standards. The Board has conducted an impressive research and development program to construct an innovative set of assessment tasks. The tasks are of two main types: tasks that teachers complete over an extended period of time in their school for their portfolio; and written exercise tasks that teachers complete over one day at an assessment centre. The portfolio ‘entries’ are designed to provide windows into what teachers and their students actually do. The Board has now settled on a similar ‘architecture’ of about five entries for each certification field. One is always a curriculum vitae-type exercise documenting work outside the classroom with colleagues, families and the wider profession. The others feature various aspects of classroom practice. Candidates are supplied with detailed guidelines for each entry. These guidelines require them to provide evidence of their teaching by means of lesson plans, videotapes and samples of student work, with reflective commentaries. Candidates for Board certification are strongly encouraged to involve colleagues in the process of preparing their portfolios, a process which is expected to take about 100 hours. (It is now possible to spread this process over more than one year.) A science teacher candidate, for example, is asked to complete four portfolio entries called: Teaching a major idea over time; Assessing student work; Hands-on inquiry; and Conceptual explorations in science. Each entry is designed to tap into several of the standards. ¹eaching a Major Idea Over ¹ime, for example, is designed to focus on the Conceptual Understanding standard mentioned above, among others. This entry asks teachers to demonstrate how they weave activities together, over

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three to six weeks, to promote students’ understanding of a major idea in science. Teachers provide three examples of activities used and samples of the work students have done for each activity, together with a final overview of the unit and reflection.

(Scriven, 1991). Much anecdotal evidence exists in which teachers report that preparation of their portfolios was the most valuable professional development experience they had ever had (Haynes, 1995; Tracz & Associates 1995; Chittenden and Jones, 1996).

Hands-on Inquiry focuses on the Science Inquiry standard, as well as others. It asks teachers to demonstrate their skill in engaging students in activities that further students’ ability to think and reason scientifically as they explore a scientific concept. Teachers must select a different class from the one featured in the Teaching a Major Idea entry. The task requires teachers to become skilled in videotaping and analysing their work during the year. For the final entry, teachers must submit two short video segments from the same class focused on small groups. One must show interactions where students are formulating hypotheses, observing phenomena, using appropriate technology and recording and interpreting data. The other must show groups of students analysing the data, discussing the significance of their findings and reaching tentative conclusions based on their data. Teachers regard these tasks as valid and challenging assessments of their teaching. The Board’s performance assessment tasks undergo rigorous research and development to ensure they meet high psychometric standards. Teacher organisations have played a significant role in conducting research and development on a variety of interesting new methods, including portfolio entries and assessment centre tasks. Reports of this R & D work of the NBPTS on standards and assessment development can be found in Pearlman (forthcoming). Six certification fields are now (1997) fully operational and several thousand teachers have completed the Board’s assessment process. The process of scoring assessments will not be discussed here. Suffice it to say that it is another facet of a standards-based professional development system that provides valuable professional learning opportunities for teachers who become involved. A number of studies have investigated the effects of preparing portfolios for Board certification on the professional development of teachers. Paradoxical though it may seem, a rigorous summative evaluation system can be the key to effective formative evaluation effort

An Infrastructure for Professional ¸earning The primary role of the NBPTS is to provide a system of certification and recognition to teachers who have reached standards for highly accomplished teaching. Steadily increasing numbers of education authorities are accepting Board certification as evidence of professional development and a basis for salary differentials (NBPTS, 1997). Six states and 14 districts provide salary supplements for Board certification, 11 states recognise Board certification for licensure renewal and continuing education units and 13 states accept it for license portability purposes. However, while the NBPTS provides detailed guidelines and encourages teachers to collaborate as they prepare their portfolio entries, it does not provide funds or specific recommendations for professional development. How a teacher prepares for Board assessment is left to the teacher. The hope is that a new infrastructure of professional learning will develop around the incentive of Board certification, and there are signs that this is happening. However, there is the definite possibility that some teachers will work alone, as teachers typically do, in preparing for Board assessment, thereby thwarting one of the Board’s key objectives to strengthen professional community. To counter this, the Board has been active in bringing school districts, universities and unions together to think through how they might support candidates. Eight states and 25 districts assist teachers with the fees to go through the certification process. Some, such as North Carolina, provide release time for the preparatory professional development. Candidates are strongly advised to join or to set up support networks; in fact, at one stage the Board considered requiring candidates to show proof of collaboration in the preparation of portfolio entries, but the idea failed to gain support from a majority of Board members. The Board has been developing professional development products to help teachers understand

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the standards, build their knowledge base and prepare for certification. Board staff run a Facilitator’s Institute that equips people to provide local support to candidates: for example, how to work with groups, ways to understand the standards and how to think about analysing student work.2 It is not difficult to see how a standards-based model could spawn a wide variety of professional development activity designed to support candidates. There is evidence to suggest a new infrastructure for professional learning is emerging. Several universities are in the process of redesigning their programs or creating teacher networks to support candidates.3 Towers (1996) describes how Saint Mary’s University’s new ‘learning community-based’ masters degree will be based on implementing professional standards such as those of the NBPTS. Without such standards, a (masters) curriculum runs the risk of becoming a series of workshops on the latest fads and ‘‘hottest’’ topics. To avoid this, (it) must be firmly secured in an underlying deep structure that validly represents the broader education community’s standards for the profession. (p. 13)

From an Australian perspective, where there has been unresolved debate for some time about establishing a national professional body for teachers similar to the NBPTS, teacher subject associations would provide a valuable basis for extending and building an infrastructure for professional learning, especially for secondary school teachers. State and local level branches of subject associations currently provide many professional development activities and could readily develop networks to provide a service to members seeking certification. There is another level at which a standardsbased system could enhance the professional role of teacher and principal associations; that is in the operation of the assessment system itself. One of the major potential benefits of the NBPTS, for example, is the opportunity it offers for many teachers to become involved in scoring portfolios and operating assessment centres. Operating the certification system requires the kind of teacher interaction and involvement in networks typical of best kinds of professional development. The NBPTS currently contracts this work out to the Education Testing Service to ensure rigorous and comparable psychometric standards across the certification fields. This

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would be prohibitively expensive in a small country like Australia. A national professional certification system could instead rely increasingly on the services of teacher and principal associations at the operational level, making them insiders to the assessment process. Cadres of trained subject association members could provide an expert, stable structure for conducting and scoring assessments in each state, a development that would be consistent with the idea of enhancing professional community. Building Professional Communities Around ¹eaching Standards This section touches on ways in which a standards-based system could foster the development of many forms of professional community within and across schools. According to Louis et al. (1996), professional communities are strong when the teachers routinely engage in reflective dialogue, de-privatise practice, focus collectively on student learning, collaborate and develop shared norms and values. Many commentators now associate the best opportunities for professional development with on-going projects based around networks of teachers wherein teachers played the major role in setting the agenda, such as the Bay Area Writing Group, begun in the early 1970s (Little, 1993). Others have written in similar vein about teacher networks (Little & McLaughlin, 1991; Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992). Professional communities and networks seem to be important ‘mediating structures’ for significant change at the level of teaching practice (McLaughlin, 1995). On close inspection, most of these professional communities rely, either explicitly or implicitly, on some conception of professional standards to underpin their activities. A standards-based professional development system overturns old assumptions about who provides in-service education and how and where professional development takes place. Teachers and their professional bodies are more likely to set up their own support networks within and across schools to help each other implement teaching standards and prepare for the next career stage. They can work toward attaining profession-defined standards in multiple ways. It is not course completion that counts so much as evidence that a teacher’s

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performance has reached the standards. Teachers and their organisations may make use of traditional providers such as universities and consultants, but the relationship is now more likely to be that of a service provider contract between equals in which teachers set the agenda. Ideally, preparation for Board certification would be a very appropriate focus for the work of professional networks and communities within and across schools. Teachers will need to invent, and argue for, a new infrastructure for professional learning that meets their desire to share what they are learning as they attempt to move their practice toward their aspirations. It is time for the previously marginal teacher networks (Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992), or collaboratives (Little & McLaughlin, 1991), or whatever name is given to the informal collegial groups teachers often form for their own PD, to come in from the cold to become a mainstream activity or forum for PD. The need for time for these activities to be built into the routine work schedules of teachers is increasingly recognised (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996). A long-term aspiration of many has been that PD should become an integral part of teachers’ work, an aspiration goes to the heart of the current desire to restructure schools as professional learning communities with time for collegial learning, reflection and accountability. Case Methods: Getting a Feel for the Standards and ºsing ¹hem to Reflect on Practice A standards-based professional development system will embrace the full range of models for effective in-service education from training to action research (Sparks & Loucks-Horsley, 1990). Teachers will make use of whatever inservice education courses and programs they think are most relevant to their development needs in relation to teaching standards. Training in new teaching techniques will sometimes be the simplest and most appropriate way to work toward standards. At other times, action research may be a better way to find new understandings about how particular standards can be made manifest in one’s own teaching. Standards provide a guide and reference point for personal professional development planning, not a prescription about how to get there. The essence of

the standards-based system is the responsibility and incentive it gives teachers to undertake such planning. One approach to professional development that seems to hold particular promise as a means of developing an infrastructure for professional learning is that of case methods. Barnett’s article in this issue shows how case methods can provide a suitable vehicle for the reflective dialogue and de-privatisation of practice characteristic of professional communities. She shows how teachers can enhance their ability to describe, analyse and evaluate their teaching, using the framework provided by the NCTM standards. These are skills that teachers preparing portfolios for National Board certification must be able to demonstrate to a high level. (Merseth (1996) provides a comprehensive review of approaches and research on case methods.) In the version of case methods developed by Barnett and others (e.g., Shulman, 1992), cases are candid stories that teachers have written about particular events or dilemmas that have arisen in their own teaching. They are usually brief first-hand accounts (one to three pages) of their experiences in teaching particular topics or ideas, often including rough and ready evidence of what students have said, done or written in class. Barnett’s teachers used ‘difficult to teach’ topics in elementary school mathematics, like fractions and decimals, as a starting point for cases. The cases usually described the context of the class, what the teacher intended to do and what actually happened, with snippets of dialogue and student work where appropriate (the ‘‘vicissitudes of human intention’’ as Bruner (1986) puts it in his description of narrative ways of knowing). In the final stages of a case, the case writer usually moves into a more analytic and reflective mode, using the evidence provided to identify a problem or dilemma in their practice. Sometimes a case may describe what the teacher did to resolve the dilemma, with further reflection on the consequences of that action. Case methods groups usually consist of teachers with a shared teaching interest who meet regularly to read one another’s cases, or cases that other teachers have written These groups require a focus for their deliberations. Standards, such as those above for science, or the NCTM, provide an appropriate focus or ‘North Star’ to guide the evaluation and reflection

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of case method groups. A case methods group could, for example, consist of a group of science teachers who decide to focus on Standard VII—Science Inquiry. Science teachers often find they have differing interpretations of this standard and different approaches for initiating students into scientific thinking. Ingvarson (1997) found that cases were a valuable way of bringing to the surface the different conceptions teachers had of ‘inquiry’ and their role in promoting it. Shifter explains how she used case writing and discussion as a means of deepening and extending the meaning of the NCTM standards: We saw them as a Rorshach, something that can be interpreted in different ways. You need the detailed descriptions of classrooms in order to start the dialogue about what the NCTM standards mean in terms of day to day practice — and you need the cases, narratives, videos in order to start thinking about what the standards mean. (Interview with author)

Good cases provoke a range of interpretations from readers. They raise value issues and promote shared inquiry through discussion Schifter (1994) found that case writing ‘‘allowed teachers to revisit classroom events, and, by viewing these events from a distance to consider them from new perspectives’’ (p. 9). Case discussions enable teachers to ‘feel’ the standards for judging their performance from the inside. Through case discussions, teachers can also perceive limitations in current standards and refine or redefine them. Well-written standards can play a valuable role in teacher change. They provide a basis for collaborative exploration of teaching. Good standards have the power to disturb — to challenge current certainties; they are not templates to be copied. In this conception, standards are tools for critique rather than rationalisations for current practice. Case writing and discussion groups epitomise the idea of professional community. Cases are written to stimulate collaborative reflection through discussion. They are a means for teachers to share insights and reflections, to identify dilemmas and problems, and to find support and challenge in a professional environment. Cases provide teachers with windows into each others’ pedagogical reasoning and practice. Most importantly, they come to see their own experiences and assumptions through the eyes of respected and sympathetic others, a critical pre-

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requisite for change in beliefs, or ‘seeing anew’ as Jenny Nias (1987) puts it. Case discussions about standards and their meaning create vehicles for generating helpful feedback about practice. Standards provide something to be collegial about. How can case methods link to the standardsbased model? It is evident from the work above that case methods have the potential for developing the kind of perceptive reflection on practice that NBPTS portfolio exercises require teachers to demonstrate for Board certification. In the National Board conception, highly accomplished teachers are not only expected to teach well, they are also expected to be explicit about what they do and why, and to be good at evaluating their teaching. Barnett and Schifter provide evidence of the increasing perceptiveness teachers gain into their own beliefs, practices and knowledge as a result of case writing and discussion. This skill is critical in transforming practice to enact the standards. While the kind of cases teachers wrote in their approach to professional development were not meant to be used for assessing teacher performance, the skills teachers obtained would be highly relevant to furthering their professional expertise and preparing successful NBPTS portfolio entries. Equally relevant to the present discussion, case methods seem to match well the preferred learning style of many teachers. Ingvarson (1997) found that teachers began to take enthusiastic control of their own professional development and focus their energy on what matters to them in meeting their own aspiration to do a better job. Case methods seemed to release teachers from the artificial deference, and consequent frustration, often induced by traditional in-service courses and workshops. Professional Certification, Career Advancement and Incentives It is increasingly recognised that pay systems for teachers need to be more effective at retaining good teachers in teaching positions (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996). New pay systems that provide stronger incentives for professional development and greater rewards for high-quality teaching are being experimented within several countries (Odden & Kelley, 1997; Kerchner et al., 1997).

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President Clinton recently (February 1997) pledged to support the NBPTS in its goal of certifying over 100,000 teachers over the next decade (a pledge that will cost at least $200 m). The emerging standards-based system provides more powerful incentives for professional development as teachers by bringing professional development and career development together. It bases career stages primarily on demonstrable advances in professional knowledge and skill, rather than selection for specific jobs in a career ladder hierarchy. In the past, career stages have not been based on evidence of progress toward highly accomplished teaching. In fact, a characteristic of teaching has been that career stages have had little relation to teaching standards at all. There has been little or no relationship between evidence of professional development and promotion as a teacher. This state of affairs has limited the status of teaching in relation to administration and other careers. In the standards-based system, certification of teachers who have reached specified teaching standards by professional bodies is a pre-requisite for major promotion and salary steps. The pay system in teaching is attempting to catch up with best practices in other organisations that employ professionals. These practices aim to bring the pay system into closer alignment with the central objectives of the organisation. In the case of schools, this means that the pay system needs to reflect the fact that it is primarily good teachers who make good schools, rather than the reverse. Pay systems for teachers are moving in the direction of being based more on competency and performance than longevity and university units or credits (Odden & Kelley, 1997). Competency-based pay rewards teachers for developing and using knowledge and skills defined by professional bodies, such as the NBPTS. Increasing numbers of employing authorities are taking certification by the NBPTS as a guarantee that teachers have gained the capacity to teach subjects and promote learning at levels described in the NBPTS professional standards (NBPTS, March 1997). Final Comments This article has presented an argument for a professional development system based on

profession-defined teaching standards. We are a long way from seeing such a system in action on a broad scale, but the work of a body like the NBPTS makes it possible to conceive of such a system. Many have argued for some time that there is a serious mismatch between our aspirations to lift the general quality of teaching and learning and our capacity to provide the conditions that would enable us to translate these aspirations into reality (Little, 1993). A standards-based professional development system has the capacity to reduce that mismatch by providing much clearer, long-term goals for professional development. Such a system would place greater responsibility for professional development in the hands of the profession and thereby strengthen teachers’ sense of ownership and responsibility for its quality. Standardsbased professional development focuses on individuals and what they might become as teachers. It provides a basis for career paths that place greater status and value on good teaching and, thereby, incentives with the capacity to involve most teachers in collaboratively reviewing their practice in the light of current research and thinking about good teaching. Notes 1 Access to further details about the NBPTS can be found at its website, www.nbpts.org. 2 I would like to express my gratitude to Amy Colton from the NBPTS for her helpful advice on these aspects of the Board’s recent work. 3 For example George Washington University; NCREST, Teachers College, Columbia University; Indiana State University; Southeastern Oklahoma State University; University of Kentucky; The Master of Arts in Applied Leadership for Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin, Greenbay; Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, Winona; The Minnesota High Success Consortium, Rochester, Minn. in conjunction with Hamline and Winona State Universities; Berry College.

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