Professional Communities and the Artisan Model of Teaching

This paper aims to reconcile tensions between an artisan model of teaching and the call for a collaborative teacher community--offering a vision of an artisan community as a context of innovative practice in contemporary American high schools. In his stunning critique of the 'communitarian movement', Michael Huberman (1993) argued that strong school community most likely undermines teachers' independent artisanship by taking up time and limiting professional judgment. Through the experiences and voices of teachers in high schools we studied in the early 1990s, we argue that artisanship in teaching is influenced, for worse or better, by the character of teachers' professional community. In weak teacher communities, the most innovative teachers were demoralized by a lack of collegial support in addressing needs of non-traditional students; in strong traditional communities, teacher artisanship was squelched or marginalized by the standardized curriculum and assessments that enforced student tracking systems. In contrast, strong collaborative teacher communities engendered artisanship in teaching--by sustaining teachers' commitment to improving practice, through dialog and collaboration around engaging students in school and content, and by sharing and inventing repertoires of effective classroom practice. We illustrate artisan communities at work with brief descriptions of the subject departments and schools we studied that fit this model of professional community. Building on Huberman's analogy between teaching artisanship and jazz improvisation, we conclude by highlighting the fundamental role that community plays in developing musicians' improvisational skills and repertoire of practice.