No Need to Talk About Teaching: Examining the Effects That an Instruction and Assessment System Has on Collaborating Teachers’ Discourse

Abstract

Raven Elementary teachers collaboratively adhered to a systematic reading program, administered frequent assessments, and their students’ test scores improved over time. Our findings indicate that, though effective for improving certain outcomes, such a tightly designed and narrowly focused system created a limiting learning environment for collaborating teachers, preventing them from engaging in reflection or developing more complex instruction. In the absence of policy and resources that require and support teachers to collaboratively reflect on instruction, their rich organizational conditions could only serve as elements of a technical problem-solving system and not as resources for teachers to collectively develop their practice.

Notes

1. An exemplar of such a system was New York District 2 under the leadership of A. Alvarado. See an overview at http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/hplc/HPLC_Video.html.

2. The 2006 Schools and Staffing Survey suggests that teacher collaboration is quite prevalent, especially among elementary teachers. Seventy-eight percent of elementary teachers regularly collaborate with colleagues on issues of instruction (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2006).

3. Multiple scores were registered for 2005 because the state moved its testing date from the winter to the fall. Students took the state assessment in the winter of 2005 and then again in the fall of 2005. All testing after 2005 was administered in the fall.

4. Please see the Appendix for a copy of the interaction log used.