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October 1, 1997
Professional Development for Inclusion
by Laura Jeffers and Babette Moeller
Many teachers face the challenge of supporting students with a variety
of needs and strengths. As school districts begin implementing inclusion plans, the
diversity in many classrooms has increased to encompass children with a variety of
disabilities. Many teachers find that technology can facilitate the integrating of
children with disabilities into general education classrooms, but useful approaches are
often lost as children move from one grade to the next.
For the past three years, researchers from the Education Development Center (EDC) have been
working on the Pathways for Learning project to address this problem. The Pathways
project, which is funded by the Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs, is
designed to improve outcomes for children with and without disabilities through
professional development activities for teachers and systematic organizational support for
those activities. The goal of this column is to describe our approach to professional
development, and discuss findings from our collaboration with the Lawrence, New York
school district, one of our two implementation sites. The Lawrence district is a small
suburban district that includes seven schools serving approximately 4,000 students. Ten
percent of the student population receives special education services. The school district
mainstreams students with mild disabilities (e.g., students with learning disabilities or
attention deficit disorder) in general education classrooms. The district is rich in
technology resources, with many computers located in labs and classrooms.
Approach to Professional Development
The approach to inservice professional development we have developed
engages general and special education teachers to work in teams to collaboratively plan
and implement technology-supported curriculum activities for all students. Our approach
has four main features: it spans multiple disciplines and multiple grades; it is ongoing;
it is facilitated, and it is supported by the administration.
Multidisciplinary, multigrade teams: Pathways teams bring together
teachers from different subject matter areas, consecutive grades, and sometimes even
different schools. The team members plan and implement technology-based curriculum
activities in relation to a common theme. While the specific content of each activity
varies across classrooms, the core activity and the theme are constant across subject
matter areas and different grades. This mode of curriculum development ensures the
continuity of successful practices which is often particularly important for students with
disabilities.
In Lawrence, we are working with two teams of teachers who volunteered
their participation. One team bridges an elementary school and the middle school with 5th,
6th, 7th, and 8th grade classroom teachers, a 6th grade special education teacher, two
middle school resource room teachers, and an elementary school psychologist. The other
team is a middle school team with only five participants, covering grades 6 through 8. The
subject matter areas represented in these teams include English, Social Studies, Science,
Math, and Foreign Language. Additional personnel, including principals, assistant
principals, and the district supervisor of pupil personnel, who is responsible for special
education in the district, also attend team meetings on occasion.
Professional development is ongoing. Pathways teams meet regularly
throughout the school year and for intensive periods during the summer. The team consists
of the following recursive sequence of activities:
1. assessing the strengths and weaknesses of target and regular students
2. reviewing and assessing current practices
3. setting common goals and objectives
4. reviewing technology resources
5. learning to use new technology
6. designing a shared activity or curriculum unit, including assessment
7. implementing this activity in the classroom
8. reflecting on and revising the intervention
Pathways teams provide ongoing support to teachers as they are
introduced to new experiences (e.g., introduction to a new piece of software), engage in
collaborative curriculum planning, and implement Pathways activities. The recursive team
process allows teachers to test and refine innovative approaches. The team structure is
especially helpful in offering teachers a forum for sharing their experiences and
reflections as they try out new approaches in their classes, an element often missing from
traditional professional development efforts.
In Lawrence, Pathways teams meet during the school day for a double
period (90 minutes). In order to attend team meetings, teachers are released from their
classroom duties and their school provides substitutes. The frequency with which the teams
have been meeting has varied from once a month to once every week. Over the course of a
school year, teams have engaged in the Pathways cycle from two to four times, depending on
the time needed to learn the new technology, the complexity of the activity the team
designs, and the academic schedule into which the activity must fit. In addition to
regular team meetings, Pathways teams have also participated in special summer curriculum
development projects sponsored by the district and other professional development forums
developed for the project. Summer curriculum projects have ranged from one to four
five-hour days, and teams have learned particular pieces of software and developed
curriculum activities to use in the fall.
Professional development is facilitated. Each Pathways team has a local
facilitator who functions both as team leader and as liaison to the school and the
district. As a team leader, a facilitator coordinates and leads team meetings, and serves
as a resource for team members. As a liaison to the school and district, a facilitator
shares the work of the team with others in the school community, helps to orchestrate
organizational support, and collaborates with other facilitators and EDC consultants.
Local facilitators work closely with EDC consultants to review and plan the various areas
of Pathways work, especially in the initial phases of their assignment. Outside support
gradually diminishes as local facilitators become more familiar with their roles. The use
of within-school facilitators insures that the operation of the team and curriculum
planning is sensitive to local circumstances, and significantly contributes to team
members' acceptance of new goals and approaches. In Lawrence, both building level and
district level administrators (an assistant principal and the districts' coordinator for
instructional technology) and classroom teachers have served as facilitators.
Professional development is supported by the schools and the district:
Through local facilitators, building-level and district-level administrators are well
informed of the ongoing work and needs of the Pathways teams, and provide the necessary
resources and support. Organizational support significantly facilitates the operation of
the teams and the implementation of Pathways activities in the classroom. In Lawrence,
organizational support provided by school and district administrations includes promotion
of the ideas and approaches developed by the Pathways teams, release time and substitute
coverage for teachers attending team meetings and other project activities, special
purchases of technology and other resources, priority access to the computer lab, and
staff time for a district-level Pathways coordinator.
Developing Curriculum Activities
The curriculum planning process that is part of the Pathways team
approach requires teachers to define and assess specific learning goals for individual
students with each activity or curriculum unit that is developed. Success of the
implementation of the new activity or curriculum unit is measured by student outcomes. For
some of the activities developed by the Pathways teams, learning goals have been derived
from the district writing curriculum guidelines, and the accomplishment of these goals is
assessed using scoring rubrics developed to evaluate the contents of students' writing
portfolios.
During and after the implementation of each Pathways activity, teachers
have extensive discussions in their teams, reporting on whether or not students are
accomplishing the goals that were set for them. If students have difficulties reaching
their learning goals, activities are refined to better meet these students' needs.
One activity designed by Team 1 had students using a piece of software
called Storybook Weaver Deluxe
to write and illustrate an adventure story. This particular software was selected after
the team considered the needs and strengths of their students and found that many of them
shared difficulties in organizing their thoughts and expressing them in writing. Storybook
Weaver Deluxe's combination of text and graphics offers a variety of alternative
strategies and tools for writing. The easy editing tools, similar to those available in
many word processors, allow children who have difficulty writing to brainstorm and edit
more comfortably. In addition, many children find it more productive to use the program's
extensive graphics to develop a story in pictures first, and then write out the text.
The adventure theme was adapted to the ongoing curriculum, themes, and
activities of each classroom. For example, one 6th grade classroom was reading The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The specific task in the Pathways activity was for
students to write an additional chapter for this story. Another 6th grade class read the
story A Gift of Life. Their task was to write an adventure story about a gift they have.
While the overall objective was the same for all students, specific
objectives were established for each child, depending on his or her needs, abilities, and
grade level. Seventh grade students were expected to compose full paragraphs, pay
attention to character development, and include a surprise twist in the plot. For some of
the target students in the sixth grade, creating three pages that flowed logically one to
the next was considered an appropriate challenge. When the activity was completed, the
team met to discuss target student outcomes, plan further efforts for those students, and
consider modifications of the activity for future use.
Activities like these were very successful with the students. Students
with and without disabilities were highly engaged in the writing activities, they
collaborated more, they felt more confident about their writing, and for many of the
target students, the quality and quantity of writing improved significantly.
Outcomes
Our approach to professional development has had a significant impact on
the participating teachers:
* The Pathways approach has allowed teachers to develop a better
understanding of the needs and strengths of individual students, because these students
are followed by the same team of teachers over several consecutive years. This had
important consequences for teaching and learning in the classroom. Since receiving
teachers already know a lot about individual students at the beginning of the school year,
and know what kinds of help and strategies worked well with these students, they are able
to provide effective instruction from early on without losing valuable time. Through their
participation in the Pathways teams, teachers have also become more accepting of academic
diversity in their classrooms and have refined their understanding of learning
disabilities, ways of integrating technology to serve students with a variety of needs,
and the processes involved in collaborative activity planning. Some of the teachers are
now interested in becoming facilitators themselves and starting new Pathways teams.
* Teachers have also become more competent participants in the
collaborative curriculum planning process. While collaborating in teams is not unfamiliar
for the teachers in Lawrence (e.g., all teachers at the middle school participate in grade
level teams), Pathways teams bring together unique sets of professionals, including:
special education professionals with classroom teachers and teachers from different
disciplines; teachers from different grade levels; staff from one of the elementary
schools with staff from the middle school; teachers with building-level and district-level
administrators; and teachers and administrators from the district with EDC staff. Pathways
teams make it possible for teachers and other staff to share with each other their
different areas of expertise (e.g., special needs students, technology, or subject
matter). Less experienced teachers learn from more experienced teachers, and teachers from
lower grade levels learn about what teachers of higher grade levels expect from their
students. The collaboration that is fostered among teachers in the Pathways teams also has
resulted in increased collaboration in the classroom. For instance, one of the Pathways
teachers used students from another Pathways teachers' class to help her introduce a new
computer program to her class.
* Pathways teachers have become more critical reviewers of software and
proficient users of at least three different software programs: HyperStudio, Storybook Weaver Deluxe, and Inspiration. At the outset of the project, most of
the teachers used computers only occasionally. Now most of the teachers have made the use
of computer technology an integral part of their classroom activities. Some of the
teachers now serve as resources for other teachers: One is teaching a district-wide
inservice course on HyperStudio, and another one
is serving as a computer coordinator of the middle school. The teachers are eager to learn
more about technology.
In summary, our approach has proven a very effective method of providing
inservice professional development for teachers. It has helped teachers develop a better
understanding of the needs and strength of individual students, it helped them to
collaborate more effectively, and it significantly contributed to their technical
competence, all of which contributed to more effective classroom practices, and ultimately
to improved student outcomes.
Challenges and Obstacles
Many of the usual "unforeseen" circumstances arose for the
Pathways teams. For instance, last-minute assembly programs superseded classes' scheduled
time in the computer lab, preparation for district-wide testing interrupted activity flow,
and complications with the technology delayed implementation of Pathways activities. In
addition, Pathways participants had to deal with a number of issues that were particularly
challenging to their work.
Because cross-grading is one of the defining elements of Pathways for
Learning, the work can only be truly successful if students who have one teacher in a
given year have another teacher from the same team the next year. Ensuring that this
happens can be quite complicated, as there are many other constraints on class placement
and scheduling.
Another challenge in Lawrence was extending Pathways into the
departmentalized structure of the high school. In the sixth grade, a team of two teachers
will cover language arts, social studies, math, and science between them, so a Pathways
activity is easily integrated into their classes. In the upper grades, where teachers
specialize, the fit is much more difficult to manage.
Finally, teacher turnover can be problematic for the Pathways teams. It
may be difficult for a new team member to catch up with the technical and pedagogical
experience of the other participants. And because the experience varies from team to team,
there's no way to develop a generic approach to preparing new members.
Email: Laura Jeffers
Email: Babette Moeller
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