Growing Teachers:
Partnerships in Staff Development

*********

Elizabeth Jones

1993

Table of Contents

About the Authors

Introduction: Growing Teachers
Elizabeth Jones

Chapter 1: Telling our Stories: The CDA Process in Native American Head Start
C. David Beers

Chapter 2: Moving Out of Silence: The CDA Process with Alaska Native Teachers
Kathrin Greenough

Chapter 3: Catching Teachers "Being Good": Using Observation to Communicate
Margie Carter

Chapter 4: Teachers Talking to Each Other: The Pasadena Partnership Project
Elizabeth Jones, Joyce Robinson, Diedra Miller, Richard Cohen, and Gretchen Reynolds

Chapter 5: Change Making in a Primary School: Soledad, California
Jane Meade-Roberts, Elizabeth Jones, and Joan Hillard

Chapter 6: Co-Creating Primary Curriculum: Boulder Valley Schools
Maja Apelman

Chapter 7: Teachers as Observers of Play: Involving Teachers in Action Research
Barbara Creaser

Chapter 8: I'll Visit Your Class, You Visit Mine: Experienced Teachers as Mentors
Lisa Poelle

Chapter 9: Looking Back: What We've Learned About Partnerships
Elizabeth Jones

Information About NAEYC

Growing teachers is different from training them. Oddly, we more often think about growing plants than about growing people. People, especially the young, are to be domesticated-trained as dogs and horses are-to make them reliable, responsible members of society. Plants, of course, can be trained, too, if we have decided on the precise direction we want them to take. We clip a little here, tie a little there, and are rewarded by just the shape we want to grace our pot or wall or formal garden.

An alternative to domestication is liberation (Freire, 1970). Teachers, like other people, need some of both. Many books have been written about teacher training, offering useful guidelines for improving practice toward specified outcomes. This book, in contrast, describes staff development activities that were open in design; philosophy and process were defined, but not outcomes. Teachers were expected to participate actively in the construction of knowledge about their work, making choices among options for growth.

Each of the stories told here involves a partnership between one or more early childhood programs-preschools, child care centers, public schools-and some other agency or individual working over time with teaching staff to facilitate their growth. Because facilitators were independent of the system that employed the teachers, they were free to encourage teachers' thinking rather than evaluate their performance. These storytellers have found this approach a particularly good fit in early childhood education. Here's why.

Introduction: Growing Teachers

Elizabeth Jones

Teachers construct knowledge about teaching

People with power in educational systems—administrators, supervisors, trainers, consultants, professors, teachers get their jobs because they are seen as experts—people who know. To most of those who know, it seems sensible to tell others what to do, whether those others are adults or children. And some kinds of knowledge-names for things, facts, rules for behavior-are indeed learned by memorizing what one is told by those who already know. Piaget calls this social knowledge; it is agreed upon by a particular society and taught directly to naive members of that society.

Piaget also has a lot to say about logical knowledge—the understandings or schemata that cannot be learned by rote but must be constructed by each knower in order to understand the relationships among things, events, and people. Young children construct logical knowledge by hands-on investigation, dramatic play, and discussion. Similarly, adults learn complex tasks and concepts by doing them and reflecting and dialoguing about them.

Jean Baker Miller (1976) has suggested that there are some tasks that can be learned, done, and evaluated with consistent precision. A bridge, for example, is designed and built according to agreed upon technical knowledge; properly constructed, it will stand. Admittedly, an earthquake may crack it, but in the earthquake country where I live, builders now claim to be able to take even earthquakes into account in their designs.

There are other tasks, says Miller, that require continual on-the-spot decision making. They cannot be engineered because the interpersonal variables are too complex and the actors keep making unpredicted choices. Childrearing, she says, is one such task; teaching is another. An early childhood classroom is a continual series of earthquakes. Childrearing and teaching young children have traditionally been jobs that belong to women and are thus devalued in a logical technical society that values prediction and control. Men (and some women) in education and psychology have, in fact, tried to redefine teaching in terms of engineering models such as behaviorism. Donmoyer (1981). discussing this history in education, proposes a growth model that is organic-not engineered-as more appropriate to the learning process. Like the facilitators in this book, he is interested in growing people rather than in training them.

Education needs theory, Kamii (1985a) has insisted, and her theory of choice is Piagetian constructivism-a complex model in which each human actor, in interaction with others, constructs his or her own continually shifting knowledge. A teacher working with many such human knowers can guide their learning only within a learning environment in which there is room for action and interaction and in which attention is paid to what is happening for each learner. In such a classroom the teacher becomes, not primarily someone who tells and corrects, but someone who watches; asks, "What happened? What did you notice?"; and reflects, "I noticed . . . " (Wasserman, 1990).

This book applies a constructivist model to staff development. Just as young children learn about their world by playing its scripts, teachers learn about teaching and learning by playing the teaching script, observing what happens, and discussing all of the possibilities with other teachers. In this process they come to see themselves as people who know—thereby, people capable of making appropriate choices for themselves and for children.

A view of How Adults (and Children) Learn

  1. Under optimal conditions of safety and challenge, human beings are inherently curious, intrinsically motivated, self-directed learners (Rogers, 1969; Maslow, 1970).
  2. Knowledge is constructed by the learner through action on the environment and interaction with peers (Piaget in Labinowicz, 1980, & Peterson, 1986).
  3. The construction of knowledge involves narrative and socioemotional, as well as logical, connections. Knowing is embedded in collectively shared meanings and depends on validation in significant relationships (Erikson, 1950; Donaldson, 1978; Knowles, 1984; Noddings, 1984; Belenky et al., 1986; Jones, 1986; Egan, 1989).
  4. Active, self-expressive learning is necessarily a social process; it should take place in, and contribute to, a democratic community of critical thinkers (Dewey, 1938, 1943).
  5. Learning takes place in the context of social/political realities. In a diverse society, members of groups with unequal access to power often internalize oppression and fail to develop an effective voice. Education is never neutral; it can be designed to maintain or to change the status quo (Freire, 1970; Delpit, 1988; Derman-Sparks et al., 1989; Rose, 1989; Darder, 1991).

Choice making: Teachers take initiative

In this model the development of teacher initiative has priority. Young children in the stage of initiative (Erikson, 1950) are mastering learning-through-play in which making choices and inventing one's own actions are the primary skills to be learned. In this stage children need facilitation of their spontaneous activity, not direct instruction. Similarly, where trust, autonomy, and a baseline of competence have been established, teachers are also intrinsically motivated to master learning-through-play, in which invention, action, and negotiation with peers lead to unpredicted but interesting and stimulating outcomes. Teachers will grow by making choices among teaching possibilities, observing children's responses, and reflecting through dialogue with facilitative and knowledgeable colleagues. Choice is a crucial component in enabling teachers to take responsibility for their own growth. Making choices is an empowering process.

What, then, about all of the early childhood program staff who "don't want to grow," who appear to lack both creativity and motivation? Again, young children offer a partial parallel. Some children have pressing needs that leave them with little energy for spontaneous play, but sometimes interesting materials and a helpful adult can entice these children into play, which helps them to move past anxiety toward competence. Many adults with complex lives have pressing needs that leave them with little energy to invest in their work beyond its minimum requirements, but some can be "hooked" in unexpected ways, especially if their personal priorities are acknowledged and a range of enticing choices is made available.

Teachers who aren't expected to take initiative probably won't. Teachers who are expected to may not, but the chances are better. Bennis has written (1976) of the human-relations or "truth/love" leadership model, which assumes

that if we present enough valid data to people and develop a relationship of trust and affection and love, then change can come about. The theory relies on the idea that trust is a historical concept based on repeated interactions. That, if there's enough trust and enough truth, most changes can take place. (p. 88)

This model is based on faith in selffulfilling prophecies-faith that ordinary teachers, viewed as interesting and competent by colleagues worthy of respect, will become more thoughtful about their work, will continue to seek input from others, and will thereby become increasingly empowered as critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Initiative or Power?

If you're responsible for a program, know what you want and have the authority and power to get what you want-go for it! Consider, however, these thoughts:

  1. Teaching requires continual on-the-spot decision making. When you're not monitoring, teachers must make independent decisions that can never be entirely predictable.
  2. In a rapidly changing society, traditional knowledge is never sufficient to cover all the possibilities.
  3. In a diverse society the knowledge base of any one culture is inadequate to answer the questions that come up when cultures meet.
  4. Teachers who are supported in practicing autonomous problem solving will become more competent professionals than those who are expected to follow instructions.
  5. Teachers accustomed to autonomy are more likely to question authority, and thus complicate administrators' lives, than teachers who are dependably obedient.

Note: Teachers and parents may find it instructive to construct a similar list substituting children for teachers.

When choice making isn't appropriate

The human-relations model works, says Bennis, but not often enough. Sometimes it's necessary to use the "power" model, in which the leader decides what she wants and gets it through the exercise of her power. The two models are complementary; it's important to choose the one more appropriate at a given time. In teaching young children we offer them many opportunities to make decisions for themselves, but there are times when they have to do something because we said so. In staff development there are comparable rules to be learned and followed; these represent the minimum standards for responsible teaching, the baseline of competence required of all staff. Some standards are determined by licensing agencies; others are set by program policy and enforced by administrators and supervisors. Compliance, not initiative, is the desired outcome. All classrooms are expected to be alike in their safety procedures; their attentiveness to children's health needs; and, in some programs, their implementation of a prescribed curriculum.

When teachers make choices some will grow more than others. They may become more different rather than more alike, directing their energies in varied ways, setting their own priorities, and developing a unique style of teaching as well as of professional growth. The organic development fostered in a growth model produces variety, not predictable sameness. It is more fruitful, more fun, and more risky.

Options in in-service education

Finding an appropriate balance between initiative and power is a challenge for both managers of programs and planners of inservice education for program staff. In programs functioning near the baseline of competence, staff development may require a training model, relying on expert information to reinforce program expectations. In contrast, programs with relatively stable, competent staff may find a facilitation model more effective in developing staff initiative toward high quality.

A staff development plan may emphasize training or facilitation, expert or collegial relationships, personal or impersonal relationships. It may rely on internal or external personnel for its implementation.

Options: Training or facilitation?

Teachers' preservice training, experience, and competence vary widely in preschool programs, both between centers and within them. Inexperienced, untrained teachers still in the survival stage (Katz, 1977) need straightforward training-social knowledge-that clarifies the expectations for their work and gives them recipes for getting started. Once teachers have developed a repertoire of group management skills and activities that keep children interested, they are ready to construct their own knowledge through reflecting on practice, being challenged to grow, and making some choices about their rate and direction of growth. Their need is less for a trainer than for a facilitator-a colleague with whom to grow. In staff development plans, training and facilitation balance each other. Programs with high staff turnover need a continuing training plan, while programs with relative stability need to explore a facilitation model.

Options: Expert or collegial?

Experts train; colleagues facilitate. Adults, like children, learn both through being told by those who already know and through discussion with peers who are in the process of constructing similar knowledge. The construction of knowledge, Piaget has suggested, takes place most effectively through interaction with peers, who can be argued with, not simply believed. An in-service plan may emphasize listening to experts or it may develop opportunities for staff to talk together. Persons who have expertise but choose to listen and question rather than give information directly may be able to build collegial relationships with teachers.

Literate learners may encounter significant others in print or visual media as well as face-to-face. Some books and films give how-to instructions; others tell stories that enable teachers to construct their own connections and understandings.

Options: Personal or impersonal contact?

Contact with experts and with peers can be personal or impersonal. Personal contact implies relationship and is usually face-to-face, although it is possible to build relationships through correspondence or interactive technology. Relationships are built on two-way interaction, although some writers and lecturers are able, through their personal style, to communicate an "as-if" experience of relationship to readers and listeners. Relationship building requires continuity over time.

Options External or internal staff developers?

Some staff-development providers are employed within the system in which the teachers work and have line authority over them. Their relationships are necessarily different, in greater or lesser degree, from those of a trainer or consultant who comes from outside the system and has no power within it. The supervisor responsible for teacher performance is always at risk of being seen as evaluator if she observes and asks questions in classrooms.

The stories in this collection examine the work of resource people external to the system who have sought to develop facilitative personal relationships that build collegiality between themselves and teachers-usually, experienced teachers. We have chosen to call this role storyteller because of the importance of observation and reflection as facilitative behaviors and to contrast it with two roles we have observed in other situations, fixer-upper and star.

Teachers as Learners

In The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies (1972), Sarason has articulated this principle in his description of a psychoeducational clinic:

"The clinic did not define its task in terms of service.... Our primary responsibility was to ourselves (the staff) in the sense that we had to learn new things. We were going to judge ourselves only secondarily by how helpful we were to others" (p. 116). "Our primary value concerns our need to help ourselves change and learn, for us to feel that we are growing in our understanding of where we have been, where we are, and what we are about, and that we are enjoying what we are doing" (p. 122).

"On those occasions when we gave this answer, the reactions varied, not surprisingly, from staring disbelief, to implicit accusations of narcissism and callousness, to a benevolence which seemed to view the answer as a kind of pious idealism which would not stand up in the real world. These reactions ... reflect values and a way of thinking implicit in the creation of almost all settings .... I will use our schools as a case in point. Nobody would disagree with the statement that schools are primarily for the education of children .... What children should be taught, what experiences children should have, how much progress children should make-these questions reveal who is center stage. I have spent thousands of hours in schools and one of the first things I sensed was that the longer the person had been a teacher the less excited, or alive, or stimulated he seemed to be about his role. It was not that they were uninterested, or felt that what they were doing was unimportant, or that they were not being helpful to their students, but simply that being a teacher was on the boring side .... what would be inexplicable would be if things turned out otherwise, because schools are not created to foster the intellectual and professional growth of teachers. The assumption that teachers can create and maintain those conditions which make school learning and school living stimulating for children, without those same conditions existing for teachers, has no warrant in the history of man" (pp. 123-124).

Fixer-uppers, stars, and storytellers

Fixer-uppers know what ought to be done and typically use suitable reinforcements to try to get it done. Fixer-uppers are most effective if they have power within the system as an administrator or supervisor or coercive power as a representative of a regulatory agency. Having made demands, the maker needs to be in a position to enforce them. Fixer-uppers have goals for the program and standards to be met, and they evaluate performance toward those standards. Ideally they are clear and direct in their communication of expectations.

Unless they are stars (see below) in their own right, fixer-uppers tend to rely on impersonal sources of expertise to justify their expectations; they cite published theories, written guidelines and standards, and marketed curricula. Such sources can be useful in depersonalizing any tension in relationships with staff. Rather than own responsibility for demanding something a teacher doesn't want to do, the administrator is free to express sympathy at a personal level while explaining that they (persons not present and not in the relationship with us) say that we have to. In many agencies and schools, this statement is not only strategic but true.

Stars are charismatic experts. They are very good at what they do and excited by the doing of it; their hope is to inspire others to do the same, through modeling and exhortation. They enjoy being on stage. Some stars do demonstration teaching; some do workshops or presentations in front of audiences. Typically, they are passionate in their concern for quality experiences for children, and they want others to catch their passion.

Stars' expertise may be shared either impersonally, as in lectures and one-shot demonstrations (in which some stars are very personal in style), or personally, over time, in the roles of model and mentor. Stars in master-teacher roles can be observed regularly by teachers-in-training in their classrooms, and the stars may be available to provide commentary on their own work and on others'. It is possible to be both star and administrator only in settings created to showcase one's work—usually small, private schools in which the star is teacher/director (and often founder).

Stars and fixer-uppers have a common priority: improving the program for children. They rely on expertise about early childhood education-their own or borrowed expertise-to influence teachers' performance.

Learning To Distrust One's Own Thinking

Writing of autonomy as the aim of education, Kamii (1985b) describes her experience of asking primary grade children working in math workbooks "how they had arrived at a particular answer. Typically, they began erasing like mad, even when their answers were perfectly correct. Even in first grade many children already have learned to distrust their own thinking. Children who are discouraged from thinking autonomously will construct less knowledge than those who are mentally active and confident" (p. 46).

Similarly, many teachers who are asked questions assume that they must be doing something wrong.

  1. Facilitators concentrate on strengths and ignore weaknesses. Fixer-uppers are in the habit of looking for weaknesses.
  2. In actuality facilitators use selective reinforcement over time to shape teacher behavior in desired directions (Riley, 1980). These directions, however, are oriented toward teacher decision making, risk taking, divergent thinking, self-observation, reflection on practice, and speaking up, rather than 9 toward implementation of any preselected curriculum or objectives. Facilitation implies commitment to adult learners as constructors of their own knowledge.
  3. People with line authority in a system are responsible for ensuring that system objectives get met. This responsibility generally turns them into fixeruppers rather than facilitators.
  4. The people freest to facilitate rather than fix up are those external to the system. This way evaluation and facilitation don't get mixed up.

Storytellers' priority is teacher growth. Storytellers have access to expertise-their own or borrowed-but they draw on it sparingly. Instead they look for the knowledge that teachers are already using and reflect it back to them, making teachers' own stories, rather than established authority, the starting point for learning. The storyteller is both a collector and a reteller of others' stories.

The storyteller is a more experienced learner who chooses to be a learner with less experienced learners. While she cares a lot about children, in this role she focuses her caring on teachers. She is motivated by genuine interest in teachers as learners, which takes precedence over her own expectations for what should be happening with children. She believes that teachers who experience such support are likely, in turn, to provide it to the children they teach (see box on p. xvii). If she asks a teacher, "Why did you do that?" it's a real question, not a veiled criticism. She would like teachers to ask such real questions of children to support the development of logical thinking (see box on p. xviii). She's interested in the teacher's thinking and in stimulating dialogue in the teacher with herself as colleague and with a growing network of other teachers. To do so she necessarily commits to building a relationship over time; only stars and experts have the luxury of dropping in to do their thing.

Storytelling is most effective with a noncaptive audience, where teachers can choose whether or not to have their stories told and discussed. An external facilitator or a peer is most able to take on this role, working with interested teachers on a voluntary basis and counting on word-of-mouth to expand the network. It is difficult for an administrator to be a storyteller unless she is trusted to be nonjudgmental, and that may be a contradiction in terms; she is, in fact, the evaluator of teacher performance, and if she observes and asks questions in classrooms, evaluating must be what she's doing. Similarly, it is difficult for an administrator to be a star in her own territory; charisma isn't easily sustained from day to day. Administrators are expected, both by the staff they supervise and those who supervise them, to be fixer-uppers, responsible for articulating and enforcing standards.

Beginning teachers and teachers whose competence is in question do, in fact, need fixing up, through clear expectations and accountability for meeting those expectations. But different teachers need different challenges, Just as different children do. An administrator working with experienced, competent teachers whose jobs are not at risk may experiment with "wearing different hats at different times, cultivating the behaviors suitable to each, making it clear when they are modeling and when they are monitoring" (Carter & Jones, 1990, p. 29).

Both system and personal characteristics will influence her ability to do so. Stability of staff and levels of authority are perhaps the most important system characteristics. To be free to facilitate, a director must have substantial autonomy. A middle manager in a bureaucracy is under too much system pressure. In any case, it may be more fruitful for administrators to find interesting ways to get teachers sharing ideas and resources—supporting each other as peers-or to arrange for external facilitation through some sort of trade or special funding. Outsiders challenge the administrator, relieve some of her isolation, and help her to think beyond her own program as well.

Personal characteristics of administrators who try a facilitation model, internal or external, must include relative freedom from anxiety about outcomes and an appreciation of teachers as independent thinkers. Storytelling is a process of helping teachers develop their own voices. Teachers who find their voices have lots to say and both the motivation and the energy to say it. They voice complaints and questions and new ideas. They may generate conflict rather than maintain a smooth status quo. These are not outcomes desired by a fixer-upper, who wants a model replicated, or by a star, who wants herself-as-model replicated. They are, however, desirable outcomes of a process whose goal is skill and confidence in divergent thinking.

Telling teachers their stories

Storytellers use their voices to reflect and develop teachers' voices. Stars often tell stories, too, but their stories are about themselves and the children they have worked with. Facilitator-storytellers observe and listen to teachers and to the children with whom those teachers work, and they collect stories to retell to teachers about themselves and their children.

Representation-in images and in spoken and written words-is a crucial tool used by human beings to make their experience real to themselves-to fix it in memory, reflect on it, and share it with others. Representation is primarily a social act. We come to know who we are and what we have experienced as others reflect our appearance, actions, and words back to us. Because self is a social creation (Mead, 1934), the degree of our self-esteem and the dimensions of our self-concept are shaped by all of the reactions of others to our growing selves.

Our conscious efforts to communicate to young children that "you are lovable and capable" are grounded in this view of development. Extended beyond childhood this view implies that adults, as well, need continuing reflections of themselves from others who care about them, admire them, and are committed to their growth. Teachers of young children facilitate their growth by providing them with time, space, and materials for play and language development, and by reflecting and representing back to them their play and their words. Facilitators of teacher development support teachers' growth by observing children in their classrooms, scribing their observations in words and pictures, and engaging in conversations in which teachers' and observers' perceptions are shared. In these interactions teachers experience a process equally appropriate for their interactions with children.

Stories can be retold in many ways—in converstation, on video, at in-services, or in a newsletter like this one, which goes regularly to all of the early childhood teachers in a school district.

Creating a Language-Rich Environment--Outdoors

Jefferson West Preschool
Mamie King, teacher
Georgina Villarino, teacher

Several children are busy with dolls and phones at a table.

Christina, handing phone to Mamie: It's your mom.

Mamie: Hello. How you doing? Did you pick up that hamburger meat for me? And what else did I tell you to get? Could you pick up some taco sauce for me-and lettuce and tomatoes? I'd really appreciate it.

Elizabeth, who has been skating, takes the phone.

Mamie: Elizabeth, I saw you at the roller rink last night. Were you roller skating? Who were you skating with-Melissa?

In the sand, three boys and a girl are making birthday cake, spreading sand carefully into pans.

Kein, to Georgina: It's your turn!

Georgina: OK, it's my turn to blow out the candles.

Eduardo, to Georgina: More cake?

Georgina: OK, vanilla. No more chocolate.

Georgina has been offered banana cake. "Estoy comiendo todo, mira!" she says. "I finished already."

In this program the flow from Spanish to English to Spanish has the rhythm of a dance. Georgina speaks both Spanish and English. Mamie speaks English, but "They're teaching me Spanish," she explains, "and I make mistakes, so they aren't afraid to talk. Kein, who is Vietnamese, is learning. 'You're learning Spanish,' I said to him. 'Sí,' he said.

"The whole thing," says Mamie, "is to get them to come out of their shells and use language-any language."

-From the ECE Community Partnerships Newsletter,
November 16, 1992, Pacific Oaks College,
Pasadena, California.


About the stories

In each of the partnerships described in this book, teachers have been encouraged to engage in reflection and dialogue through interactions with an external facilitator who has watched, listened, and retold teachers' stories to them. Facilitators have empowered teachers as communicators about their practice by devising ways for their stories to go somewhere - into print, onto video, or into in-service and conference presentations. Sharing teachers' stories builds their competence and self-esteem while passing their good ideas on to others. Teachers who recognize themselves as "people who know" are motivated to keep learning.

The partnerships described in this collection of stories provided staff development opportunities for teachers of children from infancy through age eight in half-day preschools, full-day child care centers, and elementary schools, in the western United States-rural and urban-and in Australia. All of the facilitators had experience in teaching young children, but none were employed by the schools with which they worked. Five of the facilitators were college instructors, one was employed part time as a vocational educator, and one was on staff at a teacher center. In the most complex model, a member of a community agency's consulting staff selected and supervised a group of experienced preschool teachers acting as mentors to inexperienced teachers in other preschools. These are the settings:

The rural Southwest (Head Start programs on the Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, and Ute Mountain Ute reservations in the Four Comers areas of New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado): The partner was San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico, providing advising for the Child Development Associate credential under a Head Start grant.

Southeast Alaska (Head Start programs in the small cities and native villages of this island coast): The University of Alaska-Southeast offered advising for the Child Development Associate credential in collaboration with Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes under a Head Start grant.

The Seattle, Washington, metropolitan area: Independent child care programs joined a partnership offered by Renton Vocational-Technical Institute for child care vocational education funded by the state of Washington.

Pasadena, California (a mid-size city [population about 120,000] within the Los Angeles metropolitan area): Pacific Oaks College entered into a partnership, funded by the Ford Foundation, with the Children's Services Office of Pasadena Unified School District, working with teachers in the district's child care centers and state preschools.

Soledad, California (a small, largely Latino community in the agricultural Salinas Valley near Monterey): A consultant from a college faculty and a school resource teacher collaborated in staff development at the district's primary school under a Title VII Bilingual Program grant.

Boulder, Colorado (a university community on the eastern slope of the Rockies, just north of Denver): A teacher center established at the University of Colorado with Ford Foundation support offered advising to elementary teachers in the Boulder Valley schools.

Adelaide and Darwin, Australia (the capital cities of two Australian states): In each a small, invited group of teachers shared classroom observations on a selected topic, working in Adelaide with two Kindergarten Union advisors and in Darwin with two faculty members at Northern Territory University.

Palo Alto, California: Independent preschool programs in the metropolitan area on the San Francisco peninsula joined a partership initiated by the Children's Health Council, an independent community agency, with foundation support.

ButI'm an Administrator. Can I Be a Facilitator Too?

The answer to this question depends on

  1. your trust in teachers' competence and initiative. Deep down, do you really believe they need you to improve them?
  2. teachers' trust in your open-mindedness and support. If you have reservations about them, they'll know. Those who hire and fire can be trusted only so far.
  3. teacher' job security.

References

Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R., & Tarule, J.M. (1986). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. New York: Basic Books.

Bennis, W. (1976). The unconscious conspiracy: Why leaders can't lead. New York: AMACOM.

Carter. M., & Jones, E. (1990). The teacher as observer: The director as role model. Child Care Information Exchange, 75, 27-30.

Darder, A. (1991). Culture and power in the classroom: A critical foundation for bicultural education. New York: Bergin & Garvey.

Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280-298.

Derman-Sparks, L., & the ABC Task Force. (1989). Anti-bias curriculum; Tools for empowering young children. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.

Dewey, J. (1943). The school and society. New York: Macmillan. (original work published 1900)

Donaldson, M. (1978). Children's minds. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.

Donmoyer, R. (1981). The politics of play: Ideological and organizational constraints on the inclusion of play experiences in the school curriculum. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 14(3), 11-18.

Egan, K. (1989). Teaching as storytelling. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.

Jones, E. (1986). Teaching adults. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Jones, E., & Reynolds, G. (1992). The play's the thing: Teachers' roles in children's play. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kamii, C. (1985a). Leading primary education toward excellence: Beyond worksheets and drill. Young Children, 40(6), 3-9.

Kamii, C. (I 985b). Young children reinvent arithmetic: Implications of Piaget's theory. New York: Teachers College Press.

Katz, L.G. (1977). Talks with teachers. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Knowles, M., & Associates (1984). Andragogy in action: Applying modem principles of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Labinowicz, E. (1980). The Piaget primer. Thinking, leaming, teaching. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.

Maslow, A. (1970). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper.

Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Miller, J.B. (1976). Toward a new psychology of women. Boston: Beacon Press.

Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Peterson, R., & Felton-Collins, V. (1986). The Piaget handbook for teachers and parents. New York: Teachers College Press.

Riley, D. (1980). A method of human development consulting: The teaching of tools rather than answers. Unpublished master's thesis, Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, CA. (Part of this thesis has been reprinted in Stine, S. [ 1983]. Administration: A bedside guide. Pasadena, CA: Pacific Oaks College.)

Rogers, C. (1969). Freedom to learn. Columbus, OH: Merrill.

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: The struggles and achievements of America's underprivileged. New York: Free Press/Macmillian

Sarason, S.B. (1972). The creation of settings and the future societies. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wasserman, S. (1990). Serious players in the primary classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

About the Authors

Elizabeth Jones, editor, is a member of the faculty in human development at Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, California, and resource team leader for Pasadena Community Partnerships. Her books include The Play's the Thing: Teachers' Roles in Children's Play; Reading, Writing and Talking with Four, Five and Six Year Olds; Teaching Adults: An Active Learning Approach; On the Growing Edge: Notes by College Teachers Making Changes; and Dimensions of Teaching-Learning Environments.

C. David Beers is a member of the faculty in early childhood education at San Juan College, Farmington, New Mexico, and a CDA advisor.

Kathrin Greenough is a visiting faculty member in early childhood education at the University of Alaska Southeast, Juneau, and a CDA advisor.

Margie Carter is an early childhood consultant and video producer in Seattle, Washington, where she also teaches for Seattle community colleges and Pacific Oaks College outreach as adjunct faculty.

Joyce Robinson is coordinator of the children's services department for Pasadena Unified School District in California.

Diedra Miller is director of early childhood staff development programs at Pacific Oaks College and coordinates the Pasadena Community Partnerships.

Richard Cohen is director of the research center at Pacific Oaks College and Children's Programs in Pasadena, California.

Gretchen Reynolds is a member of the faculty in early childhood education at Algonquin College, Ottawa, Canada; a Pacific Oaks adjunct faculty member; and co-author of The Play's the Thing.

Jane Meade-Roberts is a family day care provider and educational consultant in Salinas, California; she also teaches for Pacific Oaks College as adjunct faculty.

Joan Hillard is superintendent of the Spreckels Union School District in Spreckels, California.

Maja Apelman is an educational consultant in Boulder, Colorado, and co-author with Julie King of Everyday Math: Explorations for Students, Teachers and Parents (Heinemann, 1993).

Barbara Creaser is an early childhood consultant in Canberra, Australia.

Lisa Poelle is a child care consultant in San Jose, California.

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