The Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model (TCSR) recognizes teaching context, teacher characteristics, teacher thinking, and their interactions as influential factors in attempts to implement classroom reform. Using the TCSR model, teachers’ personal practical theories, and conceptual change as a framework, the authors of this article studied three college science faculty members as they designed and implemented an integrated, inquiry-based science course. The documentation and analysis of context, instructors’ knowledge and beliefs, and teaching episodes allowed the authors to identify and study the interaction of factors, including grant support, that shape reform attempts. The results suggest that grant-supported mitigation of structural barriers is a necessary but insufficient precursor to change and that personal practical theories are the most powerful influence on instructional practice. The findings highlight the critical role of pedagogical and contextual dissatisfaction in creating a context for fundamental change.

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Fundamental shifts in American educational practices have been difficult to accomplish and sustain. Most reform efforts that have sought to significantly alter accepted patterns of schooling have emerged in practice as shadows of their original intent. This article reviews four perspectives on educational reform that provide insights into the historical paradox of change without difference. None of those previous perspectives, however, adequately accounts for the complexity of the reform process. A new model of educational reform, the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform (TCSR) model, integrates the previous perspectives and highlights teacher thinking as a central factor shaped by the interdependent influences of the general context of reform, a teacher’s personal profile, and the structural and cultural contexts of teachers’work within embedded systems. The authors provide examples that illustrate how the TCSR provides a more comprehensive framework for the design and evaluation of reform initiatives.

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