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.
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.
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has proposed a broad core mathematics curriculum for all highschool students. One emphasis in that core is on "mathematical connectionsff both among mathematical topics and between mathematics and other disciplines of study. It is suggested that mathematics should become a more integrated part of all studentsf high school education. In this article, working definitions for the terms curriculum, interdisciplinary, and integrated and a model of three categories of curriculum design based on the work of Harold Alberty are developed. This article then examines how a "connected" mathematics core curriculum might be situated within the different categories of curriculum organization. Examples from research on interdisciplinary education in high schools are presented. Issues arising from this study suggest the need for a greater emphasis on building and using models of curriculum integration both to frame and to give impetus to the work being done by teachers and administrators.The mathematics curriculum should include in-
IN WHAT WAYS DO WE WANT MIDDLE-GRADES STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND ALGEBRA? Hiebert and Carpenter (1992) describe the need for students to gain both procedural knowledge and broadly connected conceptual knowledge to understand mathematics. A knowledge of rules and procedures provides students with tools for efficient problem solving. However, in learning the procedures of algebraic manipulation, for example, students often develop what Skemp (1978) calls an “instrumental understanding” of algebra. He explains, “It is what I have in the past described as ‘rules without reasons,’ without realizing that for many pupils… the possession of such a rule, and the ability to use it, was what they meant by ‘understanding’ ” (p. 9). Skemp contrasts instrumental understanding with “relational understanding,” which “consists of building up a conceptual structure (schema) from which its possessor can (in principle) produce an unlimited number of plans for getting from any starting point within his schema to any finishing point” (p. 14).
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