An Inservice Education Model: Teachers and Professors as Coequals

Abstract

The authors provide a description of the National Writing Project, a collaborative venture between teachers and professors aimed at the improvement of teaching. The article includes a discussion of the Project's history and structure, and outlines implications for other cooperative efforts in inservice education. vidence of educators' confidence ' in the concept of collaboratioñ~ has been prevalent in the recent educational literature. Professional associations have adopted position statements such as that of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, which urges &dquo;that inservice education be the product of collaboration among schools, IHEs, local communities, and LEAs&dquo; (Senter and Houston, 1981, p. 37). Research has focused on the role of collaboration in effective implementation of teaching strategies (Crandall, 1983). And colleges, universities, and local schools have formed partnerships aimed at bolstering teacher performance in the classroom (&dquo;Colleges Group,&dquo;1984). In essence, educators from the training and practicing arms of the profession are working together to solve the problems they share and confront.The following discussion provides a description of the National Writing Project (NWP), a cooperative venture aimed at the improvement of teaching, which involves classroom teachers, institutions of higher education, and local school systems. The NWP model provides one further example of collaboration that is viewed by participants and objective observers as successful. The description includes: (a) documentation of the model's history; (b) the hypothesis upon which the NWP collaborative model is based; (c) an explanation of how the model is structured; and (d) conclusions and implications for other cooperative efforts in inservice education. HistoryBegun in 1974 by James Gray, the NWP now numbers 122 national and international sites. The primary purpose of the NWP is to improve the teaching of writing, and subsequently to improve the writing skills of students.In the evaluation studies conducted on the impact of the NWP inservice, and compiled by the Bay Area Writing Project Evaluation Staff (1983), &dquo;teachers almost unanimously reported positive changes [in their classroom practices and attitudes] as a result of their training&dquo; (p. 85). Studies of student impact have found statistically significant gains in the writing skills of students whose teachers were trained in NWP inservice (See Scriven, 1979). At the conclusion of an extensive evaluation, Scriven described the Project as &dquo;the best large-scale effort to improve composition instruction now in operation in this country, and certainly the best on which substantial data are available&dquo; (p. 1).Given the success of the NWP model of inservice, an analysis of this model appears to be warranted and desirable, particularly if this analysis reveals guidelines for framing inservice endeavors in other disciplines. Project HypothesisThe operating hypothesis of the NWP can be stated as follows: Inservice e...

Lessons Learned From Professional Development Workshops on Using GIS to Teach Geography and History in the K-12 Classroom

“…This paper provides details on the approach that was used in the workshops and participant responses. Binko and Neubert (1984) showed that a well-planned, hands-on, professional development (PD) workshop, where the teacher participant can connect to the material, produces an improvement in the teacher's content and pedagogical methods knowledge. It has been determined that PD workshops provide teachers with increasingly efficient tools for teaching and create enthusiasm for further learning (Ormrod and Cole 1996).…”