Sparking a New Conversation About Teaching: Making Practice Public
Lieberman, A., & Pointer-Mace, D. (2009). Making Practice Public: Teacher Learning in the 21st Century. Journal of Teacher Education, 0022487109347319. doi: 10.1177/0022487109347319
Lieberman and Pointer-Mace continue to redefine the field of professional development and teacher learning. As the ability to collaborate and connect via the web affords teachers with new opportunities, Liberman and Pointer-Mace frame our thinking around possibilities for changing learning environments and protocol for teachers. As teachers and administrators reach out through the web, the practice of teaching is becoming more and more public. Teachers are opening up their classrooms in communities of practice that extend beyond the walls of our brick and mortar buildings. This increased publicity allows a forum of reflection, discourse and analysis of current teaching practices. No longer do teachers have to rely on their administrators or local intermediate school districts to transport knowledge into their buildings; they are finding more ways to engage in meaningful practice of for increasing their own knowledge base. Solving problems they encounter in the classroom, from behavior management to methodological approaches to teaching mathematics, teachers are reaching out to their peers for assistance and feedback. Lieberman and Pointer-Mace suggest we are entering into a new conversation about teaching, “instead of anecdotal venting in the teachers lounge at lunch, we imagin faculty looking closely at a writing workshop conference video and a piece of student work saying, “Wow! Did you notice that? What do you think?” This new kind of representation, multimedia representation of teaching, affords teachers with the opportunity to (more easily) record, access and reflect upon teaching practices in ways that haven’t been quite so accessibly before.
p. 3 “In Japan, Singapore, and South Korea teachers spend 35% of their time teaching students, while the rest is spent on a variety of activities to enhance their practice, including having shared office space where teachers have access to materials and to each other for large portions of the day. (Kang & Hong, 2008)
Ken Frank spoke to us about his observations in Finland. Students are outside for 15 minutes of every hour. In addition to the obvious health and learning benefits for children, this allows teachers to talk, to share, to collaborate 15 minutes of every hour in the school day. It is a consistent and sustainablemodel of professional learning.
