Chapter 14 Summary
The New Meaning of Educational Change by Michael Fullan

Professional Development is not Professional Learning
• Professional learning is not about workshops and courses
• 30% concerns standards and qualifications
• 70% concerns whether teachers are learning every day, continuously improving their craft collectively

Policies and practices that stand a chance of changing a dysfunctional culture within schools must focus on …
• Standards of new practice and opportunities to learn new ways of working together.
• Opportunities for people to argue new ideas into their own normative belief system

Standards of Practice

National Board of Professional Teacher Standards in the US in 1987 (www.nbpts.org)
• Developed standards and assessment procedures in 30 subject matter disciplines organized around five major propositions
1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning.
2. Teachers know the subject they teach and how to teach those subjects to students
3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring students learning.
4. Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.
5. Teachers are members of learning communities.
• currently over 100,000 teachers have been certified and reports of teachers feeling that the process of analyzing their own and their students work enhanced their effectiveness in the classroom

Implementation of standards ultimately leads to re-certification standards with performance based compensa-tion. Those in favor say that that it is fairer to reward teachers who perform well rather than paying all teachers equally. Others say that that this is a business model designed for manufacturing industries and are inappropriate for a system that does not produce tangible products.

Certification strategies focus on improving individual performance and not on the culture