Repertoire of Effective Practice

Effective teachers have a repertoire of effective practices. Repertoire is a word used mainly by people in the
performing arts to refer to the number of pieces (such as read- ings, operas, musical numbers) a person is
prepared to perform. Obviously, more ex- perienced and expert performers have larger, more diverse
repertoires than novices do. This is also true for teachers.
This book emphasizes that effective teachers have diverse repertoires and are not re- stricted to a few pet
practices. This is in contrast to some arguments from earlier eras intended to prove the superiority of one
approach to another—for example, inductive versus deductive teaching, the lecture versus discussion
method, or the use of phonics to teach reading versus a whole-language approach. This debate is futile and
misdi- rected. No single approach is consistently superior to any other in all situations. In- stead, many
teaching approaches are appropriate, and the selection of a particular model depends on a teacher’s goals,
the characteristics of a specific group of learners, and community values and expectations.
The teaching practices described in this book comprise a minimum number of mod- els, strategies, and
procedures that should be in a beginning teacher’s repertoire. Some are large and complex models of
teaching; others are rather simple procedures and techniques. The practices described are obviously not all
that exist; effective teachers add to their repertoires throughout their careers.

The concept of repertoire carries with it the idea that a course of action is linked to vari-
ous aspects of the job. To use the performing arts analogy again, an accomplished musician
may have one repertoire for performances of classical music, one for appearances in night-
clubs or pop concerts, and perhaps another for family get-togethers. Just as this text was de-
signed around a particular perspective on teaching, so too was it constructed around a
conception of what teachers do and the repertoire required in three domains of their work.
Teachers, regardless of their grade levels, their subject areas, or the types of schools
in which they teach, are asked to perform three important jobs. They provide leader-
ship to a group of students, they provide direct instruction to students, and they work
with colleagues, parents, and others to improve classrooms and schools as learning or-
ganizations. These three aspects of teachers’ work are illustrated in Figure 1.8. Obvi-
ously, these aspects are not always discrete, nor does the teacher always perform one
aspect of the job independently of the others. These labels, however, are convenient or-
ganizers for helping beginning teachers make sense out of the bewildering array of
events associated with teaching in a complex school setting.
Leadership. In many ways, a contemporary teacher’s role is similar to those of leaders who work in other
types of organizations. Leaders are expected to plan, to motivate others, to coordinate work so individuals
can work interdependently, and to help for- mulate and assess important goals.
The leadership view of teaching has sometimes been criticized. Critics argue that it grew out of the
industrial age concept of the efficient manager and that this image makes people think about schools the
same way they think about factories and, thus, overemphasizes the technical and skill side of teaching. The
“teacher as leader” metaphor can also lead to excessive attention to control, orderliness, and efficiency at
the expense of creativity and spontaneity.
Regardless of past misuse of the “teacher as leader” metaphor, there are indeed many parallels between
the work performed by both teachers and leaders in other fields. Learning to Teach presents these
leadership skills in a manner that does not violate the artistic side of teaching—that is, teacher creativity
and spontaneity.

Instructional. When most people think about what teachers do, they think of the day-by-
day instruction of students. The overall framework for thinking about this aspect of teach-
ing comes mainly from three sources: (1) the “models of teaching” concept developed by
Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil (1972) and Joyce, Weil, and Calhoun (2003); (2) the teaching
strategies and procedures that have resulted from the research on teaching over the past
forty years (Gage, 1963; Richardson, 2001; Travers, 1973; Wittrock, 1986); and (3) the wis-
dom of practice contained in the repertoire of experienced teachers (Shulman, 2004).
Over the years, many different teaching approaches have been created. Some were
developed by educational researchers investigating how children learn and how teach-
ing behavior affects student learning. Others were developed by classroom teachers ex-
perimenting with their own teaching in order to solve specific classroom problems. Still
others were invented by psychologists, industrial trainers, and even philosophers such
as Socrates.
Joyce and Weil (1972) and Joyce, Weil, and Calhoun (2003) labeled each of these ap-
proaches a teaching model. A model, as defined here, is more than a specific method
or strategy. It is an overall plan, or pattern, for helping students to learn specific kinds
of knowledge, attitudes, or skills. A teaching model, as you will learn later, has a theo-
retical basis or philosophy behind it and encompasses specific teaching steps designed
to accomplish desired educational outcomes.
Each model differs in its basic rationale or philosophical base and in the goals the
model has been created to achieve. Each model, however, shares many specific proce-
dures and strategies, such as the need to motivate students, define expectations, or talk
about things.
Teachers need many approaches to meet their goals with a diverse population of stu-
dents. A single approach or method is no longer adequate. With sufficient choices,
teachers can select the approach that best achieves a particular objective, the approach
that best suits a particular class of students, or the models that can be used in tandem
to promote student motivation, involvement, and achievement.
Literally dozens of models and approaches to teaching have been identified, but
how many of these should be in a beginning teacher’s repertoire? Obviously, it is unre-
alistic to ask a beginner to master all the models—that is a lifelong process. To require
command of only a single model is equally unrealistic. It seems fair and practical to ask
beginning teachers to acquire a modest repertoire during the initial stages of their ca-
reer. Therefore, we have selected six models that, if learned well, can meet the needs of
most teachers. These are presentation, direct instruction, concept teaching, cooperative
learning, problem-based learning, and classroom discussion. In Table 1.1, you will find
that the first three teaching models—presentation, direct instruction, and concept
teaching—are based on more traditional perspectives about student learning and rest
on more teacher-centered principles of instruction. Cooperative learning, problem-
based instruction, and discussion, on the other hand, stem from more constructivist
perspectives of learning and more learner-centered approaches to teaching (Donovan
& Bransford, 2005; Tobias & Duffy, 2009; Weimer, 2002).
Organizational. The common view of teaching focuses mostly on classroom interactions between teachers
and students, and as such it is insufficient for understanding the real- ity of teaching in contemporary schools.
Teachers not only plan and deliver instruction to their students but also serve as organizational members
and leaders in a complex work environment.
Not only are schools places where children learn; they are also places where adults carry out a variety
of educational roles—principal, teacher, resource specialist, aide, and so forth. Schools are both similar to
and different from other workplaces. Similar- ities include the ways coordination systems are designed to
get the work of the school accomplished. Beginning teachers will find that adults who work in schools are
pretty much like adults who work in any other organization. They strive to satisfy their own personal needs
and motives in addition to achieving the mission of the school. At the same time, those of you who have
worked in other organizations (perhaps during the summer or in a previous career) will find some unique
aspects of the school workplace: Norms give teachers a great deal of autonomy in their work but isolate them
from their colleagues; clients (students) do not always participate voluntarily in the organization; and
because the school is highly visible politically, diverse and unclear goals exist that reflect the multiple
values and beliefs of contemporary multicultural society.
Schools are also places, like other organizations, that need to be changed as things change in the larger
society around them. Many people preparing to teach have strong idealistic drives to make education and
schools better. This idealism, however, is not al- ways supported with sound strategies for putting good
ideas into practice, even though the knowledge base on educational change and school improvement has
in- creased substantially over the past two decades. A knowledge base now exists to ex- plain why many
earlier education reform efforts failed, and this knowledge can be applied to school improvement ideas
you may want to implement.
Building a repertoire of organizational skills is important for two reasons. First, your
ability to perform organizational roles and to provide leadership within the school as
well as the classroom will greatly influence your career. It is through performing orga-
nizational roles well that beginning teachers become known to other teachers, to their
principals, and to parents. For example, few colleagues observe a teacher’s classroom
while he or she is teaching. However, they have many opportunities to see the teacher
speak up in faculty meetings, volunteer for important committee work, and interact
with parents in open houses or meetings of the Parent-Teacher Association. Through
these opportunities, teachers become influential professionally with their colleagues
and beyond the confines of their schools. Conversely, a beginning teacher’s inability to
perform organizational functions effectively is the most likely reason for dismissal.
Many teachers who are terminated in their early years are dismissed not for instruc-
tional incompetence but for their inability to relate to others or to attend to their own
personal growth and psychological well-being within a complex organizational setting.
A second reason for learning organizational skills is because researchers and educa-
tors understand that student learning is related not only to what a particular teacher
does but also to what teachers within a school do in concert. To work toward school-
wide effectiveness requires such organizational skills as developing good relationships
with colleagues and parents, engaging in cooperative planning, and agreeing on com-
mon goals and common means for achieving those goals. The effective teacher is one
who has a repertoire for entering into schoolwide and communitywide dialogue about
important educational issues and one who can join and team with colleagues for the
purpose of working together to enhance student learning.

Reflection and Problem Solving

Many of the problems faced by teachers are situational and characterized by their uniqueness. Unique and
situational cases call for “an art of practice,” something that cannot be learned very well from reading
books. Instead, effective teachers learn to approach unique situations with a problem-solving orientation
and learn the art of teaching through reflection on their own practice.
In addition, many of the problems facing teachers become problems of values and priorities that
scientific knowledge can help explain but cannot help decide. An obser- vation from Schön (1983)
underscores the value-laden world of practicing teachers:
Practitioners are frequently embroiled in conflicts of values, goals, purposes and interests. Teachers are faced with
pressure for increased efficiency in the context of contracting bud- gets, demands that they rigorously “teach the
basics,” exhortation to encourage creativity, build citizenship, and help students to examine their values. (p. 17)

Lampert (2001) made similar observations about the complexity of teaching and why reflection and
problem solving are so important:
One reason teaching is a complex practice is that many of the problems a teacher must ad- dress to get students
to learn occur simultaneously, not one after another. Because of simul- taneity, several different problems must be
addressed in a single action. And a teacher’s actions are taken independently; there are interactions with
students, individually and as a group. A teacher acts in different time frames and at different levels of ideas with
individu- als, groups and the class to make each lesson coherent. (p. 32)

If knowledge cannot provide a complete guide for effective practice, how do practi- tioners become
skilled and competent in what they do? Again Schön (1983) provided valuable insights. He argued that
there is an irreducible element in the art of profes-
sional practice and that gifted practitioners, whether they are engineers, scientists,
managers, or teachers, display their artistry in their day-to-day practice. And, though
we don’t always know how to teach the art of practice, we do know that for some indi-
viduals it is learnable.
Learning to Teach strives to present its textual information in such a way as to alert
you to the areas of teaching where our knowledge is fragmented and incomplete and
to possible teaching situations in which you will be required to exhibit individual prob-
lem solving and reflection. Many of the learning aids found in the Online Learning
Center will assist you in becoming problem-oriented and reflective about your teach-
ing practice. Reflection and problem solving are complex dispositions and skills and
are not easily learned. However, as you read previously, the art of professional practice
is learnable, and it is experience, coupled with careful analysis and reflection, that pro-
duces results.

Learning to Teach
Some teachers, like fine wines, keep getting better with age. Others do not improve their skills even after years
of practice and remain at about the same skill level they possessed the day they walked into their first
classroom. Why is it that some teachers approach the act of teaching critically and reflectively; are innovative,
open, and altruistic; are willing to take risks with themselves and their students; and are capable of critical
judgment about their own work? Conversely, why do others exhibit exactly the opposite traits?
Becoming truly accomplished in almost any human endeavor takes a long time. Many professional
athletes, for example, display raw talent at a very early age, but they do not reach their athletic prime until
their late twenties and early thirties and then only after many years of dedicated learning and practice. Many
great novelists write their best pieces in their later years only after producing several inferior and
amateurish works. The biographies of talented musicians and artists often describe years of pain and
dedication before the subjects reached artistic maturity. Becoming a truly accom- plished teacher is no
different. It takes purposeful actions fueled by the desire for ex- cellence; it takes an attitude that learning
to teach is a lifelong developmental process in which one gradually discovers one’s own best style through
reflection and critical inquiry.
This section describes some of the things we know about the process of learning to teach and emphasizes
that learning to teach is a lifelong and developmental process, not one limited to the period of time between
the first methods class and the date a teaching license is acquired. Few effective teachers are born effective.
Rather, they be- come increasingly effective through attention to their own learning and development of
their own particular attributes and skills.

Models of Teacher Development

As you will read later, contemporary views about how children learn also apply to how teachers learn.
As applied to teaching, it means that individuals develop cogni- tively and affectively through stages.
As we learn to teach, we process experiences through our existing cognitive structures. Obviously,
individuals entering teaching have a rather complex cognitive structure about teaching because they have
spent so many hours observing teachers during their years in school. As we gain new experi-
ences, growth occurs and we progress to a more complex stage. Growth, however, is
not automatic and occurs only when appropriate experiences provide a stimulus to a
person’s cognitive and emotional growth. When environmental conditions are not
optimal—that is, too simple or too complex—then learning is retarded. In other
words, as people learning to teach become more complex themselves, their environ-
ments must also become correspondingly more complex if they are to continue de-
veloping at an optimal rate. Although it is not possible to readily change many of the
environments you will experience as you learn to teach, you can, nonetheless, try to
seek out environments and experiences that will match your level of concern and de-
velopment as a teacher.
What this means is that becoming a teacher, like becoming anything else, is a process
in which development progresses rather systematically through stages with a chance
of growth remaining static unless appropriate experiences occur. The following are spe-
cific developmental theories about how people learn to teach.

Stages of Development and Concern. The late Frances Fuller (1969) studied stu- dent teachers,
beginning teachers, and more experienced teachers at the University of Texas in the late 1960s. During
the 1980s and 1990s, Sharon Feiman-Nemser and her colleagues (1983) and Richardson and Placier
(2001) also described processes that teachers experience as they move from novice to expert status. The
stages ini- tially observed by Fuller and later defined by Feiman-Nemser have stood the test of time
and have been confirmed by more recent research (Conway & Clark,
2003, for example). The phases or stages of teacher development are summarized below.

1. Survival stage. When people first begin thinking about teaching and when they have their first classroom
encounters with children from in front of rather than be- hind the desk, they are most concerned about
their own personal survival. They wonder and worry about their interpersonal adequacy and whether
or not their students and their supervisors are going to like them. Also, they are very con- cerned
about classroom control and worry about things getting out of hand. In fact, many beginning teachers
in this initial stage have nightmares about students get- ting out of control.
2. Teaching situation stage. At some point, however—and this varies for different individuals—
beginning teachers start feeling more adequate and pass beyond the survival stage. Various aspects of
controlling and interacting with students become somewhat routinized. At this stage, teachers begin
shifting their attention and en- ergy to the teaching situation itself. They start dealing with the time
pressures of teaching and with some of the stark realities of the classroom, such as too many stu- dents,
inappropriate instructional materials, and perhaps their own meager reper- toire of teaching strategies.
3. Student results and mastery stage. Eventually, individuals mature as teachers and find ways of coping or
dealing with survival and situational concerns. During this stage, teachers master the fundamentals of
teaching and classroom management. These become effective and routine. It is only then that teachers
reach for higher- level issues and start asking questions about the social and emotional needs of stu-
dents, being fair, and the match between the teaching strategies and materials and pupil needs. Most
importantly, it is during this stage that teachers have concern and assume responsibility for student
learning.

This final stage is where teachers develop what some have labeled expertise. Unlike
novice teachers, experts have command of knowledge about their subjects and about
pedagogy so they know when and why to use particular aspects of their wide reper-
toire in a variety of teaching situations (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). They are
also able to observe patterns in what is going on in the classroom that may appear to
be chaos to the novice teacher (see Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Hammer-
ness et al., 2005; Sabers, Cushing, & Berliner, 1991).
Over the past few years there has been a gradual shift away from the stage theory
described above and toward a more flexible view about how teacher development oc-
curs (Conway & Clark, 2003; Griffiths & Tann, 1992; Richardson & Placier, 2001). This
more flexible perspective posits that developmental processes for teachers are evolu-
tionary and gradual and not as precise as suggested in the Fuller and Feiman-Nemser
model. However, the Fuller and Feiman-Nemser model is useful for thinking about the
process of learning to teach. Their principles help to put present concerns in perspec-
tive and to prepare beginners to move on to the next and higher level of concern. For
example, a beginning teacher who is overly worried about personal concerns might
seek out experiences and training that build confidence and independence. If class con-
trol takes too much mental and emotional energy, a beginning teacher can find ways to
modify that situation. A questionnaire to measure your concerns at this point in your
career is included in the Online Learning Center.

Implications of Developmental Models for Learning to Teach. As beginning teachers go through the
process of learning to teach, the developmental models have numerous implications. First, these models
suggest that learning to teach is a developmental process in which each individual moves through stages
that are simple and concrete at first and later more complex and abstract. Developmental models thus
provide a frame- work for viewing one’s growth.
Second, you can use the models to diagnose your own level of concern and devel- opment. This
knowledge can help you to accept the anxiety and concerns of the begin- ning years and, most important,
to plan learning experiences that will facilitate growth to more mature and complex levels of functioning.

Early Influences on Teaching

It appears that some aspects of learning to teach are influenced by the experiences that people have with
important adult figures, particularly teachers, as they grow up and go through school. In the early 1970s,
Dan Lortie, a sociologist at the Univer- sity of Chicago, spent several years studying why people become
teachers, what kind of a profession teaching is, and what experiences affect learning to teach. As part
of his study, he interviewed a rather large sample of teachers and asked them what experiences most
influenced their teaching. Many experienced teachers told Lortie that early authority figures, such as
parents and teachers, greatly influenced their concepts of teaching and their subsequent decision to enter
the field. Many studies since Lortie’s have confirmed that particular teachers and the act of observ- ing
teachers teach when we are students help shape the views we have as adults about effective teaching
and the “good teacher” as illustrated in the research study for this chapter.
This is the first example of the research summaries you will find in each chapter of Learning to Teach.
These summaries are included to help you get a feel for some of the re- search that has been carried out in
education and to help you develop an appreciation