The Development of Professional Developers: Learning to Assist Teachers in New Settings in New Ways

Abstract

In this article, Mary Kay Stein, Margaret Schwan Smith, and Edward A. Silver identify and describe the challenges that practicing teacher educators and professional developers are likely to encounter as they design and implement new programs to help teachers learn new paradigms of teaching and learning amidst current educational reforms. The authors call attention to the fact that, just as teachers will need to relearn their teaching practice, so will experienced professional developers need to relearn their craft, which traditionally has been defined as providing courses, workshops, and seminars. This article focuses on two professional developers who engaged in long-term efforts to work with teachers in new ways, identifying the tensions that each actually faced. The cases illustrate the challenges that professional developers may encounter in supporting the transformation of teachers, including learning how to work with groups of teachers in school settings, expanding their repertoires beyond workshops and courses, and balancing interpersonal sensitivity with the need to challenge prevailing practices and beliefs. The final section of the article looks across the two cases and begins to map out common features of the terrain through which practicing professional developers can expect to travel.