Innovator Vol. 35 No. 3 - Spring 05: Learning Partnerships
Return to contents Partnering for Learning
by Laura Roop & Steve Best
“Direct experience is more powerful than vicarious learning,” explains Patricia King, Director of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE). “Learning is not just cognitive, but also interpersonal and intrapersonal.” In a new book, Learning Partnerships: Theory and Models of Practice to Educate for Self-Authorship, King and a Miami University colleague, Marcia Baxter Magolda, look at learning across a lifetime and describe what happens when educators in institutions of higher education partner with students and community members to achieve broader citizenship goals as well as more traditional academic aims.
King says that, too often, educators in institutions of higher education “cut learners off at the neck,” focusing on subject matter content, without looking at decision-making processes and application of understanding in actual settings. She notes, “To apply one’s skills requires enough of a sense of self to articulate a position, and to make sense of situations where other people are speaking strongly, and may hold a variety of perspectives.”
“Partnerships can stimulate
learning |
Partnerships can stimulate learning by providing diverse contexts and problems that cross disciplinary boundaries. Together, people working in partnership necessarily consider and navigate perspectives that differ, sometimes shaped by age, culture, socioeconomic status, disciplinary lenses, institutional structure, and life experience.
Though King and her colleague are talking about higher education across multiple universities and a variety of disciplinary foci, their model of partnering for adult learning can serve as a valuable lens through which to understand some of the new directions the University of Michigan School of Education has been taking.
The Role of Networks
Recognizing the need to conceive of education more broadly in order to benefit teaching practice as well as to conduct meaningful research, the School of Education has begun to support and actively partner with several formally established education “networks.” An education network is a series of linked communities of learning, spanning the boundaries between multiple institutions or regions of a state or country. Networked communities typically have some common norms that make communication and learning across institutional and regional boundaries easier than usual. Interestingly, effective networks are cultural hybrids, somewhat outside of the norms of all involved groups. In this slightly unfamiliar “third space,” it often may seem more possible to imagine new possibilities for thought and action.
Two examples of networks now being sponsored by the School of Education include a site of the National Writing Project—the Oakland (MI) Writing Project (in collaboration with Oakland Schools and Adrian College), and a site of the Middle State Network—the Southeastern Michigan Middle Start Network. Both of these education networks involve K-12 education school districts, institutions of higher education, and a national level project group. In both cases, we’ve positioned our leaders to be involved at the regional and state level.
What a National Writing Project Site Does for UM SOE
National Writing Project sites are university-school partnerships that attempt to create intellectual homes for practicing teachers, pre-K-college. Participants in National Writing Project sites form learning communities that are ongoing, lasting well beyond the bounds of the four-week, intensive summer institute that is the foundation of the project. Some of those learning communities cross grade levels, school districts, regions of the state, and even state boundaries. Others are formed within a school or district. One participant may belong to multiple learning communities. Teacher-consultants from the Oakland (MI) Writing Project say that their participation has led them to take actions they wouldn’t have conceived of on their own: to document impressive growth in their students’ literacy learning, to author books and articles, to engage in classroom-based research, to present at conferences, and to co-design new learning opportunities for other teachers. Their stated motivations for maintaining the connection to a National Writing Project site is continued learning, close friendships, and the opportunity to grow into leadership and take responsibility for sharing their learning.
Currently, there are 189 such universityschool partnerships across the nation. Each National Writing project site receives some federal funding, which then must be matched by institutions and organizations in the region. Each National Writing Project site agrees to follow the National Writing Project model but also responds to local and regional conditions and policies, and draws upon local strengths and interests. The National Writing Project has been called the “most successful professional development effort in US history,” even as it continues to struggle for continuing monetary support from the federal government.
The School of Education’s sponsorship of the Oakland (MI) Writing Project has made it easier for some faculty to form ongoing relationships with practicing teacher leaders in the Metropolitan Detroit region. Sometimes these relationships lead to research projects, placement of student teachers or master’s level interns, or other informal and more formal joint work in the Detroit Metropolitan area. In the future, we are hoping to make it possible for graduate students, at both the master’s level and Ph. D. level, to participate in the Writing Project on multiple levels. Participation will give graduate students opportunities to collaborate with pre-K-12 practitioners and to co-design and co-facilitate professional learning opportunities. National Writing Project experience will also give them a leg up as they seek future employment.
Middle Start
The School of Education also supports Middle Start, a comprehensive school reform program for schools that include middle grades students. Developed through efforts of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in 1994, Middle Start is focused on issues of adolescent learners, and links participating schools with a variety of institutional partners throughout Michigan to enhance their academic excellence, social equity, and responsiveness to the developmental needs of adolescents. Middle Start is not a self-contained organization, but rather is one of a growing number of collective partnerships of institutions with a similar focus or goal. Using this organizational approach, Middle Start sought out individuals and groups from throughout the state to form a partnership that, collectively, could address the myriad issues facing middle-grades schools.
Like the National Writing Project, Middle Start also creates and supports networks to put the theory and research on middle grades education into the classroom. Throughout Michigan, regional clusters of schools have teamed with local institutions to create opportunities for learning, “third space” for educators with particular interests or needs, as well as more direct relationships with the schools to provide leadership development and focused professional learning activities for teachers on content and pedagogy as part of the schools’ broader reform efforts. The goal of this approach is to build expertise and capacity for providing change in schools through the successful experiences of educators within the network, so that the efforts within and among these schools sustain themselves beyond any individual project or grant that may benefi t them in the short term. Because of this approach, and the strength of the programs provided by individual partners within Middle Start, including the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education (commonly known as “hi-ce”) from the School of Education, Middle Start now accounts for over half of all of Michigan’s Comprehensive School Reform efforts.
What the Middle Start Network Does for SOE
The School of Education oversees the Southeast Michigan Network of Michigan’s Middle Start activities, the largest of the Middle Start networks with 34 schools participating in the reform based programs associated with this effort. Under this one umbrella, UM initiatives in science, mathematics, social studies, literacy, and leadership can potentially come into conversation with each other with a focus on the actual needs of schools and districts. This network allows School of Education faculty, such as Elizabeth BirrMoje, the opportunity to work with educators on building a cohort of literacy coaches within these schools, as well as the chance to research the use of reading and writing across content areas. She is one of several individuals or groups providing focused professional development activities that introduce leadership skills, content, and pedagogical knowledge to building leaders in the schools, who will then support these efforts with colleagues in their buildings and throughout the network. Others include UM Dearborn, and Learning Point Associates, a nonprofit organization that provides programs based on the work of the North Central Regional Lab.
While these relationships can be beneficial to both practitioners and academics, they are often difficult to broker. Given the plethora of issues that schools need to deal with for internal improvement and requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, local school districts are often hesitant to introduce programs of change or research that do not directly focus on this legislation. Typical research efforts that might focus on a select group of teachers or classrooms may not face these challenges, but with more and more research focusing on the “scaling of reforms” or the widespread use of new practices within larger school systems, having access to such a network of schools through a broad reform effort such as Middle Start allows for more immediate access to these educators and schools. Middle Start also gives the School of Education new opportunities to collaborate with other partners, as well as fostering internal collaboration, in supporting the needs of these schools. In addition, such connections can be helpful for research, placement of student teachers, and potential grant opportunities that require multiple partners.
The Future of Academic Partnerships with the School of Education
There is a trend among research funding agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation toward supporting coalitions of researchers, educators, school administrators, and content area experts in reform efforts within the nations’ schools. A simple review of funding programs indicates the effi ciency and sustainability of these partnerships, and their likely growth within the field of educational research. The research fi ndings of Patricia King and her colleagues begin to explain the educational potential of partnerships. But school administrator Aleatha Kimbrough, Director of Student Support Programs in Detroit Public Schools, has a very basic reason for valuing Middle Start: “Having access to such a wide array of resources and expertise through one program where all the pieces fit together nicely is exactly what our teachers need.”
Baxter Magolda, Marcia; Patricia M. King, eds. Learning Partnerships: Theory and Models of Practice to Educate for Self Authorship. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2004.
Bodilly, Susan; Joan Chun, Gina Ike-moto, Sue Stockly. Challenges and Potential of a Collaborative Approach to Education Reform. Rand, 2004. RAND Education Web site: http://www.rand.org/publications/MG/MG216
Lieberman, Ann; Diane R. Wood. Inside the National Writing Project: Connecting Network Learning and Classroom Teaching. New York: Teachers College Press, 2003.
Resources:
Michigan Middle Start: Southeast Regional Network Web site: http://hi-ce.org/SEMMS/
Middle Start Web site: http://www.middlestart.org
National Writing Project Web site: http://www.writingproject.org
National Writing Projects of Michigan Web site: http://www.nwp-m.org
Oakland (MI) Writing Project Web site: http://www.owp.soe.umich.edu
