Study Claims U.S. Schools Less Welcoming to Peer Networks & Knowledge Sharing Than British Schools
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Printer-friendly versionPROVIDENCE, R.I. (USA) -- In sharp contrast to England’s support for peer networking, the climate for sharing locally developed knowledge and best practices appears much less hospitable in U.S. schools and school systems, concludes a report issued today by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University (AISR).
Entitled “Lessons from England and Implications for the United States,” the research compared the policy and practice landscape of networking and collaboration among school leaders and teachers within England versus New York City schools, and examined whether peer networks in New York City and London fostered effective practice. The investigation, conducted over a six-month period during 2009-10, is part of a series called the “Transatlantic Dialogue on Collaborative Networks.”
“Many public sector organizations and schools are not designed to promote sharing and collaboration; they have cultures of knowledge hoarding, where ‘knowledge is power’ is still a central cultural tenet,” states the report, co-authored by the Annenberg Institute’s Jacob Mishook and Sara McAlister, and Karen Edge of the Institute of Education at the University of London. “The push in the U.S. for new teacher-evaluation systems that rely primarily on matching individual teachers with their students test scores threatens to exacerbate this competitive, rather than collaborative, system of teaching.”
The investigation sprung from an Annenberg Foundation-supported partnership, the Transatlantic School Innovation Alliance (TSIA), originally established in 2006 between AISR and New York City’s New Visions for Public Schools, and the Department for Education and the Joint International Unit in England.
The authors note that education systems have traditionally relied on using top-down approaches to bring reform to scale. In the U.S., since the advent of standards-based reform in the ‘80s, this has typically meant the use of accountability systems where knowledge is presumed to exist at the federal, state or district level, and then it's supposed to flow downward to principals, teachers and students.
This persistent focus on building vertical structures has resulted in weak peer collaborative structures among local schools for building knowledge and spreading effective practices, say the authors, even though local context strongly shapes the effectiveness of educational reforms.
“Professional networks in education in the U.S....are largely external, informal and voluntary,” the report states. “England is relatively advanced in the scale of its adoption and implementation of mandated networking and collaboration to drive policy and practice change.”
In England, there has been a heavy investment in networks over the past decade. The government has identified school partnerships and networks as “key to a national educational strategy” and developed multiple networks through public and private organizations to support and improve low-achieving schools, move schools from good to great, provide professional development for teachers and leaders and to test new and innovative ideas that could be taken to scale.
Furthermore, the authors note, there's evidence that these networks can improve student achievement, citing the London Challenge/City Challenge initiatives whose outcomes have continued to improve at a greater rate than other schools. This urban education reform, directed at low-performing schools, began as national government program but over time shifted to locally customized plans — largely focused on school-to-school peer support — to improve struggling schools.
To underscore their findings, the authors also note that in a 2010 interview, Milbrey McLaughlin and Joan Talbert, authors of Building School-Based Teacher Learning Communities (2006), reported that they “repeatedly found strong effects of teacher collaboration on gains in student learning at the school level and in smaller groups.”
“Moving forward, both countries face challenges and opportunities,” say the report authors in post-research comments. “In England, new education reforms proposed by the new Coalition government signal less formal support for peer networks and a shift to a more competitive model. In the U.S., the proliferation of professional learning communities in many districts is an encouraging sign about the need for supported school and teacher networks; however, declining state revenues, education spending cuts, and a focus on accountability demands may stymie such efforts.”
© Annenberg Institute for School Reform