Learning Change

Learning Change grew out of the observations, reflections, and questions the authors formulated in over a decade of teaching and learning with classroom teachers through professional development programs. Specifically, it details the four-year in-service program organized and directed by the authors in a school district north of New York City.

In their words, the book" examines how teachers and schools might transform themselves, why change is possible when it is, and what constraints operate in thwarting it. Our goal is to paint a picture which reflects all of the issues-personal, social, cultural, and institutional-that make up the process of change, which is more difficult, more complex, and more idiosyncratic than we ever realized. We want to show that it is, nonetheless, possible. Both teachers and institutions have the energy, resources, and flexibility to bring it about. "

Along the way we discovered the pivotal roles played by teachers' beliefs and attitudes about knowledge, about language, and about teaching and learning, as well as the role of the institution of schools in traditionally supporting one particular view of the purposes and goals for education. So much of the dialogue on school reform disregards the central role in real school change of uncovering and reformulating the underlying beliefs and assumptions that inform day-to-day classroom practice.

"We have come to believe that schools can (must) change from the bottom up-from changes in the ways individual teachers teach and learn with their students to changes in the voices and authority teachers assert in school decision-making to changes in school governance and relationships among educators at all levels in the school setting. In the end, Learning Change is our call for a more genuine democratic education in American schools."

“I recommend this thoughtful book to readers already undergoing the transition to a whole language curriculum.”–Language Arts