DOCUMENT RESUME ED 424 584 CS 216 525 AUTHOR Birchak, Barb; Connor, Clay; Crawford, Kathleen Marie; Kahn, Leslie H.; Kaser, Sandy; Turner, Susan; Short, Kathy G. Teacher Study Groups: Building Community through Dialogue TITLE and Reflection. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, IL. ISBN-0-8141-4846-8 ISBN PUB DATE 1998-00-00 NOTE 159p. National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon AVAILABLE FROM Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096; Tel: 800-369-6283 (Toll Free); (Stock No. 48468: $16.95 members, $22.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Non-Classroom (055) Guides Books (010) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC07 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Faculty Development; *Group Dynamics; *Professional Development; Secondary Education; *Teacher Collaboration; *Teacher Improvement IDENTIFIERS *Study Groups ABSTRACT Highlighting the issues involved in starting and maintaining a teacher study group, this book provides practical suggestions for organizing, facilitating, and dealing with group dynamics within a study group. It addresses the details that go into making decisions about the time, place, group size, resources, and structure of the meetings, as well as potential difficulties and ways to address them. Guidelines, samples of notes, transcripts of actual conversations all help to re-create the ecology of existing study groups. Chapters in the book are: (1) Why Form a Teacher (2) What Is a Study Group?; (3) How Are Study Groups Study Group?; (4) How Are Study Groups Facilitated?; (5) What Does a Study Organized?; Group Session Sound Like?; (6) What Are the Issues That Study Groups Confront?; and (7) What Is the Influence of Dialogue and Reflection beyond the Study Group? Contains 23 references. (RS) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 144 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 U 5 DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement ONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION EDUC CENTER (ERIC) his document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization onginating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve rePrOduCtiOn quality Points of view or opinions Stated in this docu- ment do not neCeSSarily represent official OERI position or policy 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Teacher Study Groups NCTE Editorial Board: Pat Cordeiro, Bobbi Fisher, Xin Liu Gale, Sarah Hudelson, Bill McBride, Al leen Pace Nilsen, Helen Poole, Jerrie Cobb Scott, Karen Smith, Chair, ex officio, Peter Feely, ex officio 4 It Teacher Study Groups Building Community through Dialogue and Reflection Barb Birchak, Clay Connor, Kathleen Marie Crawford, Leslie H. Kahn, Sandy Kaser, Susan Turner, and Kathy G. Short National Council of Teachers of English 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096 Staff Editor: Zarina M. Hock Interior Design: Doug Burnett and Carlton Bruett Cover Design: Loren Kirkwood NCTE Stock Number: 48468-3050 ©1998 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. fo- It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a the content and the teaching rum for the open discussion of ideas concerning of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Teacher study groups: building community through dialogue and reflection/ [et al.]. Barb Birchak . . . cm. p. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-81414846-8 (pbk.) 1. Teacher work groupsUnited States. 2. TeachersIn-service II. National Council trainingUnited States. I. Birchak, Barb, 1942 . of Teachers of English. LB1731.T4196 1998 98-38170 370.071'55dc21 CIP 6 k To our colleagues who share our journey as we build community through dialogue and reflection vii At Contents Acknowledgments ix 1. Why Form a Teacher Study Group? 1 2. What Is a Study Group? 13 3. How Are Study Groups Organized? 29 4. How Are Study Groups Facilitated? 54 5. What Does a Study Group Session Sound Like? 79 6. What Are the Issues that Study Groups Confront? 109 7. What Is the Influence of Dialogue and Reflection beyond the Study Group? 132 145 References Authors 147 n 0 ix Acknowledgments There are many people who supported us professionally and personally as we worked on this project. We first want to acknowledge the children in our classrooms who think with us and who constantly challenge our assumptions about their potentials as learners. They motivate and inspire us to continue our own learning and to move out of our isolation to build relationships with colleagues. We want to thank Rebecca Montario, Myna Mat lin, and Virginia Romero, who appreciated the study group as a new vision for professional development and provided encouragement and administrative support within the Tucson Unified School District. We are likewise grateful to Rosanna Gallagher and Mary Belle Mitchell for sustaining that vision when members of the group moved to new schools. We are deeply indebted to all of those who actually participated in the study groups. While their names have been changed to protect their identities, their voices provide the context, the "warp" through which we weave our interpretations. Their insights helped us identif), the patterns that emerge when teachers build community through dialogue and reflection with each other. We also want to acknowledge the University of Arizona Founda- tion and the Office of the Vice President of Research for a Small Grant, the International Reading Association for an Elva Knight Research Grant, and the National Council of Teachers of English for a Grant-in-Aid. These grants provided us with financial support to gather and analyze data from the teacher study groups. Two members of our research team, Pamella Sherman and Charlene Klassen, were unable to work with us on the writing of this book, but played important roles in the data analysis. Thanks also to Gloria Kauffman and LaFon Phillips, who lent their skills as photographers; Sharon Alexandra, who painstakingly transcribed our tapes; and Stacie Cook Emert, Barbara Bernard, Gloria Kauffman, Jean Schroeder, and the other reviewers, who read and responded to our early drafts. And finally, we thank the significant others in our lives who re- spected our need to write, suffered through the inconveniences of eat- ing late or alone, and assumed a little more than their share of responsi- bilities. Our thanks and love go to Becky, Russell, Nancy, Susan, Lucy, Lynn, Margie, Carl, Jerry, and to Sam the Cat, who so graciously and some- times not so graciously tolerated our invasion of his domain. 9 1 it Why Form a Teacher Study Group? As teachers, we have experienced how difficult it is to find time to re- flect on our teaching or to engage in a meaningful conversation with a colleague. We race from meeting to meeting, from student to student, and from one crisis to another. And that's all in the course of a normal day. Our interest in study groups developed out of a growing need to talk with colleagues about professional issuesto stop running past each other in hallways and to actually take time to reflect and dialogue about teaching and learning. We would see each other in faculty meetings, child study sessions, and various school committees, but these meetings had particular agendas with specific items of business. We were incredibly alone in a school full of people. While it would seem natural for schools to be places where educators come together and share professional con- cerns, we had experienced only occasional collaboration with one or two colleagues. We began to raise questions about establishing a community of educators within a school. Could we find a way to make reflection and dialogue part of our daily lives as professionals in schools? Was it pos- sible to slow down long enough to think about how we "did" school? Could we productively talk about our differences as teachers and find ways to use those differences to build a stronger school? How could our voices as teachers become a stronger part of the curricular changes within the school and across the district? Were there other approaches to pro- fessional development beyond the one day "shot-in-the-arm" inservice that introduced a new approach by the newest expert? These concerns led us to search for a form of professional devel- opment that recognized our voices as professionals and provided long- term support for reflection and dialogue. We became interested in teacher study groups and worked with our school district to form groups in the schools where we were teaching. While the basic format of study groups is simple and straightforward, personal experience tells us that successfully organizing and maintaining a study group can be complex and difficult. Human relationships are never simple, especially when the dialogue is about questions and topics that matter to us professionally. 10