Teachers Together
Susan Printy's Research Examines Collaborative Learning and Communities of Practice

In recent years, teacher communities of practice have become an increasingly popular tool to improve teaching and learning. But how is it that educators engaging and working with each other leads to improved teacher quality and effectiveness?

It is an interest that propelled Assistant Professor Susan Printy to write an award-winning dissertation at Ohio State University and that continues to shape her research at the Department of Educational Administration at MSU.

“My research . . . draws on the experience of having been a teacher for nearly 20 years,” said Printy, who joined the faculty in 2002. “Teacher communities of practice are popular terms right now. We tend to think about all of the good things that happen when teachers get together. But in actual fact the theory is about social learning.”

The notion behind communities of practice is that by encouraging teachers to collectively solve problems of practice and share their knowledge, they can learn from each other and through the give and take of group interaction refine such things as their understandings of the way in which students learn and pedagogical techniques that best help them learn.

Communities of practice are often seen as unmitigated goods. But Printy is careful to point out that a community of practice can perpetuate stereotypes, prejudice, and destructive practices just as easily as it can lead to productive change and innovation.

It all depends. And that is exactly what Printy has sought to understand: On what does productive change and development depend on when it comes to communities of practice and teachers? In her dissertation, she investigated what kinds of interactions bring about changes in the way teachers think, in the way they get their knowledge, and in the types of teaching skills they use.

Printy tapped the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS), which gathered information about a cohort of students beginning at the 8th grade and then at the 10th and 12th grades, as well as a few years after graduation.
The survey queried the students as well as their teachers. Printy zeroed in on the teacher data. Given the mass of information, she narrowed her research to the teachers of the students at the 12th grade, and focused on mathematics and science because of the intense national focus on those two subjects.

One of questions the teachers were asked was about their interactions within their departments and outside of them. Printy examined those interactions closely and found that as teachers’ involvement within and outside their departments increased, so did their productivity. By productivity she means a teacher’s ability to draw on the expertise of others in a school to improve practice, to use standards-based pedagogy, and to have a sense of competence and efficacy in increasing student learning.

Particularly critical to that increased productivity, Printy found, was interaction with those outside
a teacher’s department. “There is dynamic at work here. As participation increases and as interaction increases from simply within the department to outside the department, the productivity of the practice increases.

“When you interact with people outside your department, whether it’s in the school or at a conference or meeting with consultants, you are exposed to different ideas. That is going to challenge what you do and you are going to have to make sense of it. It’s going to affect your practice.”

Change can happen when there is interaction only with educators in a teacher’s department, Printy said. But it is clear to her that the pace of change will be slow. Such is the power of a teacher’s ability to engage and interact with a broader community.

For her efforts, Division A of the American Educational Research Association awarded Printy its 2002 Dissertation of the Year award. Printy is flattered that leading scholars in the field considered her research a valuable contribution. Equally important to Printy, however, is that there are steps administrators and teachers can take to foster interactions across disciplinary boundaries.

For one, high school principals can make it easier for teachers in their schools to meet and interact across disciplinary boundaries. Principals can do this by simply encouraging teachers to engage each other and supporting the interactions.

Department chairpersons, too, have a role to play. Printy believes they should invite teachers, especially novices, to engage in activities, involving them in communities of learning.

Teachers, however, are the key elements. There has to be a desire to be part of a community of learners and to extend that involvement beyond the close circle of colleagues within a department. “This is important information for teachers to hear. It’s not just about the principal. Teachers also need to take the lead. I was a teacher for almost 20 years and I never thought about these things.”

She acknowledges that much schooling works against interaction. The culture of schools and even their architecture tend to promote a certain amount of individualism. However, Printy believes it has never been more important to engage in communities of practice given the demographic changes in society and in the American classroom.

“Your communities of practice keep stereotypes going, or can challenge them,” Printy said. “If you take those opportunities to talk to teachers in other classes and disciplines and people outside the school and learn a bit more about who those students are, that might change your expectations of them and your own sense of competence to be able to make a difference in their learning.

“These are the keys to communities of learning because these changes just don’t happen naturally. I think that to some extent behaving in a way that leads to productivity in your own practice is a way of thinking about teacher leadership. Interacting outside of your department, pushing yourself to be in these situations where you are going to be open to new and different ideas, are aspects of leaderships.

“Principals can’t do it all by themselves. The power is in the teacher to make a difference in that classroom.”