classroom observation provided me with a wealth of experience in visiting teachers’ classrooms, and those earlier experiences proved invaluable to me as I now visited classrooms for an entirely different purpose.
The classroom visits that Jim and I made in the consumer-validation project were unlike those that were part of the clinical supervision process. These visitations were not so much observational as they were collegial and assistance oriented. Often, a great deal of time was spent with a teacher in an individual school. On other occasions, one of us met with a small group of teachers in the same school. There was no set way for conducting these visits. The goal was simply to assist teachers during the implementation phase.
Sharing Sessions
After teachers spent two or three weeks (depending on the complexity of the research focus) implementing research findings in their classrooms, they met in post-implementation seminars to share and discuss what had occurred during the implementation phase. The purpose of these seminars was threefold.
First and most obvious, the sessions were geared to engage teachers in sharing how they approached implementing each research finding. Sharing ideas, activities, and materials significantly increased the number and variety of instructional ideas that each teacher learned beyond those tried in his or her individual classroom. For example, as a group, the teachers tried thirty-four distinct ways of improving classroom organization and planning for instruction (Eaker & Huffman, 1980).
The second purpose of these seminars was to share conclusions about the instructional impact of specific research findings. Teachers reported that some ideas had a very positive impact on the effectiveness of their instructional practice, while others had a marginal impact. Some activities and approaches did not work well at all. Teachers learned to evaluate research findings, not after studying those findings, but rather after using those findings in their own classrooms. In this regard, teachers were becoming wise consumers of research findings.
The third purpose of the post-implementation seminars was to improve teachers’ instructional effectiveness through high-quality interactions with other teachers who had experimented with the same set of research findings. In short, the seminars provided a setting in which teachers engaged in rich dialogue with their professional colleagues. One teacher remarked that teachers rarely get to engage in extensive discussions with other teachers about teaching in an organized setting (Eaker & Huffman, 1980). It was interesting to learn that teachers perceived the experiences and perceptions of other teachers who had implemented research findings to be more credible than those of university professors.
We made significant discoveries about teacher perspectives as a result of the consumer-validation experiments (Eaker & Huffman, 1980). First, we learned that teachers valued research findings that focused on classroom instruction, and they believed research findings could have a positive impact on improved teaching. However, teachers often viewed findings to be contradictory, and they did not perceive principals, faculty meetings, supervisors, in-service meetings, or professional meetings as resources providing them with useful research findings that focused on effective classroom instructional practices.
Likewise, they did not believe undergraduate teacher preparation programs provided effective, specific information regarding classroom-related research. (However, they had a more positive view of graduate programs in this regard.) Teachers received most of their information regarding research related to effective teaching practices from professional journals, but there, too, they felt this approach to research dissemination should be expanded (Eaker & Huffman, 1980).
We also learned how to more effectively disseminate educational research findings. For example, we learned there must be a person who has the specific responsibility for studying relevant research, interpreting those findings to small groups of teachers who teach the same or similar content, demonstrating how specific findings can be effectively implemented in classrooms, then monitoring and analyzing with teachers in a collaborative setting the effects of their efforts to improve their instructional practice.
This is a complex responsibility requiring special skills. First, people in these roles must genuinely be interested in and know about research efforts that focus on instructional effectiveness. They do not need to possess the sophisticated skills required to generate research findings, but they must have the skills to accurately interpret such research. In addition, they must be familiar with and appreciate the challenging world of the classroom teacher. Researchers often lack recent preK–12 teaching experience, and this leads to a general lack of credibility with classroom teachers. Finally, effective interpersonal and communication skills are a must. A person who works with teachers to enhance their instructional effectiveness through the implementation of proven research findings must be sensitive and empathetic and possess the skills that can lead to a climate of trust (Eaker & Huffman, 1980).
Our consumer-validation experiments reinforced our belief about the necessity of trust-based collaboration with teachers. The term consumer-validated research implies that the consumers of research findings—classroom teachers—play an important role in validating both the degree to which such findings are workable and relevant to the day-to-day world of classroom teachers and how research findings can be effectively implemented, modified, and improved on. This undertaking is collaborative in nature and, if successfully implemented, can result in a body of research findings that are teacher validated and thus more likely to be useful to other teachers.
Jim and I thoroughly enjoyed our work with classroom teachers as we sought to find ways to effectively implement research findings in classrooms, but perhaps the most professionally significant outcome, like most of the major stages in my professional life, occurred rather serendipitously. Another accidental friendship developed—this time with Judith Lanier, the dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University and co-director, along with Lee Shulman, of the Institute for Research on Teaching. Judy’s friendship was a professional life changer for me.
The Institute for Research on Teaching: Michigan State University
From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, the College of Education at Michigan State University, led by Judy Lanier, was widely considered by many to be the top educational research center in the United States—and justly so. The college was home to the Institute for Research on Teaching, which was funded by a $3.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, in addition to funds from various other sources. Specifically, the focus of the institute was to investigate a broad spectrum of teacher behaviors and their effects on student learning, student behavior, and student motivation.
As mentioned earlier, the institute was home to many of the most highly respected researchers, representing a wide variety of backgrounds and areas of interest and expertise. Additionally, public school teachers worked in the institute as half-time collaborators in research initiatives. Judy Lanier and Lee Shulman were co-directors of the institute, with Larry Lezotte and Andrew Porter serving as associate directors. Larry had additional responsibilities for the areas of communication and dissemination. Although the institute published research reports, notes from conference proceedings, and occasional papers, it was their quarterly newsletter that was the vehicle for my association with the institute generally, and Judy and Larry specifically.
I don’t recall ever requesting the newsletters, but I do recall a newsletter showing up in my mail one day. As I was glancing through it, I became particularly interested in a short column written by Judy. I was impressed by her comments about the important role teachers played in the work of the institute. I wrote a letter to her, thinking, perhaps, she might be interested in knowing of the work that Jim and I were doing to enhance teachers’ instructional effectiveness through helping teachers use research findings in their classrooms. I had no expectation of a response, much less her high degree of interest.
Shortly after receiving my letter, Judy left a message for me to call her. We chatted a bit, and she expressed genuine interest and enthusiasm for our work. Fairly soon afterward, she invited Jim and me to visit the institute in Lansing and share our work at one of the regular faculty convocations. She explained the purpose of these meetings was for faculty to share and discuss their work and their thinking with each other, and occasionally, researchers