Problem-Based Case #2
Social-Cultural/Situative Learning

You are a teacher/leader in a large urban school district in California.  As a teacher/leader in this district over the past few years, you notice that the achievement gap seems to be widening between the students who are attending your school and other students in your state.  The statewide statistics indicate that 50% of the students scored at or above the 50th percentile on the math subtest of the Stanford 9 test and 42% scored at or above the 50th percentile on the reading subtest.  At your school site, where 4.9% of the students are Asian, 33.8% are Latino, 58.4% are African American, .4% are white, and 2.4% are from other groups, only 17% of the students scored at or above the 50th percentile on the math subtest and 9% scored at or above the 50th percentile on the reading subtest.  After teaching at this school for the past three years, you are convinced that many of the students are not achieving at their full levels of potential.  A large majority of the teachers in your school are white, female and middle-class.  Teacher turn-over at the school is high.  Consequently, many of the teachers at your school are new each year.

As a result of a graduate course that you have recently taken, you are aware that many American public schools have had relatively little success in educating students who are poor, members of racially or ethnically marginalized groups, and speakers of first languages other than mainstream or academic English.  When comparing larger metropolitan public urban schools with suburban schools, Orfield and Reardon (1993) found profound differences in the quality of educational opportunity and the teaching staff, with urban schools functioning at a grossly inferior level.  They also found that students in disadvantaged schools nationwide have lower scores on standardized achievement tests and higher dropout rates than those in advantaged suburban schools.  After looking closely at the nature and extent of the differences, they reached the following conclusion:

If the [urban] schools lack certified teachers, offer few academically challenging courses, and track disadvantaged students disproportionately into low-level courses; if the community is economically depressed, with few libraries, museums, and other non-school educational opportunities; and if a large number of adults with high school diplomas are unable to find adequate employment; then we cannot in good conscience claim that many disadvantaged students have simply failed to do what it takes to succeed in school.  Rather, our society has failed to give them the opportunity to succeed.  These students have not failed school; society has failed them.  (p. 29)
Realizing this, your school district has decided to take on a new challenge to find ways to maximize the development of one of America's greatest and most underused resources: its urban youth.
Funds have recently become available from a State initiated program to provide training for teachers in urban schools to help them to work toward closing the achievement gap in the state's schools.  In an effort to improve teachers' understanding of students' needs, your local School Board has recently voted to use their allocated funds to provide grants to fund teacher/leader/researcher teams who propose a series of "research-based in-service institutes that promote the professional development of teachers who teach diverse students."  The progressive minded members of the School Board strongly feel that most social and educational programs promoted by most school districts are not really founded on research.  They explicitly request that the teaching activities used in the in-service sessions be selected based on research that tells us how people learn.  They further believe that this program will have stronger and longer lasting effects on the teachers and on the district if a research component is attached to each grant proposal that is funded.  The School Board members feel that it is important to support programs that "send a clear signal about its connection with rigorous 'research-based' approaches to teacher development." At the same time, the Board members are also well aware of the need to employ bold and innovative approaches to address social and educational problems that face many of the schools in their district.

Your task is to organize a group of persons who bring strengths in the areas of teacher scholarship, teacher leadership and teacher research who are interested in planning and implementing a professional development program that will impact teacher practice at your school site.  Working in teams of three persons is highly recommended.  Your first task is to prepare a proposed lineup of your organizational group for the Board of the persons who will plan and implement this series of workshops, stating their experiences and qualifications and what they would bring to the program. You have a budget to support participation by three organizers.

Your next tasks are as follows:

(1) This proposal should address what the status of knowledge is about situative and socio-cultural learning, and its implications for designing a professional development program at your school site. The proposal should describe the important issues raised in the situative and socio-cultural literature, what are the differences in opinions on the status of the knowledge base, and why this is a body of literature that the Board should be aware of.  In addition to the literature that we have covered in class on how teachers learn best, the rationale for using these approaches and/or activities should be based on 3 to 5 additional readings that we have not covered in this course.  In your explanation of the research, feel free to draw on the readings assigned for class on April 30th as a supporting or as a contrasting perspective.

(2) You should develop a proposal that includes the design of a series of in-service sessions for teachers that a) helps them to better understand the needs of diverse students and b) prepares them to more effectively teach diverse students.  The Board realizes that the team could select any number of important topics to focus on as the main focus of their professional development program.  They are willing to consider any number of topics, however they are most interested in selecting proposals for funding that present their topic through activities that draw on and are supported by the research on how teachers learn best.

The successful proposal will specify the topic they will focus on and a series of activities that they will involve the teachers in in order to ensure their learning.

Following a brief discussion of the topic that you will focus on, the successful proposal will specify the teacher population that the professional development program will focus on; it will describe the training activities/approaches that will be used; and it will provide research-based explanations of why these activities and/or approaches were selected.

(3) In the writing of your proposal, please do not neglect to spend some time discussing how you will assess the effectiveness of your training series:  (a) How will you document whether your teachers are learning what you are attempting to teach them, and (b) How will you attempt to assess the long-term effect of this teacher training program?

(4) The final section of the proposal should also clearly describe a research component that will be carried out as a part of this plan.  Please explain how this research component can serve to help ensure the long-term effectiveness of the funded project. The full proposal should be no longer than ten to fifteen double-spaced pages (12 point type).


References Cited:
Orfield, G., & Reardon, S. F. (1993).   Race, poverty and inequality. In G. Orfield, S. Schley & S. Reardon, The growth of segregation in American schools (pp. 17-32). Alexandria: National School Boards Associatio

This case was prepared by Arnetha Ball 4/01.