González, Josué and Darling-Hammond, Linda. (1997).
New Concepts for New Challenges:
Professional Development for Teachers of Immigrant Youth.
Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Lingusitics
xxiv+168pp
$20.95 (Paper)
ISBN 1-887744-04-5
Reviewed by Betty Merchant
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
May 27, 1999
As the new millennium approaches, the United States is
experiencing a dramatic shift in the demographics of its
population. For administrators and teachers, these
statistics translate into real and immediate issues
concerning the education of a broad range of students whose
needs they feel ill-prepared to meet.
Although there have been a number of efforts to revamp
the preparation of preservice teachers by incorporating new
courses on multicultural education into their professional
preparation, for the most part, these efforts have been
inadequate in providing new teachers with the skills they
need to successfully respond to the needs of a diverse
student population. The staff development opportunities
provided to practicing teachers have not been much more
effective than traditional preservice programs in helping
teachers re-conceptualize and transform their instructional
practices in order to respond to the academic and social
needs of the students assigned to their classrooms.
Compared to preservice and inservice teachers,
principals and superintendents receive even less training in
working with diverse student populations and are provided
with little to no information about effective instructional
leadership in diverse settings. The lack of preparedness of
administrators is reflected in their inability to provide
guidance and support to teachers whose students come from
differing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Students of different nationalities and/or linguistic
traditions present a particular challenge to monolingual
English-speaking teachers and administrators. Although
recent immigration trends have contributed to an increase in
the number of such students enrolling in American public
schools, there are very few resources available to
principals to assist them in working with teachers in
creating a learning environment in which all students can
experience success.
Josué González and Linda Darling-Hammond's recent book,
New concepts for new challenges: Professional
development for teachers of immigrant youth, (1997)
makes an important contribution towards remediating this
situation. Their book is part of a series on immigrant
education published by the Center for Applied Linguistics in
Washington, D.C. Although the title of the book focuses on
teachers, the information presented in the text provides
principals with important information about the social and
academic needs of immigrant students as well the strengths
that these students bring with them to the school setting.
The authors of the book address administrators' needs for
specific information by outlining the general structure and
content of effective professional development programs and
by providing detailed descriptions of programs that have
demonstrated success in preparing teachers to work with
immigrant students.
The authors begin their book with an historical
perspective on cultural diversity in the United States,
pointing out important differences between recent waves of
immigrants and those who preceded them. One of the most
significant of these differences is that current waves of
immigrants are able to preserve contact with families and
friends in their home cultures through improved
transportation and technology. This contrasts sharply with
the experiences of the grandparents of teachers and
administrators who immigrated to the United States, and in
the absence of such technology, abandoned their home
cultures and languages comparatively quickly. The authors
argue that we must move from a homogeneous system of schools
to one which embraces the diversity represented in the
student population. They also add an important caution;
that public schools can be an arena in which the old
rivalries and religious divisions between immigrant groups
are played out. In order for schools to provide an arena in
which these conflicts can be resolved, teachers must be
skilled in human relations, creative problem-solving and
conflict solution. Although not specifically mentioned by
the authors, it is essential that administrators, as the
instructional leaders of their schools, acquire and model
these skills. Assistant principals, in particular, should
possess these skills, since they are often charged with
maintaining student discipline and therefore most likely to
mediate disputes between students from rival immigrant
groups.
Chapter 1 provides a very useful overview of differing
perspectives on immigrant education and the ways in which
U.S. government policies have shaped the national debate
about how best to educate immigrant students. The authors
focus on the changing sociocultural and linguistic profile
of the nation's public school students, as contrasted with
the relatively stable demographic profile of the teaching
force, comprised primarily of White educators whose families
have lived in this country for several generations. González
and Darling-Hammond examine the sociocultural and linguistic
characteristics of diversity and provide an emerging view of
effective practices generated from the research on effective
instruction of linguistically and culturally diverse
students. The authors also provide a list of promising
structural arrangements to facilitate communication and
collaboration within schools and between schools and other
social institutions within the community for the purposes of
supporting the education of language minority students.
One of the most important contributions made by the
authors in this section is the argument they put forth
regarding the importance of providing teachers with
opportunities for examining and reflecting on their beliefs
and ideas about various immigrant groups. It is critical
that administrators participate in such activities and, as
part of this process, that they pay particular attention to
reviewing the taken-for-granted policies and practices of
the school for the purpose of identifying those that have a
negative impact on the social and academic success of
immigrant students. In the absence of administrative
leadership in this area, teachers will continue to enforce
policies and practices that are inappropriate in responding
to the needs of a diverse student population.
Chapter 2 presents a conceptual overview of
professional development during the preservice experience,
the induction period, and throughout teachers' careers. The
authors challenge the traditional assumptions associated
with traditional preservice education and professional staff
development models and argue for communities of practice in
which teachers come together to reflect on and improve their
practice by engaging in on-going inquiry, experimentation
and sustained change. This chapter is an important source
of information for administrators who desire to transform
professional development in their schools. The authors
review the research on effective staff development
approaches and identify emerging principles for guiding a
new vision of professional development which encourages
multiple forms of instruction and student assessment. Of
additional importance to administrators is the author's
position that the definition and shaping of professional
development opportunities needs to be broadly shared among
those who have a direct stake in the future of students.
They suggest that school-based professional development and
site-based management should be tightly bound, integral
components of school-based improvement and argue strongly
against professional development as a remedial activity for
teachers or as mechanism of administrative control over
teachers.
In view of the aging teaching force and the legislation
in several states which provides incentives to teachers for
early retirement, increasing numbers of administrators are
losing experienced teachers and hiring newly-credentialed
teachers to take their place. González and Darling-Hammond
cite a number of research studies which suggest that many
new teachers feel inadequately prepared to deal with diverse
learners. The authors also point out that even veteran
teachers, when confronting students they are unable help,
become discouraged and frustrated if not provided with the
resources they need to succeed in teaching these students.
In light of the research on the frustrations that both new
and veteran teachers experience when working with immigrant
students, it is essential that administrators learn to
provide the kinds of professional development support
described by the authors.
Chapter 3 presents structures, models, and practices in
professional development which promote collaboration within
schools. between schools and universities and between
schools and neighborhood-based youth organizations and
community agencies. Arguing that traditional models of
staff development have been largely unsuccessful, the
authors propose a new model of professional development
which engages teachers, principals, counselors, support
staff and community members in critically reviewing
educational policies, practices and student outcomes, in
order to generate more effective approaches to instructing
and evaluating immigrant students. The chapter provides
clear, succinct explanations of a number of ways of
nurturing learning communities within schools, including:
cooperative learning, problem-based inquiry, peer coaching
and cognitive coaching. González and Darling-Hammond
examine the research on the development of reflective
practice, and in so doing, provide useful guidelines for
administrators who are committed to working with teachers on
creating a supportive climate for the development of
professional learning communities. The last section of the
chapter presents specific suggestions for moving from self-
reflection to collaborative action, including team teaching
and school-home collaboratives.
Chapter 4 is an outgrowth of the previous chapters, in
that it synthesizes the research findings discussed earlier
and provides detailed examples of professional development
programs that embrace the structures, models and practices
in professional development that lead to transformed
practice and improved learning environments, particularly
for immigrant students. Three of the examples describe
preservice teacher education programs: The Second Languages
and Cultures Education Program at the University of
Minnesota, the Cross-cultural Language and Academic
Development Program (CLAD) at San Diego State University;,
and the Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development
Program (CLAD) at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. The remaining two examples focus on inservice
teacher development: The International High School in New
York City, and the Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading
and Composition (BCIRC) Model, based on a model developed at
Johns Hopkins University. The rich description of each
program responds well to administrators’ need for detailed
information about the specific components of such staff-
development models, as well as the ways in which these
components can be integrated into an effective program.
In the concluding section, the authors summarize the
three themes around which their book is organized. The first
theme focuses on the social and cyclical nature of learning
which involves “visiting and revisiting questions of
practice, collecting and interpreting data, revising
hypotheses, and changing practice in light of new knowledge”
(p.131). The second theme highlights the need for an
anthropological orientation in understanding students and
the teachers who work with them. According to the authors
this approach requires teacher to become involved in
examining “themselves, the community they serve, the
learning community in the school, and the relationships of
these entities with one another” (p.131). By sharing the
information they gather as part of such inquiries with their
colleagues, teachers become aware of the importance of
soliciting multiple perspectives on a given topic. The
third theme focuses on the promise of video and other
technology to help school staff view and reflect on their
work. In particular, the authors argue for the need for
additional research on the use of videoethnographic and
computer techniques as supports for the professional
development of teachers of immigrant teachers. The authors
maintain that staff development programs for preservice and
inservice teachers of immigrant students must incorporate
these three themes in order to achieve maximum
effectiveness, pointing out that the five programs featured
in the book are exemplars of these themes.
The authors conclude by offering their book as a
catalyst for discussion among educators who are responsible
for the instruction of immigrant students and offer their
book as a basis for teacher reflection about the ways in
which their beliefs about these children influence not only
their interactions with these students but the academic and
social outcomes of these students.
Although I have taught courses in educational
leadership and school change for ten years, this is the
first book I have found that provides concrete responses to
the questions that confront principals as they try to
respond to the professional development needs of teachers of
immigrant students. Although Josué González and Linda
Darling-Hammond perform an invaluable service in
synthesizing the literature on this topic, their book is
significantly enriched by their own professional experiences
and considerable research on the subject. The authors are
university academics whose work is thoroughly grounded in
the complex reality of schools, and who are sensitive to the
kinds of professional development opportunities teachers and
principals need to have in order to become more effective in
educating immigrant students. This is the most informative
and readable book on the subject of professional development
for teachers of immigrant youth that I have come across to
date; it should be required reading for all principals
committed to creating communities of professionals dedicated
to improving learning conditions for immigrant youth and all
students.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment