David Berliner, professor in the School of Education, Arizona State University, warns against imposing programs and research on people and discusses the importance of getting others to buy in to new approaches to teaching. Excerpted from a presentation at NCREL's Academy for Urban School Leaders (1992).
"You just can't impose research on people. You can't do that. It drives them crazy. What needs to be done is sort of a confrontation of evidence. You bring together people in a group and say, 'here's cooperative learning. Ten studies in which people are telling me cooperative learning is dynamite. Are we doing anything about that here? What are we doing that's better?' It was have be from within. People have to say, 'I'll try it.' You can't just say, 'Okay, everybody in Social Studies is going to peer tutoring this year.'"