In 1985, the NEA initiated the Mastery in Learning (MIL) Projects to explore how schools faculties can be organized and empowered to assume responsibility for planning, initiating, and sustaining fundamental changes in their own schools. The project recently culminated its work with 26 schools across the country. Selected from a pool of 1,400 applicants, the schools were chosen using criteria designed to produce demographic representatives in such dimensions as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of students; types of communities served; and organizational structure. (Five schools were in the NCREL region: Key Elementary in Indianapolis, Indiana; Stuart Elementary, Flint, Michigan; Clinton Elementary, Clinton, Ohio; Paul Norton Elementary, Bettendorf, Iowa; and Willow Creek Junior High, Rochester, Minnesota.)
It is important to note, however, that this was not simply a site-based decision making experiment. The MIL Project attempted to learn what happens to education quality when a school faculty, organized knowledge, and the authority to act are brought together at the school site. The balance of these comments, therefore, focuses on two aspects of teacher empowerment: the effects of enhanced collegiality and the effects of greater participation in the creation of new knowledge about school improvement.
Collegiality
When asked to describe the positive aspects of their schools at the beginning of the Project, teachers usually mentioned their close personal relationships with one another - their high regard for their colleagues as individuals. As the MIL Project proceeded, however, it became clear that these relationships were primarily social and, though school-based, not firmly rooted in the business of schools, i.e., learning, teaching, and curriculum development.
As faculties began to engage in spirited dialogue about their visions of what their school could become, or how the curriculum could be reorganized, or how the schedule should be changed, substantive disagreements that had not surfaced during the old ways of working together emerged. Therefore, new definitions of conduct and new patterns of relating to each other had to be worked out. Some of the faculties were unable to develop new ways of working together and even suffered a diminution of their former sociability.
Most faculties in the Project, however, were able to build upon their social cohesion and became professionally engaged with one another in examining critical educational issues. In these schools, the substance of this engagement was more student orientated and school-wide concerns, and considerably more lively--perhaps even passionate!
The progression to collegiality developed through several stages with some consistency across the 26 sites (McClure, 1988). The progression went from early exhilaration and commitment to, in just a few months, disillusionment, then regeneration, experimentation, and comprehensive action. Understanding these phases, knowing they are, apparently, generic to the work of faculty-led school renewal, and understanding the implications for policy and practice decisions is important information for those embarking on such a journey.
Engagement with the Knowledge Base
In Teachers Using Research:
What Does It Mean? Carol Livingston and Shari Castle(1989) defined the MIL view of an operational knowledge base as one that consists of "the full range of Knowledge resources available to the profession. These include theoretical, philosophical, empirical, and practical resources" (p.14). They caution, however, that if the school is to be the center of change, it is inappropriate to conceive of a research utilization model in which the practitioner is only a user, and the researcher is only a producer. Integration of the two needs to occur. As Ken Sirotnik and Richard Clark (1988) contend: We must examine the idea of schools as centers of decision making and renewal, or we will find that all our discussion of school-based management will simply propel us further along the path toward unsuccessful efforts at change and renewal. If we don't understand the significance of the school as center of change, we will continue to see it only as the target of change. And we will fail to recognize and tap the reservoir of knowledge and talent that already exists there (p.664). (emphasis added)
To use the knowledge base interactively, the 26 MIL schools are now connected with one another through computer technology - the IBM/NEA School Renewal Network. In addition to the schools, other participants include several of the federally funded research and development laboratories, several universities, and schools participating in the other site-based renewal projects. The system, designed for interaction around topics germane to school restructuring, was conceptualized primarily by assessing the information needs of the MIL faculties and their dialogue around such topics as critical thinking, instructional strategies, at-risk students, authentic student assessment, and parent involvement. Each of these topics is facilitated by a researcherand a practitioner.
As faculties have become more sophisticated in their utilization and knowledge of research, there has been an expansion of their view of research:
There has been a dynamic interaction between creating new ways of working together and the process of continuing inquiry. As a result, faculties in the network schools are different now than at the outset of the Project. They are increasingly aware of the knowledge base that undergirds their work and are more likely to consider it useful in solving their problems. They see themselves as powerful shapers of the future of their school for they are more collegial and less isolated; more savvy about the politics of school systems; and better able to view their school in a comprehensive manner. They are clear about the values they hold and are, often passionate about them. They feel more influential in affecting student learning.
Based on these findings, I would contend that true, meaningful teacher empowerment needs to be initiated in an environment that permits and encourages:
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