Teaching, Learning and Living: Joining Practice and Research. Ann Lieberman. Routledge. 2018.123 pp. (hard cover). ISBN:978-1-138-06036-4 (hbk); ISBN: 978 -1-138-06038-8 (pbk); ISBN: 978-1-315-16310-9 (ebk)
Review by Lee Anna Stirling
I will begin with a summing up: if you are interested in supporting educators’ professional learning, including your own – read this book.
In Teaching, Learning and Living: Joining Practice and Research, Ann Lieberman, known as the leading advocate of empowering teachers’ voices, provides a retrospective of her 50 plus year career. The book includes practices and programs that support educators’ effective collaboration, communications, independent work, critical thinking, creativity, and self-agency. Currently Senior Research Fellow at Learning Policy Institute, Ann Lieberman has served as sixth grade teacher; Teachers College, Columbia Professor; Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; American Educational Research Association (AERA) President; and advisor to National Education Association and United Federation of Teachers.
Teaching
Looking back to when she was a sixth grade teacher, Ann Lieberman writes, “I think some of my best education about teaching took place there in the classroom” (p.2). Ann Lieberman also shares that on the ride to work, she and carpooling colleagues had enthusiastic discussions about education and, at the time, she wondered how similar discussions could occur inside the school:
“…How was this to happen? Who would do it? What would it take to replicate the
connection we felt toward each other? Could we ever break the isolation we all felt when
the bell rang to begin class?”(p. 8)
With early reflections in mind, Ann Lieberman’s research, writing, speaking engagements, and program leadership have been ventures that elicit education practitioners’ challenge-solving wisdom and knowledge. Her work over the years, and encapsulated in Teaching, Learning and Living, highlights conditions she and colleague Lynne Miller conceptualized for sustained, deeper professional learning and development:
Norms of collegiality in the building
Openness and trust
Providing opportunities and time for disciplined inquiry
Teachers learning content in the context of their classroom
Rethinking leadership roles
Forming networks, collaborations, and coalitions for continuous support
(Lieberman & Miller, 2008)
Learning
Throughout Teaching, Learning and Living, Ann Lieberman relates insights, from several authors, that have expanded her knowledge and thinking about supporting educators’ professional development. In addition, Ann Lieberman describes two initiatives she studied, and an initiative she co-led, and from which she learned, that demonstrate best professional development practices: National Writing Project; Teaching, Learning and Leadership Program; and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
National Writing Project (NWP). With individual reflections and writing, focus on what participants already know; and research and collaboration to expand their understandings, the participants strengthen their writing and incorporate new strategies into their teaching. National Writing Project supports deeper professional learning outcomes for participants, for example, self-agency, collaboration, communications, critical thinking, and using acquired knowledge. From NWP, Ann Lieberman writes she learned:
“… you could create conditions for continuous professional learning by starting with what
teachers had learned and practiced in their own teaching. They could then expand their
knowledge and use of it, by looking at research and other people’s knowledge.” (p. 75)
Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP). Founded by a partnership of Ontario Teachers’ Federation and Ontario Ministry of Education, teachers receive an 18-month budget that allows them to learn about a self-chosen topic through workshops, research, or other means, in order to strengthen their teaching or their school. The teachers hone critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and communications skills by preparing and designing their projects, planning and delivering conference session presentations, and finding ways to effectively communicate their findings with educators in their schools and beyond.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL): Ann Lieberman, other Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching senior staff, teachers, and teacher educators worked together to produce a website with videos of teachers and their students. Each vignette included the teacher’s analysis of what occurred, and the teacher’s ideas for related strategies. While teachers who were showcased sharpened their critical thinking and professional communications, those who viewed a vignette and read the teacher’s analysis of it had a multi-dimensional resource to support understanding and putting what they learned into action. A current website features some of the vignettes and a related book.
Living
The supportive and joyfully amusing work involvement of her husband, Ernie, exemplifies the interwovenness of Ann Lieberman’s personal and work life. Also, related, from early in her career, are a colleague’s sexist statements to her, and related work conditions and observations. Both the upbeat and grim anecdotes further engage the reader.
Throughout her career, Ann Lieberman has worked to empower education practitioners’ voices in research, policy, and professional learning. Readers who have appreciated one or many of Ann Lieberman’s numerous books, articles, and conference presentations must read this retrospective of experiences, studies, and readings that have shaped Ann Lieberman’s perspectives. Likewise, readers new to Ann Lieberman’s work, but interested in creating cultures for deeper professional learning will gain valuable knowledge.
Disclosure: Ann Lieberman was a beloved professor of mine due to her forthrightly stated insights, including her view that for creating worthwhile education policies and putting them into practice, include teachers’ understandings. She also led a professional development network, where I worked for one of my work-study jobs, and about which I wrote my doctoral dissertation. Ann Lieberman is my all time favorite teacher. But with my admiration of Ann Lieberman’s work, and therefore,Teaching, Learning and Living: Joining Practice and Research, I join a multitude of indebted education practitioners, researchers, and policy makers.
Reference
Lieberman, A. & Miller, L. (2008). Teachers in professional communities: Improving teaching
and learning. Teachers College Press.
