Feature Articles

Learning Labs: Collaborations for Transformative Teacher Learning

RUTH BRANCARD JENNIFER QUINNWILLIAMS
University of Colorado Denver
Teachers in a middle school and a high school with high percentages of English language learners showed evidence of transformative learning during the 2 years in which they collaborated in an ongoing professional development activity called learning labs, which include focused discussion of observations of colleagues classrooms. An analysis of qualitative data found teachers stated beliefs about their own and students roles, responsibilities, and capabilities changed as a result of their participation in learning labs. Teachers also implemented changes in their instructional practices. The authors argue that effective professional development activities must go beyond the delivery of information to support teachers examination and revision of assumptions about students, teaching, and learning that guide their practice. doi: 10.1002/tesj.22

Kathy had never tried any of the strategies she read about in
her sheltered instruction book in the high school science class she taught. The strategies seemed to her overwhelming to plan and implement, and she had no clear vision of whether they would work. Even though she knew she needed to do more to help the English language learners in her class to access the content, she just didnt have the courage to try something so new and daunting. Then, she had the opportunity, along with a group of teachers from her school, to see collaborative group work used in a colleagues classroom. She was impressed by students levels of engagement and the fact that the class did not spin out of control.
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After the observation, she and her colleagues met to talk about what they had seen and how students were learning in that class. With this conversation supporting her, Kathy was inspired to arrange her students into groups and implement a new strategy that allowed the students to interact and work cooperatively. Although the strategy did not go off perfectly, Kathy was condent that she could try it a few more times, ask for help from an instructional coach, and take what she learned back to the group of teachers for more discussion and renement. The colleagues in this example were part of a learning lab,1 a group of teachers who decided to use evidence from their own practices to grapple with a shared teaching dilemma. Host teachers from the group opened their classrooms and their practices to provide this evidence as a basis for conversation and reection about effective teaching and learning. Many professional development activities for in-service teachers are informational in nature. University professors, school principals, program developers, authors, and teacher leaders tell teachers about ways in which they can improve their teaching. This approach assumes that what teachers need is more direction about how to teach, that it is the lack of knowledge about the students in their class, the content they teach, the teaching strategies they use, or the ways they assess students learning that impedes change in teaching practice. It assumes that if professional developers supply information, teachers will change the way they teach and students will learn more. Studies of the effects of professional development on teachers practice show that informational professional development alone brings about changes in the practice of a small percentage of teachers (e.g., Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Joyce & Showers, 2002). Although informational professional development may be sufcient in some situations and for some teachers, we argue that professional development that supports the transformative learning of teachers is necessary to bring about
1

Learning labs were developed in the early 1990s at the Public Education and Business Coalition (www.pebc.org), a nonprot Denver, Coloradobased coalition of educators and business leaders, by Ellin Keene and Stephanie Harvey.

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sustained changes in their practice when those changes require them to see their roles, responsibilities, and students differently. In this article we report the results of a study we conducted of two groups of teachers organized as learning labs, one in a middle school and the other in a high school, in an urban school district in the United States. Both schools have high percentages of poor and immigrant students and have struggled, with some success, to raise academic achievement. The schools are participants in a universityschool partnership project, the goal of which is to improve the learning and engagement of English language learners through professional development for school leaders and teachers (Clarke & Davis, 2007). The purposes of the article are to describe the learning of participating teachers and to suggest an explanation of how the learning lab protocols and processes support teachers learning. We believe that learning labs are more effective than informational presentations in supporting teachers in making difcult changes in their practice because they incorporate support for transformative learning. What we learned can be helpful in planning and facilitating professional development activities for teachers. We begin with a description of the learning lab process to help the reader situate the theoretical discussion in the context in which we worked. This is followed by an explanation of transformative learning and the role of collaborative work. After outlining the method, we report the results of the study with descriptions and examples of the ways in which teachers shifted their beliefs about students capabilities and their own roles as well as the kinds of changes teachers made in their practice. Finally, we discuss the teachers learning in the study in light of a theory of adult transformative learning and teacher collaboration.

THE LEARNING LABS

This study examines the collaborative work of two groups of teachers, one at a high school, the other at a middle school. The teachers chose to meet in learning labs to address a shared problem of practice. The learning labs encompassed several sessions, with most of the same teachers taking part, over the course of 2 school years. Each learning lab session had three
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components: setting the stage, the classroom observation, and debrief of the observation. The focus session set the stage. At their rst meeting, lab participants and the facilitator decided to focus on an aspect of teaching that all members of the group wanted to improve. The focuses dealt with how to improve content area instruction, in English, for English language learners. In subsequent focus sessions, teachers read and discussed relevant book chapters and journal articles to ground themselves in the current research and thinking about the focus. For example, at both schools the participants read selections from Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008) before some labs and discussed the implications of what they had read in the focus session. Then a member of the lab volunteered to host a class in which elements of the focus were present, and all lab members planned to observe. On the day of the observation, with substitute teachers covering their classes for the day, the lab members met and followed a preobservation protocol to discuss their current beliefs about the focus of the observation. During the class observation, lab participants used the established focus to guide them in the kind of data they collected as they took empirical, nonjudgmental, specic notes of what they saw, heard, and noticed. Finally, lab members debriefed the observation. During the debrief, teachers looked at how the evidence they gathered in the observation supported or contradicted their beliefs about teaching and learning. Often, they modied their beliefs to t the new evidence. There were three rounds in the debrief discussion. First, teachers reported what they saw, heard, or noticed in the classroom. Next, they responded to and discussed the question: Given what we saw, heard, or noticed, what might we infer about student learning in the classroom we observed today? In the nal round, teachers discussed the question: What connections can you make to your own practice or beliefs about teaching and learning based on our observations and discussions today? Each participant had a turn at contributing in each round. Comments from each round were recorded on large pieces of chart paper, with lab members negotiating and conferring on the
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best way to articulate their thoughts. As the lab wound down, participants wrote and talked about how they would take what they learned into their own practices. In many labs, teachers made commitments to trying new strategies. Coaching, either by a peer or by a support person, was arranged. The cycle was repeated 1 or 2 months later, with time for teachers to talk about successes and challenges they encountered as they tried new practices.

UNDERSTANDING AND SUPPORTING TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING

As demonstrated in the example of Kathy in the introduction, informational learning is often not sufcient to bring about sustained change in teachers practice. Informational professional development may be successful when teachers are simply looking for new strategies or information, but at other times teachers need professional development that allows them to examine and revise their beliefs about teaching and learning. Some changes in practice require that teachers change how they view their schools, their students, and their roles as teachers. Transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1978, 2000) and constructive developmental psychology (Kegan, 1982, 1994; Kegan & Lahey, 2001, 2009) inform our perspectives on adult learning and development and form the basis for our explanation of teachers learning in learning labs in the next section. Technical Versus Adaptive Challenges To understand the gap between informational professional development and changes in teachers practice, the distinction between technical and adaptive challenges is helpful. Heifetz (1994) describes differences between technical problems and adaptive problems. Technical problems are those that respond to solutions based on existing knowledge that implementers are able to use and apply. If a teacher needs additional content knowledge, additional information about students, or new strategies, he or she may be able to get and use that information and implement changes in his or her practice. However, as we saw with Kathy,
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many teachers are unable to implement changes in the ways they teach simply by getting information about how to do it. Adaptive problems, in contrast to technical ones, require change on the part of those seeking to address the problems. Those working on the problem create the knowledge they need as they address it (Wagner et al., 2006). If changes in instructional practice require the teacher to change her attitudes, values, or habits in fundamental ways, to shift the way in which she views her roles and responsibilities or the roles and responsibilities of her students, then the learning required is transformative rather than informational. Technical Learning Versus Transformative Learning Learning links prior understandings to new experiences or information, and when it is transformative, learning results in the revision of those prior understandings to construct new guides for future actions (Mezirow, 2000). For this study of teachers learning, we dene transformative learning as the process by which teachers revise their taken-for-granted views of the nature of teaching and learning and the roles of teachers and students to adapt those views to conform to new experiences and to generate new beliefs that will guide their practice more effectively. A revision of what it means to teach is often required of teachers as they encounter students from cultures different from their own, students who face the challenge of learning English and negotiating cultural differences as they learn concepts and content. For example, a science teacher like Kathy needs to see herself as a language teacher as well as a science teacher (Echevarria et al., 2008; Walqi & Van Lier, 2010). Figure 1 illustrates how informational activities organized in a technical learning setting are insufcient to bring about sustained modications or changes in a teachers practice when the information provides conicts with the teachers beliefs and assumptions. For example, if teachers believe that students waste time and do not learn when they participate in group work, they are highly unlikely to implement group work regularly in classroom activities. Figure 1 shows that an activity that is transformational, that supports transformative learning by
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Figure 1. Transformative learning

providing a space for the teacher to examine and modify beliefs and assumptions, may result in changes in the teachers practice. Holding environments for transformative learning. Learning environments can be structured to increase the likelihood that adults will make transformative shifts in their assumptions and revise them in ways better tted to their current situations (Baxter Magolda, 1999; Drago-Severson, 2009; Kegan, 1994). Transformative learning requires a holding environment for the learner, an environment that controls and eases the stress that transformative learning generates while at the same time sustaining the attention of the learner and supporting the adaptive work required for change (Heifetz, 1994; Kegan, 1982). A holding environment should be a safe one for learners (Drago-Severson, 2009). They should be able to voice their beliefs and assumptions without risk of ridicule, fear of evaluation, or danger to job status. Holding environments for adaptive, transformative learning include the learners experience and worldviews. Learners start from where they are in their understanding of the world, building on their experience by bringing it to the learning environment (Baxter Magolda, 1999; Drago-Severson, 2009; Kegan, 1994). Effective professional development for teachers should occur within a holding environment that is safe and respectful of teachers experience and their currently held beliefs and assumptions. A learning environment supportive of transformative
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learning provides opportunities for teachers to voice their beliefs and to work together to make sense of their experience as teachers. Testing of assumptions. Holding environments for teachers transformative learning must allow opportunity for teachers to examine and test their assumptions. Transformative learning requires that teachers revise their assumptions about their roles, about students and their capabilities, and about teaching and learning. To revise those assumptions, teachers need the opportunity to test them. Brookeld (1995), in his work on the role of critical reection in teaching, denes assumptions as the taken-for-granted beliefs about the world and our place in it that seem so obvious to us as not to need stating explicitly (p. 2). Kegan and Lahey (2009) suggest that individuals and organizations can uncover the assumptions that get in the way of the changes they want to implement and test those assumptions. Assumptions are revised in the light of evidence to the contrary. When assumptions are revised, teachers can modify the ways in which they work. In learning labs, teachers have time to voice and discuss with their peers their beliefs about the problem of practice on which the group has chosen to focus. During the subsequent observed class session, a colleague experiments with a practice designed to address the problem of practice identied by the group. The class session constitutes a test of individually and collectively held assumptions about teaching and learning. The teachers have the opportunity to gather evidence during the observation. In the discussion after the mutual experience of observing a class, teachers share observational data and inferences about student learning, and through examination of the gathered evidence they may conrm or disconrm their taken-for-granted assumptions. Role of collaboration in transformative learning and learning labs. Collaborative, cohort learning plays a central role in the holding environment for transformative learning and is a key element in learning labs. Collaborating teachers are no longer isolated behind closed classroom doors. Further, learning lab structures support effective collaborations. Finally, collaborative work, as structured in learning labs, draws on the shared experience of teachers to create the knowledge they need to meet
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the challenges they face in their classrooms. Collaboration breaks down the isolation of a teachers classroom, allowing for the pooling of knowledge and human resources (Honigsfeld & Dove, 2010). Collaboration works against reliance on a single perspective (Whitford & Wood, 2010). Learning labs include a group observation of a classroom lesson followed by a discussion that accommodates multiple perspectives of what happened in the lesson. In Kathys case, without the collaborative element of learning labs, she might have given up on her attempts to change her practice. Instead, she had the ongoing collaborative perspectives of group members to help her innovate and move forward. Honigsfeld and Doves (2010) framework for collaborative work among teachersthe 4 Cs of Collaborationcalls for collaborative conversations, collaborative coaching, collaborative curriculum work, and collaborative crafting of teaching practice. Similarly, Barth (1991) advocates for school environments that foster collegial conversations among teachers rather than only congenial ones. Collegial conversations are ones in which the adults in a school talk about practice, observe each other teaching, work on curriculum, and teach each other what they know. In the learning labs we studied, we saw evidence of all four aspects of collaborative work and of the collegial conversations Barth describes. In addition, the learning labs situated learning squarely in the shared experience of the teacher-learners, positioned teachers as constructors of the knowledge they needed to address their problems of practice, and fostered a sense of shared responsibility for student learning. Two studies of college students (Baxter Magolda, 1999, 2001; Brancard, 2008) identify three principles for the creation of learning environments that support transformative learning: situating learning in learners experience, validating learners as knowers, and providing opportunities for interactive construction of meaning. In such learning environments, learners work together to make meaning of past and new experiences. Learners are valued as people who can and do make sense of what they are working to learn. In line with these principles, the learning labs in the study took place in the participating teachers
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schools, with their colleagues and students. Learning lab discussions were structured to allow teachers to collaborate in assembling a body of evidence they could use to revise or conrm assumptions about students, teaching, and learning. In a synthesis of international research, Darling-Hammond et al. (2009) report consensus around characteristics of effective professional development. Effective professional development related to gains in student achievement is ongoing, school based, and embedded in teachers practice. Research has found that approaches that include collaboration among teachers and foster the building of strong relationships are more likely to bring about schoolwide change in teaching practice. The learning labs in this study t this description of effective professional development. To summarize the theoretical perspective, teachers learning is transformative when it includes the revision of beliefs about themselves, their students, and their respective roles, responsibilities, and capabilities in ways that guide them to meet the challenges of their schools and classrooms more effectively. Teachers transformative learning is supported by a holding environment that is safe, collaborative, and embedded in the teachers experience and that provides opportunities to test and revise beliefs and assumptions.

METHOD
We analyzed data from two groups of teachers who participated in learning labs, one at a middle school and one at a high school, over a 2-year period. In all, 22 teachers participated in the labs. The data, collected as part of the ongoing formative evaluation of the learning labs, were of three types: documents generated collaboratively by the teacher groups during the learning labs, teachers descriptions of their own learning, and our eld notes about the learning lab sessions or about coaching sessions with individual teachers. The collaboratively generated documents, referred to by the learning lab groups as charts, were large sheets of paper on which the facilitator or a teacher volunteer recorded each teachers contribution to the discussion. The facilitator wrote these statements for the whole group to see and use as evidence that
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would inform the further rounds of the debrief conversation. In each lab session, teacher discussions were recorded under these headings, corresponding with rounds of discussion: Focus Our Observation; Saw, Heard, Noticed; Implications for Student Learning; and Connections/Beliefs. After each lab, the charts were transcribed and archived. Teachers descriptions of their own learning were documented in three ways: written responses to questions after each lab session, interviews at the end of the school year, and personal reection essays. Data analysis was conducted to answer this research question: What evidence is there that the learning of teachers in the learning labs can be described as transformative? In other words, what evidence points to changes in the ways teachers viewed students and their roles as teachers? We began our data analysis by open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) of the charting data, with attention to evidence of shifts in beliefs and resistance to new ideas about teaching and learning. Emergent codes were triangulated with teacher reection data and eld notes.

RESULTS
Of the 22 teachers who participated in the learning labs in the study, 18 (80%) reported implementing new strategies in their classrooms. Sixteen (73%) reported noticing increases in student engagement and learning in their classes. Observations of the teachers classrooms by instructional coaches and learning lab facilitators conrmed the implementation of strategies that supported the learning of English language learners in the classrooms of 16 of the 22 (73%) teachers. In most labs teachers were asked to write about and discuss changes they might make to their practices based on what they had learned in the lab. Through essays, interviews, or discussions in subsequent labs, teachers reported plans to revise classroom practice and actual changes in classroom practice. Observations by coaches corroborated classroom teachers reports. Changes included modifying or initiating group work and trying new strategies, such as implementing ongoing assessment to determine understanding and provide quicker feedback to students. In some cases, teachers also identied ways to evaluate the effect of changes
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on student learning. Because the learning labs took place over the course of 2 years, we observed that many of the changes teachers made were sustained, not temporary, modications to practice. Analysis of the qualitative data yields examples of transformative learning on the part of teachers that helps to explain why teachers made changes to their practice. Examination of what teachers said, wrote, and did during the learning labs, between the lab rounds, and after the labs provides evidence that many teachers changed or rened their beliefs about student learning and about teaching based on the experiences and conversations they had in the labs. We found multiple examples in the data indicating that teachers changed their beliefs about students and their roles as teachers. Teachers changed some of their beliefs about what students can do and how they learn. They changed their beliefs about teacher roles in the classroom and their views of teacher collaboration and professional development. These amended ways of thinking corresponded with new classroom practices for many of the teachers. In the following paragraphs, we give examples of each of these changes. Changes in Beliefs About What Students Can Do and How They Learn At the high school, teachers were being told by administrators and coaches that they needed to increase the visible, active engagement of students in learning. At the middle school, the emphasis was on improving standardized test scores. Teachers were being asked to consider what changes they could make for English language learners to improve their content area learning. In both schools, teachers in the learning labs focused during their rst year on collaborative group work and in the second year on higher level thinking, student responsibility, and scaffolding higher level work. Some teachers, however, struggled with doubts about whether students were able to participate in nontraditional approaches in the classroom. Data, as summarized below, document shifts in teachers beliefs about students capabilities in the areas of participating in and learning from group work and learning from their peers.
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Students can participate effectively in group work. Initially, some teachers expressed doubts about the effectiveness of group work, citing a school culture that did not support students working together to learn, a lack of maturity in students, and some students tendency to sit back while the strong students did the work. Other teachers feared losing control of the class or that group work did not t with their teaching styles. However, the data show that many teachers modied or rened these beliefs after seeing evidence to the contrary. See Table 1 for a summary of teacher beliefs about what students can do and how they learn and corresponding changes in practice. Marcia, a teacher at the high school, began her participation in learning labs voicing strong doubts about the effectiveness of
TABLE 1. Changes in Beliefs About What Students Can Do and How They Learn
Belief Belief shift Change in practice Teachers incorporated Students cant participate in Students can scaffolding practices such participate collaborative group work. as clear directions; posted, effectively in Students cant, and dont written directions; use of group work. want to, learn from each native language; sentence Students can learn other. stems. from each other. Students, especially English Teachers developed language learners, cant use Students can strategies to teach students engage in academic language in how to learn from each academic discussions. other. discussion. Students were given responsibility to teach each other. Teachers used scaffolding such as visual aids posted around the classroom, explicit vocabulary instruction, and sentence stems. Teachers taught, and gave students opportunities to practice, academic discussion from the start of the year.
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group work for students. During a learning lab session, she and her colleagues observed and discussed a lesson in which students worked in groups. Before the observation, Marcia talked about her belief that students see group work as play time because of experience in previous grades and schools, a student perception that she thought pervaded school culture. During the postobservation discussion, she qualied her original statement about peer culture, saying it is not applicable to every student and every classroom. Seeing a classroom where students were successfully engaged in group work caused her to question and begin to change her beliefs and assumptions. By the end of the study, visitors to Marcias classroom observed frequent use of interactive group work. After observing a lesson in which students in an honors class participated in group learning activities, some teachers expressed doubt that such learning was possible with younger, less academically oriented students. They assumed that only academically oriented students could succeed in group activities. To test this assumption in a safe environment, Laura volunteered to host the next learning lab observation in her classroom. She taught ninth graders and chose to have the learning lab group observe her most difcult group of students. After that observation and discussion, Tom, previously doubtful about the effectiveness of group work for younger students, voiced the belief that ninth and tenth graders (14 to 15 years old) can do group work if assignments are shorter and less complex. Because of the recursive nature of learning labs, teachers had repeated opportunities to nd ways of testing whether all students could learn with group work. Several teachers focused on observing the ways in which students participated in the group work. They noted what students said and did. Some estimated the percentage of students in the classroom who participated or the percentage of classroom time in which students were actively participating in group work. After gathering this data, and over time, teachers talked about what they had seen in class that might explain the student participation. They identied activities and strategies they could try in their own classes in an effort to increase student participation. These ideas included clear
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directions; posted, written directions to which students could refer; sometimes encouraging students to use their native language; and using sentence stems to scaffold the English structures required for students oral participation. By the end of the rst year of participation in the learning labs, all of the high school teachers reported implementing more effective group work in their classrooms. Students can learn from each other. One reason some teachers doubted that group work would result in learning was that they did not think students could learn from each other, or even wanted to learn from each other. However, observing group work in colleagues classrooms caused many teachers to change their assumptions about studentstudent interaction. Teachers talked about their perceptions of students notions of what school is, students expectations of their teachers, and their own ideas of how students can learn from each other. Alice shared her initial distrust of student-directed learning and said that, until she saw it in lab observations, she did not really know what it was. She described the idea of losing that teacher control, which she associated with student-directed learning, as intimidating. From the learning labs she gained knowledge of how to increase student responsibility for their own learning. Following participation in learning labs, many of the teachers became convinced that students learn more when they are given more responsibility to teach each other. Sean began the school year with a belief that teachers must expect their students to take an active part in their own learning:
I am a rm believer that at the high school level, our students will only be successful if they can become thinkers and problem solvers instead of passive learners whose only initiative is to ask their teacher. We do our students a severe disservice by consistently afrming their need for us instead of teaching them how to nd information for themselves and become independently successful.

Even with this strong belief, Sean acknowledged that students ideas about school often hindered his efforts to help them have the strategies and tools to nd their own answers. In the lab, Sean and the other teachers supported each other as they worked to
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change students ideas of what school is and how they can learn. He said, Teachers realized they had to teach students how to learn together, to help them understand what they could do. Like many teachers in the labs, Sean continued to work to change students perceptions of what school is, reporting progress in helping students be more independent and interdependent by the end of the year. Students can engage in academic discussion. Before the learning labs, some teachers were resistant to the idea that students could use academic language to talk to each other and the teacher in class. Academic language was seen as too complex, or not in the students skill sets, especially for English language learners. Observing in colleagues classrooms gave teachers the opportunity to see how students could be taught to engage in academic discussion. In data collected during the lab observations, many teachers recorded instances of these academic discussions. For example, in one middle school classroom, teachers heard students talking about the denition of an equation, using both Spanish and English to explain English academic vocabulary. On another occasion, a student explained a concept to a group member, referring to and using academic language from visual aids posted in the classroom. In a third classroom, students questioned the teachers solution to a problem, using the academic language she had provided earlier in the lesson. Based on these and other observations, teachers came to the conclusion that, with the proper instruction and scaffolding, students can engage in academic discussion, commenting that English language learners need additional scaffolding to apply, analyze and evaluate and there should be a shift [from teacherstudent questioning] to studentstudent questioning. At the high school, in contrast to their own statements earlier, teachers said that students can engage in higher order thinking from the beginning of the school year, can learn to have academic discussions with their peers, and can use academic discussion to assess each others learning. Kathy summed up the groups belief that teachers need to give students opportunities to engage in academic discussion: Sometimes were too inuenced by students
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who wont and forget about students who will. Sometimes we need to say, I do have a class that can handle that. Changes in Beliefs About Teacher Roles As teachers talked about the implications of their observations of other teachers, and as they reected on the learning lab process, they began to describe their roles as teachers in ways that indicated shifts in how they saw teachers roles in the schools. They described themselves as learners. They talked about the benets of giving up some control in the classroom and trusting students more, in effect becoming learning facilitators as well as experts in their subjects. And some described increasing leadership roles, or a desire for more understanding of how to lead, as decision makers, advocates, and examples for other teachers. See Table 2 for a summary of changes in beliefs and practice about teachers roles. Teachers as learners. Early on in the project, Josh, a math teacher, balked at attending learning labs. After some persuasion by another teacher and the lab facilitator, he nally participated. After a year of participating in learning labs, he hosted teachers in his classroom for one lab and facilitated another. When asked why
TABLE 2. Changes in Beliefs and Practice About Teachers Roles
Belief Teachers arent learners. Direct instruction is the most time-efcient, effective path to student learning. Administrators, not teachers, are school leaders. Belief shift Teachers continue to learn, both on their own and from each other. Teachers can act as learning facilitators. Teachers can have leadership roles in the school. Change in practice Teachers voluntarily participated in collaborative professional development. Teachers increased time spent in reection. Teachers implemented strategies that require students to rely on each other for learning. Teachers hosted, facilitated, and advocated for learning labs. Teachers coached new teachers.
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he had been so reluctant at rst, Josh said that he hadnt thought he could learn from his colleagues. He thought they could learn from him but not the other way around. In fact, he found that collaborative, structured conversations with colleagues could help him analyze his and his colleagues teaching. Teachers noted learning new techniques or strategies during learning labs, but some also described new commitments to examine their own practices and continue the learning process. Marcia wrote,
The major impact the SIOP [Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol] learning lab has had on my career is the inspiration factor. I also feel challenged to try new things, and I recognize the importance of being exible and not falling into my own ways.

More evidence of this kind of change is in the learning lab charting. For example, at the end of one lab session, teachers collaboratively crafted this statement: I need to spend more time reecting on effectiveness, student engagement, learning, student resistance. Teachers as learning facilitators. With the focus on interactive group work and students roles in their own learning, many teachers found themselves rethinking their roles as teachers and asking whether they ought to be spending more time as learning facilitators and less time in direct instruction. One teacher brought up the idea that instead of lling students heads with as much information as possible, the teacher might slow down to help them think through important concepts with each other. As teachers focused on evidence of learning in the interactive classrooms they observed, they began to question assumptions that direct instruction is the most time-efcient, effective path to student learning. The fear of losing control of the classroom and of students surfaced as a reason some teachers were reluctant to implement interactive strategies. Observing and teaching interactive lessons helped teachers gain the condence to experiment with lessons that gave students more autonomy. Through participation in the learning labs, Alice, who had voiced her fears of losing control of
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students, announced her intention to use more student-directed learning. She explained, It seems like my comfort and courage level in trying out new strategies has risen because of the successes I had . . . in this learning lab. Changes in teachers views of their roles were nuanced and developed over time. Starting after a class observation in which students in groups did not necessarily get to the correct answer or process, the middle school teachers returned again and again to trying to understand the role they ought to play when students are struggling to learn. Over the course of several labs, these teachers deepened and rened the notion of allowing students to struggle, or come to their own understanding of a concept. At rst, teachers mentioned vaguely that it was acceptable for students not to understand a concept, but they did not talk about what happens next, how long students should be left to work things out, and what their roles as teachers were in this situation. As they understood sheltered instruction better and saw how their colleagues scaffolded instruction for student understanding, the idea of struggle itself and the teachers role in supporting that struggle shifted. Allowing students to ounder through a lesson was rejected in favor of creating appropriate supports to help students successfully understand challenging concepts. Ways of gradually removing those supports were discussed and strategized. Teachers found the learning lab allowed them to rene their beliefs about the teachers role and be honest about the difculty of changing. Kathy said,
I think many educators talk about how the teacher needs to be the facilitator of learning instead of the deliverer of information. I want my students to nd the structure in the classroom groups to rely on themselves and each other as the rst line of information and to see me as the facilitator. It is difcult to be the facilitator until your students are prepared for you to be in that role. . . . I want to change these conceptions in my classroom, but nd the adage of old habits die hard to be true for both the students and me.

While acknowledging the difculty of the change, after several learning labs, she said that teachers need to trust that students
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can work together, learn together, and inspire each other to think more deeply. Teachers as school leaders. Some teachers took on leadership roles in their schools after participating in learning labs. Over the years of the project, three teachers at the middle school and ve teachers at the high school facilitated lab sessions. Josh, who had been reluctant to get involved in leadership in the past, agreed to facilitate a learning lab and said he would like to understand what it means to be a teacher leader. Marcia described the experience of facilitating a learning lab as enjoyable and challenging; currently, 3 years later, she is working with a coaching mentor to become a teacher coach. Kathy recruited most of her science faculty colleagues to the learning lab in its second year and became the leading voice for teachers in her subject area. All of the high school teachers in the learning lab were instrumental in making learning labs possible for all teachers in the school. Nita, at the middle school, became a strong advocate for learning labs as a part of the schools professional development plan. Teachers Changed Their Views of Collaboration and Professional Development Many teachers who participated in the learning labs talked about the value of collaboration, of having conversations with other teachers in ways that move beyond small talk to the sharing of ideas and, in fact, beyond the lab, inuencing the way teachers see professional development and how to talk to colleagues. Some said the structure of the lab kept the conversation focused and allowed them to go deeper in their conversations, and others noted the benet of a supportive environment for talking about new ideas and strategies. See Table 3 for a summary of teachers changed beliefs regarding collaboration and professional development. Value of collaboration. Teachers mentioned that the learning labs reversed the common practice of teaching behind closed doors, of never exposing personal practices to the scrutiny of other teachers. Many found their practices enriched. Marcia wrote,
One problem with the teaching profession is that oftentimes teachers will close their doors to the outside world and just do
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TABLE 3. Changes in Beliefs and Practice Related to Collaboration and Professional Development
Belief Belief shift Change in practice Teaching is a Teachers can benet from Teachers generated ideas for solitary act. sharing insights and more collaboration. Conversations with professional opinions. Teachers visited each others colleagues lack Teachers can have useful, classrooms. focus or purpose. collegial discussions. Teachers grounded instructional conversation in evidence and used collaborative protocols.

things their way in their classroom. Here, we have our doors open not only to each other physically, but to each others suggestions and insight and professional opinions. We are learning from each other and also serving as a means of support for one another. Here, in this SIOP lab, we know that we are not alone.

In addition, teachers frequently generated ideas for more collaboration. At both schools, teachers found opportunities during the structured turn-taking in the labs to generate specic ideas for cross-content collaboration and ways to implement strategies that teachers thought would t their teaching styles. Josh found that learning labs increased teachers sense of accountability to each other, contrasting the small groups in learning labs with whole-school sessions for teachers: In the small groups we had a chance, and also its expected, to participate. [In large-group sessions] when you break off to small groups that are not prearranged or preorganized you lose that accountability. After participating in 2 years of learning labs, Rosa, a teacher cofacilitating the last lab of the year, asked colleagues to think about what the value of collaboration had been to them. The group summed up their thinking: Observing multiple teachers helps us to modify our own practice and commit to applying what we learn to our own styles. How to talk to colleagues. Teachers valued the opportunity to focus their conversation on teaching and beliefs about teaching and learning. In both schools, there was a sense that conversations with colleagues often lacked focus or purpose. At the middle
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school, before attending learning labs, teachers feared the labs might just be an opportunity to complain or to judge each others teaching. However, teachers said that the protocols in labs, the emphasis on what evidence is, and basing the discussion on the evidence of the observed class session provided a useful and effective way to talk to each other. Middle school teacher response data show that nearly 70% (n = 48) of answers to the question What part of the lab did you nd most valuable? included some form of talking with colleagues, and the remainder of the responses cited observing another teacher as most valuable. Participating in labs changed some teachers regular interactions with their colleagues. Karen said that before the labs she hadnt talked much to colleagues about practice. After the labs, she visited other teachers, especially in other grade levels, to help get review material and to see what the students were learning. She said, I feel like my conversations are enriched by the type of questions I was asking in learning lab. It helps me see and really appreciate the education and knowledge of my colleagues, to look at them as resources. In addition, the ways of talking about practice learned in the labs sometimes carried over into other professional development. Teachers at the middle school began to expect that talking about practice would include evidence from teachers practices, as it did in learning labs. They incorporated the practice of grounding their inferences in evidence from practice into other professional development activities at the school. Safe, supportive environment. Learning labs are structured to provide participants with supportive environments in which they feel safe to take risks, both in teaching and in talking about teaching. A coach works with the host teachers to plan the lesson before the observation. During the lab debrief rounds, a facilitator helps make sure the discussion is based in evidence collected during the observation. The facilitator also makes sure that the ideas generated by the group are worded in a way that is not judgmental. Teachers appreciated the space the labs provided to focus on teaching. Laura, a teacher in our study, observed, [In learning labs] we get to focus just on [teaching]. [We] talk openly. Theres
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no administrator sitting there. In other words, teachers could share opinions and ideas with peers without worrying that an administrator would hold their fears, doubts, or disagreements against them. Laura described how the lab supported her teaching:
I like the teachers that Im working with too . . . just getting together just to focus on teaching. We have so much professional development that has nothing to do with making you a better teacher. This is the one thing that all we do is focus on being a better teacher. It is absolutely the best PD [professional development] Ive had in any of my training. All it is is improving your teaching. That is all this is dealing with, and you get to do that. And it is unbelievable that in a school, you have so few times to really work on improving your teaching and sharing ideas. The sharing ideas with the teachers that we meet with I think is huge.

In conclusion, three-quarters of the 22 teachers who participated in the learning labs made and sustained changes in their practice. Those changes in practice corresponded with changes in teachers beliefs about what students can do and how students learn as well as changes in their beliefs about their roles and how teachers can work together.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Kegan (2000) claims that transformative learning involves an epistemological change in the learner, not just behavioral changes or growth in knowledge, but a change in the way the learner knows. Technical learning, he says, takes place within a preexisting frame of mind, whereas transformative learning includes a new frame of mind. If changes in the ways teachers see their own and students roles, responsibilities, and capabilities in teaching and learning constitute an epistemological change, then the learning described here meets Kegans criteria for transformative learning. Our study and experience with learning labs has convinced us that transformative learning, as we have dened it for this study, was required for teachers to make sustained changes in their practice to support the learning of English language learners. Informational, technical learning was not sufcient to result in
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deep changes in practice. The teachers had read a how-to book on sheltered instruction (Echevarria et al., 2008) and participated in monthly sessions at the schools with examples of how to implement sheltered instruction. They had made some changes in practice as the result of technical learning or top-down mandates. For example, all of the high school teachers regularly posted content and language objectives in the classroom for each lesson. However, changes involving implementing collaborative group work and scaffolding higher level thinking posed greater challenges for the teachers. They identied these areas as difcult and as the focus of their work together. In the learning lab environmentone that we argue supported transformative learningteachers were able to revise their beliefs about what students can and cannot do and their beliefs about their roles as teachers. Those revised beliefs corresponded with sustained changes in the practice of most of the teachers in the study. Further, we believe that learning labs supported the transformative learning of teachers because the process embraces elements key to adult learning (Baxter Magolda, 1999; Brancard, 2008; Drago-Severson, 2009; Kegan, 1994; Kegan & Lahey, 2009; Mezirow, 2000) and effective collaboration (Honigsfeld & Dove, 2010; Whitford & Wood, 2010). Learning labs provided a safe holding environment in which teachers had opportunities to articulate assumptions about teaching and learning and to examine those assumptions with colleagues. They chose the areas of focus to address problems of practice they identied in their own work. The learning labs took place in their classrooms with their students, rmly situating the learning in their worlds. The observations of their peers classrooms provided the teachers with a chance to gather new evidence. The structured discussions with colleagues after the observations guided teachers to ground their learning in the empirical evidence of the observed classrooms. In collaboration with their peers, many teachers reevaluated their assumptions about teaching and learning and made commitments to make changes in their classrooms. The question arises of which comes rstchange in beliefs and then change in practice, or vice versa? City, Elmore, Fiarman, and Tietel (2009) argue that teachers revise their beliefs after they begin
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to teach differently. Based on our experience with learning labs, we believe that a learning environment for teachers must allow for both the opportunity to act differently and the opportunity to reect on the experience of acting differently and what that means for teachers assumptions about teaching and learning. When beliefs are revised, changes in practice can be sustained. Value of Protocols Learning labs and the protocols used during discussions structured teacher collaboration in ways that shaped how teachers interacted with each other during the learning lab sessions. Some teachers carried these ways of interacting with each other into other school contexts. According to Drago-Severson (2009), protocols can nurture adult development and provide an environment in which teachers can take the risks necessary for growth. Good protocols help create a safe environment in which teachers do not feel evaluated or judged, one in which teachers develop shared norms for working together. Learning labs gave teachers time to meet; protocols for collecting data; protocols for discussing, analyzing, and reecting on the data; and opportunities to try out and reect on new strategies and practices. Long-Term Collaborative Groups Our experience has also taught us that effective collaborative groups that constitute the holding environment for transformative learning for teachers must be built and maintained over time. Frequent changes in the membership of the group and large group workshops undermine the safety of the holding environment because they work against the building of trust. Once-a-year sessions or frequent sessions with disconnected topics and no support in trying new strategies are less likely to result in changes to teaching. In the learning labs we studied, teachers had support from their colleagues in collaborative professional development and an instructional coach to try out new teaching strategies and to reect on what they learned. Learning labs were structured as repeating professional development opportunities, with each lab session providing both the opportunity to discuss what had
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happened since the last lab, including how teachers were doing with their commitments to change, and the opportunity to see new ways to address the problem of practice that the group was working on. As we saw with the high school groups changing beliefs about who could benet from group work, it often took more than one lab session for teachers to test their assumptions, modify their beliefs, and change their practices. Because they could rely on ongoing support in a collaborative environment, many teachers were able to make changes to their practices in order to benet students. Role of the Schoolwide Environment This study conrms the importance of the schoolwide environment in supporting and sustaining improvement in instructional practice and supports the assertion that good teaching is an institutional accomplishment, not just an individual one (Clarke, 2007). At the high school, teachers followed up the lab with discussions of progress in regular meetings and also received instructional coaching to help implement new strategies. Teachers came to labs having modied strategies in their own classrooms based on observations and discussions. The whole school was engaged in creating a coherent school vision with a focus on instructional practices to increase the engagement and learning of English language learners, so other school practices, such as schoolwide professional development activities and administrators giving teachers feedback based on evaluations, provided additional support for the teachers in the lab. School policies, norms, and processes accommodated the labs. In contrast, at the middle school, only the instructional coaching element was present, and not all teachers took advantage of coaching between labs. Logistical and scheduling issues sometimes interfered with lab meetings. There was little administrative support for continued study and work on the problems of practice between labs. Teachers like Rosa seemed to give up on what they had learned, despite coaching support, because of a lack of grade-level team and administrative support.
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Changes in teacher practice at the middle school were less evenly spread across the group than at the high school. The administration and support staff, including coaches and facilitators, as well as regular collaborative opportunities for collegial conversation all need to provide a coherent support system for the change. School policies, norms, and processes must embrace and nurture the change. For example, though a teacher may come to believe that cooperative learning is a better way to engage students than lectures and rote practice, if the schools administration has decided using a program that entails primarily direct instruction and memorization is preferable, the teacher will nd it hard to act on his or her beliefs. Care needs to be taken not to overgeneralize this small study of 22 teachers to all teacher learning in all schools. Not every teacher in our study had the same learning needs, and not every teacher changed his or her practice in the same way. Nor do we think that learning labs are the only way to respond to teachers learning needs. However, we argue that professional development opportunities for teachers need to take into account the kind of learning required, that is, technical versus transformative, for sustained change in practice. Collaboratively Generated Responses to Local Problems Learning labs and other activities that support teachers transformative learning can serve as an antidote to programmatic, lockstep, one-size-ts-all prescriptions for instructional improvement. Teachers in learning labs collaborate in the construction of the local knowledge required to solve local problems of practice. Whitford and Wood (2010) describe teachers in successful professional learning communities, of which the learning labs we studied are an example, as co-constructors of responses to students learning needs:
The teachers participating in [professional learning communities]and the leaders of schools and school districtsmust reject recipe-like answers to complex problems, which are all too often proffered in schools. They must come to see that constructive responses to childrens learning problems demand keen attention, not only to generalized ideas about research-based
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practices but also to the specic, the idiosyncratic, the relational, and the personal. (p. 18)

Whitford and Wood (2010) also noticed that the teachers they studied developed a sense of shared responsibility and accountability to each other for their practice. Their description applies to the teachers in the learning labs we studied as well:
They began to build a shared responsibility for developing knowledge with each other about teaching and learning. They became accountable to each other for what was happening in their own classrooms as they tried out ideas generated in the group and shared with group members their tales of success (or woe). Their work together became highly meaningful for their work with their own students. (p. 5)

The results of this study of learning labs corroborate the value of collaborative, cohort approaches to professional learning environments for teachers. Elements of the learning lab environment that support transformative learning for teachersa safe environment to take risks; embeddedness in teachers experience and current practice; and opportunities to articulate, test, and revise assumptions about teaching and learning with colleaguesshould guide the design and implementation of professional learning opportunities.

THE AUTHORS
Ruth Brancard is a member of the research faculty in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver. Her work includes designing and implementing professional development activities for in-service secondary school teachers in schools with high percentages of English language learners. Jennifer QuinnWilliams is codirector of AIMS English, an educational consulting rm. She designs and facilitates professional development for teachers of secondary and adult English language learners. Her interests include understanding and supporting organizational and personal change in schools. She is coauthor of the Newcomer series of ction for adults.
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