“Changing the Way I Teach”

Gaining New Knowledge, the NWP, and Empowerment

These “collective teacher efficacy” experiences appeared to parallel the NWP’s approach to professional development, which we have witnessed throughout our years of work with the NWP. Although Blau (2003) does not use the term collective teacher efficacy, he articulates its functioning within the NWP:

Having experienced what it means to learn in a community of learners, teachers are inclined to count such learning as more authoritative and authentic than any other and to think of such learning as the proper aim of their own instruction. They therefore become determined to turn their own classrooms into learning communities that will function like a Writing Project, where respect for the intelligence of every learner is the starting place for all activity, where every member is seen as a source of knowledge and expertise, and where all learners are expected and required to take responsibility for their own learning, as well as assisting others to learn. In such a community, learning entails the production of knowledge as well as its reception, and knowledge is always seen as provisional and subject to challenge and refinement. (p. 16)

Many of the teacher empowerment designs sound like tenets of the NWP: Every colleague is a potential helper; teachers should teach other teachers; teachers should contribute to the collective knowledge through public forums; learners should “own” their learning; learning should occur in practice and rapport; learning communities must have several entry points; teachers must reflect on their teaching, which occurs when they reflect on their learning; teachers should take a stance of inquiry; and teachers should individualize their professional identity and connect it to the professional community (Lieberman & Wood, 2002, pp. 41-42; NWP, 2012). The NWP states that it addresses “knowledge, expertise, and leadership” in American educators, seeking to promote growth in writing abilities, as its name suggests, and to advance learning at all levels, across the curriculum.

The NWP tenets echo Galen’s (2005) proposed strategies for administrators wishing to promote teacher empowerment, noting that learning communities are “a place where all participants—teachers, principals, parents and students—engage in learning and teaching” (p. 33). Farrell and Weitman (2007) state that learning communities consist of considering every person as an expert with a given field and valuing every person’s expertise. This idea reflects the NWP motto, stressing every teacher has something of value to share: teachers teaching teachers (NWP, 2012). As Lieberman and Friedrich (2007) state, NWP teachers are both teachers and learners.

This partnership design is an established model within NWP, at every level. Not only is NWP a nationwide network, but it also fosters relationships at the state level. In our home state of Missouri and in many other states, site directors and others affiliated with individual sites join forces in statewide networks, cooperating to build projects, seek funding, and liaison with state departments of education. The NWP also builds relationships with public universities, sharing equally in the responsibilities and rewards of housing a site on a university campus (NWP, 2012). Many of these sites embrace a “shared directorship” model, with two or three professionals working together as the directors of that site. This cooperation extends to the teacher consultants working together in their “Summer Invitational Institute” (SI), in advanced and special topics summer institutes, wherein they share strategies, ideas, theories, and advice in navigating the political world of education. As Gallehr (1984) states, “We are not alone,” meaning everyone within the NWP umbrella has support—from directors supporting directors, to teacher consultants supporting other teacher consultants.

The NWP has built an infrastructure that builds teacher knowledge and support, and then uses that expertise and network. Teacher consultants become “teacher leaders,” providing professional development to schools in their geographic area. St. John and Stokes (Inverness Research, 2008) state, “This group of leading teachers is not only encouraged to remain in the profession, but their skills are tapped and their energy harnessed as they serve their fellow teachers” (p. 15). These researchers also point out that 98% of NWP teacher consultants stay in education throughout their professional lives, bucking current trends in teacher retention, and that 72% remain in educational employment after retiring. These numbers imply that NWP consultants continue feeling passionate about education and have a system of support and a depth of content knowledge keeping that interest alive.

Teachers’ Voices and Empowerment

Before teachers can confer a sense of empowerment to students, they must first feel themselves to be strong and engaged professionally and personally. They must speak and write in confident and articulate voices, using principles of rhetoric and critical discourse analysis, such as specificity, emphasis, metaphor, repetition, syntactic variety, qualifiers, superlatives, and others (e.g., Bizzell & Herzberg, 1990).

However, motivating and sustaining the rhetoric of confident voices is the teacher’s self-efficacy. Enderlin-Lampe (2002) cites Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory, in which an individual’s certainty in his or her own capabilities leads to positive interactions with his or her environments. As Protheroe (2008) states, “A teacher’s sense of efficacy can lead to gains in the classroom” (p. 42). More simply, confident teachers are more likely to positively impact students and instill within them better self-confidence. (Confidence is often best observed in teachers’ voices.) But how does one develop self-efficacy? Denham and Michael (as cited in Enderlin-Lampe, 2002) determined that efficacy results from a mixture of environmental factors, such as one’s education, peers, society, and administration. Teachers’ knowledge, then, teamed with the people surrounding them, determine in large part their level of efficacy.

Before discussing how these environmental factors might influence teacher efficacy, it may help to identify a teacher with efficacy. Protheroe (2008) states that teachers with strong efficacy plan and organize more, experiment, and listen to new ideas. More persistent and resilient, they are less judgmental of students and less likely to refer problematic students to special education. Implicit in this description is that these teachers have some ability to make decisions in their classrooms and perhaps in their school, district, community, or in the larger educational system, like in state or federal governments’ educational decisions. In addition, these teachers have a recognized knowledge base and are acknowledged as experts in their fields. Again, this inner and outer reflection of empowerment rises: To have some autonomy, teachers must feel confident in themselves as professionals and be recognized by others as experts.

Protheroe promotes the next level of teacher efficacy—collective teacher efficacy—stating that not only do individual teachers believe in their own abilities to make a difference, but that they also believe all teachers within their community try to exert a positive effect on student achievement. Looking at this influence in another light, collective efficacy means teachers work together—sharing ideas, talking about the process, motivating each other—to ensure students reach their utmost potential: a community of change.

Social Context and Empowerment

Farrell and Weitman (2007) propose teacher empowerment as three-pronged: teachers experiencing more access to decision making, achieving greater knowledge, and seeing improved teacher status. However, Esposito and Smith (2006) assert teacher empowerment, especially used in action research, includes four elements: choice, design, sharing, and results. Within this context, teachers were able to choose subjects related to their content, rather than suffer a scripted classroom; design the method of their classroom practices; share positive and negative outcomes with appropriate personnel (administration or peers); and know results benefited their classrooms because they were linked to teacher- and student-identified needs. Empowerment includes an element of autonomy and a sense of efficacy; those choices will make a difference in the teacher’s and students’ lives.

Likewise, Allen (2004) finds teacher empowerment has four voices, each compelling more from teachers: a voting voice, an advisory voice, a delegated voice, and a dialogical voice. The first three are described as providing input, but unless that input is followed, they have little real power. The dialogical voice, the most complex of the four, entails reflection and divergent perspectives, amending instructional practices. Empowerment involves a give and take, a dialogue between the teacher and others, and what the teacher says will have impact on decisions—and the future. This intermixing of stimulus from within and without a person has been promoted as a key feature of empowerment (Chen, 2002), reflecting our definition earlier of empowerment’s root word, “power.” Davis and Wilson (2000) state empowerment consists of two types: relational and personal. Relational consists of all those outside forces as well as the individual’s effect on those forces, whereas personal is the “power to exercise one’s craft with confidence” (p. 349).

Overall, this internal and external dynamic reflects Paulo Friere’s (2007) theories on empowerment:

In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation. (p. 83, emphasis in original)

Friere’s notion of transformation—of “seeing reality as process”—applied to the highly successful teachers explored in UpDrafts: Case Studies in Teacher Renewal (Fox, 2000).

The teachers in the UpDrafts study, regardless of age or teaching experience, initially seemed to view their reality as static. When major changes occurred, like being assigned to teach a new grade level or taking a new position at another school, they dealt with feelings of personal trauma. When major changes occurred in their personal lives, like the death of a sibling at a young age, they encountered feelings of professional trauma. One affected the other. These “ruptures” or “transformations” in teachers’ lives—professional and personal—necessitated they somehow renew themselves for the classroom. The guiding question of the UpDrafts study was, “How do teachers renew themselves for the classroom?” Their research revealed four main themes or processes, which appear relevant to our study, if readers keep in mind that “teacher renewal” and “teacher empowerment” are quite similar constructs. It is very difficult for one to exist without the other.

This perception of power and teachers’ influence on the world (and its influence on them) plays an essential role in teacher empowerment. This role is explored in several studies that connect teacher empowerment with student empowerment. Ingersoll (2007) finds schools where teachers exert more authority in their own classrooms, and within the entire school structure, generally experience fewer issues with student misconduct, have better cooperation between teachers and administrators, and sustain a lower rate in teacher turnover.

Similarly, Wallace’s (2006) study of teachers during a professional development series, much like the Literacy Academies, found teacher empowerment could be related directly to student empowerment. For instance, “Cordelia [a teacher in the study] saw that instruction in both reading and writing came down to empowering students with strategies to be successful on their own” (p. 153). As this teacher was strengthened in her content and her perception of ability to act (two facets of power’s definition), she transmitted that power to students by giving them options and strategies.

Participants

For this article, we focus on the 8 teachers who participated both years of the study, as the data from the other 28 participants reaffirm the findings associated with the smaller group. All participants were middle school teachers from across the state, teaching in Grade 5 through 9, in Missouri public schools. All 8 participants teach in rural locales, some hours away from any metropolitan area. Of them, 2 had earned a graduate degree, with the rest having earned bachelor’s degrees. At the beginning of the study, the participants’ teaching experience ranged from 2 years to 14 years, averaging 6.5 years. Although the original agreement with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education intended the academy teachers be from schools not making adequate yearly progress, the academy participants generally comprised teachers whose schools were at every level of proficiency in language arts. Figure 1 provides more detailed information on the individual participants.

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Figure 1.

Participants’ number of years teaching experience, highest degree held, and school location

The participants in this study were asked to complete several tasks the 1st year: administer pre- and postwriting prompts for adjudication at a national scoring event, complete a survey during their Literacy Academy, and consent to be observed and/or interviewed in the fall directly following their Literacy Academy experience. Six interviewers, trained at a day-long session for norming purposes, conducted these interviews. For this article, the data analyzed only included the surveys, the interviews, the observations, and the informal communications between the researchers and the academies’ coaches.

In the 2nd year of the study, the requirements changed little; teachers administered pre- and postwriting samples for adjudication nationally, completed a survey in the spring, and were observed and interviewed in the spring. This time change from fall to spring may have been a critical factor in findings, as it allowed more opportunity for the Literacy Academy practices to be implemented, reflected on, and judged. An interviewer from the previous year conducted seven interviews, whereas an NWP teacher consultant, trained via video conferences and emails, conducted the eighth interview. Only the surveys, interviews, observations, and informal communications with the academy coach comprised the data being analyzed.

Data Collection

The extent to which participants and coaches were willing to share limited the data collected in the study. If they were unwilling to share or uncomfortable talking about events, then the study would have stalled. In addition, relying on others for data collection took some of the control for this research out of our hands. Thus, we were mindful that this situation also limited the data collection, seen in key questions going unasked during some of the interviews. However, it allowed a level of objectivity, as interviewers had little incentive to sway results; their only tie to the results derived from being NWP consultants within the MWPN.

The surveys provided little data concerning empowerment, autonomy, or support. These documents were referenced for information that might color the teachers’ perceptions and feelings, such as number of years teaching, other professional development taken, and level of education. All relevant data were compiled and analyzed before the 2nd-year interviews were conducted. This approach had the intent that the second set of interviews could include “support questions” unique to each individual as well as repeat questions asked during the previous year’s interview. These questions included queries into classroom practices, such as processes in teaching writing, purposes and audiences for student writing, specific practices from the academies being used in the classroom, and assessments. Other topics addressed the school climate and generated much of the data used here. These queries included the following items:

As mentioned previously, some interviews included follow-up questions unique to each interviewee based on the 1st year’s interview. In addition, the interviewer was allowed a measure of flexibility to follow tangents as she saw fit.

Research Questions

Within the situated context of the NWP professional development model, with its major and overlapping components of increasing teacher knowledge while developing their feelings of support and autonomy/efficacy, we arrived at the following overarching question for this study: How do teachers renew themselves for the classroom?

We developed the following subquestions:

Figure 2 summarizes our data collection stages and sequence.

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Figure 2.

Sources of data

Analysis of Data

Our primary data set is transcripts of interviews focusing on what the teachers implemented from knowledge they gained from the literacy academies. We were equally interested in how teachers applied their new knowledge as well as the roles played by their colleagues, administrators, and so on. Our analysis attempts to explore whether a more confident teacher provides other benefits to education. Although connecting empowerment of teachers to student writing performance cannot be proven here, certainly the implicit logic remains: More knowledgeable, more confident, more supported teachers make a difference, as the studies noted earlier suggest. In addition, we initially relied on a semigrounded theory approach, reading through the data and letting topics rise to the surface. Because this study grew out of a previous, larger study, some overlap occurred in the types of evidence we explored. This report includes the coding scheme used for each study (see Appendix A, “Coding Scheme for the Literacy Academy Study and the Teacher Knowledge, Voice, and Support Study”). For example, in the first study on teachers’ practices, the code “PD” was used to indicate “professional development” and “C” indicated “community of teachers.” By the second study, these two codes were collapsed into one: “collegiality.” Later, this category expanded back into two categories: “SE” and “SD”—“social empowerment” and “social disempowerment,” respectively. Appendix B contains a sample of a completed classroom observation sheet intended to record, as objectively as possible, what occurred in that classroom at that specific time (i.e., time intervals for each task or event, the teacher’s talk and actions, the students’ talk and actions, and general observations). In addition, please see Appendix C for a sample coded transcript of the current study only.

After the initial coding for the first study (by one of us as well as several other interviewers), we returned to the transcripts with a “semigrounded theory” approach to determine whether impressions of knowledge/social context and support/voice were valid. Next, we returned to the transcripts and “wrote out,” in more descriptive, cohesive phrases, what we were observing with these codes. Both researchers were in agreement by the final review of transcripts, accompanied by resolving minor differences in coding.

Once we settled on four themes, we analyzed data accordingly, striving to identify evidence for each theme, whether stated directly (as an assertion or simple declarative sentence) or strongly implied by the participant. We discussed any differences we may have had on any piece or instance of data and reached agreement. The following sections summarize our procedures for analyzing our three major constructs: knowledge, voice, and social context. The social context construct was categorized into two basic categories: “The teacher expresses support from others for her work” and “The teacher expresses a lack of support from others for her work.” Sometimes, one or more of these constructs were observable in the same piece of data.

Knowledge Gains and Confident Voices Demonstrate Teachers’ Power

As the literacy academies were intended to develop teacher knowledge in writing instruction, we analyzed the data—after our initial semigrounded theory approach—to identify instances where the teachers indicated they had learned something or benefited from new knowledge. We then reviewed the data to see what this new knowledge had wrought in the professional lives of the participants, finding that it seemed to lead to increased confidence and, to a lesser extent, a greater sense of power. Overall, participants’ discussion and reflection on their knowledge gained from their professional development experiences—and its association with their sense of confidence and voice—is this study’s most consistent finding.

That teachers focused squarely on their new knowledge is not surprising, as this question was asked first and most consistently throughout the 2 years of the study. However, what we discovered in our second study were some of the ways in which teachers framed and articulated their reflections on new knowledge: They often did so in confident, strong voices, as revealed in their language. In this excerpt, the underlining is ours:

Each student keeps a journal and it has been great for me. They use their journals to write their responses to in-class stories and discussions. It has been most helpful for them to do book reports based on journal writing. They have to make three book reports each quarter [a curriculum requirement], and it was really hard to get more than a summary from them. Now they have to write three journal entries as they read their books. I set days when the journal entries for the book are due. Some students still write only a few lines, but most are now filling one to one-and-a-half pages. From these three entries, they have to go back and pick the most important parts to share in a final book report. I can really see differences. There is more original thought and less regurgitation in the reports. Plus, I am hearing more voices . . . more true voices in their writing. (Interview, November 25, 2007)

This teacher, Laura, focuses on the new knowledge that she gained from her professional development experience. She does so in a strong and empowering voice for a few somewhat overlapping reasons. First, the underlined words are her superlatives and intensifiers, which directly communicate confidence: great, most, really, only, and so on, as she emphasizes the positive elements.

Second, Laura uses a few ancient rhetorical devices (Bizzell & Herzberg, 1990), such as short sentences to emphasize her point, such as “I can really see differences.” Another rhetorical device for emphasis is repetition, as in “I am hearing more voices, more true voices.” Third, Laura focuses on specific elements of her teaching—not only “book reports” and “journal entries,” but the number required within a specific time frame. Not only is she specific about products but also about processes, focusing on when students make journal entries as well as the type of thinking and writing her students are generating (original thought with personal voice). When teachers speak and write in specifics, they are describing their world in a way that resides closer to real things, closer to reality, on the ladder of abstraction. Compare Laura with another teacher who might speak of her professional development in general terms: “My approach to learning has been enhanced.” When Laura speaks about three book reports and journal entries, we are confident that she knows what she is talking about. We are much less certain about the speaker of generalities. We believe communicating about new knowledge in tangible, concrete terms—in language we can see—is empowering in itself, because the speaker/writer’s linguistic “map” more closely matches his or her “territory” or actual reality. Such persuasive language tends to generate more of the same, adding to a sense of empowerment.

Finally, Figure 3 clarifies Laura’s “before and after” contrasts, which serve to give her voice authority and power.

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Figure 3.

Laura’s contrasts

When teachers use language devices (consciously or unconsciously) such as intensifiers, superlatives, short sentences, repetition, specificity, and vivid contrasts, their voices ring true and strong, embodying confidence and suggesting empowerment.

Of course, not all of the data denoting our knowledge/voice construct are as powerful as Laura’s, nor can we expect them to be. The differences are mainly ones of degree, as they, too, prove to be effective teachers. One key principle of No Child Left Behind Act is valuing “highly qualified teachers,” teachers who are skilled in content and classroom management. In addition, the more knowledge one attains generally leads to increased confidence. These teachers’ participation in the academies seems to have lead to amplified confidence within the classroom. Overwhelmingly, the teachers in each set of interviews indicated that the academies boosted their process knowledge and improved their confidence. For instance, Henry, in the following excerpt, uses some similar intensifiers and contrasts but with less specificity than Laura used, in the previous excerpt. Nonetheless, he stated that the academies sparked a transition in his teaching:

Literacy Academy has really changed the way I teach in that I have learned that I can make things fun. I was very unsure of myself in that area before, but I’m trying . . . from that experience I came up knowing that it doesn’t have to be a big deal what you do with the kids. Little things can make the whole difference for them and can make it fun and can lead them into really good thinking projects, so it really changed the way I look at everything. (Interview, March 26, 2009)

Gwen had a similar experience, stating,

I never would have [considered herself a writer] until I was asked to do this class [Literacy Academy]. My knowledge and abilities are becoming to where I can consider myself a writer. It’s been a wonderful element of this journey. (Interview, January 7, 2008)

Both of these teachers explicitly relate how the academies boosted their confidence by enlarging their information base and by giving them tools, such as sustained writing practice, strategies to teach writing, introductions to the latest research, time for lesson planning, and opportunity to test those tools before reflecting on their work in the follow-up meetings. These statements highlight Protheroe’s (2008) conception of efficacy: The teachers feel confident in their own abilities and in how they can affect positive change in their students.

Self-confidence brought about by new knowledge was also observed in teachers who assumed authoritative stances, as Fran did, when arguing with the theorists: “Atwell has a lot of great ideas, but she also didn’t have the kind of challenges you get with 150 students from all backgrounds” (Interview, April 17, 2009). Thinkers must debate the proven leaders in the field, although this stance is not the only way these teachers asserted their confidence. Zoe, for instance, uses definitive statements to illustrate her confidence: “There are other ways to measure their learning” and “Some things work better in mine than other classrooms, and I’ve just got to find what” (Interview, December 6, 2007). In the latter example, Zoe is confident that a solution, a strategy, exists that will enable her students to succeed, and she is sure that she can find it. The confidence does not rest in her knowledge base but in her belief that she has the resources to find that solution. Likewise, Naomi’s knowledge validates what she sees as a teacher and the actions she takes: “If they don’t [get it], I have to redo or I can’t go on as a teacher . . . it’s my professional responsibility” (Interview, December 6, 2007).

Definitive expressions of confidence were also observed in Fox’s study (2000) of highly effective teachers. Like Fran, Zoe, and Naomi, who assumed authoritative stances with their acquisition of new knowledge and practice, teachers in Fox’s study developed their professional voice, when they distinguished how they were alike and different from their colleagues and communities. This process is known as “simultaneous differentiation and integration” (e.g., Moffett & Wagner, 1991). The assertive stances taken by Laura, Henry, Fran, Zoe, and Naomi use a confident tone, declarative statements, and qualifying phrases to articulate how they are alike yet different from the theorists they are studying as well as from other teachers. In general, new knowledge and information helps teachers to broaden their grasp of how they fit into larger contexts—how they are similar and how they differ.

Furthermore, these teachers reveal certainty in their knowledge and abilities by wanting to share ideas and strategies gained from the literacy academies with other teachers in their district. Will, for instance, discloses strategies that he feels may help other teachers in his building, especially his fellow English teachers: “I’ve shared things with some of the other teachers and Mrs. Smith, the freshman English teacher. We’ve both used things from the Literacy Academy to enhance our teaching” (Interview, March 13, 2009). In addition, he is confident enough to reach out to retired English teachers and practicing teachers at conference meetings to share techniques and create a more collaborative relationship (Interview, March 13, 2009). These examples reflect Davis and Wilson’s (2000) ideas on personal and relational empowerment; in personal empowerment, teachers see the self as a writer working with other writers in workshop to improve each person’s craft, whereas in relational empowerment, they take teaching strategies back to other teachers in the school. Overall, these teachers gain varying measures of renewal through gaining new knowledge, trying it out in their classrooms, and articulating it in confident voices.

Knowledge Gains, Confident Voices, and the Freedom to Choose Demonstrate Teacher Power

Another factor involved in teacher renewal, as observed through the participants’ expressions of newly gained knowledge and a confident voice (as well as “social context” explored later in this report), is the freedom to choose. When teachers gain new knowledge that they consider to be useful or meaningful, they expand their repertoire of instructional options, providing them more choices in what they do and how they do it. When people have the ability to choose, they usually feel more powerful. Making one’s choice clear is largely an act of a confident, empowered voice.

This status especially applies to teachers. Teachers within this study who felt that they had some control, within their classroom and school, demonstrated more empowered rhetoric. As Esposito and Smith (2006) detail, they have a voice, a determining factor, in decisions. In our study, several participants conveyed that they had some autonomy. Henry demonstrated his confidence, implying increased autonomy that may lead to empowerment: “I wouldn’t have started that story with my struggling students if I’d known just how hard it would be for them” (Interview, December 7, 2007). His assertion shows that he has the chance to try and fail. This “inferred empowerment” through choice is also reflected in Penelope’s words, “No one system is perfect; you have to figure out which pieces you like and make your own program. Try a million things, pick what works and stick with it” (Interview, December 12, 2007). Although a confident voice is a little more implied in Henry’s example, it is nonetheless present. Henry is confident enough and has established support that gives him the incentive to try new things. Accordingly, he is confident enough in his experience and knowledge to admit failure.

These examples reflect Davis and Wilson’s (2000) personal empowerment concept, but other examples of autonomy suggest their relational empowerment notion. Teachers who profess a sense of autonomy within their classrooms and perhaps their school also seem to pass it on to students. Fran illustrates this point, conveying that she is free to focus on tailoring the lesson to augment each class’s weaknesses. However, she also conveys this ability to choose to her own students:

As things go on through school, different things occur, and we just use those . . . [For instance] The ice storm we had, we missed almost a week and a half of school. So, when we came back, I said I want to know about the best story you have about the ice storm—you know, accidents, illnesses, damage you had, what a good time you had, whatever—something that had to do with the ice. So, they had another idea that they could write about . . . They choose what they want to choose. I give them a lot of choice. (Interview, April 17, 2009)

In another school with less freedom, such as schools that use scripted curriculum, the ice storm would go unexplored, but because Fran is free to choose assignments and the order of curriculum, she can then pass on that autonomy to her students through the choices they make for writing.

Ruth also has autonomy in her classroom, admitting that she had quit using a writing idea of author Tom Romano because she had become burned out: “I got the degree and then I was so tired of writing papers in English that I really didn’t ever want to teach it again” (Interview, April 22, 2009). However, the literacy academies reignited her passion to teach writing:

When I went to the Literacy Academy it was like taking me back to where I was, and it was like “Oh, I kind of like this!” . . . I got to use some of the information I hadn’t used for years, and I started writing again. (Interview, April 22, 2009)

Obviously, Ruth has control of instructional practices in her classroom, but it took the community of learners and being reexposed to ideas to reignite her passion. However, without the power to choose what happens in her classroom, she may have continued to be apathetic toward writing, eventually “burning out.”

Social Contexts and Confident Voices Demonstrate Teachers’ Power

Social context plays a large part in this study’s findings. It is the environment—the social context—that helps determine the empowerment and autonomy teachers experience and, thus, can help to rejuvenate or decimate teacher passion and voice. Accordingly, after we had culled our initial topics from the semigrounded theory approach, we went back to the data with social context as a lens, revealing it to be positive or negative. First, this section illustrates the positive ways that social context can influence teacher empowerment and how social situations are expressed in confident voices. The final part of this section shows the “dark side” of social environments—how they can also disempower teachers.

Social Context Can Disempower Teachers

Several teachers in the first interview indicated many layers of disempowering forces, not just mandated curriculum. For instance, Zoe noted that a lack of cooperation among teachers impeded her own students’ learning, such as the teachers not agreeing on a standard vocabulary, forcing each teacher to spend extra time reteaching, when a shared, common vocabulary would be less confusing for students. As Zoe stated, “I’m going against the grain of what their homeroom teacher has taught them” (Interview, December 6, 2007). Likewise, incomprehensible and contradictory policies leech power from teachers. Fran feels that she teaches to the test “even if their criteria doesn’t make sense” (Interview, November 16, 2007), and Naomi feels disempowered by her school blocking students’ access to Internet blogs, even though her after school program focuses on writing in this online genre. However, although the various disempowering examples in the 1st year interviews were numerous, only two examples appear in the second interviews.

Teaching is not all happy thoughts, wish fulfillment, and unbridled success. These teachers communicated that many elements disenfranchised them, such as school policies and curriculum mandates. In her first interview, Gwen cites her school’s mandate to use the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) program, a measurement system intended to monitor the literacy acquisition of students, as an impediment restricting her time for teaching language arts (Interview, January 7, 2008). However, even here (largely due to her participation in the academy), the teacher’s sense of confidence rises. In her second interview, Gwen admitted that she now has chosen to use only parts of the DIBELS program and implement more of her strategies from the academy (Interview, February 20, 2009). She has seized control despite directions from her superiors, showing greater confidence and efficacy, believing she can make greater strides using the academy strategies over the canned program.

This growth of confidence and decrease of references to disempowering forces appeared in nearly all the second interviews. In addition to Gwen’s comment, only one other participant referred to feeling disenfranchised, and Gwen’s comments only arose when she was directly asked about DIBELS as a follow-up from her previous interview. So, the reduction of allusions to feeling disempowered could simply be attributed to the nature of the questions. However, other than the direct follow-up questions, the questions used were nearly the same as those used the previous year.

What could cause this decrease in feeling disempowered expressed by teachers in their initial interviews? Several factors may contribute. As the surveys reveal, these teachers are more experienced and therefore more aware of their own capabilities as well as the expectations of their schools. Although this is logical, other reasons may exist, each tied to the literacy academies. Again, time and experience could be partly responsible. The first interviews were conducted in late 2007, soon after most of the participants had completed the initial Literacy Academy, whereas the second interviews were performed late spring of 2009. Roughly, 17 months had elapsed, giving these teachers ample time to test the teachings of the initial academies and add to that knowledge, testing more strategies from the 2nd year of academy instruction. This elapsed time also enabled them to reflect on what had worked in their classrooms that 1st year and what else they might change to improve their teaching. Fran reveals this reflective stance in her final comment on her 2nd year:

This year’s academy was very beneficial. As a teacher that has taught for 11 years, I feel like the first six were a less than mediocre try at getting my students to achieve in writing. I had them write, but did not have the tools or the training to get them to write well. The ones that were naturally good writers received good grades; the ones that weren’t did not. But now I have the knowledge and experience to get even the traditionally “bad” writers to succeed and improve in their writing. My opinion is that these methods and techniques should be a part of teacher training throughout the state of Missouri.

In addition, these teachers had further solidified their community within the academy as well as in their school, greatly increasing their support system and possibly raising their sense of power. This networking also extended to the coach. In the 1st year, the nine academies had a total of 18 coaches; in the 2nd year, the total number of coaches was only 1. Another change was that most of the contact went from face-to-face academy sessions to online meetings the 2nd year. This increase in one-to-one communication with the coach may have also boosted their sense of autonomy and confidence, lessening their sense of having no control.

Of course, these possibilities are just that, potential explanations. Further research into teacher empowerment and the affect professional development like the literacy academies have on a teacher’s sense of control and autonomy is needed. However, after witnessing the seeming transformations of these teachers, we can no longer rest on the idea that knowledge is power. Instead, we must also consider that knowledge—combined with support and an extended process of learning, not only how to teach writing but also how to be writers ourselves—can help us become confident, persistent, and powerful. In this era of increasingly scripted classrooms, teachers may need this sense of confidence and efficacy to step outside of what others think should be done and rely on our own knowledge and experience of “best practices.”