Network Logic - Index of

5. Untangling the threads
networks, community and teacher
learning in the National Writing
Project
Ann Lieberman and Diane Wood
In the press for higher standards on the one hand and test results on
the other, much of what we are learning about the necessity and
support for teacher learning in professional communities is getting
lost. Questions about how teachers learn, what they do with what
they learn, and whether it ever shows up in what students accomplish
are all being buried. But these are precisely the kinds of questions that
might lead us to understand better how to build an essential bridge
between teachers’ professional development and student learning.
It was these questions that excited us, serving as an impetus for a
1998–2000 study of two sites of the National Writing Project (NWP), 1
arguably the single most successful professional development
network in the United States. We wanted to find out what teachers
learned in the NWP; what, if anything, they took back to their
classrooms; and how it showed up in the work they did with
students. 2 Although we already understood that the sites were
organised locally and yet were linked nationally, we wanted to know
more about how these organisational arrangements were developed
and sustained and what effects such arrangements had on teacher
learning.
In the beginning
Long before we began our study we had heard from teachers that the
NWP ‘transformed’ their lives. We wanted to know exactly what they
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