Network Logic - Index of

Network logic
ways I seek to contribute to the advancement of academic theory and
research, as well as to teacher practices, in a field where rapid change
and development can surely be expected.
Professional development and student learning
Lieberman and Wood seek to ‘untangle the threads’ of the dynamics
of the NWP that, in their view, potentially builds the essential bridge
between teachers’ professional learning (their own passion) and
student learning (and its outcomes in measured achievements, the
passion of politicians pressing for higher standards). If a causal link
can be demonstrated between the kinds of teacher practices
developed in the NWP and improved student learning, then this not
merely adds to our knowledge of ‘what works’ in schooling; it also
validates the approaches to professional learning that Lieberman has
long advocated rather than the top-down interventions that have
been attractive to political reformers. Lieberman and Wood do not
adduce evidence for this causal link: they assume it. If it does exist –
and we must look elsewhere for the hard evidence – then the
relationship between teachers’ professional development and student
test scores will, as they claim, be a complex one, with many threads
that need to be untangled. Or, to put the matter in more conventional
research terms, there will be many variables involved and these are
likely to interact with one another in complex ways.
In essence, the essay offers a list of possible variables, but little
insight into which of them might be of particular importance or into
the ways in which they interact (or, in their terms, become ‘tightly
woven’). The evidence is based on interviews with the participants
and observation of some (unspecified) activities. It appears that the
participants were enthusiasts for the project and their claims of its
success are taken at face value. It is not clear how much of the analysis
is based on the accounts yielded by the interviews and how much on
what is inferred from researchers’ observations. It is, in short, a piece
of preliminary or exploratory ‘soft’ research, but the findings are not
then set within a harder framework, such as a set of hypotheses that
might be tested. This is a pity, for if there is firm evidence of a causal
80 Demos