National Network for Educational Renewal
The National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER), dedicated to the simultaneous renewal of P-12 and teacher education, will celebrate its twenty-second birthday in 2007. The network and its ongoing vitality, can be attributed to John Goodlad and his colleagues’ insistence on continual reflection regarding the mission, clarity on the conditions necessary to enact the mission, and forwarding key strategies to advance the work.
The conditions necessary to advance the mission are articulated in the 19 postulates from John Goodlad found in Educational Renewal: Better Teachers, Better Schools (1994) and the more recently added 20th postulate. (link to postulates)
Primary strategies for advancing the mission include:
Partner schools — Schools that agree to an expanded mission where public school and university colleagues work collaboratively to improve education for current students and future educators. Partner schools provide access to quality knowledge to all learners, provide exemplary professional development for all adults in the learning community, provide school-wide clinical experiences for pre service teachers, and engage in school-wide inquiry to improve learning for all students.
Leadership Associates Programs — Professional development sessions in local settings and network-wide programs. These academically rigorous and highly interactive programs build collegial networks, promote conversation that clarifies the work, and develop leadership to strengthen the NNER.
Annual Conferences — Settings host NNER colleagues and others to promote new learning, review progress and challenges to advancing our goals, and network to increase support advancing the Agenda for Education in a Democracy.
Background
In Renewing Schools and Teacher Education: An Odyssey in Educational Change, Ken Sirotnik detailed the work of the NNER through 2001. He describes the roots of the work in Goodlad’s early research and the initiation of the original version of the NNER following publication of the widely acclaimed A Place Called School. He notes that the early emphasis on school renewal was followed by a second iteration of the NNER focused heavily on teacher education in response to reports that grew out of the Study of the Education of Educators, as reported in publications such as Teachers for Our Nation’s Schools. Currently, the NNER is mindful its responsibility to the simultaneous renewal of schools and places that prepare educators.
By the twenty-first century, the NNER had begun to evolve as an increasingly self-governing organization working collaboratively with the IEI to advance the AED. Simultaneously, the IEI began to expand its leadership development. Beginning in 1998, the Institute initiated its Journalism, Education, and the Public Good program in an effort to increase the quality of information the public has regarding education as a result of the interaction of educators and journalists. In 2002, with funding from the Kellogg Foundation, the IEI launched an ambitious initiative designed to develop networks of school, university, and community members in local settings. Both the work with journalists and the Kellogg initiative began a process of expanding the partnerships to include lay members of the community with the educators previously engaged in NNER partnerships. A third IEI initiative, the League of Small Democratic Schools provides a network of support for schools within the NNER and other like-minded small schools that promote democratic practices.
Organizational Structure
In 1985, the NNER was created by John Goodlad and colleagues. In 1986 the network consisted of 10 school-university partnerships. The school-university partnerships, network constituents, have since grown to include 24 settings. These constituents involve 42 universities throughout the United States and Canada. As the constituency grew, recommendations from a Futures Committee 1997, led to changes in the network that included payment of dues from each NNER setting, and election of a governing council. Over the next several years the decision was made to retain a part-time executive director and after another year of study, adoption of the current governance structure that includes an expanded governing council with provisions to ensure representation from schools, arts and sciences, and colleges of education. The current governance structure includes a tripartite council with three representatives (higher education arts and science, education, and public schools) from each setting to provide guidance on the vision of the network, and an executive board to handle business between the two annual meetings of the governing council.