They are victims of poor preparation and a system that frustrates their efforts to learn and change while they are on the job instead of supporting these efforts. In Japan, as Lederman points out, teachers spend nearly half their time working together to improve the lessons they teach and the way they teach them, and there is ample money to support professional development activities. Changing culture is never easy. The total is equivalent to the tuition for one year at a mid-priced university. Yet one of the curious and inexplicable frustrations of our work has been the difficulty of getting the money to sustain it.
Teachers love it.
And when it is well managed, it creates an intense, joyous learning process. Such interventions also lead to a greatly energized teaching corps, in which the new teaching style spreads to other subjects and brings with it technology that can fruitfully enhance the teacher's effectiveness. This is not flashy stuff. It is basic common sense. Lederman does not believe that schools can, by themselves, mount programs to bring about necessary changes in teaching and learning, and he may be right.