Co‑constructing Visions for the Future of Teaching

8. School redesign and the implications for teacher professional roles and retention

Abstract

Linda Darling-Hammond, leading education researcher and professor emeritus at Stanford University, along with Dion Burns, a senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, challenge the mismatch between the outdated Fordian “factory model” of schooling and modern knowledge on learning and teaching.

An expert perspective by Linda Darling-Hammond and Dion Burns, Learning Policy Institute

In this third decade of the 21st century, the global environment is characterized by rapid change. While the recent pandemic stimulated many efforts to transform schools, the process of change has been slow and difficult. Meanwhile, the teaching profession in the United States and around much of the world finds itself in crisis, with profound teacher shortages that are most severe in schools serving more disadvantaged students (International Labour Organization, United Nations and UNESCO, 2024[1]).

In the US, a 2024 analysis found that at least 400,000 teaching positions, or around 1 in 8, were either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments. Teacher turnover is a significant driver, with around 8% of teachers leaving the teacher workforce each year, mostly for reasons other than retirement (Learning Policy Institute, 2024[2]).

Though exacerbated by teacher layoffs following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and increased stress and burnout in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic (Pressley, 2021[3]), the origins of the crisis lie deeper, with an inherited structure of schooling drawn from the industrialisation of more than a century ago.

Our factory model heritage

At the root of the crisis in teaching is the way teaching was conceptualized when our current school structures were designed a century ago. As scientific managers used Henry Ford’s assembly-line model to make schools “efficient” in the early 20th century, they sought to manage schools with more tightly prescribed curriculum, more teacher-proof texts, more extensive testing, and more regulations. To standardize curriculum and reduce the amount teachers needed to know, the Prussian age-grading model was adopted, along with the platoon system, sending students in groups of 30 to another teacher at each grade level and to a different teacher in each subject matter starting in junior high school. Like workers on an assembly line, teachers were expected to stamp students with a lesson and move them onto the next worker to stamp them with the next. The image of a moving conveyer belt on which students were placed while teachers performed a predetermined series of operations on them was a powerful metaphor for order and efficiency. This “improved school machine” as it was called, lowered both plant costs and teacher costs per pupil and simplified teachers’ work. Furthermore, feminisation of the teaching force was a deliberate strategy to lower salaries, as women were paid less than men.

Schools were designed for teachers to work alone, in “egg-crate” classrooms. Their jobs were viewed as managing groups of students and overseeing additional duties in the lunchroom or playground as assigned. There was no need to schedule teacher time for planning, collaboration, or ongoing learning because teaching was designed to be largely rote work, wholly managed by the externally prescribed lessons. To this day, US teachers work more hours per week and year and have less time for collaboration and planning than teachers in most countries around the world.

Max Weber, the theoretical father of bureaucracy, noted that its virtue was that it could be run “according to calculable rules and ‘without regard for persons.’” (Weber, 2009[4]). Unfortunately, it is this very “virtue” that has made teaching and learning so difficult in modern schools. Today’s challenge—to create strategies that can support the individually appropriate teaching needed to produce high levels of success for diverse learners—was not the goal of the last century’s reformers. They wanted to use methods that could teach “without regard to person,” and to a remarkable extent they did. Although today’s schools are less regimented than they once were, most still carry the marks of their industrial origins in the standardized structures, curriculum, and tracking systems; the design of the teaching job; and the lack of time and space for collaboration among teachers and personalisation for students, except in working for extra hours against the grain. As one teacher put it:

: “How do we teach these kids in a way that they can learn? I don’t believe that the present educational structure can do that anymore. It’s like trying to run a battleship with a tugboat engine” (Poplin and Weeres, 1992, p. 11[5]).

These conditions make teachers’ work both difficult and frustrating. It is hard to support success for students in organizations that are not designed to teach them in the ways they can learn best. And teacher efficacy – the ability to make a positive difference for children – is the most important motivator for continuation in the profession.

Creating a new foundation for schooling through the science of learning and development

Research from neuroscience, learning sciences, education, and other fields has defined a new science of learning and development (SoLD) which illustrates that the assumptions on which the factory model are based are deeply flawed. Among these are the facts that:

• Intelligence and potential are not hardwired at birth. Instead, the brain is malleable and is shaped throughout one’s life span through reciprocal relationships between biological factors, relationships, and contexts.

• Standardisation is not the most efficient means of instruction, since each child’s development is unique, with its own strategies and pacing. Indeed, variability in development is the norm, not the exception.

• Learning is not merely the receipt of information. Learning is simultaneously social, emotional, and cognitive and greatly affected by both emotional contexts (safety, trust, lack of stigma or distress) and by individuals’ opportunities for agency and inquiry.

• Relationships matter greatly. Developmentally positive relationships are central to healthy development and learning and provide a buffer against adversity and stress, while promoting resilience.

• Children learn and perform best under conditions of low threat and high support. (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020[6]).

In short, developmentally positive relationships and supportive contexts are key catalysts for learning. How schools create these contexts matters, both for student learning and teacher success and satisfaction.

Designing for relationship-centred schools that promote deeper learning

These findings set the foundation for a new framework for teaching, learning and the organization of schools, centred on the needs of the whole child. Schools that have successfully redesigned and that are producing much greater success for students and teachers prioritise relationship-centred and personalised practices. (Darling-Hammond, Alexander and Hernández, 2024[7]) This requires fundamental changes in school structures, especially in secondary schools: Small learning communities featuring teaching teams that share students, advisory systems that ensure that every student is well known, block schedules that allow more time for deeper learning and reduce teachers’ pupil loads are all part of a structural redesign that supports stronger relationships.

More authentic and applied curriculum and performance-based assessment stimulate inquiry, motivation, and agency. In successfully redesigned schools, instruction shifts from a transmission model of teaching to one that encourages critical thinking, collaboration with peers, and integration of information from across subject domains. Social and emotional learning are interwoven with academic content to help students develop metacognition, perseverance, and a growth mindset.

Building teachers’ professional capacities in redesigned schools

The redesign of schools to prioritise developmentally supportive relationships and centre the needs of the whole child also changes the working conditions that teachers experience and shifts teacher roles in ways that leverage and enhance their professional capacity. Strategies such as block scheduling allow teachers to spend longer periods of time with a smaller number of students and provide opportunities to teach across disciplines (Darling-Hammond, Alexander and Hernández, 2024[7]). Reorganising time can create room for advisory structures in which teachers work with small groups of students, common planning time for teachers, and time for collaborative professional learning. These provide important opportunities for staff to build relationships, to share and learn from each other, and for mutual support. It also allows teachers to be more connected to their students and families—and ultimately more successful in supporting student learning.

In redesigned schools, teachers are also empowered to participate in school governance and decision making and to take on leadership roles in the school. For example, teachers can participate in faculty committees that shape the decision making process. They may work on specific issues, such as staff hiring, curriculum development, and planning professional learning, as well as overall school design and policy issues (Darling-Hammond, Alexander and Hernández, 2024[7]). Shared decision making within the school also supports success, as problems can be tackled and solved as they arise, with the input of those with expertise and experience.

In these ways, the teacher’s role is more than that of an instructor transmitting a prescribed curriculum to students. Teachers are curriculum developers, advisors, learning coaches, and leaders of student learning. Teachers work in interdisciplinary teams, personalising instruction and supporting students’ academic and social and emotional learning needs to support student achievement (Darling-Hammond et al., 2022[8]). Teachers are also enabled as collaborative professionals, sharing practices and resources, mentoring novices, and giving and receiving feedback for mutual development. Teachers progressively take on leadership roles, continually developing their capacity as part of career development (Hargreaves, 2025[9]). This can include participation in cross-school teacher networks, so that effective practices can be spread systemwide (Lieberman, Campbell and Yashkina, 2016[10]). This can include participation in cross-school teacher networks, so that effective practices can be spread systemwide (Lieberman, Campbell and Yashkina, 2016[11]). Thus, as the nature of teaching and learning changes, teacher professional collaboration underpins educational improvement. As a leading scholar of teacher leadership describes:

“There is no student engagement without teacher engagement. Professionally driven innovation ignites the intrinsic rewards of teaching.” (Hargreaves, 2025[9])

Supporting teacher leadership and retention

Redesigning schools in ways that enhance professional working conditions for teachers is essential for addressing the high levels of teacher attrition. Opportunities to work in collaborative school environments, participate in ongoing professional learning, and engage in school decision making are associated with increased job satisfaction, lower burnout rates, and greater retention in the profession (OECD, 2020[12]). Lower attrition, in turn, helps create a more stable learning environment and supports more positive student-teacher relationships (Partnership for the Future of Learning, 2021[13]).

Conclusion

There is a need for a transformative approach to schooling that both addresses the needs of students and provides support for educators (International Labour Organization, United Nations and UNESCO, 2024[1]). Developments in the science of learning and development provide the evidentiary foundation for this approach, centred on the needs of the whole child. Redesigning schools with this vision creates opportunities for shared decision making, teacher professional collaboration and professional learning, as well as contexts that enable greater student success—the most important condition for teacher retention.

References

[7] Darling-Hammond, L., M. Alexander and L. Hernández (2024), “Redesigning High Schools: 10 Features for Success.”, Learning Policy Institute, https://www.redesigninghighschool.org/sites/default/files/rk/attach/Redesigning_High_Schools_10_Features_REPORT.pdf (accessed on 4 May 2026).

[6] Darling-Hammond, L. et al. (2020), “Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development”, Applied Developmental Science, doi: 10.1080/10888691.2018.1537791, pp. 97-140, https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2018.1537791.

[8] Darling-Hammond, L. et al. (2022), Educator Learning to Enact the Science of Learning and Development, Learning Policy Institute, https://doi.org/10.54300/859.776.

[9] Hargreaves, A. (2025), “Teacher leadership in a time of inclusion, innovation, and collaboration”, Understanding Teacher Leadership in Educational Change: An International Perspective, pp. 9-26.

[1] International Labour Organization, United Nations and UNESCO (2024), United Nations Secretary-General’s high-level panel on the teaching profession: Recommendations and summary of deliberations, https://www.ilo.org/publications/recommendations-and-summary-deliberations-united-nations-secretary-general-0 (accessed on 6 May 2026).

[2] Learning Policy Institute (2024), “The state of the teacher workforce: A state-by-state analysis of the factors influencing teacher shortages, supply, demand, and equity [Interactive map]”, https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/state-of-teacher-workforce-interactive (accessed on 25 February 2025).

[10] Lieberman, A., C. Campbell and A. Yashkina (2016), Teacher Learning and Leadership, Routledge, New York: Routledge, 2017., https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315673424.

[11] Lieberman, A., C. Campbell and A. Yashkina (2016), Teacher learning and leadership: Of, by, and for teachers, Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315673424.

[12] OECD (2020), TALIS 2018 Results (Volume II): Teachers and School Leaders as Valued Professionals, TALIS, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/19cf08df-en.

[13] Partnership for the Future of Learning (2021), The Teaching Professional Playbook, https://www.teachingplaybook.org/ (accessed on 4 May 2026).

[5] Poplin, M. and J. Weeres (1992), Voices from the Inside: A Report on Schooling from Inside the Classroom. Pt. 1, Naming the Problem, Institute for Education in Transformation.

[3] Pressley, T. (2021), “Factors Contributing to Teacher Burnout During COVID-19”, Educational Researcher, doi: 10.3102/0013189X211004138, pp. 325-327, https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211004138.

[4] Weber, M. (2009), From Max Weber: essays in sociology, Routledge.