Please note: This paper will be published in a conference volume and should not be distributed, cited, or quoted. Piaget Goes Digital Negotiating Accommodation of Practice to Principles Martha Stone Wiske, David Perkins, and David Eddy Spicer Introduction Helping teachers improve their practice so that students learn better is a perennial goal of education (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996, 2003). Laudably, it is one thoroughly studied, but regrettably one rarely achieved on a wide scale. The largest fault line is all too familiar. Most professional development consists of transmitting information to teachers, a strategy that does not work significant changes in their practice (Drago-Severson, 2004; Little, 1993). Even when teachers learn how to enact new strategies, they typically do not change their accustomed practice very much (Cohen, 1990). The reality is that substantial changes in professional practice involve “sailing against the wind.” Countervailing forces at both the individual and the institutional levels tend to maintain the status quo. With teachers, as with other professionals, individual beliefs and habits commonly hinder taking in new ideas or applying them in practice. Institutional factors like pervasive norms, policies, and organizational structures constrain individuals who want to change (National Academy of Education, 1999). To invoke one of Swiss developmentalist Jean Piaget’s most familiar conceptions, teachers – and institutions – often assimilate what they learn in professional development into their existing instructional patterns rather than accommodating their practice to new principles. Page 1