Knowledge and Skills of Professional Teaching Project

hello everyone,

Good to see you all yesterday and Louise, we missed you! The notes from our meeting yesterday are posted under the ‘Subcommittee Dates and Notes’ tab. Please take a look to remind yourselves of your individual task before our next meeting, and to otherwise reflect on how reflective and thoughtful we are as a group (smile).

Happy holidays to you and your families!

James

Please ckeck out the libguide.enc.edu/teacher_knowledge_base page as I have had several articles on culture added to the readings.

Lorne

Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, glibly says no…

Take a look at a brief overview, and a Washington Post clip from its Leadership series here.  I’d love to hear what you all think…

Wagner gives his “Tirage Survey” which I find interesting.  I like his statement that “Common agreement on curricular and instructional components, as well as order and discipline, are established through consensus.“   The survey divides the assessment into “professional collaboration, affiliative and collegial relationships, and efficacy and self-determination.”  I think the survey divisions make for interesting conversation and would like to hear others’ comments on the survey and its benefit for us as a group.

  http://www.jstor.org/pss/27540438

A study published in the Journal of Educational Research (abstract link available) listed four aspects of teacher burnout involving culture which may give us some direction as well:

  “The findings in this study indicated that four major school culture variables contribute to teacher burnout: (a) the drive toward measurable goal-achievement behavior imposed on teachers by school administration, (b) lack of trust in teachers’ professional adequacy, (c) circumscribing school culture, (d) and disagreeable physical environment.”

Hi everyone,

Stephen recently posted a really compelling set of questions that I would love to re-pose get others’ responses and thoughts. There are a number of prompts here, so feel free to respond to as few as one or as many as strike you! I agree with you, Stephen– the conversation so far has been nicely prodding.

Here are some nuggets from his comment posting:

In two of the readings ‘Good Seeds Grow in Strong Cultures” and “A Shift on School Culture” — excellent articles — I was struck by the school being the unit of description, as if the individual members of the school culture do not bring a professional culture with them. I wonder what it means to be a “teacher.”

• Do teachers share any professional culture — acts, discourse, ways of thinking — that come with their being teachers, in the way that exist when individuals become part of their professions?
• I wonder how one identifies and uses the already existing “culture” of a person who is a teacher. What do teachers share because they have become teachers in the way that the Hippocratic Oath is a given for a doctor?
• Is teaching a profession whose members expect to get better, sharing their craft work with colleagues in order to improve?
• [What do] teachers purportedly bring with them as part of their craft identity [as individuals that might be separate from an existing school culture].

A good comment-thread conversation we have going! Lorne raised the point about a ‘school culture accountability’ of sorts… and the difficulties that can arise when some adults either are not ‘on board’ or seem opposed to some elements of that culture.

What do you all see as other complications when trying to establish a professional school culture among the adults in a school (administrators, teachers, support staff, parents and other community partners). Do you feel there should be a ‘hard line’ when it comes to ‘dealing with’ adults who don’t quite fit in a particular cultural mindset? What can lead to successful buy-in of all involved?

In the article Good Seeds Grow in Strong Cultures, the authors identify 12 cultural norms that affect school improvement”:
1.  Collegialty
2.  Experimentation (I might suggest risk taking in terms of trying out new ideas and methodologies)
3.  High expectations
4.  Trust and confidence
5.  Tangible support
6.  Reaching out to the knowledge base
7.  Appreciation and recognition
8.  Caring, celebration and humor
9.  Involvement and decision-making
10. Protection of what’s important
11. Traditions
12. Honest, open communication

In an interview with Dr. Kent Peterson, he suggests a number of features of positive school cultures:
1.  a widely shared sense of purpose and values that is consistent and shared across staff members
2.  group norms of continuous  learning and school improvement that the  group reinforces, the importance of staff learning and a focus on continuous improvement in the school
3.  a sense of responsibility for a student’s learning
4.  collaborative and collegial relationships between staff members – people share ideas, problems and solutions – they work together to build a better school
5.  a real focus on professional development, staff reflection and sharing      of professional practice – people interact around their craft, improve their teaching and do so as a shared collaborative

To begin the process of a discussion, how do the above characteristics/descriptions of school culture align with the list we developed at our meeting on Nov 10?  To what extent should we expand our descriptions/list of components of a school culture?  To what extent do we need to modify our descriptions?  Once we do develop a list/description/features, how then do practicing teachers and pre-service teachers adopt/practice/learn them and become part of their habits as teachers – how do they learn to put them into their practice in a school setting?

Descriptions from Nov 10 meeting

*In a productive professional school culture in a school, we find the following structures, processes, procedures, behaviors, habits of mind, values.  (Stephen)

Behaviors  (collaboration (looking at student work, data.), risk-taking, mutual accountability, communication, reflective,

Structures (mentoring program, PLCs, decision-making structures, communication vehicle, responsive to needs, coaching, team-teaching, peer observation, inquiry/study groups, job-embedded professional culture, own professional growth plan, differentiated growth career and leadership possibilities, effective evaluation and supervision model)

Shared Values (belief all students can learn, respect, responsibility, obligation to continually improve and get better [efficacy], accountability, that education leads to success, (constructivist approach?), inquiry stance on practice, reflective, learning is rigorous and relevant

Professional Practice  [does this fit in behavior?],