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Research
Domain: Group Five - Informal Learning in Different Workplaces
Title
of Project: Informal Learning in School Community
Partnerships: Teachers' Learning about Education Restructuring
Start
Date: April 1, 1997
Academic Investigator: Dr. Kari Dehli
The
research is a small-scale exploratory study of teachers'
informal learning processes during a period of educational
change and 'restructuring.' The research is part of a larger
ethnographic study (funded by SSHRC, April 1996 to March 31,
1999, grant number 410-96-0848) of how four Toronto elementary
schools implement policies of parental and community
involvement in school governance by establishing School
Advisory Councils. Such advisory councils are now mandated by
law in Ontario, through Bill 160. The main study traces
school-community-parent interactions in the formal setting of
meetings and through interviews with parents, community
representatives, principals and teachers. This small research
project focuses on how teachers learn about and understand
educational change, and how they learn to incorporate specific
curriculum and evaluation innovations into their daily work. A
small number of open-ended interviews have been conducted with
elementary school teachers as part of the larger project.
Fewer interviews than expected were conducted in 1998-99, and
we would like to move the main research activity for this
project to the 1999-2000 funding year, in order to carry out a
larger number of interviews with teachers in the Spring of
1999.
What
are we looking for? In these interviews we explore whether and
how teachers in the four schools of our ethnographic study
adjust their work with children and reporting to parents.
Although the research is preliminary, this is what is emerging
thus far. While teachers see few direct effects of School
Advisory Councils as such on their classroom work, they
describe in great detail how new reporting procedures have
altered their teaching practices, their understanding of
curriculum and their relationships with children, parents and
colleagues. New report cards, yearly tests of Grade 3
students, growing use of homework and the introduction of a
more standardized curriculum are especially important in this
regard.
How
and what are teachers learning? While they describe
professional development workshops offered by school boards or
the Ministry of Education as useful but insufficient, they
learn how to use the new reporting mechanisms through
self-initiated and informal means, and/or by colleagues and
principals. Beyond learning the mechanics of how to use the
new report-cards, however, we are interested in how teachers
describe the many ways in which they 'adjust' their teaching
strategies, curriculum thinking and interaction with children
in order to generate good performance by students on tests and
to demonstrate improved achievement in reports to parents.
This, more subtle aspect of teachers' learning is, we would
hypothesize, far more consequential for their work and the
school experiences of children. Very briefly, together the new
curriculum, testing and reporting mechanisms insert an
outcomes or performance-based (termed 'expected') framework
for teacher thinking and children learning. For some teachers
this framework confirms their view of teaching and learning,
for others it represents a shift for some, we suspect, a
major shiftfrom process-oriented, experiential, holistic
and/or child-centred teaching and learning, to one that is
concerned mainly (though not completely) with achievement and
performance, and particularly those kinds of achievements that
are rendered visible, measurable and countable in tests and
report cards. It could be argued that this preliminary
research demonstrates that a standardize curriculum and
regular testing will lead teachers to 'teach to test.' While
this may be the case, such statements do not tell us much
about how this process occurs, nor do they allow for space for
teachers' potential and actual agency. In the preliminary
interviews with teachers we can see that their thinking and
pedagogical strategies are quite complex, creative and varied,
and at times surprising.
We
would like to continue our exploration of how teachers
understand, explain and account for these shifts which, in our
view, are at the heart of contemporary educational reform. The
proposed research activity, carried over from 1998-99, will
consist of ten to fifteen open-ended interviews with
elementary school teachers, beginning with teachers in the
four schools where we are conducting the larger study. Towards
the end of the school year (May-June 1999), we will bring
together a small group of elementary teachers (4-6) to discuss
their experiences with grade 3 tests, new reporting procedures
and curriculum.
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