The Leadership Aspects of Teaching

The Leadership Aspects of Teaching

Perspective on Planning • Planning is vital to teaching. • Clark and Yinger (1979) reported that teachers estimate they spend between 10 percent and 20 percent of their working time each week on planning activities. • The process of learning to teach is described by some as that through which teacher candidates learn to decide what curriculum content is important for students to learn and how it can be enacted in classroom settings through the execution of learning activities and events. (Doyle, 1990); Stronge, 2002)

Planning-The Traditional View • The dominant perspective that guides most of the thinking and action on this topic has been referred to as rational-linear model. • The focus is on goals and objectives as the first step in a sequential process. • The model assumes a close connection between those who set goals and objectives and those changed with carrying them out. • Good educational planning is characterized by carefully specified instructional objectives (normally stated in behavior terms), teaching actions and strategies designed to promote prescribed objectives, and careful measurements of outcomes, particularly student achievement.

Rational Linear Model Actions Goals Outcomes

Planning-An Alternative Perspective • During the last 20 years, many observers have questioned whether the rational-linear model accurately describes planning in the real world. (Fullan, 2001; Weick, 1979, for example). • The view that organizations and classrooms are goal driven has been challenged, as has the view that actions can be carried out with great precision in a world characterized by complexity, change, and uncertainty.

Nonlinear Planning Model • In the nonlinear model, planners start with actions that in turn produce outcomes (some anticipated, some not) and finally summarize and explain their actions by assigning goals to them. • Proponents of this model of planning argue that plans do not necessarily serve as guides for actions but instead become symbols, advertisements, and justifications for what people have already done. • This model may describe the way many experienced teachers actually approach some aspects of planning.

Nonlinear Model Outcomes Actions Goals

Theoretical and Empirical Support • The research on teacher planning and decision making is substantial and has grown significantly in the past three decades. • It has shown that • planning has consequences for what students learn, • beginning teachers and experienced teachers plan differently • experienced teachers do not always plan as expected

Consequences of Planning • Planning for any activity improves results. • Research favors instructional planning over undirected events and activities. • Some types of planning may lead to unexpected results. • Planning processes initiated by teachers can give both students and teachers a sense of direction and can help students become aware of the goals implicit in the learning tasks they are to perform.

Another consequence of teacher planning is that it produces a smoothly running classroom with fewer discipline problems and fewer interruptions. • Education research for the past three decades has consistently found that planning is the key to eliminating most management problems. • Teachers who plan well find they do not have to be police officers because their classrooms and lessons are characterized by a smooth flow of ideas, activities, and interactions.

Planning and the Beginning Teacher • Researchers and educators have been puzzled over why it seems so difficult for beginning teachers to learn some of the important planning skills. • The fact that experienced teachers attend to different planning tasks and cues from those attended to by inexperienced teachers presents some challenging problems for a beginning teacher. • Most teacher planning occurs in private places, such as the teacher’s home or office. • By their very nature, planning, and decision making are mental, non-observable activities. Only the resulting actions are observable. • When written plans are produced, they represent only a small portion of the actual planning that has gone on in the teacher’s head.

Three Phases of Teacher Planning and Decision Making (Table 3.3) Before Instruction • Choosing content • Choosing approach • Allocating time and space • Determining Structures • Determining Motivation

Planning and the Instructional Cycle • Teacher planning is a multifaceted and ongoing process that covers almost everything teachers do. • It is part of an overall instructional cycle. • Some aspects of planning precede instruction and in turn precede assessment of student learning. • The whole planning process is cyclical. • Assessment information influences the teacher’s next set of plans, the instruction that follows, and so on.

Three Phases of Teacher Planning and Decision Making (Table 3.3)(cont.) During Instruction • Presenting • Questioning • Assisting • Providing for practice • Making transitions • Managing and disciplining

Planning and the Instructional Cycle Planning prior to instruction Assessing Instructing

Three Phases of Teacher Planning and Decision Making (Table 2.3)(cont.) After Instruction • Checking for understanding • Providing feedback • Praising and criticizing • Testing • Grading • Reporting

The Time Spans of Planning • Teachers plan for different time spans, ranging from the next minute or hour to the next week, month, or year. • Obviously, planning what to do tomorrow is much different from planning for a whole year. • However, both are important.

Robert Yinger (1980) was able to identify the five time spans that characterized teacher planning: • Daily planning • Weekly planning • Unit planning • Term planning • Yearly planning

Choosing Curriculum Content • Curriculum in most elementary and secondary schools is currently organized around the academic disciplines • History • Biology • Mathematics • English Language Arts • And so forth…

Consequently, an important planning task of teachers will continue to be choosing the most appropriate content from the various subject matter areas for a particular group of students. • This is no small feat, because there is already much more to teach on any topic than time allows, and new knowledge is being produced every day. • Beginning teachers are often bewildered about where content comes from and the role teachers play in selecting it in today’s schools, deciding what to teach is no longer done by teachers independently.

What to teach decisions are influenced by many factors, some of which are: • Society • State Curriculum • Local curriculum frameworks and guides • School-wide curriculum agreements • Community values • Each subject has a learned society or professional association that makes recommendations about what should be taught. • Sometimes these recommendations are made in the form of performance standards for what students should learn.

State Curriculum Frameworks and Mastery Tests • Over the past decade, state departments of education have exerted an increasing amount of influence over what is taught in schools. • Most states have curriculum guides or frameworks, that define what students should know and be able to do as they proceed through the various levels of schooling. These curriculum guides/frameworks exist for each subject area and each grade level. • It is expected that teachers will provide learning experiences for students at the various levels that will ensure that students can meet the standards and ultimately the overall goal.

State frameworks have an important influence on what is taught in schools because mastery tests are usually built around the performance standards identified in the frameworks. • These tests are administered to students on a regular basis. • Students scores are summarized by schools and/or school districts. • Scores on mastery tests are often published in local newspapers so parents and citizens will know how students in their school compare to students elsewhere in the state.

Community Values and Local Curriculum Frameworks • Community values and societal viewpoints have an important influence on what is taught in schools, particularly in subjects that contain topics that controversial. • Larger societal views influence the content and standards that appear in the frameworks developed by professional associations, and local community values impact local curriculum frameworks.

Textbooks are selected and curriculum guides are often planned to parallel state frameworks. • When this has occurred, such guides provide excellent tools for a beginning teacher to use. • The job of beginning teachers becomes mainly that of making sure they understand the scope and sequences of this content and find ways to interpret and teach it effectively to a particular group of students

Factors Influencing What is Taught in Schools (Figure 3.6)

The Specifics of Planning • Choosing Curriculum Content • Learning Society Standards • State curriculum Frameworks and Mastery Tests • Community Values and Local Curriculum Frameworks • Tools for Choosing Content • Use Concepts of Economy and Power • Attend to Knowledge Structures • Curriculum Mapping

The Specifics of Planning (cont.) • Instructional Objectives • The Mager Format of Behavioral Objectives • More General Approaches • Which Approach to Use • Taxonomies for Helping Choose Instructional Objectives • Categories of the Knowledge Dimension • Categories of the Cognitive Process Dimension • The Affective Domain • The Pyschomotor Domain

The Specifics of Planning (cont.) • Lesson Plans and Unit Plans • Daily Planning • Weekly and Unit Planning • Yearly Plans • Time-tabling Techniques to Assist Unit and Yearly Planning • Other Planning Decisions

Tools for Choosing Content • Bruner (1962), a long time ago, argued that teachers should strive for economy in their teaching. • Using economy means being very careful about the amount of information and the number of concepts presented in a single lesson or unit of work.

Take a difficult concept and make it clear and simple for students, not taking any easy concept and making it difficult. • It means helping students examine a few critical ideas in depth rather than bombarding them with unrelated facts that have little chance of making an impact on learning. • The principle of power is one in which basic concepts from the subject area are presented in straight forward and logical ways.

Figure 3.8 • The background of the illustration represents the whole field of possible content, which obviously cannot be covered. • The largest ring represents knowledge and skills that a teacher might determine that students should be familiar with. • The middle ring would be that knowledge that is determined to be very important. • The third ring in the represent the “enduring” understandings, the big ideas that should remain with students after they have forgotten most of the details.

Establishing Curricular Priorities (Figure 3.8)

Wiggins and McTighe offer four questions for teachers to ask as they select what to teach. • 1. To what extent does the idea, topic, or process represent a big idea having enduring value beyond the classroom? • 2. To what extent does the idea, topic, or process reside at the heart of the discipline? • 3. To what extent do students have misconceptions about the idea, topic, or process and find it difficult to grasp? • 4. To what extent does the ideas, topic, or process offer potential for engaging students?

Attend to Knowledge Structures • Teachers must choose content based on the basic ideas and structures of knowledge for a particular field, taking into account, of course, their students’ prior knowledge and abilities. • Heidi Hayes Jacobs (1997) has offered the idea of curriculum maps as a way for teachers in particular buildings or school districts to chart what they are doing and to help make sure gaps in important skills and understanding and not too much repetition and overlapping occur. Curriculum mapping begins with each teacher describing the processes and skills he or she emphasizes, the essential concept and topics he or she teaches, and the kind of learner outcomes expected.

Instructional Objectives • By definition, teaching is a process of attempting to promote growth in students. • Student learning is the “bottom line” for teachers and for schools. • The term instructional objective is used to describe the teacher’s intention for students’ growth and change. • Instructional objectives are like roadmaps: they help teachers and their students know where they are going and when they have arrived at their destination.

Instructional objectives written in the Mager format became known as behavioral objectives that require three parts: • Student behavior – What the student will be doing or the kinds of behavior the teacher will accept as evidence that the objective has been achieved. • Testing situation – The condition under which the behavior will be observed or expected to occur. • Performance criteria – The standard or performance level defined as acceptable.

When teachers write behavioral objectives using the Mager format, the recommendation is to use precise words that are not open to many interpretations. • Examples of precise words include: write, list, identify, compare, contrast. • Examples of less precise words include: know, appreciate, understand. • Well written behavioral objectives give students a very clear statement about what is expected of them, and they help teachers measure student progress.

Some critics believe that relying on specific student behaviors as the sole measure of learning does not provide evidence of larger learning goals that may not be observable. • Some educators advocate first writing global objectives and then writing specific objectives that are consistent with the larger (usually unobservable) ones.

A third approach for writing objectives has been developed by scholars who recently revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. • The Bloom’s revisionists Anderson et al., 2001) argue that objectives that use more traditional frameworks have focused only on content and skills of instruction and have ignored the cognitive – the “way students think” dimension of teaching and learning.

They have identified a standard format for stating objectives that requires only a verb and a noun. • The verb generally describes the intended cognitive process and the noun describes the knowledge students are expected to acquire. • Example of an objective: • The student will learn to distinguish (verb for cognitive process) among federal and unitary systems of government (noun for knowledge).

The form and use of instructional objectives, as with many other aspects of teaching, are likely to remain a controversial subject for a long time. • The approach teachers use will be influenced somewhat by school wide policies, but in most instances, considerable latitude exists for individual preferences and decisions.

Sample Lesson Plan Format (Figure 3.11)

Sample Unit Plan Format (Figure 3.12)

Check, Extend, ExploreThe Specifics of Planning • What are the major factors that influence teachers’ decision about what to teach? • What is the primary purpose of a curriculum map? • How do the various approaches to writing objectives vary? What have been the major criticisms of the behavioral approach to writing objectives?

Check, Extend, ExploreThe Specifics of Planning (cont.) • What are taxonomies? What are the category schemes in Bloom’s revised taxonomy? • What are the differences between unit plans and daily plans? • How can teachers adapt instruction to meet the individual needs of their students?

Planning for Time and Space • Time • Total Time • Attended Time • Available Time • Planned Academic Time • Actual Academic Time • Engaged Time • Academic Learning Time (ALT) • Space

Check, Extend, ExplorePlanning for Time and Space • What does research show about how teachers vary as to amount of time spent on similar subjects and work activities? • What are the seven categories of instructional time as defined by Weinstein and Mignano?

How Much Time is There, Anyway? (Figure 3.14)

Check, Extend, ExplorePlanning for Time and Space • How might different types of lessons affect the way a teacher might arrange classroom space?

The Leadership Aspects of Teaching