| Read a Post for Constrained Professionalism: Dilemmas of Teaching in the Face of Test-Based Accountability | | | | Reply to this Post | | | A working teacher responds | | Posted By: Paul Rigmaiden on January 15, 2011 | | | | I see your study took place in a rural school where administrative support for teacher autonomy was a characteristic of the school. For me, that says volumes, because at a rural school the relationship between teachers and their principal is likely familial in nature. I teach sixth grade at an urban school where administrative support for teacher autonomy does not exist. The district has an administrative culture exacerbated by rankism (Fuller, 2008). This means many of the administrators see themselves as somehow better than classes of employees that are not as high in the district hierarchy as they are, including teachers. This may be attributable to human nature, but one implication of all this is that some of them appear to think that their sometimes whimsical, sometimes uninformed, sometimes ridiculous administrative decisions are equivalent to holy writ. I am fighting this by completing a doctorate in education. When I finish, I think I will be the only person in the district with a PhD in education; that is how I will fight back. |
| |
