So you applied for a per session position: “Member of the School Inquiry Team,” and, lo and behold, you’ve been selected … what have I gotten myself into?
Congratulations! You are now part of the Klein plan to change the face of education, sort of …
You may remember in your graduate course(s) that you participated in an Action Research project. A group of classmates selected an “issue,” (maybe, low academic achievement among Afro-American male students), designed an “experiment,” investigated the literature, collected data, implemented the “experiment,” analyzed the data, and, theoretically, adjusted your classroom practice.
Action Research is a process for a teacher, or, hopefully a group of teachers to reflect upon their practice in a collegial setting … the UFT Teacher Centers have supported this process in Centers around the city for many years. Needless to say it is a voluntary process.
But, for Sandra Stein, the leadership guru at Tweed, if the Inquiry Team process (aka Action Research) is a good idea … mandate it for each and every school. Last year the 321 Empowerment Schools struggled with the Sandra Stein iteration of the Inquiry Team process … next your it’s each and every school.
* Collect up a Team in the school (offer per session as a “cookie”)
* Design a method to study and identify 15-30 low achieving kids.
* Create an “issue” around the areas of literacy/numeracy.
* Train one of the Team members as a Data Specialist.
* Share the results of action research with the entire staff, and
of course, the Team members will be greeted with wild applause, hosannas … and will ride off into the sunset.
The motto chiseled over the mantle of Tweed has not faded, “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.”
Sorry Joel … you’ll never coach a winning team.
On a successful team the sum of greater than the parts. The “players” share, sacrifice, are committed to playing together, defending, taking risks, all for the Team … and the coach is the leader.
The leadership model at Tweed is the Simon Legree model .. expecting teachers, dragging leg irons, to ask, “Getting’ off boss …”
Hopefully thoughtful principals will implement Inquiry Teams in a collegial manner. Designing teams with the Chapter Leader and their members, not selecting teams in the dead of night … transparency not stealth.
Interim assessments, data driven instruction and action research are good ideas, not new ideas. Twenty years ago President Reagan demanded that the Soviets “Tear Down That Wall…,”
Mr. Klein, tear down that wall … the wall of arrogance.
2 Comments:
1 Patience
· Dec 26, 2008 at 1:41 pm
There seems to be lots of disagreement among the members of theinquiry team about the focus of the research. Some say it is student focused, others say it is teacher focused. Some say the students that were chosen for the inquiry this year were selected last year. Some say they were selected this year. Some say that the fact that some teachers have five or more targeted students in their classrooms, while others only have one or two this year is a coincidence. Other say, no it is not. Furthermore, these students who are being identified as needing instruction in a particular skill are not allowed to be targeted by the teacher. If they already exhibit weaknesses in these areas, why wouldn’t we want to target them? What is the sense of discovering a weakness and not using the “training” provided to see if it ameliorates the problem? This begs the question, again: Who is being evaluated? Why make the outcome a factor of a whole group lesson if the data proves that these students have not been performing all along? As far as the training, who determines whether the training is adequate? If the training is just – “Read this handout on teaching XYZ”, does that constitute training? What about the evaluation? Could poor training be a factor? Could poorly constructed evaluative methods be a factor? Who keeps the inquiry teams accountable for the quality of the processes they initiate? How can we as teachers assure ourselves that the “action research” data compiled by the inquiry team is fair and unbiased?
2 shesaidsomething
· Nov 27, 2010 at 10:29 pm
I think many of Patience’s questions are rooted in the the practice of scientific research. I don’t know how teacher education prepares for research but there is no doubt that in biology there is a clear standard for publishable research. Since there are publications for publishable, peer reviewed educational research it seems feasible that there could be a market for small scale studies directly from the classroom.
This action research would be peer reviewed and have many of the accountability measures that academic research is held to, while keeping in mind the constraints that “action research” is under.