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ERIC/RCS: Teachers as Decision MakersAuthor(s): Carl B. SmithSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 42, No. 8, Empowerment through Literacy (Apr., 1989), p.632Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20200246 .
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ERIG/RGS_
Teachers as decision makers Carl B. Smith _
Various metaphors have been used to describe the classroom teacher?cata
lyst, coordinator, moderator, and most
recently, decision maker. They arise from our continuing effort to under stand the role of the classroom teacher and to improve and guide teacher be havior. Each term tries to provide an
image of an important element in the
process of teaching. Some of them come from current theories on teacher behavior or from popular approaches, such as those that promote interaction in the classroom.
No one can move through one day without making decisions. But teach
ing as decision making has gained re cent endorsement from educators who are asking for powers they don't think teachers now possess.
Throughout the educational commu
nity "teacher empowerment and deci sion making" are being purported.
Disregarding the political overtones of those discussions and whether or not teachers are empowered to make the decisions essential to doing their jobs, we can nevertheless reflect on the deci sions that teachers do make and ways to improve that decision making.
The need to make a decision in
teaching arises with any situation where the teacher has an option. The teacher comes to a branching road and has to choose one of the paths that are
open?one book, one method, one ex
ample. Some of those decisions are
made on the run, almost without a sec
ond thought; but the ones we want to review here are those that involve re
flection and are apt to give direction to other decision making points that nec
essarily follow. If the purpose of teaching is to direct
the learning of a class and of individ
uals, the nature of the job involves
making decisions about where learners
are and how to keep them moving in a
profitable direction?how to help them become fluent readers, for instance.
When teachers in Tucson, Arizona, were surveyed to obtain a detailed de
scription of their decision making (Shedd, Conley, and Malanowski, 1986, ED 280 132), over 80% re
ported that their daily and weekly deci sions fulfilled 11 main responsibilities:
Keeping students on task
Observing progress to see when
plans needed to be changed Communicating expectations to
students
Making midstream changes in plans
Leading class discussions and
demonstrations
Administering discipline Assigning class work and home work
Delivering whole class lectures
Working with individual students
Instructing groups of students
Recording attendance
Each of these responsibilities requires decisions, whether these involve plan ning, interacting with students and other
professionals, or evaluating students and the teacher's own performance. These
responsibilities reveal the very active cir cumstances under which teachers work, and they suggest that teachers make a
great variety of decisions-many of which merit reflective thought. It is also clear that teachers see many of their re
sponsibilities operating on groups first and then on individuals.
Many teacher decisions fall into pre dictable categories: selecting objectives,
deciding how to motivate students, de
termining practice activities, selecting resources, deciding how to evaluate pro gress, etc. These could be managed in the planning or preteaching stage of instruction.
However, the teacher's planning does not tend to focus on objectives but rather on the selection of practice activities and on matching these to learners' character istics (Walter, 1984, ED 246 021;
Yinger, 1980, EJ 222 294). Nor do teachers tend to make decisions that in
corporate evaluation of student progress when planning their lessons (Shavelson and Stern, 1981, EJ 257 299). Teachers often select exercises that have motivated the students successfully in the past.
Teachers may do this because they be lieve motivating students is central to
learning. Such limited decision making, however, may result from unsystematic planning behavior.
Decisions made actively?that is, in the midst of daily activity?are more
difficult to examine empirically. Such decisions are diagnostic in a real sense because the teacher is reacting and in
teracting with the students and their re
sponses to the lesson. No matter how
carefully a teacher anticipates re
sponses, these can't really be planned, so decisions are often made moment to
moment. Active decision making may also rely on experience or personal philosophy. Teacher decision making might be described as more intuitive,
resembling the creative process, rather than as a systematic weighing of
alternatives.
For information on ERIC materials, write to ERIC/RCS at Indiana University, Smith Research Center, Suite 150, 2805 East Tenth Street, Bloomington IN
47405, USA.
632 The Reading Tbacher April 1989
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