Changing Our Ideas about Change
Keywords:
School reform, Teacher agencyAbstract
Current approaches to school reform stress tighter coupling of system plans and teacher behaviour, but ignore dilemmas inherent in teaching which may place limits on efforts to manage teacher behaviour. Starting from the teacher's perspective might be a more promising way to do research and make policies aimed at improving schooling. The notion of dilemma is lodged within a conception of school reform which takes the perspective of the teacher seriously. Rather than reform through management; the argument here is for reform through greater teacher awareness of dilemmas-in-practice and how they resolve them. The consequences of these resolutions become the agenda for reform.
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