Schoolwide Learning Goals

Schoolwide Learning Goals

Much like individual classrooms, schools vary in the types of learning goals they emphasize. As Maehr and Midgley note, “Decisions, practices, and actions that have schoolwide effects are likely to symbolize the purposes and meaning of time spent in a particular school.” For example, some school “streess learning more for its own sake” while “others put special emphasis on extrinsic rewards and competition”

Some school leaders intentionally downplay differences in the relative ability of students and minimize crossstudent comparisons. Instead they communicate to students through their words and actions that effort is valued and that the puspose of learning is “to gain understanding, insight, or skill,” not to outtperform others. When leaders strive to communicate the latter message, they in turn are likely to influence the learning goals that students adopt, and thereby play” a profoundly important role in the determination of the nature and quality of student motivation and learning”

Teachers as well as students are affected by the signals sent out at the school level. School-level policies and practices tend to encourage or restrict teachers’ freedom to implement motivational strategies at a classroom level. In addition, school leaders are influential in creating the psychological climate of the school, which can either support or tear down teacher motivation and morale. In turn, teacher motivation and commitment affect student motivation, and vice versa.

RELATIONSHIPS WITH TEACHERS

RELATIONSHIPS WITH TEACHERS

From the responses provided by students in this study, the one element that appears to most strongly influence whether school is a place they enjoy is the perceived presence or absence of caring. The nature of students’ relationships with teachers is central to what makes school appealing or distasteful, inviting or uninviting. What students say they want is “authentic relationships where they are trusted, given responsibility, spoken to honestly and warmly, and treated with dignity and respect. They feel adults inside schools are too busy, don’t understand or just don’t care about them”

Both teachers and caring somewhat more personally and more tangibly than did teachers. Students experienced teachers as caring when they directly stated that they cared, “when they laughed with them, trusted them, asked them or told them personal things, were honest, wrote them letters, called home to say nice things, touched them with pats, hugs, hand shakes or gave them the ‘high five,’ or otherwise recognized them as individuals”

As Poplin and weeres note, “The relationship between students and their teachers seems to dominate students’ feelings about school.” When students who were interviewed made positive comments about school, “they usually involved reports of individuals who care, listen, understand, respect others and are honest, open and sensitive.”

Students repeatedly “raised the issue of care” when asked about their school experience, stating that “what they liked best about school was when people, particularly teachers, cared about them or did special things for them.” Conversely, students were vociferous about “being ignored, not being cared for, and receiving negative treatment.”

A SENSE OF CARING AND CONNECTION

A SENSE OF CARING AND CONNECTION

Students’ feeling and attitudes about school are linked to teachers. Wheter they have positive or negative associations with school is primarly based on and directly related to their experience with teachers.

Higher standards, more effective teaching techniques, better account-ability, clearer goals all may be necessary, but they are not likely to be sufficient. If students have teachers who care about them, expect much from them, and communicate a love of knowledge, the students will respond in kind. But all too often, the teens say, teachers appear to be uninterested, unwilling to challenge, and indifferent to the subjects they teach.

More attentive to students’ thoughts and feelings teachers will be in a better position to facilitate student motivation and engagement: As teachers learn more about how students think and feel, they will be able to create classes where students have fun because they are engaged in learning in diverse, purposeful, and meaningful ways.

Clearly, education consists of more than test scores and academic achievement, but even the goal of academic excellence will be compromised if feeling cared about is not an integral part of students’ school experience. As Nel Noddings (1995) states, “We should want more from our educational efforts than adequate academic achievement. But we will not achieve even that meager success unless our children believe that they themselves are cared for and learn to care for others.”

STUDENTS MOTIVATION

STUDENTS MOTIVATION

Motivation is perhaps no other quality is so important to success in school, nor so misunderstood. Motivation is the ultimate product of many aspects of the school experience: significant relationships between teachers and students and among students; a meaningful, well-taught curriculum; teachers who maintain high expectations and look for ways to help each student connect to the curriculum; opportunities for choice and self-evaluation that foster students’ ownership of learning.

Young children’s natural motivation to learn will survive only in schools where the curriculum is worth learning and teachers help students see why it is worth learning; where students focus on learning (not on competition or grades); and where students feel valued, and therefore are disposed to care about the school’s values, including learning.

Recent research suggests that practitioners who shift away from systems of rewards and punishment and, instead, actively involve students in shaping classroom climate and learning (through methods such as class meetings) promote both students’ motivation to learn and their commitment to democratic values.

Missing, from both Japanese childrearing at home and preschool and elementary education, are the rewards and consequences that are now commonplace in U.S. schools. Japanese elementary teachers focus their attention on building close, supportive relationships and involving children in classroom management.

Even at first grade, Japanese students run class meetings, set personal goals, self-evaluate their behavior, and discuss “the kind of class we want to be.” They form class “promises” and goals based on their class discussion. One goal of Japan’s national Course of Study is for students to develop “intimacy with classmates and an enjoyment of classroom life.”

Rewards and punishments are conspicuously absent from Japanese elementary classrooms, and teachers rely on students’ interest in well-taught, important subject matter, self-evaluation, and enjoyment of group life to gradually build discipline and support motivation to learn. Other teachers explained that rewards were used only as a last resort, when there was no relationship between student and teacher to build from.

CULTIVATING A LOVE OF LEARNING

CULTIVATING A LOVE OF LEARNING

Human beings are born with a hunger to learn, a seemingly instiable appetite for knowledge. Infants and young children appear to be propelled by curiosty, driven by an innate need to explore, interact with, and make sense of their environment. As one author notes, “Rarely does one hear parents complain that their preschooler is ‘unmotivated’ “ (James Raffini 1993).

“More than one In for students who enter first grsde leave before graduating, and many of those who do continue avoid making a personal commitment to the learning process.

Teachers usually enter the classroom with an inadequate foundation in both motivational theory and classroom application of motivational principles.

After children enter school, the level of parent involvement in their children’s education becomes very important.

Another way parents influence their children is through the transmission of values. If parents value learning for its own sake and this value is evident in their everyday lives, perhaps through activities such as pleasure reading or the pursuit of various hobbies, their children are more likely to cherish learning.

EDUCATION IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES

EDUCATION IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES

In its long march to the present, humankind developed skills of creating, sustaining, and transmitting culture. These cultural survival skills, which have persisted from prehistoric times to the present, became the basis of formal schooling. Preliterate persons faced the problem of survival in an environment that pitted them against natural forces, animals, and other hostile human beings. To survive, human beings needed food, shelter, warmth, and clothing. In order to transform a frequently hostile environment into a lifesustaining one, humankind developed life skills that eventually became cultural patterns.

For the culture of a particular group to continue, that culture must be transmitted from the group’s adults to its children. As the children learn the language, skills, knowledge, and values of their society, they inherit the culture. The earliest patterns of education involved (1) tool or instrument making, (2) the mores of group life, (3) and language learning.

As toolmakers, humans created instruments for their protection and for food gathering. Clubs, spears, bows and arrows, pottery, sleds and other instruments were means of gaining control over the environment. Whenever and wherever parents taught their offspring to make and use spears to catch fish or kill animals, informal educational forces were operating.

Primitive humans found scurity in group life, based on kinship and tribal patterns. Group life provided greater efficiency in gathering or growing food, in building shelters, and in protecting group members against enemies. Life in the human group was educational as children observed and learned from the older members of the group. Children were deliberately instructed in specialized tasks and roles by their parents, tribal storytellers, and priests. Over time, many of the patterns of group life became moral behavioral codes that were ritualized ways of dealing with the environment.

Important among the human being’s powers was the ability to use abstract thought. As toolmakers, human beings could fashion and manipulate instruments; as abstract thinkers, they could create, use, and manipulate symbols. Through gestures, sounds, and words, they could communicate symbols. Through gestures, sounds, and words, they could communicate with each other. When these symbols were expressed in signs, pictographs, and letters, human beings created a written language and made the great leap to literacy. Humanity’s powers to abstract, conceptualize, and communicate in oral and written language had tremendous educational consequences. Education involved an emphasis on language learning as children participated, in the songs, stories, and ritual that formed the group’s cultural inheritance.

STATUS OF TEACHERS

STATUS OF TEACHERS

Prestige, salaries, and supply of teachers are all interrelated factors. Their relative positions are major concerns for future and present teachers. Generally, when the supply of members of a given profession is scarce, demand and salaries increase; when the salaries of a profession are high, professional status is high; conversely, when salaries are low, so is professional status.

The Prestige Factor

Prestige refers to the estimation an individual or group occupies in the eyes of others in a social system; it connotes that individual’s or group’s status within the society. A few studies of social status and occupational ratings are available that shed some light on the social status of teachers. Perhaps the best-known studies of occupational prestige are those conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), affiliated with the University of Chicago. In 1947 NORC asked 2.290 persons throughout the country to rank eighty-eight occupations. The study showed that school teachers ranked thirty-seventh in prestige, and college professors outranked others in the teaching profession. A related study of ninety occupations with similar populations was conducted by NORC in 1964. In the later stude, teacher ranked 29,5 moving up 7,5 places. Since most other professional occupations also tended to show gains in prestige, however, the new atatus of teachers must be qualified on a comparative basis. In a 1970 survey of 650 people who provided prestige ratings of more than 500 overlapping occupational titles, the highest average score was 81,5 for physicians and surgeons and the lowest was 9,3 for a shoe shiner. Elementary school teachers were rated 60,1 and secondary school teachers were rated 63,1 both above the 90^th percentile. About the same level of prestige for teachers was reported in a 1977 summary of research on occupational status.

Although a combination of factors determines prestige, in our society in come is closely related to prestige. As teachers salaries increased, the occupational rating of teaching also rose. It is still evident, however, that teachers do not receive salaries in keeping with the ratings they receive on occupational status scale. In addition, there is evidence that the occupational prestige of elementary and secondary teachers declined somewhat between 1964 and 1980 as teachers salaries failed to keep pace with inflation.

Pay Scale And Trends

In 1930 the average teachers salary was $1.420; in 1950 it was $3.126; in 1980, $16.001. By 1984 this figure had risen to $22.019. The most rapid growth came between 1960 and 1970, a period of rising teacher militancy. During this period, teacher salaries rose faster than the rate of onflation. Today, it is not uncommon for some experienced teachers to earn $40.000 to $45.000. In addition, there are opportunities to work in after-school programs and summers for supplementary income and to advance to administrative positions with annual salaries well over $50.000.

Decline in purchasing power

However, there is another side to the picture. While the average salaries of teachers more than doubled between 1986 an 1984, prices increased at an even faster pace. Between 1972 and 1082 annual salaries for teachers increased from $10.342 to $20.536, but in terms of the purchasing power of 1972 dollars, the 1982 average salary amounted to only $9.015. Teacher salaries declined in purchasing power at a rate of nearly 1,5 percent a year between 1972 and 1982. (Of course, similar trends were experienced in virtually occupations; the average workwer lost ground during this ten-year period).

Salary Levels And Differentials

Teaching pay varies considerably among and within states. The range for that year was more than $20.000, from $15.895 in Mississippi to $36.564 in Alaska. Average yearly salaries in the three highest-paying states (Alaska, Michigan, and New York) were nearly twice as high as those in the three lowest-paying states (Mississippi, Arkansas, and South Dakota). Of course, comparative living costs must be taken into account. It is much more expensive to live in Alaska, for example, than to live in the Southeast.

Salary differences within states are wide, especially in states where average state pay scales are high. For example, in Niles, Illinois, the average teacher salary in 1983 was approximately $10.000 more than the average for other Illinois, teachers. In southern states where average salaries are low the range is narrower, but there are still considerable differences. In Georgia, for example, if you pur down your roots in Cobb County your maximum salary in 1980 was more than $5.000 lower than the salary maximum for Atlanta teachers.

The greatest variation in salaries is based on years of experience and education. Teachers with more years of experience and more education earn more than those with less of either. Thus teachers salaries in Chicago in 1983 ranged from $13.770 for new teachers with a bachelor’s deggre to $29.268 for experienced teachers with a year of graduate credit beyond the M.A. degree. Equivalent figures for Detroit were $15.027 and $36.315, respectively. As shown, the salary schedule negotiated for 1981 through 1984 provided $13.226 for a first-year teacher with a B.A. and $27.056 for a teacher at the highest level of experience and education.

Although a teacher at the top of salary schedule (based on experience and graduate degrees or certificates) can earn an attractive salary considering that the academic year is only about ten months long, starting salaries still tend to be low. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to see how beginning teachers in many school districts can support a family adequately or finance graduate education on basic salary of $14.000 or $15.000 a year. Recognizing this problem, many political and educational leaders are working to in crease initial salaries as well as those experienced teachers in order to attract and retain high-quality teachers. In particular, some states are providing additional funds so that all school districts can raise beginning salaries to a state-determined minimum.

Comparison With Other Fields

A good way to measure the economic position of an occupational group is not compare its salaries with those of other groups of workers having similar years of education. These four groups have consistently started at an annual average salary higher than teachers, moreover, the gap between these four groups and teachers has widened since 1965.

In addition, the price of goods and services increased faster than teacher salaries between 1967 an 1983. prices rose by over 300 percent during this period, but teacher salaries increased by less than 250 percent. We also should note that while the median family income in the United States for 1982 was $23.895, the average teacher salary was only $20.536. average teachers salary as a percentage of median family income declined from 93 percent in 1972 to 82 percent in 1978. However, this trend reversed in 1980, and average teacher salary increased to 86 percent of median family income in 1982. Furthermore, of some 2,1 million persons employed as elementary and secondary school teachers in 1983, almost 1,4 million are women. Note, however, that where the teacher is a married women (about two-thirds of the female teachers are married), we can assume that their spouses generally earn similar or higher salaries. Thus their combined incomed incomes are likely to put a great many teachers in the top five percentilies in the country, having family incomes of $50.000 or more.

It also should be kept in mind that teachers have many opportunities to increase their salaries by taking on additional responsibilities. For example, many teachers receive significant payments for coaching athletic teams or supervising other extracurricular activities, and teachers also again in both salary and prestige when they are appointed to serve as administrators, curriculum developers, staff development specialists, master teachers, or in other specialized positions. In the past few years there has been some movement toward developing both career ladders, which enable outstanding teachers to take on additional responsibility, and merit pay plans, which provide higher salaries for superior classroom teachers.

As we will illustrate in the concluding section of chapter, the quality of education and the situation of teachers have become important national concerns in recent years. In many states, governors and other political leaders as Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee, have developed plans for substantial statewide increases in teachers salaries. As a result of these developments, teacher salaries probaly will increase significantly faster than inflation during the next few years.

Supply and demand

From 1950 until the mid-1960s the schools were bursting at the seams with record enrollments that had their beginning in the post-World War II baby boom. These high birtrate groups had to rely on teachers born during the low birthrate years of the Great Depression-a trickle of teachers for a flood of students. Thus a wisdespread shortage of teachers developed in the 1950s and early 1960s.

However, the pattern was reversed in the late 1960s, and a general oversupply of teachers was available in the 1970s and early 1980s. This surplus of teachers reflected two major interrelated factors.

First, the U.S. birthrate fell steadly from 1955 to 1973 and then remained low, leading to a decline in schools. Second, the college-age population increased as the baby boom generation grew up, and many of this generation entered teaching, partly because there had been a shortage teachers. By 1969 there was an “excess” of 16.000 beginning teachers, and by 1974 the number of surplus beginning teachers was more than 60.000, with several additional thousands no longer even applying for jobs.

It should be noted that in certain subject areas the teacher shortage has persisted through much of the past fifteen years. These fields include special education, bilingual education, and early childhood educationa-which were expanding rapidly despite general enrollment decline-and science, mathematics, and industrial arts-in which financial rewards were far better in business and industry than in teaching.

As college students, teacher educators, and state government officials realized that there was a substantial oversupply of teachers, enrollment in teacher education programs decreased in the 1970s. the number of education degrees awarded to new teachers fell from 176.614 in 1971 to 108.309 in 1981. reflecting the same trend, the percentage of college freshmen intending to become teachers declined from 22 percent in 1966 to 5 percent in 1982. If recent trends continue, this number will decline to 77.270 in 1988- 44 percent of the 1971 figure. However, some colleges and universalities reported an increase in teachers education enrollment in 1984, for the first time in ten or twelve years.

As of 1985, however, it appears that the overall trend is again being reversed: there is likely to be a significant shortage of teachers by the late 1980s. reasons for predicting an improvement in the market for new teachers during the next ten years include the following:

1. The number of students graduating annually from teachers-preparation institutions has been drastically reduced.

2. A “mini” baby boom is beginning to develop as the original baby boom generation grows up and produces its own children. As a result, school enrollment will increase after 1985. this will substantially increase opportunities for elementary teachers beginning in 1985, and for secondary teachers beginning in 1992.

3. In many communities a significant proportion of the current teaching force will be reaching or approaching retirement within the next ten years. Some observers perceive this as a “window of opportunity,” during which time well-trained new teachers can be prepared to function in the schools.

4. The recent rise in national and local concern with the quality of education (discussed elsewhere in this book) may lead to reductions in class size, expansion of preschool education, greater emphasis on science and mathematics, and other changes that require an increased number of teachers.

5. Population in the United States has shifted from the Frostbelt states of the North and East to the Sunbelt states of the South an West. In addition, immigration from Mexico and elsewhere also has increased the population of the Sunbelt. Both these phenomena have created teaching opportunities, particularly in the Southwest.

6. Among the more positive responses to the supply-demand gap in teaching has been a movement to help teacher education students prepare for careers other than those in schools or classrooms. In conjunction with programs leading directly to a teaching certificate, many colleges and universities are offering interdisciplinary majors that blend the liberal arts withan educational-studies major to prepare students for a broad range of careers. These new career programs frequently reduce or eliminate teaching-methods requirements and substitute courses of study that can lead to one of several fields or career options, such as adult education, consulting and research, state or federal agencies, community organization and development, vocational guidance, youth-serving organizations (for example, Boy Scouts), and private-sector training.

However, it is very difficult to predict exactly the market for new teachers in the future. In addition to uncertainties regarding enrollment and programming in the schools, market opportunities on the demand side will depend on whether developments affecting salary and other teaching conditions encourage or retirement and resignation. On the supply side, several factors may increase the number of new teachers: improvements in teacher salary vis-à-vis other jobs; efforts to recruit and provide financial support for students in teacher education; the extent to which certified teachers who left teaching or never obtained a job may return to teaching; a decline in opportunities in law, business, and other fields; and related developments. Despite these uncertainties, it is likely that opportunities for teachers will improve over the next decade. The most recent estimates prepared by the National Center for Education Statistics indicate that by 1990 the supply of new teachers will be only about 75 percent of the demand.