Developmental Stages of Preschool Teachers

Teachers' Sense of Efficacy: An Important Factor in School Improvement

The Elementary School Journal Volume 83, Number 2 ? 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 001 3-5984183/8302-0009$01o.00 Teachers approach their instructional tasks with a variety of perspectives and strategies that emphasize certain aspects of teaching and deemphasize others. For example, some teachers teach language skills using organized games, while other teachers teach the same skills by direct instruction. Teachers adopt different approaches to the same subject matter partly because their teaching situations differ. Their students may have different learning problems or their classrooms may have varied resources and facilities. Even in the

The Elementary School Journal Volume 81, Number 1 ? 1980 by The University of Chicago 0013-5984/81/8101-0008$0o1.00 In colleges and universities across the country, prospective and practicing teachers and administrators take courses on planning-curriculum-planning and instructional planning. During the courses, teachers and administrators usually study an objectives-first model of curriculumplanning. This model has four steps. Planners are expected to 1. Formulate objectives 2. Choose appropriate learning activities

added by over 1,000 teachers to a survey of teachers' practices. Results of the survey of 3,700 teachers in about 600 schools in Maryland are described in Becker and Epstein (in this issue). The teachers' comments reflect the variation in years of experience and in the number and types of contacts individual teachers have had with parents. Each theme can be viewed from two perspectives-there are potential advantages, but there are also potential problems, with any parent-involvement technique. Teachers' comments reveal their contrasting opinions on the benefits expected from parent assistance at home and on the organizational structures used to conduct parent-involvement activities. Some teachers are very positive about parent involvement; others have been discouraged by their attempts to communicate and work with parents.

The Elementary School Journal Volume 86, Number S O 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-5984/86/8603-0002$01.00 Teachers have strong opinions about parent involvement. Some believe that they can be effective only if they obtain parental assistance on learning activities at home. Others believe that their professional status is in jeopardy if parents are involved in activities that are typically the teachers' responsibilities. The different philosophies and beliefs of teachers reflect the two main, opposing theories of school and family relations. One perspective emphasizes the inherent incompatibility, competition, and conflict between families and schools and supports the separation of the two institutions (Parsons, 1959; Waller, 1932; Weber, 1947). It assumes that school bureaucracies and family organizations are directed, respectively, by educators and parents, who can best fulfill their different goals, roles, and responsibilities independently. Thus, these distinct goals are achieved most efficiently and effectively when teachers maintain their professional, general standards and judgments about the children in their classrooms and when parents maintain their personal, particularistic standards and judgments about their children at home.

The primary reference employed in this paper is to view schools as social organizations. Such a perspective calls attention to the structure of the social relations in the school as well as to norms, values, and other orientations shared by school personnel. The present study builds upon earlier research in which pupil control was seen as a central feature of the organizational life of schools.2 A major concern was the socialization of teachers with regard to pupil control ideology. It was hypothesized that as teachers were absorbed into the teacher subculture their pupil control ideology would become more custodial. Cross-sectional data confirmed the prediction that more experienced teachers would be more custodial than less experienced teachers.3 Subsequent longitudinal data on a sample of beginning teachers also showed a significant increase in the custodialism of pupil control ideology both after the student teaching experience and again after the first year of teaching.4 The purpose of this inquiry is to reexamine the pupil control ideology of the same sample of beginning teachers as they acquired their second year of teaching experience. Before the empirical phase of this investigation is reported, it seems appropriate to review the conceptual framework and rationale from which the major hypothesis was developed.

The Influence of Experience on the Beginning Teacher

to general feelings such as liking/disliking of mathematics, nor is it meant to exclude perceptions of the difficulty, usefulness, and appropriateness of mathematics as a school subject. There are several ways affective variables are related to mathematics learning. It is likely that a student who feels very positive about mathematics will achieve at a higher level than a student who has a negative attitude toward mathematics. It is also likely that a high achiever will enjoy mathematics more than a student who

Change Processes and Strategies at the Local Level

STEAM to R-SLAMET Modification: An Integrative Thematic Play Based Learning with R-SLAMETS Content in Early Child-hood Education

The Politics and Economics of Comparison

An Experimental Study of Effective Teaching in First-Grade Reading Groups

? 1978 by The University of Chicago. 0013-5984/78/7803-0010$00.88 Pupils who fall behind their classmates academically fall further behind each year they remain in school (1). Part of the explanation for their continuing failure to keep pace with other pupils may lie in the fact that they spend less time on academic tasks than other pupils. The reason for such self-defeating behavior may be the desire to maintain self-esteem. If a pupil expends less effort on schoolwork than the average pupil, any resulting failure may be easier to accept. Pupils who try but fail may conclude that they do not have the ability to succeed. Pupils' involvement in tasks would seem to be a necessary condition for school achievement. If pupils are to master material, they must engage in it and react to it-read, make response. Indeed there are data to suggest that achievement is related to time for learning and opportunity to learn (2, 3). Similarly, there are data to suggest that learning is also positively related to low rates of time lost because of poor management of classrooms, for example, lengthy transitions (4). The major purpose of the present study was to find out whether pupil involvement was different for high, middle, and low achievers. Also, we wanted to find out whether pupils generally were more involved in some subjects than in others and whether certain types of classroom activities were associated with higher or with lower levels of pupil involvement. We selected two different types of schools to find out whether pupils' characteristics affect involvement. School 1

L'auteur tente d'expliquer les differences d'impacts de la mondialisation au niveau local sur les systemes educatifs par les variations de l'identite des enseignants. L'enseignant, considere en tant qu'acteur social, politique et historique d'un pays donne, peut malgre tout aider a apporter des solutions aux politiques reformatrices developpees. En effet, si les pays en voie de developpement ont des besoins similaires qui repondent a des logiques, des priorites et des attentes bien definies, les consequences des reformes engagees different selon les pays.

Globalization Viewed from the Periphery: The Dynamics of Teacher Identity in the Republic of Benin