Teacher Views on School Improvement

A major thrust of the restructuring movement is the involvement of teachers in school-based management and the development of a professional culture ( Lieberman, 1988 ). The goal is to increase student achievement by giving teachers more voice in decision-making and expanding teacher leadership roles. Rosenholtz ( 1989 ) in her book, Teachers’ Workplace , provided data that showed the significance of teacher collaboration, decision-making, shared goals, team-teaching and involvement on teacher commitment to the profession and student achievement. Teachers’ certainty about their craft and their skills were enhanced when teachers had time to talk and work with each other. As the case-studies and cross-case analysis in this study revealed, extensive involvement by staff in decision-making and structures that facilitated collaboration were hallmarks of the most effective schools. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze how teachers themselves define an effective school and describe the improvement process necessary to reach their goal. Do teachers in the most effective schools differ in their views about what is an effective school or how to improve schools compared to teachers in the least effective schools? How close do teacher views on improvement match empirical data? To answer these questions, teachers in each school were asked the following two questions: 1) If your school was described as an effective school what would that mean to you? 2) Think of yourself as a consultant to another school and based on what you have learned from your experiences in the improvement process, what would you recommend other schools do, what should be done differently? (See Appendix B ).