Preparing Teachers as Agents of Change

Abstract

Teachers have long been expected to be agents of change. They are expected to evoke change in the students they teach. They are expected to carry out the broad missions of public education in the United States, including specific agendas for social change, and they are also expected to implement programs, policies, and innovations. Now, increasingly, they are expected to assume leadership of school reform.It is one thing to expect teachers to be agents of change and yet another for them to perform this role successfully. Goals for teaching and for schooling are vague and often contested. The means to achieve those goals-the "technology" of teachers' work-are also ambiguous and uncertain. The entire enterprise is fraught with dilemmas that pit highly valued alternatives against one another. To be effective agents of change, teachers must be able to confront and manage these dilemmas. They must make meaning out of ambiguity; they must act in the midst of conflict.It is often assumed that teacher educators know what capacities teachers need to be effective agents of change and can help them to develop these capacities. The research on preservice and inservice teacher education indicates, however, that these assumptions are not necessarily valid. Despite decades of effort to improve learning opportunities for teachers, the manner in which they are typically prepared and supported on the job falls short of developing the capacities they need to evoke change. If the expectation that teachers should be agents of change is taken seriously, the capacities this work requires of them must be considered more closely. Current practices of preservice and inservice teacher education must be examined more critically. And ways to enhance teachers' learning across their careers should be explored more thoughtfully.

Chapter I: Education and Society, 1900-2000: Selected Snapshots of Then and Now

“…141 However, we do want to note that this Yearbook makes the point that, despite the extreme interest in teacher education and professional development during the last two decades, there has been little if any change in the structure and content of teacher education programs. 142 Ironically, despite the calls from teacher educators for reforming American schools, there has been little zeal to change teacher education and to study how such changes impact the public schools.…”

A Leadership Competency Model for Music Instructors at Normal Universities in Hunan Province, China

“…Wasley (1991)believes that teacher leadership may be "encouraging colleagues to challenge and do things that have an impact on leadership"; Childs-Bowen, et al(2000) believed that "teacher leadership refers to the role of teachers in leading students in a learning community, thereby affecting students' learning effects, promoting their learning reforms, and motivating surrounding teachers to participate in educational improvement activities"; various researchers on teacher leadership The definition of teacher leadership is different, and scholars such as York Barr have also mentioned that "few scholars can accurately define teacher leadership, which may be one of the reasons for the rapid expansion of the field of teacher leadership research." Smylie (1999) proposed in "Teacher Leadership: Tension and Ambiguities in Organizational Perspective" that teacher leadership has its evolution process. Teachers, as leaders of students and classroom teaching, bear different responsibilities; Little, J.W.…”