Saturday, December 20, 2008
Gender Analysis - A School's Situation
REFLECTIVE PAPER
Background
This reflective paper focuses on how gender reflects and is enacted in every day practices of a trust controlled school in Karachi, which was established in 1949 and now running in two shifts. Our focus (as a group) was the evening shift, secondary section, which was loaded with 600 students, almost an equal ratio of boys and girls with 32 teachers, 10 male and the rest were female. I will try to critically examine and analyze this school, based on two visits to explore three major dimensions lensed with gender, i.e. management in terms of assignments and tasks delegated to teachers and students, physical resources and teaching learning practices. However, I feel that these two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of gender which is of-course a huge area to discuss and schools have been known as the reflection of society (Leach, 2003). In my personal observation, schools along with society and home, normally continue to perpetuate the worst forms of gender discrimination and the abuse of basic human rights for both girls and boys. Schools help to reflect the values held by society (Leach, 2003). Therefore, covering all aspects of gender inaction in two visits only is absolutely unattainable. This paper will outline the state of the existing practices and procedures in school in gender perspective and will lastly try to analyze some of these practices with some recommendations.
Thematic Observations
Management
As a small reflection of these two visits on first dimensions i.e. the management, I found that females were mostly managing academic side while the administrative practices were done by male members. Female students were mostly given leading positions like monitors and prefects. Assembly proceedings were similar to boys and girls except the separate entry and exit points. Students were performing the same exercise in assembly, but positioned in separate lines. Female students use to get five minutes earlier break and tuck shop was having two windows one for girls and another for boys.
Physical Resources
The physical resources in terms of access, library, labs, sports, water, canteen, restroom, teaching aids and displays, I observed that major portion of playground was occupied by boys. There were separate washrooms, seating arrangement in classrooms was separate and the displays were more male oriented, however, for Science Labs & Library there were equal opportunities for both genders.
Teaching and Learning
The situation of teaching and learning in terms of language, teachers’ interactions, students interactions, curriculum contents and teaching strategies, I found that language used in class was not purely gender biased, teachers used to call students either by their names or saying ‘students’, similarly, the syllabus contents were addressing as ‘students’ or ‘learners’. Female students were hesitant and low voiced and male students were active participants, while during interviews with two teachers', they told us that girls are active participants while boys are passive participants in classes, so this perception was contrasting in real situation.
Analysis
Stereotyping
My initial observation was encouraging to note that boys and girls were treated almost equally without any big discrimination because it was also told that school discourages gender discrimination, however, I felt that socially constructed ‘stereotyping’ was a major influencing factor in school and still there were some gaps between boys and girls. There were certain games such as volley ball and cricket where mostly the boys seemed engaged. The girls had a separate portion for games where they play table tennis; a light game as compared to volley ball and cricket.
All these practices depict that gender stereotyping is common in Pakistan, where the culture and society have been influenced by centuries of a male-dominated life style that places women in a subordinate role and subjects them to unequal treatment. While the concern for gender equality and equity condition in education continues to be now seen as a priority item in developed countries as well as in developing countries.
Specifically talking on ‘stereotyping’ in gender, which can be defined as a subjective perception or a picture in one’s head of the characteristics, roles, attributes, forms, or traits of a person which gradually in-builds through societal influence. I felt among the teachers and students (to whom I interviewed) that their perception about gender was typically stereotyped. They didn’t seem to favor gender disparities but their perception was telling another story, like ‘Girls take initiative’, ‘Girls are sensitive’, ‘Boys are strong’, ‘Boys are our heroes’, ‘Boys are reluctant and careless’
Therefore, there is an urgent need for the teachers and other stakeholders in this school to minimize the so-called stereotyping which in my perception is just the myths with no concern to the reality. At the other hand, it is also critical to bear in mind that teachers do not come into the classrooms as gender-neutral personalities. Teachers are likely to have internalized an exact gender ideology through years of socialization in both informal and formal settings. However, I believe, teachers are purposefully positioned to act as change agents at classroom level in order to level the gender disparities. But, to achieve this purpose a greater awareness among teachers and policy makers is necessary, which will lead to more gender focused and related interventions at school level.
School Culture and Infrastructure
In many ways, school infrastructure and culture was not gender responsive when it came to meeting the needs of teenage girls. This can be a factor to widen the gap between boys and girls in classrooms. Firstly, the design of school desks and benches were not appropriate and suitable for girls to have an easy access, if seated with boys. Secondly, I felt that the hesitation and low voice of girls can be rooted with the culture of this school that students must respond to teacher’s questions while standing or during teacher’s entry and exit from classroom as a sign of respect. Girls may find all these unnecessary requirements as barriers for active participation in the learning process, because of their natural construction and process of feminine.
Displays
School learning and teaching materials, especially displays, were dominant with masculine orientations that negatively impact upon girls’ self esteem and confidence. When dealing with power issues, girls are cast in powerless or disempowering roles in which they cannot make any decisions without consulting male figures. After observing all these stuff, children acquire gender stereotypes about boys and girls. Therefore, sensitization of gender equality and equity is essential during planning and displaying the visual aids in school.
Conclusion and Recommendation
After going through my current course and school visit, I feel that if female are given leadership role and trusted they can become bold and play their role equal to male, which was reflecting from the school principal’s behavior and practice.
After having said that ‘schools are the reflection of society’, now it is the time for school to reflect back to society a different image about a gender equitable society. School is a major source that will help to trigger change. This will occur only when teachers and learners are assisted in adopting classroom level initiatives that reflect new images based on positive gender thoughts. To bring improvement in this regard, I recommend Gender Awareness workshops for teachers, parents and students in this school, all students should be facilitated all sports and according to our group they all should convince to understand GENDER as;
G
E
N
D
E
R
Grow together
Eliminate discrimination
Neglect criticism
Discourage stereotyping
Encourage equity and equality
Respect all
REFERENCES
Leach, F. (2003). Practicing gender analysis in education. Oxford, UK: Oxfam.
Background
This reflective paper focuses on how gender reflects and is enacted in every day practices of a trust controlled school in Karachi, which was established in 1949 and now running in two shifts. Our focus (as a group) was the evening shift, secondary section, which was loaded with 600 students, almost an equal ratio of boys and girls with 32 teachers, 10 male and the rest were female. I will try to critically examine and analyze this school, based on two visits to explore three major dimensions lensed with gender, i.e. management in terms of assignments and tasks delegated to teachers and students, physical resources and teaching learning practices. However, I feel that these two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of gender which is of-course a huge area to discuss and schools have been known as the reflection of society (Leach, 2003). In my personal observation, schools along with society and home, normally continue to perpetuate the worst forms of gender discrimination and the abuse of basic human rights for both girls and boys. Schools help to reflect the values held by society (Leach, 2003). Therefore, covering all aspects of gender inaction in two visits only is absolutely unattainable. This paper will outline the state of the existing practices and procedures in school in gender perspective and will lastly try to analyze some of these practices with some recommendations.
Thematic Observations
Management
As a small reflection of these two visits on first dimensions i.e. the management, I found that females were mostly managing academic side while the administrative practices were done by male members. Female students were mostly given leading positions like monitors and prefects. Assembly proceedings were similar to boys and girls except the separate entry and exit points. Students were performing the same exercise in assembly, but positioned in separate lines. Female students use to get five minutes earlier break and tuck shop was having two windows one for girls and another for boys.
Physical Resources
The physical resources in terms of access, library, labs, sports, water, canteen, restroom, teaching aids and displays, I observed that major portion of playground was occupied by boys. There were separate washrooms, seating arrangement in classrooms was separate and the displays were more male oriented, however, for Science Labs & Library there were equal opportunities for both genders.
Teaching and Learning
The situation of teaching and learning in terms of language, teachers’ interactions, students interactions, curriculum contents and teaching strategies, I found that language used in class was not purely gender biased, teachers used to call students either by their names or saying ‘students’, similarly, the syllabus contents were addressing as ‘students’ or ‘learners’. Female students were hesitant and low voiced and male students were active participants, while during interviews with two teachers', they told us that girls are active participants while boys are passive participants in classes, so this perception was contrasting in real situation.
Analysis
Stereotyping
My initial observation was encouraging to note that boys and girls were treated almost equally without any big discrimination because it was also told that school discourages gender discrimination, however, I felt that socially constructed ‘stereotyping’ was a major influencing factor in school and still there were some gaps between boys and girls. There were certain games such as volley ball and cricket where mostly the boys seemed engaged. The girls had a separate portion for games where they play table tennis; a light game as compared to volley ball and cricket.
All these practices depict that gender stereotyping is common in Pakistan, where the culture and society have been influenced by centuries of a male-dominated life style that places women in a subordinate role and subjects them to unequal treatment. While the concern for gender equality and equity condition in education continues to be now seen as a priority item in developed countries as well as in developing countries.
Specifically talking on ‘stereotyping’ in gender, which can be defined as a subjective perception or a picture in one’s head of the characteristics, roles, attributes, forms, or traits of a person which gradually in-builds through societal influence. I felt among the teachers and students (to whom I interviewed) that their perception about gender was typically stereotyped. They didn’t seem to favor gender disparities but their perception was telling another story, like ‘Girls take initiative’, ‘Girls are sensitive’, ‘Boys are strong’, ‘Boys are our heroes’, ‘Boys are reluctant and careless’
Therefore, there is an urgent need for the teachers and other stakeholders in this school to minimize the so-called stereotyping which in my perception is just the myths with no concern to the reality. At the other hand, it is also critical to bear in mind that teachers do not come into the classrooms as gender-neutral personalities. Teachers are likely to have internalized an exact gender ideology through years of socialization in both informal and formal settings. However, I believe, teachers are purposefully positioned to act as change agents at classroom level in order to level the gender disparities. But, to achieve this purpose a greater awareness among teachers and policy makers is necessary, which will lead to more gender focused and related interventions at school level.
School Culture and Infrastructure
In many ways, school infrastructure and culture was not gender responsive when it came to meeting the needs of teenage girls. This can be a factor to widen the gap between boys and girls in classrooms. Firstly, the design of school desks and benches were not appropriate and suitable for girls to have an easy access, if seated with boys. Secondly, I felt that the hesitation and low voice of girls can be rooted with the culture of this school that students must respond to teacher’s questions while standing or during teacher’s entry and exit from classroom as a sign of respect. Girls may find all these unnecessary requirements as barriers for active participation in the learning process, because of their natural construction and process of feminine.
Displays
School learning and teaching materials, especially displays, were dominant with masculine orientations that negatively impact upon girls’ self esteem and confidence. When dealing with power issues, girls are cast in powerless or disempowering roles in which they cannot make any decisions without consulting male figures. After observing all these stuff, children acquire gender stereotypes about boys and girls. Therefore, sensitization of gender equality and equity is essential during planning and displaying the visual aids in school.
Conclusion and Recommendation
After going through my current course and school visit, I feel that if female are given leadership role and trusted they can become bold and play their role equal to male, which was reflecting from the school principal’s behavior and practice.
After having said that ‘schools are the reflection of society’, now it is the time for school to reflect back to society a different image about a gender equitable society. School is a major source that will help to trigger change. This will occur only when teachers and learners are assisted in adopting classroom level initiatives that reflect new images based on positive gender thoughts. To bring improvement in this regard, I recommend Gender Awareness workshops for teachers, parents and students in this school, all students should be facilitated all sports and according to our group they all should convince to understand GENDER as;
G
E
N
D
E
R
Grow together
Eliminate discrimination
Neglect criticism
Discourage stereotyping
Encourage equity and equality
Respect all
REFERENCES
Leach, F. (2003). Practicing gender analysis in education. Oxford, UK: Oxfam.
Proposal Abstract
EXPLORING HEAD TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS USING COMPUTERS IN EDUCATION
ABSTRACT
Attitudes play a significant role in acceptance of any idea or innovation. This study aims to explore the head teachers’ attitude towards computer usage in education; as many researchers have identified the significance of computers and the important role of headteacher, who has been largely publicized as a hindering factor or sometimes as an initiator. To explore attitudes on a large scale a survey design with an adopted questionnaire (Pelgrum and Plump, 1993) will be used to gather relevant information from 224 head/deputy head teachers of Government primary and secondary boys and girls’ schools. The sample chosen from a variety of contexts in Sindh and Baluchistan including urban and rural areas; which constitutes a representative sample, who are currently involved in a course at AKU-IED under Ed-Link project. Since the government sector is the largest provider of education and Federal Government has also stressed great emphasis on enhancing the scope and amount of computers in Education. Ed-Link project facilitates implementation of the government’s agenda for quality education, which is funded by USAID. This project intends to up-grade and to establish computer labs in these schools; therefore, it is essential to explore the attitude and the state of readiness among the leadership about acceptance of computers in education. The findings of this study will be a source of reference not only for Ed-Link project to plan professional development programs and to initiate appropriate interventions in future but will also be helpful for the policy makers and curriculum designers to improve the current condition of curricula to meet the needs and demands. Furthermore, this study will also be a testing phase to check the reliability and validity of this tool for the head teachers in Pakistan.
ABSTRACT
Attitudes play a significant role in acceptance of any idea or innovation. This study aims to explore the head teachers’ attitude towards computer usage in education; as many researchers have identified the significance of computers and the important role of headteacher, who has been largely publicized as a hindering factor or sometimes as an initiator. To explore attitudes on a large scale a survey design with an adopted questionnaire (Pelgrum and Plump, 1993) will be used to gather relevant information from 224 head/deputy head teachers of Government primary and secondary boys and girls’ schools. The sample chosen from a variety of contexts in Sindh and Baluchistan including urban and rural areas; which constitutes a representative sample, who are currently involved in a course at AKU-IED under Ed-Link project. Since the government sector is the largest provider of education and Federal Government has also stressed great emphasis on enhancing the scope and amount of computers in Education. Ed-Link project facilitates implementation of the government’s agenda for quality education, which is funded by USAID. This project intends to up-grade and to establish computer labs in these schools; therefore, it is essential to explore the attitude and the state of readiness among the leadership about acceptance of computers in education. The findings of this study will be a source of reference not only for Ed-Link project to plan professional development programs and to initiate appropriate interventions in future but will also be helpful for the policy makers and curriculum designers to improve the current condition of curricula to meet the needs and demands. Furthermore, this study will also be a testing phase to check the reliability and validity of this tool for the head teachers in Pakistan.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Analytial Paper
ANALYTICAL PAPER
BACKGROUND
It is very well said that school improvement is a “systematic, sustained effort aimed to change in learning conditions and other related internal conditions in one or more schools, with the ultimate aim of accomplishing educational goals more effectively” (Hillman & Stoll, 1994), and personally I believe that for effective accomplishment of this objective a gradual and a significant period of time is required. This reflective paper focuses on the same parameters to explore the school improvement through the perception of teachers of a government girls’ pilot school in Karachi, which was loaded with 1238 students of low socio-economic background and 54 teachers with a vision to develop students who will become curious, confident and responsible citizens of the world, capable of critical decision making. I will try to critically examine this school to analyze and link with their vision on the basis of my observations, artifacts/documents analysis, and semi-structured interviews with two teachers to explore the existing state of school improvement and their perceptions.
The discussion of this paper is based on two visits only. However, I feel that these two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of the phenomenon which is of-course a huge area to discuss as schools are known the reflection of society (Leach, 2003). This paper will outline the state of the existing practices and procedures, perceptions of teachers according to school improvement and will lastly try to critically analyze and put forward some recommendations.
Existing state of school improvement
Quality education is every citizen’s right and its responsibility lies with the state therefore government sector is the largest provider of education in Pakistan. According to my observation, generally government schools (mostly in rural areas), are nothing more than a room, chalkboard and a teacher, which can be termed as ‘something is better than nothing’ but according to my understanding this term should never be used when it comes to education. Perhaps under a political agenda some years back as a first step towards accomplishment of ‘quality education’, Sindh government had started pilot educational facilitation in every district of Karachi. The school I visited was also established as a pilot school, fully equipped with almost every facility required for a ‘good’ school in terms of its physical structure and available facilities, like extended physical structure with two huge annexes/blocks with boundary walls all around, playing grounds and other facilities such as sufficient teaching staff (one M.Ed[1]. from AKU-IED[2] and 12 other teachers were VTs[3] from AKU-IED), separate labs for home-economics, physics & computer, band facility, library, separate offices, staffroom, notice boards, special needs room, filter water, washrooms, furniture, gardens/lawn, ground-swings, canteen, girls guide room and art room.
With all this fully equipped structure and facilities, the school should be a successful school and its improvement should progress further. Of-course this would be the feelings of every reader, so the question arises here that what was the state of school improvement?
To explore the ground realities, I observed classes, assembly, staffroom; documents were analyzed and interviews were taken, which guided me to say that all these facilities were in proper use a ‘very long ago’, which has now become the part of school history to remember. I felt and teachers also indicated that there is a lack of funding from government for maintenance and follow-up, so every facility and infrastructure is getting rotten by every single day passes.
Co-curricular activities and sporting events are not that much in practice, while very well written artifacts and honor boards were present showing success stories of past as they were updated up to 1995, which was now stopped for no reason. When enquired from Principal, she felt the lacking and told us that because we are not getting additional grant for such activities, so we could not continue the practices. So, every thing was concluding with the same excuse that we are not getting much grant from government.
School has many Trained teachers i.e. 12 VTs and 1 M.Ed. When discussed with these teachers they showed that there is no motivation from the authorities and leadership. According to a teacher, “there is no praise and appreciation for a good work and no judgment for careless teachers, so our moral became down”. I was reflecting on myself that, weather the trainings I usually get from different institutions, is just limited to get the praise from my authorities and those expertise will only be exercised, when I will be motivated by my leadership to utilize? During my observation I found that, yes; the principal is not motivating teachers properly, but at the other hand, she has also given a free hand to practice and to take initiatives for teachers. I am sure, if these teachers initiate some new teaching strategies, principal would not be the hindering factor.
School campus was reasonably big and the support staff was very limited and it was according to principal and teachers due to non-provision of required staff from government authorities. So, they had an alternative solution for this purpose by involving students (late comers and class room punishments) to collect garbage and cleaning of classroom and school campus. According to teachers, students’ strength was very much high some years back, which has been decreased now and they were justifying it with increased number of private schools in the vicinity and blaming government that it is not providing much funds for modern facilities. However, I feel that may be this ‘punishment’ to students can be one of reasons of decreased number of students’ enrollment.
Library and books were present, librarian ne-da-red[4], Science Labs, art room, home economic room were present but the respective attendants ne-da-red, and so these rooms never open. It was amazing for me that for cleaning purpose, teachers had created an alternate solution and even they had contributed to hire a lady for the preparation of tea during their break time, but for Library, labs and other facilities of school, no solution has been sorted out, but waiting for government to depute the required staff. This lacking can also be traced among the state of staff co-operation, as I found that there was lack of collaboration among teachers, although during the interview, teachers told me that there is a good collaboration, but while interviewing a teacher in staff room on a specific table, some other teachers entered the staffroom, and the teacher whom I was interviewing told me that we should move to another table, as this was ‘their’ table, which showed a face of balkanized culture (Stoll & Fink, 1996) among teachers. This type of collaboration is known as neither isolated nor work as a whole school. In this situation becoming on a focal point by all teachers as a team seems impossible.
Teaching and learning in school was observed as traditional teaching, very well known as ‘Talk, Chalk and Walk’; encouraging and promoting rote memorization among students. There was no concept of group work and activity based teaching. The teachers were having an opinion that existing teaching strategies should be changed towards visual aids, classroom activities, and activity based teaching, but my mind was striking me again, that who would initiate these strategies; the government or the teachers on whom government has already spent lots of money to train them in prestigious institutions? Another problem identified by the teachers that what ever they do in their classes, they don’t get any feedback even from Head teacher as she use to observe classes but never gives feedback. According to these teachers good schools mean the school teachers with positive attitude while for bad schools they were in opinion those schools with teachers but no effective teaching. I was confused to categories this school!
Likewise, the school celebrations were limited to 14th Aug., 23 Mar., 6 Sep., and on asking why these days are celebrated, teachers responded that to give students knowledge about Pakistan and to create the sense of sacrifice (qurbani ka jazba)’ and to boost up the sense of love to their country (‘watan say mohabat’). On asking what other days should be celebrated, teachers told me that sports day, bait-bazi, share-o-shairi, literary debates etc. should be included in our celebration as co-curricular activities. But the question still remained un-answered, that who would initiate these activities and celebrations? While teachers were in on opinion that government should instruct us to do these things. I couldn’t figure out, that when government had instructed them to hire a lady as a personal maid and utilize students as cleaners of school!
When I asked teachers that what is good about this school and what are lacking and what are the things you would like to change? Teachers told me that school needs more facilities for students, sports are lacking, which should be increased, debates and co-curricular activities should be included. But to do all these according to the teachers there was no or less budget allocation from government. Teachers further blamed parents that they are not taking interest in their children education, which reminded me of the characteristics of a sinking school (Stoll & Fink, 1996). While, teachers told me that only few educated parents use to visit school, although school doesn’t have a proper and effective mechanism to interact with parents. I was amazed that to organize debates and other co-curricular activities what type of financial aid is required from government.
Teachers were confidently saying that our school is better than others as we are getting good board result every year – (‘andoon may kaana raja’)- and we prepare students well for board exam. School vision was displayed on the school entrance, however on asking the vision of school, teachers told me that our vision is to make students good citizens, and could be able to differentiate between good and bad.
I understand that there are continuous changes and reforms in education sector all around the world. One of the key elements in most of these reforms is the professional development of teachers. Societies are acknowledging that teachers are the most significant change agents. This role of teacher in educational reforms makes the field of teacher professional development a growing and challenging area. Definitely to bring change in teaching strategies, teachers need to be aware of the new ways of teaching. Even the best and brilliant teachers need professional knowledge to learn about teaching and learning strategies (Rizvi & Elliott, 2007). Currently this school is loaded with 12 VTs and one M.Ed. teacher (of-course a big human resource to motivate and effectively utilize their capacities), but there was no trend of in-school trainings, however out of school trainings for science teachers and others was existing through high ups of education department.
Recommendations
After having said initially that ‘schools are the reflection of society’, now it is the time for school to reflect back to society a different image. School is a major source that will help to trigger change. This will occur only when teachers and learners are assisted in adopting classroom level initiatives that reflect new images based on positive approaches for school improvement. To bring improvement in this regard, I recommend the following strategies to change the existing state of school improvement;
1. According to my observation, every thing is available in school; the only object required is to re-shape the existing school facilities by willingness and active efforts to change (Fullan, 2001). Head teacher and every individual staff member is required to understand that traditional cultural response patterns are now not longer appropriate, they need to change. The culture of school has become dependent on government, which needs to be re-shaped with positive initiatives to create ownership of school by every stakeholder.
2. Strong leadership is required for development of shared vision and goals (Rosenholtz, 1989) through improving collegiality to create learning communities (Sergiovanni, 1998), so that a sense of ownership could be developed. Likewise, effective utilization of the capacities of existing trained staff and reforms are required to introduce instructional initiatives. This can be done through positive leadership by showing trust and empowering other staff members by distributing leadership (Gebhardt et al., 2003), which starts from willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to participate without dominating (Gronn, 2003).
3. To manage improving schools, perhaps less concentration on organizational change that affects structure and more concentration on building the capacity that exposes teachers to such forces for change. This sort of change must arise from the desire of teachers to improve and stop putting in place obstacles to self-development (Flecknoe, 2005).
4. Since parents are a critical part of a learning community so their involvement is very much crucial. To involve parents in schooling activities, I suggest initiating volunteer programs involving parents for different activities or as a first step, parents can be asked to work with a child at home on reading and home work (Tinzmann et al. 1990).
Implications
This exposure to study a government school was a significant learning for me, because, I was relating all my past experience and practices of my colleagues (a private school). I learnt that school effectiveness is dependent on effective utilization of capacities and on available facilities, rather becoming dependent on others to initiate things and efforts. I understand that as an individual every member should play his/her role in school improvement. This exposure would certainly help me to lead effectively a group of teachers in future.
Last word
I am fully aware that, I become very much negative on reflecting the state of this school, but I really felt pain in my chest while observing the finest resources and ideally constructed infrastructure keeping every aspect and requirement of education in mind, which is now getting towards sinking for no any genuine reasons. This school needs a complete reform.
REFERENCES
Flecknoe, M. (2005). The Changes That Count in Securing School Improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement. 4(16), 435 - 443
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Gronn, P (2003). The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London. Sage Publications.
Hillnann, J. & Stoll, L. (1994). Understanding School Improvement. School Improvement Network Research Matters, 1, 1 – 4.
Serviovanni, T. (1998). Leadership as pedagogy, capital development and school effectiveness. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1(1), 37-46
Stoll, L. & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Tinzmann et al. (1990). Why should schools be learning communities? NCREL, Oak Brook.
Leach, F. (2003). Practicing gender analysis in education. Oxford, UK: Oxfam.
[1] Masters of Education.
[2] Aga Khan University – Institute for Educational Development.
[3] Visiting Teachers.
[4] A Persian word used for ‘non-availability’.
BACKGROUND
It is very well said that school improvement is a “systematic, sustained effort aimed to change in learning conditions and other related internal conditions in one or more schools, with the ultimate aim of accomplishing educational goals more effectively” (Hillman & Stoll, 1994), and personally I believe that for effective accomplishment of this objective a gradual and a significant period of time is required. This reflective paper focuses on the same parameters to explore the school improvement through the perception of teachers of a government girls’ pilot school in Karachi, which was loaded with 1238 students of low socio-economic background and 54 teachers with a vision to develop students who will become curious, confident and responsible citizens of the world, capable of critical decision making. I will try to critically examine this school to analyze and link with their vision on the basis of my observations, artifacts/documents analysis, and semi-structured interviews with two teachers to explore the existing state of school improvement and their perceptions.
The discussion of this paper is based on two visits only. However, I feel that these two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of the phenomenon which is of-course a huge area to discuss as schools are known the reflection of society (Leach, 2003). This paper will outline the state of the existing practices and procedures, perceptions of teachers according to school improvement and will lastly try to critically analyze and put forward some recommendations.
Existing state of school improvement
Quality education is every citizen’s right and its responsibility lies with the state therefore government sector is the largest provider of education in Pakistan. According to my observation, generally government schools (mostly in rural areas), are nothing more than a room, chalkboard and a teacher, which can be termed as ‘something is better than nothing’ but according to my understanding this term should never be used when it comes to education. Perhaps under a political agenda some years back as a first step towards accomplishment of ‘quality education’, Sindh government had started pilot educational facilitation in every district of Karachi. The school I visited was also established as a pilot school, fully equipped with almost every facility required for a ‘good’ school in terms of its physical structure and available facilities, like extended physical structure with two huge annexes/blocks with boundary walls all around, playing grounds and other facilities such as sufficient teaching staff (one M.Ed[1]. from AKU-IED[2] and 12 other teachers were VTs[3] from AKU-IED), separate labs for home-economics, physics & computer, band facility, library, separate offices, staffroom, notice boards, special needs room, filter water, washrooms, furniture, gardens/lawn, ground-swings, canteen, girls guide room and art room.
With all this fully equipped structure and facilities, the school should be a successful school and its improvement should progress further. Of-course this would be the feelings of every reader, so the question arises here that what was the state of school improvement?
To explore the ground realities, I observed classes, assembly, staffroom; documents were analyzed and interviews were taken, which guided me to say that all these facilities were in proper use a ‘very long ago’, which has now become the part of school history to remember. I felt and teachers also indicated that there is a lack of funding from government for maintenance and follow-up, so every facility and infrastructure is getting rotten by every single day passes.
Co-curricular activities and sporting events are not that much in practice, while very well written artifacts and honor boards were present showing success stories of past as they were updated up to 1995, which was now stopped for no reason. When enquired from Principal, she felt the lacking and told us that because we are not getting additional grant for such activities, so we could not continue the practices. So, every thing was concluding with the same excuse that we are not getting much grant from government.
School has many Trained teachers i.e. 12 VTs and 1 M.Ed. When discussed with these teachers they showed that there is no motivation from the authorities and leadership. According to a teacher, “there is no praise and appreciation for a good work and no judgment for careless teachers, so our moral became down”. I was reflecting on myself that, weather the trainings I usually get from different institutions, is just limited to get the praise from my authorities and those expertise will only be exercised, when I will be motivated by my leadership to utilize? During my observation I found that, yes; the principal is not motivating teachers properly, but at the other hand, she has also given a free hand to practice and to take initiatives for teachers. I am sure, if these teachers initiate some new teaching strategies, principal would not be the hindering factor.
School campus was reasonably big and the support staff was very limited and it was according to principal and teachers due to non-provision of required staff from government authorities. So, they had an alternative solution for this purpose by involving students (late comers and class room punishments) to collect garbage and cleaning of classroom and school campus. According to teachers, students’ strength was very much high some years back, which has been decreased now and they were justifying it with increased number of private schools in the vicinity and blaming government that it is not providing much funds for modern facilities. However, I feel that may be this ‘punishment’ to students can be one of reasons of decreased number of students’ enrollment.
Library and books were present, librarian ne-da-red[4], Science Labs, art room, home economic room were present but the respective attendants ne-da-red, and so these rooms never open. It was amazing for me that for cleaning purpose, teachers had created an alternate solution and even they had contributed to hire a lady for the preparation of tea during their break time, but for Library, labs and other facilities of school, no solution has been sorted out, but waiting for government to depute the required staff. This lacking can also be traced among the state of staff co-operation, as I found that there was lack of collaboration among teachers, although during the interview, teachers told me that there is a good collaboration, but while interviewing a teacher in staff room on a specific table, some other teachers entered the staffroom, and the teacher whom I was interviewing told me that we should move to another table, as this was ‘their’ table, which showed a face of balkanized culture (Stoll & Fink, 1996) among teachers. This type of collaboration is known as neither isolated nor work as a whole school. In this situation becoming on a focal point by all teachers as a team seems impossible.
Teaching and learning in school was observed as traditional teaching, very well known as ‘Talk, Chalk and Walk’; encouraging and promoting rote memorization among students. There was no concept of group work and activity based teaching. The teachers were having an opinion that existing teaching strategies should be changed towards visual aids, classroom activities, and activity based teaching, but my mind was striking me again, that who would initiate these strategies; the government or the teachers on whom government has already spent lots of money to train them in prestigious institutions? Another problem identified by the teachers that what ever they do in their classes, they don’t get any feedback even from Head teacher as she use to observe classes but never gives feedback. According to these teachers good schools mean the school teachers with positive attitude while for bad schools they were in opinion those schools with teachers but no effective teaching. I was confused to categories this school!
Likewise, the school celebrations were limited to 14th Aug., 23 Mar., 6 Sep., and on asking why these days are celebrated, teachers responded that to give students knowledge about Pakistan and to create the sense of sacrifice (qurbani ka jazba)’ and to boost up the sense of love to their country (‘watan say mohabat’). On asking what other days should be celebrated, teachers told me that sports day, bait-bazi, share-o-shairi, literary debates etc. should be included in our celebration as co-curricular activities. But the question still remained un-answered, that who would initiate these activities and celebrations? While teachers were in on opinion that government should instruct us to do these things. I couldn’t figure out, that when government had instructed them to hire a lady as a personal maid and utilize students as cleaners of school!
When I asked teachers that what is good about this school and what are lacking and what are the things you would like to change? Teachers told me that school needs more facilities for students, sports are lacking, which should be increased, debates and co-curricular activities should be included. But to do all these according to the teachers there was no or less budget allocation from government. Teachers further blamed parents that they are not taking interest in their children education, which reminded me of the characteristics of a sinking school (Stoll & Fink, 1996). While, teachers told me that only few educated parents use to visit school, although school doesn’t have a proper and effective mechanism to interact with parents. I was amazed that to organize debates and other co-curricular activities what type of financial aid is required from government.
Teachers were confidently saying that our school is better than others as we are getting good board result every year – (‘andoon may kaana raja’)- and we prepare students well for board exam. School vision was displayed on the school entrance, however on asking the vision of school, teachers told me that our vision is to make students good citizens, and could be able to differentiate between good and bad.
I understand that there are continuous changes and reforms in education sector all around the world. One of the key elements in most of these reforms is the professional development of teachers. Societies are acknowledging that teachers are the most significant change agents. This role of teacher in educational reforms makes the field of teacher professional development a growing and challenging area. Definitely to bring change in teaching strategies, teachers need to be aware of the new ways of teaching. Even the best and brilliant teachers need professional knowledge to learn about teaching and learning strategies (Rizvi & Elliott, 2007). Currently this school is loaded with 12 VTs and one M.Ed. teacher (of-course a big human resource to motivate and effectively utilize their capacities), but there was no trend of in-school trainings, however out of school trainings for science teachers and others was existing through high ups of education department.
Recommendations
After having said initially that ‘schools are the reflection of society’, now it is the time for school to reflect back to society a different image. School is a major source that will help to trigger change. This will occur only when teachers and learners are assisted in adopting classroom level initiatives that reflect new images based on positive approaches for school improvement. To bring improvement in this regard, I recommend the following strategies to change the existing state of school improvement;
1. According to my observation, every thing is available in school; the only object required is to re-shape the existing school facilities by willingness and active efforts to change (Fullan, 2001). Head teacher and every individual staff member is required to understand that traditional cultural response patterns are now not longer appropriate, they need to change. The culture of school has become dependent on government, which needs to be re-shaped with positive initiatives to create ownership of school by every stakeholder.
2. Strong leadership is required for development of shared vision and goals (Rosenholtz, 1989) through improving collegiality to create learning communities (Sergiovanni, 1998), so that a sense of ownership could be developed. Likewise, effective utilization of the capacities of existing trained staff and reforms are required to introduce instructional initiatives. This can be done through positive leadership by showing trust and empowering other staff members by distributing leadership (Gebhardt et al., 2003), which starts from willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to participate without dominating (Gronn, 2003).
3. To manage improving schools, perhaps less concentration on organizational change that affects structure and more concentration on building the capacity that exposes teachers to such forces for change. This sort of change must arise from the desire of teachers to improve and stop putting in place obstacles to self-development (Flecknoe, 2005).
4. Since parents are a critical part of a learning community so their involvement is very much crucial. To involve parents in schooling activities, I suggest initiating volunteer programs involving parents for different activities or as a first step, parents can be asked to work with a child at home on reading and home work (Tinzmann et al. 1990).
Implications
This exposure to study a government school was a significant learning for me, because, I was relating all my past experience and practices of my colleagues (a private school). I learnt that school effectiveness is dependent on effective utilization of capacities and on available facilities, rather becoming dependent on others to initiate things and efforts. I understand that as an individual every member should play his/her role in school improvement. This exposure would certainly help me to lead effectively a group of teachers in future.
Last word
I am fully aware that, I become very much negative on reflecting the state of this school, but I really felt pain in my chest while observing the finest resources and ideally constructed infrastructure keeping every aspect and requirement of education in mind, which is now getting towards sinking for no any genuine reasons. This school needs a complete reform.
REFERENCES
Flecknoe, M. (2005). The Changes That Count in Securing School Improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement. 4(16), 435 - 443
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Gronn, P (2003). The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London. Sage Publications.
Hillnann, J. & Stoll, L. (1994). Understanding School Improvement. School Improvement Network Research Matters, 1, 1 – 4.
Serviovanni, T. (1998). Leadership as pedagogy, capital development and school effectiveness. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1(1), 37-46
Stoll, L. & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Tinzmann et al. (1990). Why should schools be learning communities? NCREL, Oak Brook.
Leach, F. (2003). Practicing gender analysis in education. Oxford, UK: Oxfam.
[1] Masters of Education.
[2] Aga Khan University – Institute for Educational Development.
[3] Visiting Teachers.
[4] A Persian word used for ‘non-availability’.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Reflective Paper about XYZ Trust.
REFLECTIVE PAPER
After going through the current studies, my understanding and perception about leadership changed as I had perceived leadership a fixed position but the literature based evidences and classroom interactions were too dominant and convincing to accommodate (Illeris, 2003) new learning which came as leadership a set of functions and leadership as a concept (Leithwood & Steinbach, 2000) rather than a formal role (Leithwood, 2004; Lieberman, 1988). Based on this understanding this reflective paper focuses on how a trust team views its role as a leader. I will try to critically examine and analyze the practices of a trust, based on two visits to explore the leadership and its pedagogy. However, I feel that two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of the topic which is of-course a huge area to discuss. This paper will outline the background information, state of the existing leadership model and practices and lastly will try to put forward some recommendations.
The trust was a result of an inspiration of a worst situation observed by a renowned singer of Pakistan, when he observed some children in a far-flung area of Sindh, Pakistan who were constrained to drinking contaminated water from a well where birds and animals were lying dead. This situation was a though provoking event for him. Hence, he, with the support of his friends and fans, launched XYZ trust, with the aim to provide basic needs for the children, specifically with the vision that trust will be a leader in providing opportunities to a better life through education to the underprivileged working children of Pakistan. However, the focus has now been expanded towards the ‘children in public schools’ besides ‘underprivileged working children’. Under this trust, currently there are 34 schools operational in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore where almost 2155 working children are getting educational benefits, while 148 teachers are employed. One government schools is also handed over by government to the trust while negotiations for others are in process.
Of-course, it seems a noble cause, and at the other hand there is a harsh reality that currently there are 8 Million Child Labors in Pakistan (Chaudhry, 1999) caused by constant poverty which forces the parents to send their children to work for an additional income. The childhood rights to get education, the chance to play and opportunities for the normal physical development are basic human rights, denied to these 8 million children. Perhaps, now in Pakistan, we are so used to child labors that we don’t even notice it. I reflect on my own behavior that when this task was given, I explored different materials on child laboring and started taking notice of child labors around me, else, I never critically thought about. (Absolutely, it is my new learning). It could be probably the cultural context and mind-set of every common person in Pakistan.
With above worst situation of child labouringly in Pakistan, will the trust be able to accommodate and achieve its goals and vision? Of-course not, but the trust has taken initiatives to fill the gap being within its capacity and limitations, not to facilitate all these 8 millions children but to contribute its share with the slogan that, ‘no differences can only make the difference’. This can be through provoking message to every one of us.
XYZ Trust mainly endeavors to facilitate non-formal primary education to the underprivileged working children of Pakistan to make them better citizens for a brighter future. It has introduced a new notion of education as ‘Education as Labor’, because it also extends financial support to these deserving working children by providing a fixed stipend of Rs 10/- daily in exchange for the time they take out from their every day jobs to attend schools. Through this initiative XYZ Trust is trying to make a difference in the society. The education imparted to these children would help them to take on board with the mainstream society and become useful citizen of Pakistan.
Initially I was exactly not aware of the structure of this trust and its leadership style, and I had thought of sampling one of its trust members to explore his/her pedagogy of leadership. But after going through the whole system of the trust and its schools network, I opted the whole XYZ Trust officials as leadership for the schools whom I found occupying various roles in the school and leadership was not static. They were providing direction and exert influence in order to achieve the school’s goals (Leithwood, 2004).
The leadership style, which I perceived was purely based on the given criteria and tasks proposed by Sergiovanni (1998) as the trust is striving hard for capital development through focusing their ministerial roles seriously and embodying it by emphasizing the practices purposing, maintaining harmony, institutionalizing values, motivating, problem solving, managing, explaining, enabling, modeling and supervising. I found the evidences of every task in Trust leadership and in their controlled schools with compassion that the organization, its employees and other stakeholders believe in concern and sympathy for the underprivileged, especially the working children. I observed that every individual to whom I met showed a culture of collaboration in trust as well as in schools, which reminded me of a live example of learning community (Lovely & Buffum, 2007) because to create a learning community the major components like respect, caring, inclusiveness, trust, empowerment and commitment (Retallick, Cocklin, & Coombe, 1999) are the essential ingredients and all these were very evidently present.
The second major characteristics of the institutions was the distributed leadership (Gronn, 2003) which starts from willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to participate without dominating, this was very much evident through out the institution, as every body seemed independent to work toward the achievement of their goals.
The students brought to school are not the normal school students, but they use to come from the background of working class children, and they use to have problematic behaviors. I found the leadership of school emphasizing on character building, as they consider character building to be an integral aspect of their programs, as learning without personal integrity will be of little value to the individual and the society.
I also found that the trust in terms of cultivation, courage, creativity, commitment, and communication is very much consistent, with a culture of high expectations as in the beginning of this paper I have already given the statistics of child labor in Pakistan, but the trust is still striving hard to impart quality education to these underprivileged children and gradually approaching toward its goal. Likewise they have the creativity to create solutions to the potential barriers like the problems in terms of dealing with government schools as they faced some resistance from parents and teaching staff. Trust created a good link and partnership with government to overcome the issue as they believe that without mutual cooperation and support by the government, programs can not get the success. Another problem was adopting the proscribed syllabus in its schools, so with collaboration of a prestigious institution the existing syllabus was maneuvered to meet the needs of the students, so that students could be able to get the most relevant and authentic information through the usage of AV aids in their teaching, which also shows their commitment to look for the best practices.
Trust leadership explained that quality education is every citizen’s right and its responsibility lies with the state. Now, a paradigm shift is required in the mindset of state authorities, the people and the education system to save our future generations from destruction. As a first step towards accomplishment of its vision, Trust had initially started educational facilitation for the underprivileged working children of Pakistan, but now they have expanded their service scope from these children to other children studying in government schools through public-private partnership to maximize the mass coverage. Trust believes there is not a single decent public school in Pakistan, so what future do these children studying in public schools have if they study 61-year-old textbooks in a rapidly progressing world? Trust believes that a student must learn from the textbook how to learn, change and inquire freely rather than becoming a “lakeer ka faqeer”. If we want our future generations to ask the right questions then a culture of discussion, interaction, proactive thinking and asking questions needs to be encouraged, then we have to update our curriculum according to the needs of time. To address these needs, Trust has created its own syllabus up to class 5th, which has already been mentioned above.
Likewise according to the Trust, a ‘public school’ is nothing more than a room, chalkboard and a teacher, which can be termed as ‘something is better than nothing’ but Trust emphases that this term should never be used when it comes to health and education. They justify it by saying that a ‘reason to believe’ sets the ball rolling slowly, but in the right direction. It is not strange when extraordinary people do extraordinary things. But when they have a ‘reason to believe’, even ordinary people start doing extraordinary things.
Conclusion and Recommendation
I have been privileged to work with many dynamic, adaptive and creative colleagues who represent the essential qualities of effective leadership. Yes; the group members, I really appreciate their kindness, generosity and knowledge sharing attitude though which I got many new ideas and learning. Concluding this reflective paper, I am confident to say that the school is on the track to transform the school to a LC. A slight supportive and collaborative atmosphere is needed for further progress by the Principal. DL extends authority and influence to groups and some further downed distribution of responsibilities can flourish school further. On going professional development is always the assurance of success that needs to be initiated, while taking appropriate measure to retain the trained staff.
REFERENCES
Chaudhry, M.A.K. (1999). Child Labor: Facts an Fiction. The Lahore Journal of Economics, 2(2). 119 - 123
Gronn, P (2003). The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London. Sage Publications.
Illeris, K. (2003). Towards a contemporary and comprehensive theory of learning. International Journal of Lifelong Education. 22(4), 396-406
Leithwood, K. (2004) What we know about successful leadership. The practicing Administrator, 4
Libereman, A. (1988). Building a professional culture in schools. New York. Teachers College Press.
Lovely, S. & Buffum, A.G. (2007). Generations at School: Building an Age-Friendly Learning Community. California: Crown Press.
Retallick, J. Cocklin, B. & Coombe, K. (Eds.). (1999). Learning Communities in Education: Issues, strategies and contexts. London: Routledge.
Serviovanni, T. (1998). Leadership as pedagogy, capital development and school effectiveness. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1(1), 37-46
Stewart, D. & Prebble, T. (1993). The Reflective Principal: School Development Within a Learning Community. New Zealand: ERDC Press Massey University.
Leithwood, K., Jantizi, D., and Steinbach, R. (2000). Changing leadership and changing times. (reprint). Buckingham: Open University.
After going through the current studies, my understanding and perception about leadership changed as I had perceived leadership a fixed position but the literature based evidences and classroom interactions were too dominant and convincing to accommodate (Illeris, 2003) new learning which came as leadership a set of functions and leadership as a concept (Leithwood & Steinbach, 2000) rather than a formal role (Leithwood, 2004; Lieberman, 1988). Based on this understanding this reflective paper focuses on how a trust team views its role as a leader. I will try to critically examine and analyze the practices of a trust, based on two visits to explore the leadership and its pedagogy. However, I feel that two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of the topic which is of-course a huge area to discuss. This paper will outline the background information, state of the existing leadership model and practices and lastly will try to put forward some recommendations.
The trust was a result of an inspiration of a worst situation observed by a renowned singer of Pakistan, when he observed some children in a far-flung area of Sindh, Pakistan who were constrained to drinking contaminated water from a well where birds and animals were lying dead. This situation was a though provoking event for him. Hence, he, with the support of his friends and fans, launched XYZ trust, with the aim to provide basic needs for the children, specifically with the vision that trust will be a leader in providing opportunities to a better life through education to the underprivileged working children of Pakistan. However, the focus has now been expanded towards the ‘children in public schools’ besides ‘underprivileged working children’. Under this trust, currently there are 34 schools operational in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore where almost 2155 working children are getting educational benefits, while 148 teachers are employed. One government schools is also handed over by government to the trust while negotiations for others are in process.
Of-course, it seems a noble cause, and at the other hand there is a harsh reality that currently there are 8 Million Child Labors in Pakistan (Chaudhry, 1999) caused by constant poverty which forces the parents to send their children to work for an additional income. The childhood rights to get education, the chance to play and opportunities for the normal physical development are basic human rights, denied to these 8 million children. Perhaps, now in Pakistan, we are so used to child labors that we don’t even notice it. I reflect on my own behavior that when this task was given, I explored different materials on child laboring and started taking notice of child labors around me, else, I never critically thought about. (Absolutely, it is my new learning). It could be probably the cultural context and mind-set of every common person in Pakistan.
With above worst situation of child labouringly in Pakistan, will the trust be able to accommodate and achieve its goals and vision? Of-course not, but the trust has taken initiatives to fill the gap being within its capacity and limitations, not to facilitate all these 8 millions children but to contribute its share with the slogan that, ‘no differences can only make the difference’. This can be through provoking message to every one of us.
XYZ Trust mainly endeavors to facilitate non-formal primary education to the underprivileged working children of Pakistan to make them better citizens for a brighter future. It has introduced a new notion of education as ‘Education as Labor’, because it also extends financial support to these deserving working children by providing a fixed stipend of Rs 10/- daily in exchange for the time they take out from their every day jobs to attend schools. Through this initiative XYZ Trust is trying to make a difference in the society. The education imparted to these children would help them to take on board with the mainstream society and become useful citizen of Pakistan.
Initially I was exactly not aware of the structure of this trust and its leadership style, and I had thought of sampling one of its trust members to explore his/her pedagogy of leadership. But after going through the whole system of the trust and its schools network, I opted the whole XYZ Trust officials as leadership for the schools whom I found occupying various roles in the school and leadership was not static. They were providing direction and exert influence in order to achieve the school’s goals (Leithwood, 2004).
The leadership style, which I perceived was purely based on the given criteria and tasks proposed by Sergiovanni (1998) as the trust is striving hard for capital development through focusing their ministerial roles seriously and embodying it by emphasizing the practices purposing, maintaining harmony, institutionalizing values, motivating, problem solving, managing, explaining, enabling, modeling and supervising. I found the evidences of every task in Trust leadership and in their controlled schools with compassion that the organization, its employees and other stakeholders believe in concern and sympathy for the underprivileged, especially the working children. I observed that every individual to whom I met showed a culture of collaboration in trust as well as in schools, which reminded me of a live example of learning community (Lovely & Buffum, 2007) because to create a learning community the major components like respect, caring, inclusiveness, trust, empowerment and commitment (Retallick, Cocklin, & Coombe, 1999) are the essential ingredients and all these were very evidently present.
The second major characteristics of the institutions was the distributed leadership (Gronn, 2003) which starts from willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to participate without dominating, this was very much evident through out the institution, as every body seemed independent to work toward the achievement of their goals.
The students brought to school are not the normal school students, but they use to come from the background of working class children, and they use to have problematic behaviors. I found the leadership of school emphasizing on character building, as they consider character building to be an integral aspect of their programs, as learning without personal integrity will be of little value to the individual and the society.
I also found that the trust in terms of cultivation, courage, creativity, commitment, and communication is very much consistent, with a culture of high expectations as in the beginning of this paper I have already given the statistics of child labor in Pakistan, but the trust is still striving hard to impart quality education to these underprivileged children and gradually approaching toward its goal. Likewise they have the creativity to create solutions to the potential barriers like the problems in terms of dealing with government schools as they faced some resistance from parents and teaching staff. Trust created a good link and partnership with government to overcome the issue as they believe that without mutual cooperation and support by the government, programs can not get the success. Another problem was adopting the proscribed syllabus in its schools, so with collaboration of a prestigious institution the existing syllabus was maneuvered to meet the needs of the students, so that students could be able to get the most relevant and authentic information through the usage of AV aids in their teaching, which also shows their commitment to look for the best practices.
Trust leadership explained that quality education is every citizen’s right and its responsibility lies with the state. Now, a paradigm shift is required in the mindset of state authorities, the people and the education system to save our future generations from destruction. As a first step towards accomplishment of its vision, Trust had initially started educational facilitation for the underprivileged working children of Pakistan, but now they have expanded their service scope from these children to other children studying in government schools through public-private partnership to maximize the mass coverage. Trust believes there is not a single decent public school in Pakistan, so what future do these children studying in public schools have if they study 61-year-old textbooks in a rapidly progressing world? Trust believes that a student must learn from the textbook how to learn, change and inquire freely rather than becoming a “lakeer ka faqeer”. If we want our future generations to ask the right questions then a culture of discussion, interaction, proactive thinking and asking questions needs to be encouraged, then we have to update our curriculum according to the needs of time. To address these needs, Trust has created its own syllabus up to class 5th, which has already been mentioned above.
Likewise according to the Trust, a ‘public school’ is nothing more than a room, chalkboard and a teacher, which can be termed as ‘something is better than nothing’ but Trust emphases that this term should never be used when it comes to health and education. They justify it by saying that a ‘reason to believe’ sets the ball rolling slowly, but in the right direction. It is not strange when extraordinary people do extraordinary things. But when they have a ‘reason to believe’, even ordinary people start doing extraordinary things.
Conclusion and Recommendation
I have been privileged to work with many dynamic, adaptive and creative colleagues who represent the essential qualities of effective leadership. Yes; the group members, I really appreciate their kindness, generosity and knowledge sharing attitude though which I got many new ideas and learning. Concluding this reflective paper, I am confident to say that the school is on the track to transform the school to a LC. A slight supportive and collaborative atmosphere is needed for further progress by the Principal. DL extends authority and influence to groups and some further downed distribution of responsibilities can flourish school further. On going professional development is always the assurance of success that needs to be initiated, while taking appropriate measure to retain the trained staff.
REFERENCES
Chaudhry, M.A.K. (1999). Child Labor: Facts an Fiction. The Lahore Journal of Economics, 2(2). 119 - 123
Gronn, P (2003). The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London. Sage Publications.
Illeris, K. (2003). Towards a contemporary and comprehensive theory of learning. International Journal of Lifelong Education. 22(4), 396-406
Leithwood, K. (2004) What we know about successful leadership. The practicing Administrator, 4
Libereman, A. (1988). Building a professional culture in schools. New York. Teachers College Press.
Lovely, S. & Buffum, A.G. (2007). Generations at School: Building an Age-Friendly Learning Community. California: Crown Press.
Retallick, J. Cocklin, B. & Coombe, K. (Eds.). (1999). Learning Communities in Education: Issues, strategies and contexts. London: Routledge.
Serviovanni, T. (1998). Leadership as pedagogy, capital development and school effectiveness. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1(1), 37-46
Stewart, D. & Prebble, T. (1993). The Reflective Principal: School Development Within a Learning Community. New Zealand: ERDC Press Massey University.
Leithwood, K., Jantizi, D., and Steinbach, R. (2000). Changing leadership and changing times. (reprint). Buckingham: Open University.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Research Proposal.
INTRODUCTION
Leadership is a key component in guiding the teaching-learning process necessary for preparing students with relevant knowledge and skills in today’s society to become a productive citizen of the 21st century. According to Dinham (2005) leadership is important in developing effective, innovative schools and in facilitating quality teaching and learning through computers. Today’s head teachers are expected to not only manage the day to day activities of a school but also focus on students learning, standards, data driven decision making and restructuring efforts. All these tasks can be greatly facilitated by the use of computer. Thus, school leadership has a responsibility for initiating and implementing school change through the use of computers to facilitate decisions about integration of ICT into learning and teaching (Schiller, 2003).
Although the attitude of head teachers in supporting computer integration is critical, much of the research literature has tended to overlook the attitude of the principal (Michael, 1998) and the head teacher’s current technology leadership capabilities. This gap in the research is unusual because many studies relating to school effectiveness, school improvement and change show that head teachers’ attitude play an important role in creating successful change in schools (Schiller, 2003). In addition, little is known about the attitude, perception and use of computers by school head teachers in Pakistan. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the attitude and perception of principals for long lasting ICT integration in Education, which is on its initial phases in Pakistan.
Rationale
In my experience in schools in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, I have come across situations where teachers or student-initiated ICT projects have been undermined due to lack of support from the school head teachers. While encouraging staff members to use computers for classroom instruction and administration, I realized that head teachers have a critical role to play (Chin, 2000). In order for head teachers to encourage the use of computers among the staff, their own attitude towards using the technology matters a lot. Consideration of user attitude is an integral part of educational computer use as attitudes influence not only head teachers’ initial acceptance of computer, but their future behavior regarding computers. Experiences suggest that provision of hardware and software alone is inadequate to guarantee effective integration of computers into school without the learners’ inclination to use technology. Researchers are of the opinion that awareness and attitudes toward computers, constitutes a crucial criterion in the evaluation of computer application and usage including the development of computer-based curricula (Woodrow, 1991; Kay, 1993; Robertson et al, 1995).
Therefore, as a first step towards understanding the processes of computer integration, the purpose of this study is to explore the attitudes of the head and deputy head teachers of Sindh and Baluchistan toward computers in education.
Research Question
· What are the current attitudes of government schools’ head teachers and deputy head teachers of Sindh and Balochistan toward the use of computers in education?
· What are the relationships between head teachers’ attitude toward computers and their demographic and computer use information?
Definition of Key Terms
· Attitude: Attitude is the way of behaving and feeling good and bad about something or some body.
· Attitude toward Computers: It means positive or negative contribution towards understanding the computer.
Significance of the Study
The study will be significant in several ways:
1. This study will provide data to understand the head teachers’ attitude towards computers, which will be relevant as one of the sources of reference for policy makers, curriculum planners and for Ed-Links Project Team to plan professional development programs in future, to improve the current condition of curricula so as to determine the needs and trends for computers, and to suggest recommendations for changes.
2. As a researcher, I will further enhance my skills of conducting quantitative study in educational contexts.
3. The findings of the study will contribute to the research literature on the attitudes of schools heads in the implementation of computers in education.
4. In this study, I will use a tool which has been used as part of a study in several countries. By using this tool, I will be able to test the reliability and validity of the tool for the head teachers in Pakistan. This would be another significant contribution to the field.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This is a review of literature where I have tried to thematically describe in four sub-categories i.e. Attitude, Computers in education, role of head teacher in change management process and finally research on head teachers’ attitudes towards computers.
Attitude
Most definitions seem to agree that an attitude is a state of readiness, a tendency to act or react in a certain manner when confronted with certain stimuli (Oppenheim, 1966). A person may have strong attitudes for or against some issue and we can explore through confronting the individual with an attitude questionnaire (Evans, 1965).
An attitude is accompanied by a tendency to act in a particular way in given circumstances; it is sometimes possible to infer the attitudes of an individual from his/her response (Evans, 1965). Attitude is how we think and whether we lean toward the optimistic or pessimistic. Attitude is a mental position relative to a way of thinking or being. A positive attitude implies a way of thinking that is predominantly positive and optimistic. The opposite inclination, a negative attitude is predominantly pessimistic. All human gets influenced with their different perceptions towards the attitude. What type of attitude we use to face, our life will always be repaid to what type of life we are having now (Keller, 2000). A positive attitude is a person’s passport to a better tomorrow and if we are willing to change our attitude, we can change as Keller (2000) cites James as, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind”.
According to Aiken (1980), attitudes are "learned predispositions to respond positively or negatively to certain objects, situations, concepts, or persons" (p. 2). They can be thought of as a reflection of an individual's global perspective on a topic and can be predictive of behavior. Attitude is the way a person thinks about somebody or something and the way s/he behaves toward someone. It is her/her personal view or opinion of something. It also describes her/his general emotional approach to any person or situation. Attitude is a primary component of our mannerism. It is the foundation for achieving and maintaining a positive mental outlook. We see the world the way we are or should be. Our beliefs about others reflect back at us.
Finally attitudes are referred to the way of behaving and feeling good and bad about something or some body. Similarly attitude toward computer in education means positive or negative contribution towards understanding the world and computer. Like Petty & Cacioppo cited in Abell and Lederman (2007) defines attitude as, “an attitude is a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object or issue (p.78)”.
Computers in education
Computer became an important part of human life in this era and because of technology involvement; life style of human being has been gradually changed, as technology used to extend human capability to control and modify natural and human-made environments (Raizen et al, 1995). Ultimately Educational institutions are also in this transactional phase. Technology recommends and offers new capabilities that lead to significant changes in the organizational day to day affairs. It shows the new way of allocation and distribution of information throughout the institution.
In discussion about the potential role of technology in education as many educators believe that computer use for instructional purposes can be employed effectively to enhance teaching and learning. In other words, computer technologies can change the teacher’s role from information giver to facilitator and co-learner (Jonassen et al., 1999). Similarly, Attaran and Vanlaar (2001) pointed out that technology reduces record keeping time in schools and simplifies administrative tasks. Also, computer networking is creating a professional attachment between teachers and administrators.
Crawford (1997) has very artistically defined computer as a powerful tool, an interesting, patient and responsive teacher, makes learning easier and more attractive, a pupil-centered, independent and flexible learning, gives access to on-line learning resources, promotes sharing and collaboration, promotes diversity, blind to gender, race, age and disability, but if not taken the benefit of computer in its real sense all this theoretical ideas will remain the contents of books and articles. Computers cannot be integrated into classroom overnight. Technology integration includes different stages. Despite the increasing presence of computer hardware and software in schools and numerous workshops and training, the consistent integration of ICT into regular classroom is still a far cry from reality (CEO Forum, 2000)
Role of the head teacher in change management process
Safdar (2001) very artistically describes the import role of head teacher as;
I have never seen a good school with a poor principal or a poor principal with a good school. I have seen unsuccessful school turned around into successful ones, and regressively outstanding schools slide rapidly into decline. In each case, the rise and fall could be readily be traced to the quality of the principal.
According to Fullan (2003), no successful large-scale change or school reform effort has advanced very far without the support of the school leaders. Similarly, Schiller (2003) stated that “principals have a key role to play in the facilitation of educational change” (p. 4). Schiller (2003) concludes in his research that head teachers who take an active approach and attitude to innovation can foster an environment that has greater benefits for their students and staff. Hence, head teachers’ attitude, awareness and use of computer are essential for effective use and integration of computers in the school (Smith et al., 1999). Therefore, successful ICT development within the school will require the leader with positive attitude towards technology. For the effectiveness and sustainability of computer integration, head teachers’ attitude and their awareness in the use of technology is very much essential.
As it has already been proved through different researches that effective involvement of head teacher in computer integrating in schools has brought better outcomes (Schiller, 2003). Literature further clarifies that head teachers are the main sources of intervention in terms of ICT integration. The studies of Schiller (1991) highlight the positive attitude of school head teachers in helping their staff better use of computers to enhance teaching and learning and to assist with administration and management. While another research of Allan, Yuen, Nancy, & Wong (2003) indicates that to ensure the successful integration of ICT in school, cooperation between school leadership and teachers is essential.
In the age of information technology, head teachers must be able to integrate computer into their daily practice and to provide consistent and positive leadership for technology use in the teaching-learning process. In fact, they must be technology leaders. According to Hope, Kelly and Guyden (2000) technology leadership involves both understanding the technologies and how they can be applied to accomplishing tasks. If head teachers’ attitude towards ICT is better then they will be able to promote a school culture which encourages exploration of new techniques in teaching, learning and management (Schiller, 2003). Therefore, schools need leaders who can facilitate the change process and support a learning community for technology integration.
Research on head teachers’ attitudes towards computers/ change
Based on various research studies, a wide range of factors have been found to affect technology integration in the school. Of these, leadership attitude of head teacher is the single most important factor affecting the successful integration of technology (Byrom & Bingham, 2001).
Studies showed that head teachers played an important role for promoting computers use in schools and classrooms. Their attitude and support were highly related with if schools would have the climate and environment where teachers wanted to use computers in their classrooms (Dupaggne & Krendl,1992; Pelgrum, 1993; Pelgrum & Plomp, 1991a; Pruett et al., 1993). Researches have shown that schools head teachers usually had positive attitude toward use of computers and favor teachers to use them in schools (Wolf, 1993). The result would not only influence teachers' attitude for using computers but also offered support to teachers to use computers. Pelgrum (1993) confirmed that the correlation of the attitude for using computers in schools between teachers and head teachers is positive. Akker and Pelgrum (1993) concluded that school head teachers having positive attitude for computers reported a higher frequency of stimulation of computer use by school authorities than those who have less positive attitude.
Head teachers with more positive attitude for using computers tended to emphasize the impact, purposes, and integration of computers in schools and encourage teachers to use computers more. Pruett et al. also (1993) found that teachers whose head teachers or supervisors encouraged them to use computers were more possible to use them in their instruction. They also, hence, provided more opportunities of in-service programs for teachers. The tendency to use computers was formed positively. Support and training of personnel were helpful for teachers' use of computers and motivated them to use more and deeply (Becker, 1994). Support from head teachers and administrators are very important because of offering adequate training, hardware and software, and time to plan in order to promote and motivate teachers to integrate computers into curriculum.
Wilmore and Betz (2000) stated that “Information Technology will only be successfully implemented in schools if the head teacher actively supports it, learns as well, provides adequate professional development and supports his/her staff in the process of change” (p. 15). Hence, head teachers are one of the key leaders of change at the school level. Their actions, interests and attitude can have a profound impact on program change and instructional practice. Therefore, effective administrators must have a positive attitude towards computers and knowledge.
These findings are clearly confirmed that head teachers' attitude toward computers will decide the level of ICT integration. The relationship between school leadership and the use of computer often plays an important role to encourage and facilitate the use of computers within their schools for administrative and managerial work (Visscher, 1996) as well as for instructional activities (Akker, Keursten & Plomp, 1992). It refers to the concept of educational leadership (Creemers, 1994), whereby school leaders can influence and improve what happens in the teaching/learning process. The extent to which school head teachers promote the use of computers in their schools probably depends on the degree to which they consider computer useful. Their views on this matter can be evident in a number of ways, such as how they incorporate computer into their own school tasks and the school policy measures that they effect to promote the incorporation of ICT into their schools.
The whole vision of getting the school ready and up to date with the use of educational technology in the classroom would not be complete without the commitment and readiness of the head teachers.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Methodology
The purpose of my study is to measure the attitude of head teachers towards computers, therefore, the most logical method for gathering information on attitudes is to ask directly from head teachers, who are leading schools, through an attitudinal survey research method (May, 2003). Such surveys specifically deal with gaining data on attitudes. According to Fink and Kosecoff (1998) “survey is a method of collecting information directly from people about their ideas, feelings, … beliefs and social, educational … background” (p. 1). This design will also allow me to get information from a large number of head teachers through the questionnaire method, which is widely used as a useful research instrument for collecting survey information and providing structured and numerical data, within a short period of time, which are often straightforward to analyze (Cohen, Manion & Marrison, 2000). Since my research requires collecting data at a single point in time, I have selected a cross-sectional survey because a “cross-sectional survey produces a ‘snapshot’ of a population at a particular point in time” (Cohen, Manion & Marrison, 2000). An additional advantage of the cross-sectional survey is that it is quicker to conduct and cheaper to administer (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2006; Fink and Kosecoff, 1998).
Background of Study Sample
Since the government sector is the largest provider of education in Pakistan and Federal Government has also stressed great emphasis on enhancing the scope and amount of computers in Education. In this regard ‘The links to learning: Education Support to Pakistan (ED-LINKS)’ is also working with government on the same track, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).The ED-LINKS project is designed to facilitate implementation of the government’s agenda for quality education at the middle and secondary levels in Sindh, Balochistan, FATA and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).
Apart from other activities of teaching learning process, ED-LINKS program also includes up-gradation and establishment of Computer Labs in selected middle and secondary schools of the project area. ED-LINKS is working closely with the Ministry of Education and the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) for effective implementation of target activities in the selected schools, functioning in four rural and one urban sectors of FDE.
ED-LINKS is comprised of a team of international and local partners. AIR, the prime is joined by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF-US/Pakistan) including affiliates, Aga Khan University Examination Board and Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development, Children’s Resource International Pakistan, Management Systems International (MSI), Society for Community Support for Primary Education in Balochistan (Society), Sarhad Rural Support Program (SRSP), Teachers Resource Center (TRC), and Kids-on-line.
Ed-Links program has initiated a 10 week Certificate in Education: Educational leadership and management course at AKU-IED from July 2008 and it will continue till January 2009. The course is consisting of eight different modules about teaching learning processes. My research topic can be assisted by the fourth module i.e. Integration of ICT with Teaching Learning.
In this course the head teachers and deputy head teachers from the Government Schools of Balochistan and Sindh are taking part in three different cohorts. Specifically talking about the focus areas in Baluchistan are; Qilla Abdullah, Qilla Saifullah, Pishin, Loralai, Sibi, Bolan, Jaffarabad, Khuzdar, Awaran, Panjgoor and Kech and from Sindh; Khairpur, Shikarpur, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Dadu, Jamshoro, Jacobabad, Sanghar, Kashmore, Nawabshah and Tharparkar.
Through Ed-links program all the CPs are being exposed to the use of computers and in my opinion this exposure would be a patronizing factor toward positive or negative attitude toward computers. I assume all these CPs will be the representative samples, who have been drawn by the respective DEOs – District Education Officers, keeping the future facilitation and need in view. Understanding their attitude toward computers will guide for appropriate intervention plans in these areas and schools.
Sample
Good sampling achieves representativeness (Balnaves and Capuli, 2001) and is considered to finding ways to give all population members an equal chance of being selected and one of these is to use the probability methods for choosing a sample (Bryman, 2004). Samples selected through probability sampling techniques are more likely to be representative of the population they are drawn from and thus the likelihood of generalizing from sample to population increases. Keeping this criterion in mind, I intend to choose Ed-links program - ‘10 Week Certificate program for head teachers and deputy head teachers’- participants (male & female) of three cohorts total 224 CPs who will be invited to complete a questionnaire.
Data Generation Tool
To explore the attitudes towards computers of government school head teachers and deputy head teachers, I intend to adopt questionnaire developed by Pelgrum and Plomp, (1993) which was initially tested and validated in England, Germany, Greece and Netherlands. Then the tool was used as a part of study in several countries including China and India. The findings of the study confirmed the validity and reliability of this questionnaire. The research (Pelgrum, 1993) has suggested giving some more attention to females who seem, on the whole to be somewhat less positive about the educational impact of using computers than their male colleagues while Hashim, & Mustapha, (2004) have found that female respondents have more positive computer attitudes than males. So, it will be an interesting study to know about the gender difference according to attitude toward computer in Pakistani context.
The questionnaire is relevant to the purpose of my study which is to measure the attitude toward computers. This questionnaire is designed not only for the head teachers but it can also be used for students and teachers. Furthermore, as the appearance of the questionnaire is also important (Cohen, Manion and Marrison, 2000), when I looked at the appearance, it looked easy, attractive and interesting because the statements were according to the understanding level of any grade, in simple language and with very clear wording. Not only appearance looked okay, but the items were also relevant to explore my concern. As Robson (2002) states,“ a good questionnaire not only provides a valid measure of the research questions but also gets the cooperation of respondents, and elicit accurate information” (p.242), while Balnaves & Caputi (2001) describe questionnaire as an ‘ambassador’ for the research project.
Tool Piloting Phase
A preliminary test of a questionnaire helps to identify problems and benefits associate with the design (Balnaves and Caputi, 2001) and to get a better understanding of the frame of reference relevant to the questionnaire and question wording. Hence, the English questionnaire has been translated into Urdu and checked through back translation to ensure accuracy of translation and for an easy understanding of respondents.
Although, the tool has been piloted and validated, mostly in developed countries, and tool asks questions which appear relevant to the local context of Pakistan but still I feel there is a need to pilot it since it was used in a completely different context, and it is now translated in Urdu, therefore, I am in process to pilot the tool to check its construct and internal validity in the context of Pakistan. For this purpose I have already negotiated with CPs of M.Ed. (ELM) 2010 of AKU-IED and pilot testing phase is in process. I have not changed the originality of items. Nevertheless, the tool is being pilot tested and changes will be made accordingly if deemed necessary.
Questionnaire is based on two parts. Part A requests general demographic and computer use information while Part B is the measuring of Attitudes Toward Computers. Further details on the questionnaire are provided below:
Part A: Demographic and Background Information
In this section participants will be asked to provide information about their work experience, gender, age, highest level of education, do they own a computer, what area is their school located, in which province they belong to, do they use a computer and have they got any formal computer training. All these variables will be treated as independent variables, which will also be used for comparison and to identify the co-relation with attitudinal components during data analysis as a survey in comparison can cover a rang of issues and normally results in a variable by case matrix (person by age, person by education etc) (Balnaves & Caputi, 2001).
Part B: Attitude Towards Computer
The questionnaire consists of 20 items. Of these 20 statements, 18 are worded positively and two are worded negatively. Statements will correspond to four main dimensions namely;
1. Perceived Educational Impact
2. Perceived Social Impact
3. Training needs and
4. Self Confidence level
This tool employs a 5-point Likert scale to measure attitude as attitude scale plays an important role (May, 2003), in which head teachers will be asked to rank their attitude toward computers ranging from 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (not sure), 4 (agree) and 5 (strongly agree).
As far as getting ‘the cooperation of respondents’ and eliciting the ‘accurate information’ is concerned I am aware that the head teachers’ attitude towards computer questionnaire has not been tested (to the best of my knowledge) in Pakistan, hence it should be validated first in order to be able to do the above. Questionnaire will be mailed with a covering letter explaining the purpose of the questionnaire and stressing the need for cooperation and the anonymity of replies (May, 2001). I will enclose a stamped, addressed return envelope for respondents’ convenience in returning the completed questionnaire (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2000).
All questionnaires will be treated confidentially, only identification number will be printed on each questionnaire. The number will be used for convenience to recognize the respondent.
Intended Data analysis procedures
After the data collection, I intend to analyze data using the statistical software SPSS which according to Gaur & Gaur (2006) is the most reliable software for analyzing quantitative data, for frequencies, percentages, cross tabulation and descriptive statistics. The population variables of age, level of education, level of work experience, computer use, computer training, gender and their locality will be given numeric values to aid in data analysis. Following will be the step by step process of intended data analysis.
Data entry
I will create a data set by defining the variables, attaching labels and entering the pre-coded responses. The code for missing data will be ’99’ and for ‘invalid’ or ‘not applicable’ the code will be ’98.’
Data cleaning
After data entry, data cleaning is as important as the need to proof-read text for errors (Robson, 2002). I will carry-out data cleaning by checking the data for errors which could have been made while ‘keying in’ the data. After simple eye-balling of the data for any visible anomalies, I will conduct univariate analysis to explore each variable separately in my data set. Univariate analysis looks at the range as well as the central tendency of the values (Field, 2005). It also describes the pattern of response to the variable because it depicts each variable on its own.
Analysis
Firstly, descriptive statistics will be calculated for all variables. Means, standard deviations, minimums, and maximums will be calculated for continuous variables. Frequencies and percentages will be calculated for categorical variables.
Secondly, the data will be disaggregated by demographic variables, and inferential statistics will be calculated to assess the relationships between the demographic variables and attitudinal variables. I will also use descriptive statistics to describe and summarize the data.
Limitations in the Study
Like every research, my research will have some limitations that need to be acknowledged at this stage. Normally survey designs use to have a number of limitations. The most serious weakness concerns the validity and reliability of responses obtained to questions. Surveys provide only verbal descriptions of what respondents’ say they do or how they feel about something. Responses cannot always be taken as accurate descriptions of what the respondents actually do or really feel about something. I acknowledge that following will be my limitations.
Response rate
The mailed questionnaire is probably the most frequently used method for surveying; however, they tend to result in lower response rates (Dillman, 1978) and thus are more likely to obtain results that are biased in favor of the sample population most interested in the survey topic. Secondly, my research participants are in the far flung areas of Baluchistan and Sindh. I fear of delayed or misplaced delivery of mail.
To overcome this issue, I will have a face to face meeting with them as they will be visiting AKU-IED for their course participation and will request them to ensure their participation and for an early return mail. However, respondents will be given approximately two weeks from the date of initial mailing to return the questionnaires. For the purpose of reciprocity and to increase the response rate, I will send a thank you postcard/letter to all respondents after two weeks of my initial mail (questionnaire). This postcard/letter will serve both as a friendly reminder for non-responding individuals to respond and as a thank you to individuals who already responded.
Social Desirability
It is obvious that when we know that other people are watching us, we will tend to behave in a way we believe is socially acceptable and desirable. It is a common tendency and nature of human being to reply in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. I expect some responses in this category.
Again this issue can be eliminated by face to face meeting and assuring them through the research information sheet that there is no any right or wrong answer and strict maintenance of anonymity of their identification would surely decrease the social desirability, as the tool doesn’t ask about their names or any other personal identification. Secondly as I am sending postal surveys and respondents will not perceive themselves to be in a survey situation, and thus I expect more open and fair personal information.
Monitoring the answers
As my research tool will be mailed to the respondents to be filled and return to me. So, I will not be in a position to monitor filling up process at every individual’s end. May be some people will pass questionnaires to others to answer.
Through information sheet and during face to face meetings, I will try to motivate and honor that their own responses are very much valuable for me.
Ethical Consideration
As I am intending to carry out an academic or educational setting research, so, I have to consider and be aware of the ethics as “Ethics in research are the principles of right and wrong that a particular group accepts” (Bogdan and Biklen, 1998, p.49). To ensure the dignity, privacy and interests of the participants I am using an anonymous survey, so that respondents’ privacy could be guaranteed or non-traceable (Cohen et al. 2002).
I will seek permission of the people who I will be studying to conduct research involving them. I will not do anything that would cause physical or emotional harm to my research participants. I will be reporting research findings accurately representing what I will get through my measurement tool.
As a researcher I must pay attention to the ethical principals as the term research ethics indicates a moral enterprise between the researcher and the research participants (Vazir, 2004). It refers to the question of right or wrong, and it is conforming to the standards of conduct specified in research (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2006).
Therefore, I will inform the research participants about the purpose of the research and expectations. I will provide a complete information sheet to every participant about the research by clearly stating the purpose of the study along with the consent forms.
I will also assure my respondents that the information provided by them would be used for the study purposes only. The privacy of the records would be maintained and no one would have access to them before analysis and report-writing. After completion of the study the records would be destroyed in accordance with the Institute’s policy and the dissemination of research findings would be done in accordance with the ethical considerations of not harming the personal and academic lives of participants involved. I will also write letters of thanks to the head teachers as a token of my appreciation and in the spirit of reciprocity.
Time Frame Schedule
Table 1: Time Frame
S #
Activities
From
To
Days
1
Proposal Writing
06/10/2008
24/11/2008
48 days
2
Translation of instrument.
10/11/2008
18/11/2008
08 days
3
Piloting the instrument
18/11/007
30/11/2008
12 days
4
Analysis
01/12/2008
10/12/2008
10 days
5
Mailing Questionnaire
15/12/2008
25/12/2008
10 days
6
Thanks and Reminder letters
31/12/2008
10/01/2009
11 days
7
Collection of Questionnaire
15/01/2009
31/01/2009
16 days
8
Data entry & Analysis
01/02/2009
14/02/2009
15 days
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Leadership is a key component in guiding the teaching-learning process necessary for preparing students with relevant knowledge and skills in today’s society to become a productive citizen of the 21st century. According to Dinham (2005) leadership is important in developing effective, innovative schools and in facilitating quality teaching and learning through computers. Today’s head teachers are expected to not only manage the day to day activities of a school but also focus on students learning, standards, data driven decision making and restructuring efforts. All these tasks can be greatly facilitated by the use of computer. Thus, school leadership has a responsibility for initiating and implementing school change through the use of computers to facilitate decisions about integration of ICT into learning and teaching (Schiller, 2003).
Although the attitude of head teachers in supporting computer integration is critical, much of the research literature has tended to overlook the attitude of the principal (Michael, 1998) and the head teacher’s current technology leadership capabilities. This gap in the research is unusual because many studies relating to school effectiveness, school improvement and change show that head teachers’ attitude play an important role in creating successful change in schools (Schiller, 2003). In addition, little is known about the attitude, perception and use of computers by school head teachers in Pakistan. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the attitude and perception of principals for long lasting ICT integration in Education, which is on its initial phases in Pakistan.
Rationale
In my experience in schools in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, I have come across situations where teachers or student-initiated ICT projects have been undermined due to lack of support from the school head teachers. While encouraging staff members to use computers for classroom instruction and administration, I realized that head teachers have a critical role to play (Chin, 2000). In order for head teachers to encourage the use of computers among the staff, their own attitude towards using the technology matters a lot. Consideration of user attitude is an integral part of educational computer use as attitudes influence not only head teachers’ initial acceptance of computer, but their future behavior regarding computers. Experiences suggest that provision of hardware and software alone is inadequate to guarantee effective integration of computers into school without the learners’ inclination to use technology. Researchers are of the opinion that awareness and attitudes toward computers, constitutes a crucial criterion in the evaluation of computer application and usage including the development of computer-based curricula (Woodrow, 1991; Kay, 1993; Robertson et al, 1995).
Therefore, as a first step towards understanding the processes of computer integration, the purpose of this study is to explore the attitudes of the head and deputy head teachers of Sindh and Baluchistan toward computers in education.
Research Question
· What are the current attitudes of government schools’ head teachers and deputy head teachers of Sindh and Balochistan toward the use of computers in education?
· What are the relationships between head teachers’ attitude toward computers and their demographic and computer use information?
Definition of Key Terms
· Attitude: Attitude is the way of behaving and feeling good and bad about something or some body.
· Attitude toward Computers: It means positive or negative contribution towards understanding the computer.
Significance of the Study
The study will be significant in several ways:
1. This study will provide data to understand the head teachers’ attitude towards computers, which will be relevant as one of the sources of reference for policy makers, curriculum planners and for Ed-Links Project Team to plan professional development programs in future, to improve the current condition of curricula so as to determine the needs and trends for computers, and to suggest recommendations for changes.
2. As a researcher, I will further enhance my skills of conducting quantitative study in educational contexts.
3. The findings of the study will contribute to the research literature on the attitudes of schools heads in the implementation of computers in education.
4. In this study, I will use a tool which has been used as part of a study in several countries. By using this tool, I will be able to test the reliability and validity of the tool for the head teachers in Pakistan. This would be another significant contribution to the field.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This is a review of literature where I have tried to thematically describe in four sub-categories i.e. Attitude, Computers in education, role of head teacher in change management process and finally research on head teachers’ attitudes towards computers.
Attitude
Most definitions seem to agree that an attitude is a state of readiness, a tendency to act or react in a certain manner when confronted with certain stimuli (Oppenheim, 1966). A person may have strong attitudes for or against some issue and we can explore through confronting the individual with an attitude questionnaire (Evans, 1965).
An attitude is accompanied by a tendency to act in a particular way in given circumstances; it is sometimes possible to infer the attitudes of an individual from his/her response (Evans, 1965). Attitude is how we think and whether we lean toward the optimistic or pessimistic. Attitude is a mental position relative to a way of thinking or being. A positive attitude implies a way of thinking that is predominantly positive and optimistic. The opposite inclination, a negative attitude is predominantly pessimistic. All human gets influenced with their different perceptions towards the attitude. What type of attitude we use to face, our life will always be repaid to what type of life we are having now (Keller, 2000). A positive attitude is a person’s passport to a better tomorrow and if we are willing to change our attitude, we can change as Keller (2000) cites James as, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind”.
According to Aiken (1980), attitudes are "learned predispositions to respond positively or negatively to certain objects, situations, concepts, or persons" (p. 2). They can be thought of as a reflection of an individual's global perspective on a topic and can be predictive of behavior. Attitude is the way a person thinks about somebody or something and the way s/he behaves toward someone. It is her/her personal view or opinion of something. It also describes her/his general emotional approach to any person or situation. Attitude is a primary component of our mannerism. It is the foundation for achieving and maintaining a positive mental outlook. We see the world the way we are or should be. Our beliefs about others reflect back at us.
Finally attitudes are referred to the way of behaving and feeling good and bad about something or some body. Similarly attitude toward computer in education means positive or negative contribution towards understanding the world and computer. Like Petty & Cacioppo cited in Abell and Lederman (2007) defines attitude as, “an attitude is a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object or issue (p.78)”.
Computers in education
Computer became an important part of human life in this era and because of technology involvement; life style of human being has been gradually changed, as technology used to extend human capability to control and modify natural and human-made environments (Raizen et al, 1995). Ultimately Educational institutions are also in this transactional phase. Technology recommends and offers new capabilities that lead to significant changes in the organizational day to day affairs. It shows the new way of allocation and distribution of information throughout the institution.
In discussion about the potential role of technology in education as many educators believe that computer use for instructional purposes can be employed effectively to enhance teaching and learning. In other words, computer technologies can change the teacher’s role from information giver to facilitator and co-learner (Jonassen et al., 1999). Similarly, Attaran and Vanlaar (2001) pointed out that technology reduces record keeping time in schools and simplifies administrative tasks. Also, computer networking is creating a professional attachment between teachers and administrators.
Crawford (1997) has very artistically defined computer as a powerful tool, an interesting, patient and responsive teacher, makes learning easier and more attractive, a pupil-centered, independent and flexible learning, gives access to on-line learning resources, promotes sharing and collaboration, promotes diversity, blind to gender, race, age and disability, but if not taken the benefit of computer in its real sense all this theoretical ideas will remain the contents of books and articles. Computers cannot be integrated into classroom overnight. Technology integration includes different stages. Despite the increasing presence of computer hardware and software in schools and numerous workshops and training, the consistent integration of ICT into regular classroom is still a far cry from reality (CEO Forum, 2000)
Role of the head teacher in change management process
Safdar (2001) very artistically describes the import role of head teacher as;
I have never seen a good school with a poor principal or a poor principal with a good school. I have seen unsuccessful school turned around into successful ones, and regressively outstanding schools slide rapidly into decline. In each case, the rise and fall could be readily be traced to the quality of the principal.
According to Fullan (2003), no successful large-scale change or school reform effort has advanced very far without the support of the school leaders. Similarly, Schiller (2003) stated that “principals have a key role to play in the facilitation of educational change” (p. 4). Schiller (2003) concludes in his research that head teachers who take an active approach and attitude to innovation can foster an environment that has greater benefits for their students and staff. Hence, head teachers’ attitude, awareness and use of computer are essential for effective use and integration of computers in the school (Smith et al., 1999). Therefore, successful ICT development within the school will require the leader with positive attitude towards technology. For the effectiveness and sustainability of computer integration, head teachers’ attitude and their awareness in the use of technology is very much essential.
As it has already been proved through different researches that effective involvement of head teacher in computer integrating in schools has brought better outcomes (Schiller, 2003). Literature further clarifies that head teachers are the main sources of intervention in terms of ICT integration. The studies of Schiller (1991) highlight the positive attitude of school head teachers in helping their staff better use of computers to enhance teaching and learning and to assist with administration and management. While another research of Allan, Yuen, Nancy, & Wong (2003) indicates that to ensure the successful integration of ICT in school, cooperation between school leadership and teachers is essential.
In the age of information technology, head teachers must be able to integrate computer into their daily practice and to provide consistent and positive leadership for technology use in the teaching-learning process. In fact, they must be technology leaders. According to Hope, Kelly and Guyden (2000) technology leadership involves both understanding the technologies and how they can be applied to accomplishing tasks. If head teachers’ attitude towards ICT is better then they will be able to promote a school culture which encourages exploration of new techniques in teaching, learning and management (Schiller, 2003). Therefore, schools need leaders who can facilitate the change process and support a learning community for technology integration.
Research on head teachers’ attitudes towards computers/ change
Based on various research studies, a wide range of factors have been found to affect technology integration in the school. Of these, leadership attitude of head teacher is the single most important factor affecting the successful integration of technology (Byrom & Bingham, 2001).
Studies showed that head teachers played an important role for promoting computers use in schools and classrooms. Their attitude and support were highly related with if schools would have the climate and environment where teachers wanted to use computers in their classrooms (Dupaggne & Krendl,1992; Pelgrum, 1993; Pelgrum & Plomp, 1991a; Pruett et al., 1993). Researches have shown that schools head teachers usually had positive attitude toward use of computers and favor teachers to use them in schools (Wolf, 1993). The result would not only influence teachers' attitude for using computers but also offered support to teachers to use computers. Pelgrum (1993) confirmed that the correlation of the attitude for using computers in schools between teachers and head teachers is positive. Akker and Pelgrum (1993) concluded that school head teachers having positive attitude for computers reported a higher frequency of stimulation of computer use by school authorities than those who have less positive attitude.
Head teachers with more positive attitude for using computers tended to emphasize the impact, purposes, and integration of computers in schools and encourage teachers to use computers more. Pruett et al. also (1993) found that teachers whose head teachers or supervisors encouraged them to use computers were more possible to use them in their instruction. They also, hence, provided more opportunities of in-service programs for teachers. The tendency to use computers was formed positively. Support and training of personnel were helpful for teachers' use of computers and motivated them to use more and deeply (Becker, 1994). Support from head teachers and administrators are very important because of offering adequate training, hardware and software, and time to plan in order to promote and motivate teachers to integrate computers into curriculum.
Wilmore and Betz (2000) stated that “Information Technology will only be successfully implemented in schools if the head teacher actively supports it, learns as well, provides adequate professional development and supports his/her staff in the process of change” (p. 15). Hence, head teachers are one of the key leaders of change at the school level. Their actions, interests and attitude can have a profound impact on program change and instructional practice. Therefore, effective administrators must have a positive attitude towards computers and knowledge.
These findings are clearly confirmed that head teachers' attitude toward computers will decide the level of ICT integration. The relationship between school leadership and the use of computer often plays an important role to encourage and facilitate the use of computers within their schools for administrative and managerial work (Visscher, 1996) as well as for instructional activities (Akker, Keursten & Plomp, 1992). It refers to the concept of educational leadership (Creemers, 1994), whereby school leaders can influence and improve what happens in the teaching/learning process. The extent to which school head teachers promote the use of computers in their schools probably depends on the degree to which they consider computer useful. Their views on this matter can be evident in a number of ways, such as how they incorporate computer into their own school tasks and the school policy measures that they effect to promote the incorporation of ICT into their schools.
The whole vision of getting the school ready and up to date with the use of educational technology in the classroom would not be complete without the commitment and readiness of the head teachers.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Methodology
The purpose of my study is to measure the attitude of head teachers towards computers, therefore, the most logical method for gathering information on attitudes is to ask directly from head teachers, who are leading schools, through an attitudinal survey research method (May, 2003). Such surveys specifically deal with gaining data on attitudes. According to Fink and Kosecoff (1998) “survey is a method of collecting information directly from people about their ideas, feelings, … beliefs and social, educational … background” (p. 1). This design will also allow me to get information from a large number of head teachers through the questionnaire method, which is widely used as a useful research instrument for collecting survey information and providing structured and numerical data, within a short period of time, which are often straightforward to analyze (Cohen, Manion & Marrison, 2000). Since my research requires collecting data at a single point in time, I have selected a cross-sectional survey because a “cross-sectional survey produces a ‘snapshot’ of a population at a particular point in time” (Cohen, Manion & Marrison, 2000). An additional advantage of the cross-sectional survey is that it is quicker to conduct and cheaper to administer (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2006; Fink and Kosecoff, 1998).
Background of Study Sample
Since the government sector is the largest provider of education in Pakistan and Federal Government has also stressed great emphasis on enhancing the scope and amount of computers in Education. In this regard ‘The links to learning: Education Support to Pakistan (ED-LINKS)’ is also working with government on the same track, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).The ED-LINKS project is designed to facilitate implementation of the government’s agenda for quality education at the middle and secondary levels in Sindh, Balochistan, FATA and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).
Apart from other activities of teaching learning process, ED-LINKS program also includes up-gradation and establishment of Computer Labs in selected middle and secondary schools of the project area. ED-LINKS is working closely with the Ministry of Education and the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) for effective implementation of target activities in the selected schools, functioning in four rural and one urban sectors of FDE.
ED-LINKS is comprised of a team of international and local partners. AIR, the prime is joined by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF-US/Pakistan) including affiliates, Aga Khan University Examination Board and Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development, Children’s Resource International Pakistan, Management Systems International (MSI), Society for Community Support for Primary Education in Balochistan (Society), Sarhad Rural Support Program (SRSP), Teachers Resource Center (TRC), and Kids-on-line.
Ed-Links program has initiated a 10 week Certificate in Education: Educational leadership and management course at AKU-IED from July 2008 and it will continue till January 2009. The course is consisting of eight different modules about teaching learning processes. My research topic can be assisted by the fourth module i.e. Integration of ICT with Teaching Learning.
In this course the head teachers and deputy head teachers from the Government Schools of Balochistan and Sindh are taking part in three different cohorts. Specifically talking about the focus areas in Baluchistan are; Qilla Abdullah, Qilla Saifullah, Pishin, Loralai, Sibi, Bolan, Jaffarabad, Khuzdar, Awaran, Panjgoor and Kech and from Sindh; Khairpur, Shikarpur, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Dadu, Jamshoro, Jacobabad, Sanghar, Kashmore, Nawabshah and Tharparkar.
Through Ed-links program all the CPs are being exposed to the use of computers and in my opinion this exposure would be a patronizing factor toward positive or negative attitude toward computers. I assume all these CPs will be the representative samples, who have been drawn by the respective DEOs – District Education Officers, keeping the future facilitation and need in view. Understanding their attitude toward computers will guide for appropriate intervention plans in these areas and schools.
Sample
Good sampling achieves representativeness (Balnaves and Capuli, 2001) and is considered to finding ways to give all population members an equal chance of being selected and one of these is to use the probability methods for choosing a sample (Bryman, 2004). Samples selected through probability sampling techniques are more likely to be representative of the population they are drawn from and thus the likelihood of generalizing from sample to population increases. Keeping this criterion in mind, I intend to choose Ed-links program - ‘10 Week Certificate program for head teachers and deputy head teachers’- participants (male & female) of three cohorts total 224 CPs who will be invited to complete a questionnaire.
Data Generation Tool
To explore the attitudes towards computers of government school head teachers and deputy head teachers, I intend to adopt questionnaire developed by Pelgrum and Plomp, (1993) which was initially tested and validated in England, Germany, Greece and Netherlands. Then the tool was used as a part of study in several countries including China and India. The findings of the study confirmed the validity and reliability of this questionnaire. The research (Pelgrum, 1993) has suggested giving some more attention to females who seem, on the whole to be somewhat less positive about the educational impact of using computers than their male colleagues while Hashim, & Mustapha, (2004) have found that female respondents have more positive computer attitudes than males. So, it will be an interesting study to know about the gender difference according to attitude toward computer in Pakistani context.
The questionnaire is relevant to the purpose of my study which is to measure the attitude toward computers. This questionnaire is designed not only for the head teachers but it can also be used for students and teachers. Furthermore, as the appearance of the questionnaire is also important (Cohen, Manion and Marrison, 2000), when I looked at the appearance, it looked easy, attractive and interesting because the statements were according to the understanding level of any grade, in simple language and with very clear wording. Not only appearance looked okay, but the items were also relevant to explore my concern. As Robson (2002) states,“ a good questionnaire not only provides a valid measure of the research questions but also gets the cooperation of respondents, and elicit accurate information” (p.242), while Balnaves & Caputi (2001) describe questionnaire as an ‘ambassador’ for the research project.
Tool Piloting Phase
A preliminary test of a questionnaire helps to identify problems and benefits associate with the design (Balnaves and Caputi, 2001) and to get a better understanding of the frame of reference relevant to the questionnaire and question wording. Hence, the English questionnaire has been translated into Urdu and checked through back translation to ensure accuracy of translation and for an easy understanding of respondents.
Although, the tool has been piloted and validated, mostly in developed countries, and tool asks questions which appear relevant to the local context of Pakistan but still I feel there is a need to pilot it since it was used in a completely different context, and it is now translated in Urdu, therefore, I am in process to pilot the tool to check its construct and internal validity in the context of Pakistan. For this purpose I have already negotiated with CPs of M.Ed. (ELM) 2010 of AKU-IED and pilot testing phase is in process. I have not changed the originality of items. Nevertheless, the tool is being pilot tested and changes will be made accordingly if deemed necessary.
Questionnaire is based on two parts. Part A requests general demographic and computer use information while Part B is the measuring of Attitudes Toward Computers. Further details on the questionnaire are provided below:
Part A: Demographic and Background Information
In this section participants will be asked to provide information about their work experience, gender, age, highest level of education, do they own a computer, what area is their school located, in which province they belong to, do they use a computer and have they got any formal computer training. All these variables will be treated as independent variables, which will also be used for comparison and to identify the co-relation with attitudinal components during data analysis as a survey in comparison can cover a rang of issues and normally results in a variable by case matrix (person by age, person by education etc) (Balnaves & Caputi, 2001).
Part B: Attitude Towards Computer
The questionnaire consists of 20 items. Of these 20 statements, 18 are worded positively and two are worded negatively. Statements will correspond to four main dimensions namely;
1. Perceived Educational Impact
2. Perceived Social Impact
3. Training needs and
4. Self Confidence level
This tool employs a 5-point Likert scale to measure attitude as attitude scale plays an important role (May, 2003), in which head teachers will be asked to rank their attitude toward computers ranging from 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (not sure), 4 (agree) and 5 (strongly agree).
As far as getting ‘the cooperation of respondents’ and eliciting the ‘accurate information’ is concerned I am aware that the head teachers’ attitude towards computer questionnaire has not been tested (to the best of my knowledge) in Pakistan, hence it should be validated first in order to be able to do the above. Questionnaire will be mailed with a covering letter explaining the purpose of the questionnaire and stressing the need for cooperation and the anonymity of replies (May, 2001). I will enclose a stamped, addressed return envelope for respondents’ convenience in returning the completed questionnaire (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2000).
All questionnaires will be treated confidentially, only identification number will be printed on each questionnaire. The number will be used for convenience to recognize the respondent.
Intended Data analysis procedures
After the data collection, I intend to analyze data using the statistical software SPSS which according to Gaur & Gaur (2006) is the most reliable software for analyzing quantitative data, for frequencies, percentages, cross tabulation and descriptive statistics. The population variables of age, level of education, level of work experience, computer use, computer training, gender and their locality will be given numeric values to aid in data analysis. Following will be the step by step process of intended data analysis.
Data entry
I will create a data set by defining the variables, attaching labels and entering the pre-coded responses. The code for missing data will be ’99’ and for ‘invalid’ or ‘not applicable’ the code will be ’98.’
Data cleaning
After data entry, data cleaning is as important as the need to proof-read text for errors (Robson, 2002). I will carry-out data cleaning by checking the data for errors which could have been made while ‘keying in’ the data. After simple eye-balling of the data for any visible anomalies, I will conduct univariate analysis to explore each variable separately in my data set. Univariate analysis looks at the range as well as the central tendency of the values (Field, 2005). It also describes the pattern of response to the variable because it depicts each variable on its own.
Analysis
Firstly, descriptive statistics will be calculated for all variables. Means, standard deviations, minimums, and maximums will be calculated for continuous variables. Frequencies and percentages will be calculated for categorical variables.
Secondly, the data will be disaggregated by demographic variables, and inferential statistics will be calculated to assess the relationships between the demographic variables and attitudinal variables. I will also use descriptive statistics to describe and summarize the data.
Limitations in the Study
Like every research, my research will have some limitations that need to be acknowledged at this stage. Normally survey designs use to have a number of limitations. The most serious weakness concerns the validity and reliability of responses obtained to questions. Surveys provide only verbal descriptions of what respondents’ say they do or how they feel about something. Responses cannot always be taken as accurate descriptions of what the respondents actually do or really feel about something. I acknowledge that following will be my limitations.
Response rate
The mailed questionnaire is probably the most frequently used method for surveying; however, they tend to result in lower response rates (Dillman, 1978) and thus are more likely to obtain results that are biased in favor of the sample population most interested in the survey topic. Secondly, my research participants are in the far flung areas of Baluchistan and Sindh. I fear of delayed or misplaced delivery of mail.
To overcome this issue, I will have a face to face meeting with them as they will be visiting AKU-IED for their course participation and will request them to ensure their participation and for an early return mail. However, respondents will be given approximately two weeks from the date of initial mailing to return the questionnaires. For the purpose of reciprocity and to increase the response rate, I will send a thank you postcard/letter to all respondents after two weeks of my initial mail (questionnaire). This postcard/letter will serve both as a friendly reminder for non-responding individuals to respond and as a thank you to individuals who already responded.
Social Desirability
It is obvious that when we know that other people are watching us, we will tend to behave in a way we believe is socially acceptable and desirable. It is a common tendency and nature of human being to reply in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. I expect some responses in this category.
Again this issue can be eliminated by face to face meeting and assuring them through the research information sheet that there is no any right or wrong answer and strict maintenance of anonymity of their identification would surely decrease the social desirability, as the tool doesn’t ask about their names or any other personal identification. Secondly as I am sending postal surveys and respondents will not perceive themselves to be in a survey situation, and thus I expect more open and fair personal information.
Monitoring the answers
As my research tool will be mailed to the respondents to be filled and return to me. So, I will not be in a position to monitor filling up process at every individual’s end. May be some people will pass questionnaires to others to answer.
Through information sheet and during face to face meetings, I will try to motivate and honor that their own responses are very much valuable for me.
Ethical Consideration
As I am intending to carry out an academic or educational setting research, so, I have to consider and be aware of the ethics as “Ethics in research are the principles of right and wrong that a particular group accepts” (Bogdan and Biklen, 1998, p.49). To ensure the dignity, privacy and interests of the participants I am using an anonymous survey, so that respondents’ privacy could be guaranteed or non-traceable (Cohen et al. 2002).
I will seek permission of the people who I will be studying to conduct research involving them. I will not do anything that would cause physical or emotional harm to my research participants. I will be reporting research findings accurately representing what I will get through my measurement tool.
As a researcher I must pay attention to the ethical principals as the term research ethics indicates a moral enterprise between the researcher and the research participants (Vazir, 2004). It refers to the question of right or wrong, and it is conforming to the standards of conduct specified in research (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2006).
Therefore, I will inform the research participants about the purpose of the research and expectations. I will provide a complete information sheet to every participant about the research by clearly stating the purpose of the study along with the consent forms.
I will also assure my respondents that the information provided by them would be used for the study purposes only. The privacy of the records would be maintained and no one would have access to them before analysis and report-writing. After completion of the study the records would be destroyed in accordance with the Institute’s policy and the dissemination of research findings would be done in accordance with the ethical considerations of not harming the personal and academic lives of participants involved. I will also write letters of thanks to the head teachers as a token of my appreciation and in the spirit of reciprocity.
Time Frame Schedule
Table 1: Time Frame
S #
Activities
From
To
Days
1
Proposal Writing
06/10/2008
24/11/2008
48 days
2
Translation of instrument.
10/11/2008
18/11/2008
08 days
3
Piloting the instrument
18/11/007
30/11/2008
12 days
4
Analysis
01/12/2008
10/12/2008
10 days
5
Mailing Questionnaire
15/12/2008
25/12/2008
10 days
6
Thanks and Reminder letters
31/12/2008
10/01/2009
11 days
7
Collection of Questionnaire
15/01/2009
31/01/2009
16 days
8
Data entry & Analysis
01/02/2009
14/02/2009
15 days
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Teacher's Biography
TEACEHR’S BIOGRAPHY
Perhaps, I didn't have any aspiration to become a teacher. All I wanted was to become a doctor or a pilot – Sultan Alam[1]
“I've been a Science Teacher, Science Coordinator and Principal in different educational institutions. When I started my career as a teacher, I had no idea where this profession would lead me to. I never have been motivated to become a teacher by my teachers”. Sultan Alam, a young energetic headteacher, now in first year of Masters in Education program at a prestigious university in Karachi, describes his journey of becoming an educator. His life history is full of diverse experiences to learn, as it can be used to illustrate the power of certain cultural convention (Arnold & Blackburn, 2004). Sultan Alam belongs to Hunza valley in North Pakistan. He started his schooling in his village Hussainabad at D.J[2] Middle School, while for SSC[3] he joined F.G[4] BHS[5] No.1 Gilgit. With a motivation to become a doctor he moved to Karachi for F.Sc.[6], but he could not get a chance to go for MBBS[7], so his motivation shifted towards financial management after B.Sc.[8]
Schools in Northern Areas today need additional efforts to find/hire the professional educators to keep schools competitive as frequent teacher vacuuming occurs. May be there are several reasons for the discrepancy, which is of-course, not the topic of this paper. In 1996, after B.Sc. examination, Sultan Alam moved back to his village which resulted to enter in teaching profession, he terms it as ‘un-intentional entry’. According to him it was a critical incident to lead his career to an unknown path. This is the practice of most of the teachers joining schools in Northern Areas without having theoretical understanding of teaching and learning (Khan, 2004). He describes that the school from where he had started his schooling, was now upgraded to high school and as usual there was discrepancy of Science teachers. The notables of community and school management approached him to handle Science classes. He was morally/emotionally attached with his school and community; hence he could not deny the offer. Despite his original goal and motivation, new opportunity presented itself as a career. He was not sure that he recognized the significance of this incident at the time but he says that he enjoyed the job as the subjects were relevant according to his content knowledge. He confessed that he was lacking pedagogical skills; however his students’ response was good. He emphasized that theoretical pedagogical knowledge is useless if teacher is unaware of the context as it is not just an important element in thinking about human learning but is perhaps central to our understanding (Merriam, 1993). It can be further referred to the ‘fit’ between the teachers’ culture values (Walkeer, & Shuangye, 2007).
Once home exam result of class 9th remained much low to 40%. It was a shock for the headteacher and staff. We faced criticism from community due to Community-Centered Environment (Bransford, 1999). We all took this situation as a challenge and initiated different measures like remedial/extra classes, group works, and parents’ involvement for cooperation etc. keeping in mind the cooperative and collaborative group work has positive effects on academic and social outcomes (Baines, Blatchford, & Chowne, 2007). When the board result announced, it was a sweeping change, securing 75% result, and then we realized that if we work like a team, we can achieve our goals. This was a motivating and learning impact.
Sultan Alam attended a week’s workshop on math and science teaching in the form of Learning Experiences for Practicing Teachers’ (Putnam, R.T. & Borko, H. 2000), where he learnt some basics of pedagogical skills and local resource management, which helped him for his teaching, as he tried to implement in classroom, the methods taught in workshop.
After serving 3.5 years in this school, he started his own assessment as the career was not giving him satisfaction in terms of finance and his static position. So, he decided to continue his education and resigned from the school in 1999 and moved to Karachi for mastery in Environmental Sciences with a motivation to become Government college lecturer.
Although, Sultan Alam had ‘un-intentionally’ got into teaching profession but now he had the experience of teaching, so while doing his masters from KU[9] in the evening shift, he joined a private school, because school teaching was feasible in terms of less hours duty and of-course to meet the financial needs. This exposure to teaching was once again a building on process for his teaching career.
In 2002 he completed his masters and once again returned homeland, where only ‘teaching profession’ awaits everybody. While striving hard to get into government sector education as a lecturer, Sultan Alam worked with D.J Community High School Sultanabad and with an English medium school in Gilgit consecutively.
Sultan Alam’s administrative journey began during his 7th year of teaching. Since he was a teacher, it seemed like a long-shot, when he heard about the vacancy and offer. His exploratory nature finally moved him towards the independent administrative position at a private educational institution Al-Sabah Sakura Academy Gilgit which runs under a local NGO. He became the headteacher of the school in 2006 and started some new initiatives keeping the experiences of different school practices in mind as new headteachers usually began organizational changes (Early, & Weindling, 2007). It was a new experience of leading a group of teachers and dealing with all the stakeholders. It was an outstanding and challenging exposure. He served this school till July 2007, from where he qualified the entry test/interview to get admission in the current course.
He shared a moral story of his headship period at Al-Sabah, that he was nominated SSC examination superintendent in a remote area of Gilgit. During English paper one student right after 1½ hrs of paper distribution solved the paper. Without any idea Sultan Alam took the paper and just skimmed through it and noticed that paper was very well written and was composed accurately, which he was not expecting from a student of such remote area. He become a bit curious and doubtful and asked him to show his admit card, but the student made an excuse of forgetting it in house. So, he went to next room, making student stand, to get copies of admit cards received from the board as a ready reference for superintendent. When he returned back to the room he noticed another boy standing, while the former one was not there! When he matched the picture with the boy, he was the original one, while the boy who was there solving paper, was counterfeit. He enquired. The newly appeared boy insistently told that he is the boy who wrote that paper. Sultan Alam become frustrated on this fake statement and marked paper as UFM[10] and recommended the board to cancel this paper. With this incident he became much curious that teacher should keep every aspect of the matters in mind and should not trust blindly as the invigilators of the same area were present around and they didn’t notify the UFM to him and favored the cheating. According to him, cheaters should face the penalty and now he always refers this happening to his students to discourage the UFM.
The ups and downs of teaching career of Sultan Alam were neither short nor easy. I found him during last 9 months being together for the same course, determined that he has many qualities prized as an outstanding teacher through his experience. He is energetic, enthusiastic, creative, and supportive, which are the loud-calls of his rich experience. His energy and enthusiasm can also be seen through different aspects apart from teaching like his active involvement in sports (volley ball, cricket, badminton, swimming etc.) I appreciate his way of enthusiasm to enjoy life to its fullest. He is desirous to be the kind of person that stands out, so by being creative and supportive, people will usually come to him for ideas or advice. Out of these qualities, I am optimistic that he has been effectively educating young minds. Now, his effectiveness and enthusiasm is being sharpened more through professional development course. After realizing that how much fun teaching is and how well he can do helping others, the ‘un-intentional’ decision through a critical incident he made to become an educator, changed to a confident statement, that ‘Now I am on the right direction’.
REFERENCESs
Arnold, D., & Blackburn, S. (Eds.). (2004). Telling Lives in India. Biography, Autobiography, and Life History: New Delhi. Permanent Black.
Baines, E., Blatchford, P. & Chowne, A. (2007). Improving the effectiveness of collaborative group work in primary schools: effects on science attainment . British Educational Research Journal, 33(5). 663 – 680.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R.R. (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. National Research Council: (Chapter 8: Teacher Learning)
Early, P. & Weindling, D. (2007). Do School Leaders Have a Shelf Life? Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(1). 73 – 88.
Khan, B. (2004). Role of Portfolio in the teachers’ professional development and learning. Unpublished master’s thesis, Aga Khan University –Institute for Educational Development, Karachi.
Merriam, S. B. (Eds.). (1993). An Update on Adult Learning Theory: San Francisco. Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What Do New Views of Knowledge and Thinking Have to Save About Research on Teacher Learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1). 4 – 15.
Walkeer, A. & Shuangye, C. (2007).Leader Authenticity in Intercultural School Contexts. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(2). 185 – 204.
[1] Mr. Sultan Alam has given me consensus to disclose his original name and details.
[2] Diamond Jubilee Schools running under supervision of Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan.
[3] SSC – Secondary School Certificate – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[4] F.G – Federal Government.
[5] BHS Boys High School
[6] F.Sc. – Faculty of Science – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[7] MBBS – Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.
[8] B.Sc. – Bachelor of Science – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[9] KU Karachi University.
[10] UFM – Un-fair means.
Perhaps, I didn't have any aspiration to become a teacher. All I wanted was to become a doctor or a pilot – Sultan Alam[1]
“I've been a Science Teacher, Science Coordinator and Principal in different educational institutions. When I started my career as a teacher, I had no idea where this profession would lead me to. I never have been motivated to become a teacher by my teachers”. Sultan Alam, a young energetic headteacher, now in first year of Masters in Education program at a prestigious university in Karachi, describes his journey of becoming an educator. His life history is full of diverse experiences to learn, as it can be used to illustrate the power of certain cultural convention (Arnold & Blackburn, 2004). Sultan Alam belongs to Hunza valley in North Pakistan. He started his schooling in his village Hussainabad at D.J[2] Middle School, while for SSC[3] he joined F.G[4] BHS[5] No.1 Gilgit. With a motivation to become a doctor he moved to Karachi for F.Sc.[6], but he could not get a chance to go for MBBS[7], so his motivation shifted towards financial management after B.Sc.[8]
Schools in Northern Areas today need additional efforts to find/hire the professional educators to keep schools competitive as frequent teacher vacuuming occurs. May be there are several reasons for the discrepancy, which is of-course, not the topic of this paper. In 1996, after B.Sc. examination, Sultan Alam moved back to his village which resulted to enter in teaching profession, he terms it as ‘un-intentional entry’. According to him it was a critical incident to lead his career to an unknown path. This is the practice of most of the teachers joining schools in Northern Areas without having theoretical understanding of teaching and learning (Khan, 2004). He describes that the school from where he had started his schooling, was now upgraded to high school and as usual there was discrepancy of Science teachers. The notables of community and school management approached him to handle Science classes. He was morally/emotionally attached with his school and community; hence he could not deny the offer. Despite his original goal and motivation, new opportunity presented itself as a career. He was not sure that he recognized the significance of this incident at the time but he says that he enjoyed the job as the subjects were relevant according to his content knowledge. He confessed that he was lacking pedagogical skills; however his students’ response was good. He emphasized that theoretical pedagogical knowledge is useless if teacher is unaware of the context as it is not just an important element in thinking about human learning but is perhaps central to our understanding (Merriam, 1993). It can be further referred to the ‘fit’ between the teachers’ culture values (Walkeer, & Shuangye, 2007).
Once home exam result of class 9th remained much low to 40%. It was a shock for the headteacher and staff. We faced criticism from community due to Community-Centered Environment (Bransford, 1999). We all took this situation as a challenge and initiated different measures like remedial/extra classes, group works, and parents’ involvement for cooperation etc. keeping in mind the cooperative and collaborative group work has positive effects on academic and social outcomes (Baines, Blatchford, & Chowne, 2007). When the board result announced, it was a sweeping change, securing 75% result, and then we realized that if we work like a team, we can achieve our goals. This was a motivating and learning impact.
Sultan Alam attended a week’s workshop on math and science teaching in the form of Learning Experiences for Practicing Teachers’ (Putnam, R.T. & Borko, H. 2000), where he learnt some basics of pedagogical skills and local resource management, which helped him for his teaching, as he tried to implement in classroom, the methods taught in workshop.
After serving 3.5 years in this school, he started his own assessment as the career was not giving him satisfaction in terms of finance and his static position. So, he decided to continue his education and resigned from the school in 1999 and moved to Karachi for mastery in Environmental Sciences with a motivation to become Government college lecturer.
Although, Sultan Alam had ‘un-intentionally’ got into teaching profession but now he had the experience of teaching, so while doing his masters from KU[9] in the evening shift, he joined a private school, because school teaching was feasible in terms of less hours duty and of-course to meet the financial needs. This exposure to teaching was once again a building on process for his teaching career.
In 2002 he completed his masters and once again returned homeland, where only ‘teaching profession’ awaits everybody. While striving hard to get into government sector education as a lecturer, Sultan Alam worked with D.J Community High School Sultanabad and with an English medium school in Gilgit consecutively.
Sultan Alam’s administrative journey began during his 7th year of teaching. Since he was a teacher, it seemed like a long-shot, when he heard about the vacancy and offer. His exploratory nature finally moved him towards the independent administrative position at a private educational institution Al-Sabah Sakura Academy Gilgit which runs under a local NGO. He became the headteacher of the school in 2006 and started some new initiatives keeping the experiences of different school practices in mind as new headteachers usually began organizational changes (Early, & Weindling, 2007). It was a new experience of leading a group of teachers and dealing with all the stakeholders. It was an outstanding and challenging exposure. He served this school till July 2007, from where he qualified the entry test/interview to get admission in the current course.
He shared a moral story of his headship period at Al-Sabah, that he was nominated SSC examination superintendent in a remote area of Gilgit. During English paper one student right after 1½ hrs of paper distribution solved the paper. Without any idea Sultan Alam took the paper and just skimmed through it and noticed that paper was very well written and was composed accurately, which he was not expecting from a student of such remote area. He become a bit curious and doubtful and asked him to show his admit card, but the student made an excuse of forgetting it in house. So, he went to next room, making student stand, to get copies of admit cards received from the board as a ready reference for superintendent. When he returned back to the room he noticed another boy standing, while the former one was not there! When he matched the picture with the boy, he was the original one, while the boy who was there solving paper, was counterfeit. He enquired. The newly appeared boy insistently told that he is the boy who wrote that paper. Sultan Alam become frustrated on this fake statement and marked paper as UFM[10] and recommended the board to cancel this paper. With this incident he became much curious that teacher should keep every aspect of the matters in mind and should not trust blindly as the invigilators of the same area were present around and they didn’t notify the UFM to him and favored the cheating. According to him, cheaters should face the penalty and now he always refers this happening to his students to discourage the UFM.
The ups and downs of teaching career of Sultan Alam were neither short nor easy. I found him during last 9 months being together for the same course, determined that he has many qualities prized as an outstanding teacher through his experience. He is energetic, enthusiastic, creative, and supportive, which are the loud-calls of his rich experience. His energy and enthusiasm can also be seen through different aspects apart from teaching like his active involvement in sports (volley ball, cricket, badminton, swimming etc.) I appreciate his way of enthusiasm to enjoy life to its fullest. He is desirous to be the kind of person that stands out, so by being creative and supportive, people will usually come to him for ideas or advice. Out of these qualities, I am optimistic that he has been effectively educating young minds. Now, his effectiveness and enthusiasm is being sharpened more through professional development course. After realizing that how much fun teaching is and how well he can do helping others, the ‘un-intentional’ decision through a critical incident he made to become an educator, changed to a confident statement, that ‘Now I am on the right direction’.
REFERENCESs
Arnold, D., & Blackburn, S. (Eds.). (2004). Telling Lives in India. Biography, Autobiography, and Life History: New Delhi. Permanent Black.
Baines, E., Blatchford, P. & Chowne, A. (2007). Improving the effectiveness of collaborative group work in primary schools: effects on science attainment . British Educational Research Journal, 33(5). 663 – 680.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R.R. (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. National Research Council: (Chapter 8: Teacher Learning)
Early, P. & Weindling, D. (2007). Do School Leaders Have a Shelf Life? Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(1). 73 – 88.
Khan, B. (2004). Role of Portfolio in the teachers’ professional development and learning. Unpublished master’s thesis, Aga Khan University –Institute for Educational Development, Karachi.
Merriam, S. B. (Eds.). (1993). An Update on Adult Learning Theory: San Francisco. Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What Do New Views of Knowledge and Thinking Have to Save About Research on Teacher Learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1). 4 – 15.
Walkeer, A. & Shuangye, C. (2007).Leader Authenticity in Intercultural School Contexts. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(2). 185 – 204.
[1] Mr. Sultan Alam has given me consensus to disclose his original name and details.
[2] Diamond Jubilee Schools running under supervision of Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan.
[3] SSC – Secondary School Certificate – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[4] F.G – Federal Government.
[5] BHS Boys High School
[6] F.Sc. – Faculty of Science – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[7] MBBS – Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.
[8] B.Sc. – Bachelor of Science – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[9] KU Karachi University.
[10] UFM – Un-fair means.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
REFLECTIVE PAPER – ROLE OF A TEACHER IN THE LEARNING COMMUNITY
REFLECTIVE PAPER – ROLE OF A TEACHER IN THE LEARNING COMMUNITY
INTRODUCTION
This reflective paper aims to explore the existence of Learning Community in a private school of Karachi in general and Role of a Teacher in particular. This reflective paper aims to identify the characteristics of a LC[1] and the role of a teacher through literature and understanding of this phenomenon and would explore and compare critically the actual happening.
The school chosen to observe was having an approximate strength of 500 students and 42 teachers. School was initiated by the Principal, who is basically a medical doctor, in 1999 with strength of 40 students, which increased gradually. School runs two systems of education i.e. Matric and O level, affiliated with AKU-EB[2] and Cambridge University correspondingly.
In a group of three members[3] we visited school twice to observe and collect data. Before visiting the school we had created a concept map to make ourselves focus to explore some specific dimensions of a teacher’s role. We selected a female teacher, who was the most senior in terms of longevity in service with the school.
WHAT IS LEARNING COMMUNITY – literature review?
Initiating with the quote of Michael Fullan about LC that, “The leaders' new work for the future is building learning organizations where people continually expand their capacities”. Strengthening this concept, Peter Senge further elaborates as; “most successful organization of the future will be a learning organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire”. Definitely this concept of Fullan and Senge is becoming the reality now, as adaptation of LC is a new emerging trend and demand of all organizations in general and educational institutions in particular.
Literature further clarifies that LC means facilitating a culture of collaboration (Lovely, & Buffum, 2007). To elaborate this concept Retallick, Cocklin, and Coombe (1999) have very concisely articulated and notified the basic requirements for LC as respect, caring; inclusiveness, trust; empowerment and commitment. Moreover, a most advanced definition in its nature described by Rogoff, Bartlett, & Turkanis, (2001);
Our ideas stem from participation in an innovative public school that prioritizes instruction that builds on children’s interests in a collaborative way, where learning activities are planned by children as well as adults, and where parents and teachers not only foster children’s learning but also learn from their involvement with the children (p. 3).
Learning communities are consisting of three pivotal capacities, which have very creatively and self explanatorily defined to understand basic elements of a LC by Mitchell & Sackney (2000). These elements have an impact on the capacity to improve teaching and learning include anything that shapes how people do their work in a school.
Figure 1: Key elements in building the capacity for a learning community (p.124)
WHAT IS LEARNING COMMUNITY – MY UNDERSTANDING?
LC is a group of stack holders including teachers, students and parents etc. who share common values and beliefs and actively engage in learning together. In order to create a LC we have to focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively and hold ourselves accountable for results and better outcomes.
As the focus of this reflective paper is about the role of a teacher in a LC, so the staff should be organized in reciprocal, not hierarchical or top-down relationship (Retallick, 2005). This relationship can ensure, lessening of isolation of teachers, increased commitment and will to strengthen the mission and goals, shared responsibility for the development of students, teachers and organization as a whole.
EXPLORED DIMENSIONS AND FINDINGS
It has already been discussed that we had sketched a concept map before visiting school, where we had explicitly identified certain dimensions which revolve around a LC and significantly helped us to identify its existence in this school. Following were our focus areas and findings.
Leadership Style and Teachers
Members of LC work together, share expertise, and exercise leadership to ensure the intended results. These characteristics of leadership are known as DL[4] (Gronn, 2003), which starts from willingness to share authority, and the ability to participate without dominating. Stewart and Prebble (1993) state that, “If principals wish to change what teachers do, they must first change the way teachers think about what they do” (p.189).
In this school we found that a smooth form of DL was in practice in shape of top down order as Principal, Vice Principal, Chief Coordinator, Section Coordinators and then teachers who were also taking care of different portfolios according to their capabilities and their will, apart from the casual teaching. For instance, the teacher we talked was the coordinator of extra-curricular activities, as she told us that she loves to organize functions and parties.
According to the teacher, all staff members were mutually working together as a team. This idea has very accurately articulated by Sergiovanni (1996) that, “communities are collections of individuals who are bonded together…. This bonding and binding is tight enough to transform them from a collection of “I’s” into a collective “we”.
Teacher to Teacher Relationship
Review of a teacher's behavior by colleagues is the norm in the LC (Louis & Kruse, 1995). This practice is not evaluative but is part of helping each other. The process is based on the mutual respect and trustworthiness. In this school the relationship between teachers was very much healthy as they were having a nice chit-chat time in staff room while our visit to school, and the teacher also identified that she is very much satisfied with the atmosphere and work as she was expressive that she is learning many new things daily from her colleagues during ‘informal talks’ and from students. This statement signifies that one way in which teachers can develop a LC amongst themselves is to regard their everyday work as an opportunity for learning. Workplace learning means ‘learning on the job’ (Retallick, et al., 1999).
However, in terms of ‘professional dimension’ of LC, which demands for a professional collaboration and relationship by classroom visits and positive feedback, the teacher told us that, “I don’t need any help, when I need it; I visit library or internet and get the relevant information”. Triangulating about this notion, Principal also confessed that the culture of professional collegiality (Sergiovanni, 1996) is lacking, but he was optimistic to work in this filed to improve the true collaborative culture (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) of positive feedback among staff.
We found that teachers have the potentiality to mould in reforms as they were actively participating without any hesitation in the discussion with us and they were in favor that reforms in terms of providing appropriate learning environment for students and teachers is needed. The environment that values and supports hard work, the acceptance of challenging tasks, risk taking, and the promotion of growth (Midgley & Wood, 1993).
Professional Development
LC demonstrates implementation of regular internal and external trainings and resources. Continuous professional learning is focused on improving practice and performance as a vehicle for school improvement and program coherence. This is accomplished through collaboration, reflection and frequent review of pedagogy then planning relevant trainings and refresher courses accordingly.
In the focused school, we found that the teacher who has been working with this school for last 6 years got enough in-house trainings and also participated in different workshops. School also encourages staff for professional development and educational enhancement and gives relaxation in terms of timing and required leaves. School also had been sponsoring staff for different trainings, which has been now STOPPED as principal evidently told us that, “When I invest and train a teacher, right after the training, teacher quits the job”. However, internal training sessions remain continued frequently throughout the year, which is facilitated by the Principal and Vice Principal.
MY LEARNING, CHALLENGES AND MY ROLE IN GROUP WORK
It was an excellent experience to work closely with nice fellows having different capabilities, like sharp observation skills, finest communication skills, good time managers, soft heartedness, and computer expertise. Amalgamation of these capabilities, in my opinion was the patronizing and driving factor for understanding the topic and reflecting with much confidence and owning the presented data.
During this visit of school, I learnt many new things and some reinforcements in my learning. I found a sense and applicability of DL among all the staff members which very much attracted me. It will be the reinforcing factor for me in future and I would be eager to know more about the headteacher’s role in this regard as I found him the focal point.
Another thing which I learnt, was the understanding of responsibility as all the staff members of this school were not only assuming their selves only teachers, but also involved in different activities of school, like taking care of discipline, school maintenance, handling school assemblies and co-curricular activities etc. I will be looking forward to understand more this notion of leadership in this school.
To understand the role of a teacher in a learning community two days visit and observation, probably was not much sufficient to collect data, as the teacher whom we had taken as sample was very much busy with her classes and home assignment checking. However, with collaboration of section coordinator, we were able to talk with her and observe.
CONCLUSION
Concluding this reflective paper, I am confident to say that the school is on the track to transform the school to a LC. A slight supportive and collaborative atmosphere is needed for further progress by the Principal. DL extends authority and influence to groups and some further downed distribution of responsibilities can flourish school further. On going professional development is always the assurance of success that needs to be initiated, while taking appropriate measure to retain the trained staff.
REFERENCES
Gronn, P (2003). The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London. Sage Publications.
Harris, A. (2007). Distributed leadership: conceptual confusion and empirical reticence. International Journal of Leadership in Education. 10(3), 315-325
Lovely, S. & Buffum, A.G. (2007). Generations at School: Building an Age-Friendly Learning Community. California: Crown Press.
Mitchell, C & Sackney, L (Eds.). (2000). Profound Improvement: Building Capacity for a Learning Community. The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.
Retallick, J. Cocklin, B. & Coombe, K. (Eds.). (1999). Learning Communities in Education: Issues, strategies and contexts. London: Routledge.
Retallick, J. Farah, I. (Eds.). (2005). Transforming Schools in Pakistan: Towards the Learning Community. Pakistan: Oxford University Press.
Rogoff, B., Turkanis, C.G & Bartlett, L. (Eds.). (2001). Learning Togathre: Children and Adults in a School Community. New York: Oxford University Press
Sergiovanni, T.J. (1996). Leadership for the Schoolhouse: How Is It Different? Why Is It Important? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Stewart, D. & Prebble, T. (1993). The Reflective Principal: School Development Within a Learning Community. New Zealand: ERDC Press Massey University.
Tungsten School of Excellence. (n.d.) [Brochure].Karachi, Pakistan:
[1] Learning Community
[2] Aga Khan University – Examination Board
[3] CPs of M.Ed. 2009
[4] Distributed Leadership
INTRODUCTION
This reflective paper aims to explore the existence of Learning Community in a private school of Karachi in general and Role of a Teacher in particular. This reflective paper aims to identify the characteristics of a LC[1] and the role of a teacher through literature and understanding of this phenomenon and would explore and compare critically the actual happening.
The school chosen to observe was having an approximate strength of 500 students and 42 teachers. School was initiated by the Principal, who is basically a medical doctor, in 1999 with strength of 40 students, which increased gradually. School runs two systems of education i.e. Matric and O level, affiliated with AKU-EB[2] and Cambridge University correspondingly.
In a group of three members[3] we visited school twice to observe and collect data. Before visiting the school we had created a concept map to make ourselves focus to explore some specific dimensions of a teacher’s role. We selected a female teacher, who was the most senior in terms of longevity in service with the school.
WHAT IS LEARNING COMMUNITY – literature review?
Initiating with the quote of Michael Fullan about LC that, “The leaders' new work for the future is building learning organizations where people continually expand their capacities”. Strengthening this concept, Peter Senge further elaborates as; “most successful organization of the future will be a learning organization where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire”. Definitely this concept of Fullan and Senge is becoming the reality now, as adaptation of LC is a new emerging trend and demand of all organizations in general and educational institutions in particular.
Literature further clarifies that LC means facilitating a culture of collaboration (Lovely, & Buffum, 2007). To elaborate this concept Retallick, Cocklin, and Coombe (1999) have very concisely articulated and notified the basic requirements for LC as respect, caring; inclusiveness, trust; empowerment and commitment. Moreover, a most advanced definition in its nature described by Rogoff, Bartlett, & Turkanis, (2001);
Our ideas stem from participation in an innovative public school that prioritizes instruction that builds on children’s interests in a collaborative way, where learning activities are planned by children as well as adults, and where parents and teachers not only foster children’s learning but also learn from their involvement with the children (p. 3).
Learning communities are consisting of three pivotal capacities, which have very creatively and self explanatorily defined to understand basic elements of a LC by Mitchell & Sackney (2000). These elements have an impact on the capacity to improve teaching and learning include anything that shapes how people do their work in a school.
Figure 1: Key elements in building the capacity for a learning community (p.124)
WHAT IS LEARNING COMMUNITY – MY UNDERSTANDING?
LC is a group of stack holders including teachers, students and parents etc. who share common values and beliefs and actively engage in learning together. In order to create a LC we have to focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively and hold ourselves accountable for results and better outcomes.
As the focus of this reflective paper is about the role of a teacher in a LC, so the staff should be organized in reciprocal, not hierarchical or top-down relationship (Retallick, 2005). This relationship can ensure, lessening of isolation of teachers, increased commitment and will to strengthen the mission and goals, shared responsibility for the development of students, teachers and organization as a whole.
EXPLORED DIMENSIONS AND FINDINGS
It has already been discussed that we had sketched a concept map before visiting school, where we had explicitly identified certain dimensions which revolve around a LC and significantly helped us to identify its existence in this school. Following were our focus areas and findings.
Leadership Style and Teachers
Members of LC work together, share expertise, and exercise leadership to ensure the intended results. These characteristics of leadership are known as DL[4] (Gronn, 2003), which starts from willingness to share authority, and the ability to participate without dominating. Stewart and Prebble (1993) state that, “If principals wish to change what teachers do, they must first change the way teachers think about what they do” (p.189).
In this school we found that a smooth form of DL was in practice in shape of top down order as Principal, Vice Principal, Chief Coordinator, Section Coordinators and then teachers who were also taking care of different portfolios according to their capabilities and their will, apart from the casual teaching. For instance, the teacher we talked was the coordinator of extra-curricular activities, as she told us that she loves to organize functions and parties.
According to the teacher, all staff members were mutually working together as a team. This idea has very accurately articulated by Sergiovanni (1996) that, “communities are collections of individuals who are bonded together…. This bonding and binding is tight enough to transform them from a collection of “I’s” into a collective “we”.
Teacher to Teacher Relationship
Review of a teacher's behavior by colleagues is the norm in the LC (Louis & Kruse, 1995). This practice is not evaluative but is part of helping each other. The process is based on the mutual respect and trustworthiness. In this school the relationship between teachers was very much healthy as they were having a nice chit-chat time in staff room while our visit to school, and the teacher also identified that she is very much satisfied with the atmosphere and work as she was expressive that she is learning many new things daily from her colleagues during ‘informal talks’ and from students. This statement signifies that one way in which teachers can develop a LC amongst themselves is to regard their everyday work as an opportunity for learning. Workplace learning means ‘learning on the job’ (Retallick, et al., 1999).
However, in terms of ‘professional dimension’ of LC, which demands for a professional collaboration and relationship by classroom visits and positive feedback, the teacher told us that, “I don’t need any help, when I need it; I visit library or internet and get the relevant information”. Triangulating about this notion, Principal also confessed that the culture of professional collegiality (Sergiovanni, 1996) is lacking, but he was optimistic to work in this filed to improve the true collaborative culture (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) of positive feedback among staff.
We found that teachers have the potentiality to mould in reforms as they were actively participating without any hesitation in the discussion with us and they were in favor that reforms in terms of providing appropriate learning environment for students and teachers is needed. The environment that values and supports hard work, the acceptance of challenging tasks, risk taking, and the promotion of growth (Midgley & Wood, 1993).
Professional Development
LC demonstrates implementation of regular internal and external trainings and resources. Continuous professional learning is focused on improving practice and performance as a vehicle for school improvement and program coherence. This is accomplished through collaboration, reflection and frequent review of pedagogy then planning relevant trainings and refresher courses accordingly.
In the focused school, we found that the teacher who has been working with this school for last 6 years got enough in-house trainings and also participated in different workshops. School also encourages staff for professional development and educational enhancement and gives relaxation in terms of timing and required leaves. School also had been sponsoring staff for different trainings, which has been now STOPPED as principal evidently told us that, “When I invest and train a teacher, right after the training, teacher quits the job”. However, internal training sessions remain continued frequently throughout the year, which is facilitated by the Principal and Vice Principal.
MY LEARNING, CHALLENGES AND MY ROLE IN GROUP WORK
It was an excellent experience to work closely with nice fellows having different capabilities, like sharp observation skills, finest communication skills, good time managers, soft heartedness, and computer expertise. Amalgamation of these capabilities, in my opinion was the patronizing and driving factor for understanding the topic and reflecting with much confidence and owning the presented data.
During this visit of school, I learnt many new things and some reinforcements in my learning. I found a sense and applicability of DL among all the staff members which very much attracted me. It will be the reinforcing factor for me in future and I would be eager to know more about the headteacher’s role in this regard as I found him the focal point.
Another thing which I learnt, was the understanding of responsibility as all the staff members of this school were not only assuming their selves only teachers, but also involved in different activities of school, like taking care of discipline, school maintenance, handling school assemblies and co-curricular activities etc. I will be looking forward to understand more this notion of leadership in this school.
To understand the role of a teacher in a learning community two days visit and observation, probably was not much sufficient to collect data, as the teacher whom we had taken as sample was very much busy with her classes and home assignment checking. However, with collaboration of section coordinator, we were able to talk with her and observe.
CONCLUSION
Concluding this reflective paper, I am confident to say that the school is on the track to transform the school to a LC. A slight supportive and collaborative atmosphere is needed for further progress by the Principal. DL extends authority and influence to groups and some further downed distribution of responsibilities can flourish school further. On going professional development is always the assurance of success that needs to be initiated, while taking appropriate measure to retain the trained staff.
REFERENCES
Gronn, P (2003). The New Work of Educational Leaders: Changing Leadership Practice in an Era of School Reform. London. Sage Publications.
Harris, A. (2007). Distributed leadership: conceptual confusion and empirical reticence. International Journal of Leadership in Education. 10(3), 315-325
Lovely, S. & Buffum, A.G. (2007). Generations at School: Building an Age-Friendly Learning Community. California: Crown Press.
Mitchell, C & Sackney, L (Eds.). (2000). Profound Improvement: Building Capacity for a Learning Community. The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.
Retallick, J. Cocklin, B. & Coombe, K. (Eds.). (1999). Learning Communities in Education: Issues, strategies and contexts. London: Routledge.
Retallick, J. Farah, I. (Eds.). (2005). Transforming Schools in Pakistan: Towards the Learning Community. Pakistan: Oxford University Press.
Rogoff, B., Turkanis, C.G & Bartlett, L. (Eds.). (2001). Learning Togathre: Children and Adults in a School Community. New York: Oxford University Press
Sergiovanni, T.J. (1996). Leadership for the Schoolhouse: How Is It Different? Why Is It Important? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Stewart, D. & Prebble, T. (1993). The Reflective Principal: School Development Within a Learning Community. New Zealand: ERDC Press Massey University.
Tungsten School of Excellence. (n.d.) [Brochure].Karachi, Pakistan:
[1] Learning Community
[2] Aga Khan University – Examination Board
[3] CPs of M.Ed. 2009
[4] Distributed Leadership
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