Critical Perspectives on the Organization and Improvement of Schooling

Transcription

1 Critical Perspectives on the Organization and Improvement of Schooling

2 Evaluation in Education and Human Services Editors: George F. Madaus, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Daniel L. Stufflebeam, Westem Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, U.S.A. Previously published books In the series: Kellaghan, T., Madaus, G., and Airasian, P.: The Effects of Standardized Testing Madaus, G. (editor): The Courts, Validity, and Minimum Competency Testing Brinkerhoff, R., Brethower, D., Hluchyj, T., and Nowakowski, J.: Program Evaluation, Sourcebook/Casebook Brinkerhoff, R., Brethower, D., Hluchyj, T., and Nowakowski, J.: Program Evaluation, Sourcebook Brinkerhoff, R., Brethower, D., Hluchyj, T., and Nowakowski, J.: Program Evaluation, Design Manual Madaus, G., Scriven, M., Stufflebeam, D.: Evaluation Models: Viewpoints on Educational and Human Services Evaluation Hambleton, R., Swaminathan, H.: Item Response Theory Stufflebeam, D., Shinkfield, A.: Systematic Evaluation Nowakowski, J.: Handbook of Educational Variables: A Guide to Evaluation Stufflebeam, D., McCormick, C., Brinkerhoff, R., and Nelson, C.: Conducting Educational Needs Assessment Abrahamson, S.: Evaluation of Continuing Education in the Health Professions Cooley, W. and Bickel, W.: Decision-Oriented Educational Research Gable, R.: Instrument Development in the Affective Domain

3 Critical Perspectives on the Organization and Improvement of Schooling Kenneth A. Sirotnlk University of Washington Jeannie Oakes The Rand Corporation Kluwer. Nijhoff Publishing a member of the Kluwer Academic Publishers Group BostoniDordrecht/Lancaster

4 Distributors for the United States and Canada: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, Massachusetts 02061, USA for the UK and Ireland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, MTP Press limited, Falcon House, Queen Square, Lancaster LA 1 1 RN, United Kingdom for all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, Distribution Centre, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Main entry undertitle: Critical perspectives on the organization and improvement of schooling. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. School management and organization-united States Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. School supervision-united States Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Teaching-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Sirotnik, Kenneth A. II. Oakes, Jeannie. LB2805.C ' ISBN-13: e-isbn-\3: DOl: / Copyright 1986 by Kluwere Nijhoff Publishing, Boston Softcoverreprint of the hardcover lst edition 1986 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, wijhoutthe prior written permission of the publisher, KluwereNijhoff Publishing, 101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, Massachusetts

5 Contents Contributing Authors Preface 1 Critical Inquiry for School Renewal: Liberating Theory and Practice Kenneth A. Sirotnik and Jeannie Oakes 2 A Critical Perspective on Administration and Organization in Education William Foster 3 An Alternative and Critical Perspective for Clinical Supervision in Schools W. John Smyth 4 Reformulating the Evaluation Process Donna Leonhard Coomer vii ix Reflections 5 On Critical Theory and Educational Practice David P. Ericson 6 Teaching as Reflective Practice Gary Sykes Author Index Subject Index v

6 Contributing Authors Donna L. Coomer, Private Industry Council, P.O. Box 248, Menomonie, WI David P. Ericson, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Los Angeles, CA William Foster, School of Education, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA Jeannie Oakes, The Rand Corporation, 1700 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA Kenneth A. Sirotnik, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle, WA W. John Smyth, School of Education, Deakin University, Victoria 3217 Australia Gary Sykes, School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Vll

7 Preface Major "paradigm shifts"-replacing one "world view" with anotherregarding what constitutes appropriate knowledge do not happen overnight. Centuries usually intervene in the process. Even minor shiftsadmitting alternative world views into the domain of legitimate knowledgeproducing theory and practice-require decades of controversy, especially, it seems to us, in the field of education. It has only been in the last 20 years or so that the educational research community has begun to accept the "scientific" credibility of the qualitative approaches to inquiry such as participant observation, case study, ethnography, and the like. In fact, these methods, with their long and distinguished philosophical traditions in phenomenology, have really only come into their own within the last decade. The critical perspective on generating and evaluating knowledge and practice-what this book is mostly about-is in many ways a radical departure from both the more traditional quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The traditional approaches, in fact, are far more similar to one another than they are to the critical perspective. This is the case, in our view, for one crucial reason: Both the more quantitative, empirical-analytic and qualitative, interpretive traditions share a fundamental epistemological commitment: they both eschew ideology and human interests as explicit components in their paradigms of inquiry. Ideology and human interests, however, are the "bread and butter" of a critical approach to inquiry. This should give readers some idea of the magnitude of the challenge to existing world views presented by the idea of critical inquiry and, therefore, by the ideas in this book. Indeed, the selections of work in each chapter might well be viewed as a set of challenges: a challenge to educational researchers and evaluators to seriously consider multiparadigmatic approaches that explicitly recognize and incorporate values and human interests; a challenge to district and school administrators and supervisors to replace notions of authority, manipulation, control, and isolation with ix

8 x CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES those of leadership, facilitation, collaboration, and communication; a challenge to teachers to demand their professional right to reflect critically upon their own practices and the conditions and circumstances under which they work and to engage with other educators in truly collaborative processes of school improvement; a challenge to all to suspend belief, at least for the sake of argument, in traditional world views of what constitutes appropriate knowledge and action and trace through the implications of praxis, of critical inquiry in action, by people during the ordinary course of their daily worklives. The educational community is plagued with on-again off-again crises in public confidence, and proposals that appear to be somewhat radical are difficult to take seriously by beleaguered educators. It is our sincere hope, however, that the magnitude of the above challenges does not contribute to a backlash of complacency in the educational community. For in fact, the central theme is a simple and ultimately relevant one. What this volume argues for, in essence, is incorporation ofthe human side of institutions into the theory and practice of school organization and change. Our purpose is twofold: encouraging the creation of school settings characterized by open and nonexploitive relationships among professionals, and legitimizing the role of educators as conscious moral agents in the evolution of life and learning in schools. The method, put simply, is critique-a process of open, honest, and undistorted communication among human beings. The authors in this volume share a common belief that the knowledge and understanding that can result from critique can free educators to act in intellectually and morally responsible ways. In exploring the implications of these views and challenges for school organizational and improvement processes, then, this book offers a critique of and an alternative to conventional, linear approaches to school renewal and change, administration, supervision, and evaluation. All of the contributors consider these issues from critical perspectives that require the systematic and rigorous exploration of the tensions that arise in the conduct of schooling between fundamental human interests, on the one hand, and the knowledge gained from research and practice, on the other. Specifically, in the first chapter, we challenge traditional research and development models for school improvement and change. In their stead, we offer a conceptual and practical argument for incorporating school people into a collaborative process of critical inquiry-an ongoing, knowledge-production process of reflection, discourse, and action that forms the basis for school renewal and change. In addition to developing our own perspective, we attempt in this chapter to provide some of the necessary background material for the authors of subsequent chapters.

9 PREFACE xi In chapter 2, William Foster explores traditional notions in organizational theory and then suggests alternative concepts pertinent to a critical theory of school administration. He argues that an adequate theory of educational administration must be located within the context of the actual practice of schooling and that it must point not just to a better way of administrating schools, but to the right way. Foster argues that school administration must be seen as a moral and cultural means for empowering the school's membership. He sees administration, therefore, not as a remote process of authoritative control but rather as one of communicative and collaborative understanding and action, in practice, with staff on an equitable basis. With administrative practice that is consensual, critical, and communicative, Foster asserts that schools can assume a democratic rather than bureaucratic emphasis. In doing so, schools can abandon the attempts to develop systems of control that parallel the private appropriation of labor and capital. With a critical perspective on educational administration, then, schools can be empowered to develop truly educative cultures. Clearly related to Foster's position, John Smyth argues in chapter 3 that clinical supervision is not a behavioralistic exercise borrowed from managerial principles of linear accountability or principles of reinforcement adapted from the psychology of learning. Rather, he sees the "clinical" concept as it was originally intended, namely, as a collaborative, reflective, and critical exploration and practice among teachers and their supervisors. Supervision, therefore, is conceived of as an emancipatory process through which teachers assist each other to gain control over their own professional lives and destinies. In developing his argument, Smyth traces some of the social conditions that spawned clinical supervision and raises questions about its continued popularity. He is strongly critical of current practices and argues that they are means of "disenfranchising teachers and bringing into disrepute a way of working that has the potentiality to liberate teachers from oppressive forms of hegemony and domination." Smyth presents a rationale for and the impediments to construing clinical supervision in socially critical terms. Moreover, he suggests the means for using supervision to help teachers confront the limits of current practice and engage in analysis, reflection, and discourse about "alternative worlds of teaching." Donna Coomer, in chapter 4, builds a case for what she labels "critical evaluation." Her ideas are clearly compatible with those we present in chapter 1, and they present program evaluators with a distinct alternative to what ordinarily goes on in the name of the practice. In effect, Coomer puts the "value" back into evaluation. Evaluation methodology, she argues, must explicitly incorporate values and human interests through the process of competent (equitable) communication. Evaluation, therefore, is viewed

10 xii CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES as the vehicle whereby the political and ethical consequences to human beings are explicit and legitimate aspects of judgments about the worth of educational activities. First, Coomer reviews the dominant traditions of educational program evaluation-the more quantitative, explanatory models and the more qualitative, interpretive models-and critiques these approaches in terms of their adequacy to resolve the present crisis in confidence in schooling. Then she suggests a critical model of evaluation to overcome the limitations of these more traditional modes of evaluation. In essence, she calls for evaluation practice that considers the consequences of evaluation for the people in schools being evaluated and how these consequences affect the larger society in which schools are situated. The work that all of us share with you here is far from the last word on what the critical perspective is all about and what its implications are for the organization and improvement of schooling. For one thing, we have deliberately omitted the implications for curriculum, instruction, and learning since these issues have already been discussed at length by others. More importantly, were we to advertise our work as definitive, it would represent an exercise in hypocrisy given our commitment to the dialectical tradition in critical inquiry. To continue the dialogue, therefore, we have sought the reactions and wisdom of two additional contributors, less steeped in the idea of critical theory, but nevertheless deeply concerned about reconceptualizing and reconstructing what goes on in the name of educational research and practice. We did not ask our discussants to relegate their critiques to either-or debates that have often characterized the arguments between champions of either the quantitative or qualitative paradigms. We are not interested in using this book as a forum for setting up old battle lines between positivists, phenomenologists, and critical theorists. We think that readers will agree that the discussions in chapters 5 and 6 contain all the elements that good constructive critique is all about. First, David Ericson reflects on our work primarily from his perspective as a philosopher of education. In his chapter, Ericson looks at the work of Jurgen Habermas which provides much of the philosophical underpinnings of the critical perspective presented throughout the chapters. Ericson examines what he views as weaknesses in the conceptual framework of Habermas's critical theory and attempts to suggest how these weaknesses strip the critical perspective from some of its power relative to educational practice. Ericson suggests that the strength of Habermas's work lies in its ability to move us closer to enlightened critical studies of education. It may, however, be less potent in effecting a transformation in educational practice. Ericson offers the hope that while a critical perspective may not provide a well-

11 PREFACE xiii marked road to educational utopia, it provides us with a path to an emancipated perception of where we are at the moment. This contribution is of no small significance. Finally, from the perspective of educational practice, Gary Sykes reflects on our work from the standpoint of policy, particularly in terms of implications for the profession of teaching. Sykes points to the tensions underlying both the appeal and the difficulty of developing a critical practice of education. He suggests that critical reflection is essential to the practice of good teaching, that the kind of discourse implied by critical inquiry is at the very heart of the teaching activity. At the same time, however, he outlines features of teaching work that pose inherent impediments to a critical approach. Sykes posits that the current socialization of teachers, the organization of teaching, and perhaps even self-selection processes of the teaching profession make it unlikely that a critical practice of teaching can develop. Taking what he believes to be a pragmatic approach, therefore, Sykes looks to the current press for a professionalized teaching role and to processes related to it within local schools, universities, and teacher organizations as sources of a critical practice of teaching. These, then, are the intended thematic thrusts of this book. If, indeed, the educational community is undergoing a paradigm shift of the sort we propose here, it is clearly only in its embryonic stages of development. We will be most satisfied and encouraged if we have hastened its period of gestation, even if only a little. And we look forward to still being around to help nurture the infant during its most formative years of development. We would like to thank the editors of this evaluation series and Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing for their willingness to provide a forum for critical and alternative thinking in educational theory and practice. Ken Sirotnik Jeannie Oakes

12 Critical Perspectives on the Organization and Improvement of Schooling