Ed Foundations Learning Journal Post #2
Previously I have posted on the case study of Tracy and how she didn’t fit in with the socio-economic orientation of her school. The changes to the case study, shown underlined below, have not changed my thoughts regarding Who Tracy is accountable to but they have added another of the Nine Provocations (University of Canberra 2011) to the mix, namely, ‘What will students want and need from her?’. I also now feel more confident in explaining why Tracy’s situation has come about and what Tracy might be able to do to change it.
Case Study: Tracy(3)
Tracy knew the first few years of her career would be busy and exhausting, however she never thought she’d be one of those statistics of early career attrition. For three years now Tracy has been working at a new outer suburban private school. The opportunity to be on the staff of a brand new school was extremely exciting, especially for a first job. She had great plans to develop rich learning tasks, and cultural clubs. However she is now becoming disillusioned as the school council appears solely focussed on the schools NAPLAN results, the MySchool website and the uniform. She has fought for three years now get support for cross-curricular learning programs and the students just don’t seem to want to take part in activities out of school hours that are not linked to their assignments. To make matters worse Tracy is finding the parents increasingly difficult to deal with, especially as they seem to support their own children at the expense of others and the school as a whole. Tracy is worried that the students are not being exposed to other experiences, and instead are generally being expected to study and focus on getting a good ATAR. A number of parents have asked for a weekly study guide and practice tests to assist their children's revision.
Roberts, 2011 underlining mine.
It seems particularly relevant to me to look at this situation through the prism of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs(as cited in Churchill, 2011, pg 78), as shown below.
Created by FactoryJoe and Sourced from Wikimedia Commons
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The previously noted actions of the School Board and the newly added information regarding the request from parents for study guides and practice tests only confirms that education at this school is very much driven by the parents and their perceived needs for their children’s socio-economic future. The parent’s intentions for their children are obviously very much based on the ‘Safety’ layer of Maslow’s hierarchy and are to be achieved by ensuring that their children and school get good scores in their ATAR and NAPLAN respectively.
In conforming to their parent’s desires for academic success — as indicated by their indifference to extra-curricular activities not devoted to assignment work — the students are placing themselves firmly in the ‘Love/belonging’ layer of the hierarchy, as failure to do so would weaken their relationship with their parents.
And finally Tracy, in my opinion, is precariously looking down on this situation from the higher lever of ‘Esteem’, but is teetering on the brink because she is not getting the respect she needs.
I therefore have two alternative recommendations for Tracy, both of which recognise the fact that she is not likely to be able to change the socio-economic orientation of the school, at least not in the short term.
The first is to take the advice I suggested in my first post which was to recognise who she was accountable to in her current position and perhaps seek employment elsewhere if she cannot reconcile that fact with her career aspirations. This would prevent her own possible fall down the levels of Maslow's hierarchy by possibly giving up and accepting the situation.
My second recommendation is for Tracy to lead by example and aspire to the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy — ‘Self-actualisation’.
It is my thinking that instead of looking to use extra-curricular activities to forward her educational plans for her students she should instead begin to incorporate her ideas of social interaction, rich learning tasks and cross-curricular programs (i.e. Invoking Maslow’s aspects of Creativity, Problem Solving etc) into her daily lessons while at the same time still catering to the wishes of the parents for more traditional forms of education in the form of homework (i.e. the study guides and practice tests).
I feel this approach would have a number of educational benefits. It would allow Tracy to expose her students to a wider range of experiences while they are a captive audience at school, thereby obviating her obvious fears about their developing identities being subsumed by their parent’s socio-economic concerns (Identity vs Role Confusion: Erikson and others as cited in Krause et al., 2006, pp 108-113), while still reinforcing the basic information they might need for their subjects with the eager assistance of their parents at home.
This approach also has the added possibility that Tracy’s students, as they develop their sense of self, will begin to appreciate the added advantages of a broader more social pedagogy and perhaps change their attitude towards her extra-curricular cultural ideas thereby helping Tracy achieve the respect for her efforts she is currently lacking and allowing her to aspire to self-actualisation.
Finally, I would like to connect this case study with the second of the Nine Provocations I listed in my introduction: ‘What will students want and need from me?’ (University of Canberra 2011). I mention this in the more general form because I now believe that this provocation applies to all teachers. Having studied the philosophies, physiologies and psychologies that apply to education and learning during the course of this term I now feel that teachers are in the best position to decide what their students
want and
need to get the best outcomes from their schooling experience.
References:
Churchill, R. et. al. 2011,
Teaching: Making a Difference, 1st Edn, John Wiley & Sons, Australia.
Krause, K., Bochner, S., Duchesne, S., (2006)
Educational Psychology for learning & teaching, South Melbourne, Vic, Thomson Learning Australia.
Roberts, P. 2011,
Module C: Learning Theory, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, viewed 22nd April 2011, http://ucangraddip.wikispaces.com/Ed+Fou
ndations+Module+C
University of Canberra 2011,
The Nine Provocations, Graduate Diploma in Education Wiki, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, viewed 22 April 2011, http://ucangraddip.wikispaces.com/Provoc
ations
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