ERIC/RCS: Teachers as Decision MakersAuthor(s): Carl B. SmithSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 42, No. 8, Empowerment through Literacy (Apr., 1989), p.632Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20200246 .

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ERIG/RGS_

Teachers as decision makers Carl B. Smith _

Various metaphors have been used to describe the classroom teacher?cata

lyst, coordinator, moderator, and most

recently, decision maker. They arise from our continuing effort to under stand the role of the classroom teacher and to improve and guide teacher be havior. Each term tries to provide an

image of an important element in the

process of teaching. Some of them come from current theories on teacher behavior or from popular approaches, such as those that promote interaction in the classroom.

No one can move through one day without making decisions. But teach

ing as decision making has gained re cent endorsement from educators who are asking for powers they don't think teachers now possess.

Throughout the educational commu

nity "teacher empowerment and deci sion making" are being purported.

Disregarding the political overtones of those discussions and whether or not teachers are empowered to make the decisions essential to doing their jobs, we can nevertheless reflect on the deci sions that teachers do make and ways to improve that decision making.

The need to make a decision in

teaching arises with any situation where the teacher has an option. The teacher comes to a branching road and has to choose one of the paths that are

open?one book, one method, one ex

ample. Some of those decisions are

made on the run, almost without a sec

ond thought; but the ones we want to review here are those that involve re

flection and are apt to give direction to other decision making points that nec

essarily follow. If the purpose of teaching is to direct

the learning of a class and of individ

uals, the nature of the job involves

making decisions about where learners

are and how to keep them moving in a

profitable direction?how to help them become fluent readers, for instance.

When teachers in Tucson, Arizona, were surveyed to obtain a detailed de

scription of their decision making (Shedd, Conley, and Malanowski, 1986, ED 280 132), over 80% re

ported that their daily and weekly deci sions fulfilled 11 main responsibilities:

Keeping students on task

Observing progress to see when

plans needed to be changed Communicating expectations to

students

Making midstream changes in plans

Leading class discussions and

demonstrations

Administering discipline Assigning class work and home work

Delivering whole class lectures

Working with individual students

Instructing groups of students

Recording attendance

Each of these responsibilities requires decisions, whether these involve plan ning, interacting with students and other

professionals, or evaluating students and the teacher's own performance. These

responsibilities reveal the very active cir cumstances under which teachers work, and they suggest that teachers make a

great variety of decisions-many of which merit reflective thought. It is also clear that teachers see many of their re

sponsibilities operating on groups first and then on individuals.

Many teacher decisions fall into pre dictable categories: selecting objectives,

deciding how to motivate students, de

termining practice activities, selecting resources, deciding how to evaluate pro gress, etc. These could be managed in the planning or preteaching stage of instruction.

However, the teacher's planning does not tend to focus on objectives but rather on the selection of practice activities and on matching these to learners' character istics (Walter, 1984, ED 246 021;

Yinger, 1980, EJ 222 294). Nor do teachers tend to make decisions that in

corporate evaluation of student progress when planning their lessons (Shavelson and Stern, 1981, EJ 257 299). Teachers often select exercises that have motivated the students successfully in the past.

Teachers may do this because they be lieve motivating students is central to

learning. Such limited decision making, however, may result from unsystematic planning behavior.

Decisions made actively?that is, in the midst of daily activity?are more

difficult to examine empirically. Such decisions are diagnostic in a real sense because the teacher is reacting and in

teracting with the students and their re

sponses to the lesson. No matter how

carefully a teacher anticipates re

sponses, these can't really be planned, so decisions are often made moment to

moment. Active decision making may also rely on experience or personal philosophy. Teacher decision making might be described as more intuitive,

resembling the creative process, rather than as a systematic weighing of

alternatives.

For information on ERIC materials, write to ERIC/RCS at Indiana University, Smith Research Center, Suite 150, 2805 East Tenth Street, Bloomington IN

47405, USA.

632 The Reading Tbacher April 1989

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