Teachers' Resources in an Era of Change: Variety, Differentiation, and Context
Author(s):
Yael Grinshtain (submitting) Audrey Addi-Raccah (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations
Format:
Paper

Session Information

01 SES 02 A, National Approaches to Professional Development

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-22
15:15-16:45
Room:
K3.17
Chair:
Rauno Huttunen

Contribution

Objectives

The extensive social changes that educational systems are undergoing within neo-liberal regimes exposed teachers to diverse and complex challenges. The present study aims to reveal the various resources that can assist teachers in their daily work at school, and elucidate if there are differences between teachers' resources in the  Jewish and Arab sectors, which compose distinct cultural and social contexts.

 

Perspectives

Over the past few decades, educational systems have been exposed to significant changes based on the neo-liberal approach (Ball & Olmedo, 2013). They include decentralization that transferred authorities from the Education Ministry to lower echelons, including the level of school principals and the teaching staff (Nir, 2009).  Decentralization triggered changes in the structure and size of managerial groups in schools, brought new players into the arena, and changed the map of power in school (Malen & Cochran, 2008) alongside demands for accountability. This change is associated with the move toward more fluid boundaries between school and its environment and demanding more effort from individual teachers (e.g. Bauman, 2013).   Teachers' work has grown complex, and they have to cope with different and sometimes contradictory requirements, such as test-based accountability, increased class-size, budget cuts, student heterogeneity (Murnane, 2014; Putnam, 2015) and more.

Viewing teachers as change agents enhances their role in finding ways of confronting these changes (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012) in the new circumstances created in school thereafter (Lucas, 2015; Pyhältö, Pietarinen & Soini, 2014; Saeed & Hussain, 2014). Moreover, 'Since many teachers feel that there is a bull's eye on their backs' (Darling-Hammond & Rothman, 2015. p. 7) they need to strengthen and make prominent their unique resources in order to cope with their profession’s new complexity following the rapid changes. Characteristics that were traditionally major components of teachers' work, like education, may no longer be the only nor the central component in their work (Brown, 2013). Moving toward individualism impels teachers to emphasize their unique resources: some of them may be addressed as traits that are less changeable, some of them developed as a result of early socialization processes, and others were acquired during professional development training before and after entering the school system (Jordan, 2016).

However,  in multicultural societies like Israel, there may be differences regarding these trends. In the Arab educational sector in Israel, that is identified as a collective society (Arar et al., 2013; Cohen, 2007), implementation of neoliberal ideology practices have been slower in comparison to the Jewish educational sector that grants more space to individualism. Arab schools are also less exposed to and affected by decentralizing forces and external agencies, and teachers there tend to hold views that are shaped and influenced more by higher ranks in the educational system  and less by individual interactions (Addi-Raccah & Grinshtain, 2016).

In light of the above literature, the current study aims to identify and map the different resources of teachers in different contexts. Two questions guided this study:

 

  1. What are the resources that teachers’ perceive as contributing to their ongoing work as teachers?
  2. Are there differences in teachers' perception of their needed resources in different school contexts?  

Method

Methodology The research-array drew on principles of the interpretive-constructivist approach, and the research genre was grounded theory. Twenty-five teachers were interviewed (19 female, 6 male) employed at schools in the Arab and the Jewish sector (9 Arab, 16 Jewish teachers) located in towns in north and central Israel. Teachers were chosen by the snowball sampling method (Patton, 2002), and were located through referrals by their colleagues, without any prior personal knowledge about the teachers themselves. The research was based on in-depth interviews. The interviews complied with the exploratory stages of a research, where a preliminary understanding is required, as well as developing systems and processes for which sufficient information has not been obtained. They helped develop a clear conceptual framework for the research (Guest, Namey & Mitchell, 2013), and accordingly assisted this groundbreaking research to identify some initial resources and to examine the degree to which they contributed to teachers’ work. Teachers were asked to estimate which are the resources that contribute to their work as teachers and to what extent they use the different resources. Data analysis The data were analyzed using the ground theory, in two stages: first, conceptualizing processes observed in the field as elicited through thematic analysis. This stage was intended to achieve a preliminary identification of resources that teachers use. An analysis of the interviews led to structuring themes that included similar statements made by different interviewees. Everything was structured around a similar group of factors that help teachers in their work. In the next stage, links were found with existing theory and literature (Marshall & Rossman, 2015), as the different types of resources depicted in the research literature. Special consideration was given to the literature that described the different cultural background of teachers, using the resources that emerge from the interviews into the categories. Ethics Fundamental and comprehensive critical ethical issues were well-established and taken into consideration during the entire research process. Two main issues were highlighted. First, the moral principles concerning human beings - respect, beneficence, and justice - were established and made clear to the interviewees (Marshall & Rossman, 2015). Second, any identifying details were ignored in order to protect not only the interviewees but their schools and environments as well.

Expected Outcomes

Three main findings were found: 1) Three core categories of a variety of resources were revealed as contributing to teachers' work: a) General social characteristics (e.g. social background, manners and behavioral patterns, life style and education; b) Collective teaching-profession characteristics (e.g. collegiality, relations with the principal, teachers’ social status and c) Individual professional characteristics (e.g. interpersonal skills, work commitment, professional development and seniority). 2) Differentiation in the level of using the resources, and their importance to teachers' work, was found in two core categories – general social characteristics and individual professional characteristics. Similar perceptions were found in regard to the collective teaching-profession characteristics. 3) The use of resources were found to be context dependent: General social characteristics, particularly education (e.g. academic degree) and life style (e.g. dressing and manners) were perceived as contributing to teachers in the Arab sector. Individual professional characteristics, particularly interpersonal skills (e.g. caring, emotional capacity) and job commitment were perceived as contributing to teachers' work in the Jewish sector. Discussion Over the past few years, teachers have had to cope with a complex work environment that is undergoing numerous changes (Darling–Hammond & Bransford, 2007). Our research showed that teachers make differential use of the resources that help them in their work, that go far beyond their formal education and training as teachers. Whereas in the Arab sector teachers' resources are based on their affiliation to a certain social status (Eilam, 2003), Jewish teachers need to count on their own individual work capacities. Apparently, mapping the different types of resources can provide directions for teachers’ professional development in distinct workplace cultures. Thus, pre-service and in-service professional training need to consider the elaboration of the teaching profession regarding the educational and social changes occurring to varying extents in different socio-cultural and ethnic contexts.

References

Addi-Raccah, A., & Grinshtain, Y. (2016). Teachers' capital and relations with parents: A comparison between Israeli Jewish and Arab teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 60, 44-53. Arar, K., Shapira, T., Azaiza, F., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2013). Arab women in management and leadership. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ball, S. J., & Olmedo, A. (2013). Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities. Critical Studies in Education, 54(1), 85-96.‏ Bauman, Z. (2013). Liquid modernity. John Wiley & Sons.‏ Brown, P. (2013). Education, opportunity and the prospects for social mobility. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5-6), 678-700.‏ Cohen, A. (2007). An examination of the relationship between commitments and culture among five cultural groups of Israeli teachers. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38, 34-49. Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, (2007)(Eds.) Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do. Wiley Press. Darling-Hammond, L., & Rothham. R. (2015). Teaching in the Flat World – Learning from High-Performing Systems. New York: Teachers College Press. Eilam, B. (2003). Jewish and Arab teacher trainee's orientations toward teaching learning processes. Teacher Education, 14(2), 169-186. Guest, G., Namey, E.E., & Mitchell, M.L. (2013). Collecting Qualitative Data – A Field Manual Applied Research. Los Angeles: Sage. Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. New York: Teachers College Press. Jordan, M. E. (2016). Teaching as Designing: Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Adaptive Teaching. Theory Into Practice, 55(3), 197-206. Lukacs, K., P.H.D. (2015). 'For me, change is not a choice': The lived experience of a teacher change agent. American Secondary Education, 44(1), 38-49. Malen, B., & Cochran, M.V. (2008). Beyond pluralistic patterns of power: Research on the micropolitics of schools. In B. Cooper, J. Cibulka, & L. Fusarelli (Eds.), Handbook of education politics and policy (pp. 148-178). New-York: Routledge. Marshall, C., & Rossman, G.B. (2015). Designing Qualitative Research Sixth Edition. Sage Publications. Nir, A. (2009). Centralization & School Empowerment : From Rhetoric to Practice. New York : Nova Science Publishers. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods. London: Sage. Putnam, R.D. (2015). Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster. Pyhältö, K., Pietarinen, J., & Soini, T. (2014). Comprehensive school teachers' professional agency in large-scale educational change. Journal of Educational Change, 15(3), 303-325. Saeed, M., & Hussain, S. (2014). Analyzing perceptions of primary school teachers about their professional competencies, expectations and needs. Journal of Educational Research, 17(1), 91-101.

Author Information

Yael Grinshtain (submitting)
The Open University of Israel
EDucation and Psychology
Raanana
Audrey Addi-Raccah (presenting)
Tel Aviv Unibversity
Tel-Aviv

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