Institutional Challenges in the Czech Schools

Author(s):

Karel Starý(presenting / submitting)Dominik Dvořák

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

11. Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance

Format:

Paper

Session Information

11 SES 12 B, Institutional Challenges to Reach Today’s Quality of Education

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-16

08:30-10:00

Room:

J 24/14,G, 20

Chair:

Irina Maslo

Contribution

The paper deals with some results from study founded by departmental program Ministry of Education Youth and Sports - Centre for Basic Research on Schooling (2006-2010). The objective of this contribution focuses on one partial aim to describe classroom practice and identify institutional challenges. Conceptual and theoretical framework gave us “new” institutionalism (Rowan, Miller, 2007), which make distinction between school as organisation and school as institution (Berg 2007). Shulmans´ created model (2004), in which the level of individual teacher is created by a motivation, vision, understanding and a practice, with the reflection in the centre. On the school level the model is extended to a collegial peer support, a shared vision, a knowledge base and a community of practitioners. The research question was: Which inner structures and mechanisms in schools strongly influenced school education?
Manthey (2009) claims that school development requires creative use empty space - „what is not“. It gave us the “glasses” which we use during observation classroom practices and for interpretation of interviews with students and teachers. We were seeking how educational leadership influenced the classroom practice in such areas as assessment, teaching strategies like cooperative teaching, adaptive teaching or classroom management. We also tried to find and describe how mutual discourse among teachers influenced their practice.
As Seidel and Shavelson (2007) in their meta-analysis pointed out, teaching effectiveness studies in the last decade were quantitatively predominated by correlation survey studies. They found the largest teaching effects for domain-specific teaching components. Fenstermacher and Soltis (2004) distinguish executive, facilitator and liberationist approaches to teaching. It depends on the values and beliefs which individual teachers hold. Too different approaches to teaching can bring a lot of challenges to students. Authors have created framework for identifying values MAKER - Methods, Awareness, Knowledge, Ends, Relationships which have different importance for teachers and sometimes compete each other in different approaches.

Method

We use qualitative research approach – a multiple case study. Some methodologists distinguish between instrumental and intrinsic case studies (Stake, 1995). I our study we did first of them. Although we used mostly qualitative approach methodology, we also used standardised questionnaires for teachers and students. We did more than two hundred lesson observations, fifty individual interviews with teachers, eight focus groups with students and analyses of documents and artefacts. We can also name our research design as a mixed research. Our epistemological perspective oscillated between constructivism (Stake) and subtle realism (Miles and Huberman 1994, Maxwell 2005). Involving quantitative research methods brings some challenges for managing quality of qualitative research. As Yin (1994) recommend gathering all data to one database accessible to all member of research team is very important. It enables various types of triangulation: resources, methods, researchers and theoretical frameworks. Together with triangulation we used member validation (Yin, 1994). In every five schools we presented the research findings to teachers and headmasters and recorded their feedback.

Expected Outcomes

One of the main findings was that variety of teaching which meets students is enormous on the scale between traditional instruction and instruction inspired by constructivism in according with Scheerens (2010). The real classroom practice depends on the teacher` approach to teaching especially if there is a weak educational leadership in the school. Five investigated schools were surprisingly similar in many things despite of different school settings (urban – rural, bigger – smaller). It was possible to make an “analytic generalisation” (Yin, 1994): • Two parts of basic school (primary and lower secondary) are very different. A transition between primary and lower level students reflected as challenging. • The reality of classroom instruction depends on the teacher, not on the school. There is a lack of the “pedagogical” management in the schools. Coordination of the educational processes (assessment, cooperative learning, teaching strategies, claassroom management) is the weakness of schools. • The school curricula reform is an “invisible” thing in the everyday school life. These findings will be elaborated in the paper.

References

Berg, G. From structural dilemmas to institutional imperatives: a descriptive theory of the school as an institution and of school organizations. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2007, 39, 5, p. 577–596. Dvořák, D., Starý, K. Urbánek, P., Chvál.M., Walterová, E. Česká základní škola: vícepřípadová studie. (Czech Basic School: Multiple case study). Praha : Karolinum, 2010. Fenstermacher, G. D., Soltis, J. F. Approaches to teaching. New York : Teacher College Press. 2004. 4th ed. Bassey, M. Case study Research in Educational Settings. Maidenhead : Open University Press, 2006. Flick, U. Managing Quality in Qualitative Research. Thousand Oak : Sage, 2007. Huberman, A. M., Miles, M. B. Qualitative Data Analysis. An Expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oak : Sage, 1994. Manthey, G. Leadership requires creative use of „what is not―. Leadership, 1st September 2009, s. 15. Maxwell, J. A. Qualitative Research Design. An Interactive Approach. Thousand Oaks,: Sage, 1996. Morgan, D. L. Focus Groups as Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks : Sage, 1994. Rowan, B., Miller, R. J. Organizational Strategies for Promoting Instructional Change: Implementation Dynamics in Schools Working With Comprehensive School Reform Providers. American Educational Research Journal, 44, 2007, s. 252—297. Seidel, T. and Shavelson, R. J. (2007). Teaching effectiveness research in the past decade: the role of theory and research design in disentangling meta-analysis results. Review of Educational Research, 77(4), 454-499 Schostak, J. Interviewing and Representation in Qualitative Research. Maidenhead : Open University Press, 2006. Scheerens, J. ed. Teachers` Professional Development. Europe in international comparison. Luxembourg : Office for Official Publications of the European Union, 2010. Shulman, L. S., Shulman J. H. How and what teachers learn: a shifting perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36, č. 2 (March/April 2004), s. 257–271. Stake, R. E. The Art of Case Study Research. Thousand Oak : Sage, 1995. Yin, R. K. Case Study Research. Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks : Sage, 1994.

Author Information

Karel Starý (presenting / submitting)

Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education

Institute for Research and Development of Education

Prague

Dominik Dvořák

Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education, Czech Republic

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