The Dilemmas of Deskilling Reflections of a Staff Developer

Nancy P. Kraft

Effective staff development programs need to minimize teacher deskilling practices and instead engage participants in critical, democratic, and participatory learning experiences.

I have been a staff developer for the past 10 years working with teachers and educators to help them learn about their teaching through the processes of self-study, reflective practice, and action research. I believe that staff development should encourage educators to be more critical, self-analytical, and reflective.

Unfortunately, much of today’s staff development consist of giving teacher then nuts and bolts and the “how-to’s” rather than creating learning opportunities for teacher to examine the nature of process of educational change and reform imitative. In effect, these practical staff development approaches without self-study and reflection actually cause teacher s to be deskilled, to limit their improvement.

The deskilling approaches separate the conception of curriculum form execution of curriculum; these approaches have experts do “the” thinking while teacher are reduced to doing the “implementing”. Giroux (1988) concludes that “the effect is not only to deskill teachers, to remove them from the processes of deliberation and reflection, but also to routinizes the nature of learning and classroom pedagogy” (p. 124). If one major outcome of education for children to create individual who are tinker and problem solver, hoe

Page 406

Regarding deskilling practices. In addition to sharing my journal reflections from this workshop, I describe set of strategies that I use as a staff developer to encourage teachers to actively participate in their own learning

THE EMPEROR IS WEARING NO CLOTHES

“The emperor’s new clothes are here. There she is parading before the audience. No one is telling her she got nothing.” As I read these words written on the reflection sheet I received form one participant during the second day a three-day workshop, I suddenly felt every dejected and extremely discouraged. I was facilitating learning for 35 chapters 1 teacher in a workshop which covered a broad array of topics ranging from “getting on touch with yours belief , values , and assumption about knowledge and learning” to ‘ hoe to get meaningful parent involvement in chapter 1 programs.”

In my own journal, I had noted resistance from some of the participants who were expecting the traditional “sit and get” type of workshop, but I thought that by the end of the first day I had been rather successful in presenting a different kind of staff development opportunity – one that required the participants to think and engage in critical discourse. After all, I reflected in my journal, attends had been actively participating in their own learning, exploring their beliefs about education and assumption of chapter 1 students, and willingly sharing their craft with each other. Even though I had encouraged critical reflection on the events of the workshop the criticism by this participant hurt me.

I questioned the source of this participant’s criticism: Was it my style or the content of my workshop? Was it because I was requiring her to think and become more analytical about her own teaching situation (something she may not have had to do in long time)? I wondrered hoe I could find ways to vlasidate her feelingsm but at the same time find ways to help her reconceptualize staff development as an opportunity to reflect and engage in critical discourse.

APPROACHES TO STAFF DEVELOPMENT

I see two approaches to staff development – the traditional approach which essentially tells teachers what to do and critical theory approach which has teachers engage in critically reflective analyses of educational construct and their belief, values, and assumptions.

THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH

So much of staff development has traditionally focused very narrowly on effecting change through telling teachers what to do and how to do it. Teachers haven’t been involved in their conceptualizing what change should look like or in deciding. They are typically relegated to technician status in implementing other’s idea or “recipes” for change. In a critique of the process of educational reform, Giroux (1988) says:

Many of the recommendation that have emerged in the current debate either ignore the role teacher play in preparing learners to be active and critical citizens or they suggest reforms that ignore the intelligence, judgment, and experience that teacher might offers in such a debate. Where teachers do enter the debate, they are the object of educational reforms that reduce them to the status of high-level technicians carrying out dictates and objectives decided by experts far removed from the everyday realities of classrooms life. The message appears to be that teachers do not count when it comes to critically examining the nature and process of educational reform. (p. 121)

THE CRITICAL THEORY APPROACH

The critical theory approach allows teachers to examine society from the perspective of power relationship within that society; it allows staff developers to engage participants in questioning power relationships within schools. Thus the critical theory approach allows teacher