{"id":132,"date":"2011-07-25T11:03:43","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T11:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/managingtoteach.org\/?p=132"},"modified":"2011-07-25T11:03:43","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T11:03:43","slug":"are-teachers-managers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/edinfoconnections.com\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"Can Teachers Be Managers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April 25 of this year at an event on the campus of Johns Hopkins University<\/a> titled The Future of Teaching: New Standards, New Tests, and New Evaluations — What does it all mean<\/a>?,<\/em> American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten argued that teachers, in the work they do, are managers, saying:<\/p>\n

Teaching, I don\u2019t care who [which kinds of students] it is, teaching is incredibly hard — you are managing<\/em>, whether it is 20 kids or 40 kids\u2026\u00a0 When you are teaching, you are managing<\/em>, whether it is 20, 30, or 40; or if you are a high school teacher 150 to 200 kids at a time.\u00a0 Unlike adults, kids don\u2019t have a sensor\u2026so you really have to manage kids and engage them \u2026 particularly if you want to go deep.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was for me a provocative statement and opened up some questions about how the profession of teaching is constructed in policy and research; and, how data and information tools are being developed to support teachers.\u00a0 In businesses and other fields that have used information and data to manage performance, managers have had a different relationship to the tools than workers.\u00a0 Managers are the ones provided summary indicators. They have a job that allows them to collect and integrate different information as they analyze, diagnose, and direct.\u00a0 In contrast, workers use information to be informed about their tasks and what they need to do next.\u00a0 How we think of the role of teachers may have a bearing on how we design information tools to support them in practice.<\/p>\n

Managing in and beyond the classroom<\/strong><\/p>\n

Weingarten’s comments call attention to the type of coordination of content and student preparation that teachers regularly do to ensure the moment-by-moment flow of information in the classroom works. \u00a0This is more than classroom management<\/em>, which is often considered to be maintaining discipline and order.\u00a0 This is instructional management <\/em>that entails ensuring that students are continuously and appropriately engaged.\u00a0 This involves planning of lessons and execution in a way that works for the different kids who have different aptitudes, interests, and preparation.\u00a0\u00a0 This is managing the classroom environment. \u00a0And, most would agree that some teachers do this better than others.<\/p>\n

Teachers can also manage outside of the classroom.\u00a0 They often coordinate with their peers to develop projects and activities for the students.\u00a0 They manage relationships and expectations with parents.\u00a0 Some teachers are department heads.\u00a0 Some are informal leaders as the Distributed Leadership Study<\/a> showed several years ago.\u00a0 Some teachers have aides in their classroom and these teachers coordinate and manage the work of their aides\/para-educators.<\/p>\n

Now the value-added teacher measurement movement is creating another management opportunity for some teachers.\u00a0 Some students, those in special education and English language learners (ELL), can have aides who work with them some portion of their school day.\u00a0 Schools and districts that measure teachers based on student test scores will likely then need to account for the contributions of these other supporting professionals.\u00a0 A straightforward way is to have one teacher designated as the teacher of record<\/em><\/a> as a program funded by the Gates Foundation<\/a> is exploring.\u00a0 This would then give that teacher of record some managerial responsibility for coordinating the other professionals involved in that student\u2019s learning since the teacher of record would be evaluated on the shared student’s performance.<\/p>\n

How can teachers be managers if they are not in management?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One question that this idea of teachers as managers immediately raised for me is how they could be managers when they do not have management roles<\/em>.\u00a0 Teachers, after all, usually belong to labor unions and have contracts that are similar to the contracts used by other public employees who perform important functions \u2013 police officers, firefighters, and bus drivers \u2013 while not being managers.\u00a0 But, in other fields there are cases where a professional manages activities and people, while part of the official management of an organization.\u00a0 For example, in industries that employ contractors (construction, software development, conference management), it is common to have contractors who are professional project managers.\u00a0 These individuals are hired temporarily for their ability to manage multiple tasks, prioritize, communicate, plan, and direct the work of others.\u00a0 They are, however, not part of the management of the organizations they are working for.\u00a0 They do not review employees or have the human resources responsibilities that members of management have.\u00a0 It seems that conceptually, being a member of management is a specific role within organization.\u00a0 Being a manager describes the nature of the work someone does.\u00a0 Often these two occur at the same time, but not always.<\/p>\n

Being accountable defines a manager<\/strong><\/p>\n

While there are many things managers do from developing schedules to coordinating resources to ensuring the delivery of an expected product or service, a signature characteristic of managers is that they are responsible and accountable<\/em> for results.\u00a0 In businesses and other organizations, managers are expected to manage to deliver results within constraints and limits.\u00a0 Unlike workers, the buck stops with the manager.\u00a0 Perhaps no other characteristic of a manager is so related to teaching in the current era.\u00a0 If the job of teaching was less managerial before standards-based accountability, it is likely more so now.\u00a0 While there are many weaknesses to the form of testing used under NCLB (and the kind that would likely be used to support value-added measures of teachers), it has provided a set of common metrics that can be used with those teachers (about a third of all teachers) in schools.\u00a0 Similar types of measures are being used with many teachers in other subjects as well. These metrics provide an important metric that teachers need to manage to.\u00a0 While in some cases the response is to try to cheat the system, many teachers are responding by trying to manage to these metrics.<\/p>\n

So it seems to me that one of the big shifts that is occurring in education today is the development of managerial dimensions to the job of teachers. \u00a0Just as accountability makes instructional responsibility more shared, so does it provide more opportunities for teachers to be more responsible and manage more. \u00a0Perhaps not all teachers are interested or prepared for this part of their job. \u00a0Perhaps as new approaches to teacher evaluation are designed complementary teacher development as managers should be considered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In April 25 of this year at an event on the campus of Johns Hopkins University titled The Future of Teaching: New Standards, New Tests, and New Evaluations — What does it all mean?, American Federation of Teachers President Randi…<\/span><\/p>\n

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