EMPOWERING TEACHERS

Contributed by Jessy Rae D. Licaroz – Teacher III, Sta. Rosa Elementary School, Pilar

If trustworthy research findings are going to be effectively used to inform instructional practices in classroom settings, we must acknowledge that teachers must be provided the necessary basic knowledge to translate research into effective classroom practices.

Teachers are the most important consumers of our society. At a minimum, these recommendations are offered:

Systems of accountability must be developed and put into practice. To ensure that all teachers have mastery of the content they are teaching, they can deliver instruction through a wide range of approaches and methods, and have a clear understanding of individual differences in their students.

Teachers must be prepared to understand the basic principles underlying the development of the skills that they are teachingand how these principles relate to instructional practice. It is also critical that teachers receive basic training on how to access and interpret the research literature relevant to their instructional responsibilities. It is only in this way that they will be empowered to judge both the quality and applicability of the research findings.

Teachers must be included in the planning, design, and conduct of educational research that are expected to influence their instructional practices in the classroom. Both researchers and teachers must have the opportunity to develop genuine research collaborations where constant input and feedback are provided bilaterally. This will require substantial changes in the current training of both researchers and teachers.
The bottom line is that, being a professional teacher takes more than what you see in the license; not even for the high position that you can achieve as you go up the career ladder, but on each individual whose life you touched.

As leaders, we must make the attempt and be the best in whatever task God is calling us to do; and we can only do that if we put our chosen profession in its proper perspective.

References:

Excerpted from Lyon, G. R. (May 4, 2000). Education Research and Evaluation and Student Achievement: Quality Counts.

Empowering Teachers (2008) Retrieved from

http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2008/03/01/02hirsch.h01.html