ASCD's - Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development- journal - all online. View the current issue or browse archives, all from your computer.
As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally-our willingness to be disturbed. Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think. No one person or perspective can give us the answers we need to the problems of today. Paradoxically, we can only find those answers by admitting we don't know. We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be confused for a time.
"The most powerful and ample resource for change in education is teachers' own expertise. Yet, teachers are regularly overstepped when it comes to leading school improvement.
In the United States, less than one-fourth of teachers feel that they have great influence over school decisions and policies in seven different areas, as noted in the National Center for Educational Statistics' Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) database for 2003-04 reported by the National Staff Development Council (NSDC) in Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the U.S. and Abroad."