Walter Geerts & René van Kralingen - The Teachers' Handbook

Introduction

PART C  What is my school like? This part reviews the school as a work environment for the teacher. This work environment – contrary to many other types of workplace – is subject to many external forces, and all those forces want to have a say in the educational model. Amajor force is the parents. In general, your students’ parents tend to be more highly educated than in the past. The families in which they raise their children often consist of two or three children and a lot of value is attached to the well-be ing and prosperity of these children. Parents consider the school to be of critical importance in determining their children’s future career path and life in general. They acknowledge the fact that teachers are a critical success factor in this. How ever, this does not imply that parents will always – or ever – agree with the teach er’s approach. A fair number of parents want to control what teachers do. Another important force is society, and ‘society’ today contrasts sharply with society, say, forty years ago. We can illustrate this by using the following exam ples: ■■ Students often grow up in blended families these days. ■■ Students tend to be more assertive and prosperous. As a consequence, teach ers need to be more skilled to facilitate their learning. ■■ Modern society sometimes causes students to be extremely restless. Take, for instance, the ever-increasing use of internet and social media. Younger teach ers tend to accept this more easily than some teachers from older generations. ■■ Students seem to have less sense of discipline, though this is debatable. In ancient Greece, Aristotle also complained about the fact that youth lacked self-discipline. Nevertheless, this doesn’t rule out that for some students the only source of guidance that is provided is actually at school, by the teacher; he/she establishes rules and enforces them, which creates order and stability. Society is watching over the teacher’s shoulder. A third major force is the political environment. One recent development is the fact that teacher quality has been ‘rediscovered’ by politicians. Parliamentary re search in the Netherlands conducted by the ‘Dijsselbloem committee’ (2008) revealed that teachers have been systematically neglected by leaders, reformers and managers over the past few years. On the other hand, the government tends to make considerable policy changes in education with each change of adminis tration. This dual approach by the government is reflected in continuous involve ment in many different areas. For example, in recent years governmental insti tutions have kept a close eye on participants in secondary vocational education (VET) levels 1 and 2. The analysis attributes a key role to teachers in preventing and/or solving issues like school drop-out rates as well as rude and anti-social behaviour. In other words, teachers should assume a nurturing role while simul taneously offering their students job perspectives, certificates of completion, long-term internships or vocational training. Hence, students are often offered alternative courses of studies in order to keep growing and developing. At this

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