Miles Myers
THE PROBLEM OF TEACHER AUTHORITY
There are two ways to have influence as a teacher—one is the use of political power and
the other is the use of recognized authority. Political power is the organization of
constituencies around particular goals—getting the necessary votes to take power within
an organization and getting collective bargaining laws which require the resolution of
disputes within a political arena. Both political goals have been achieved by classroom
teachers over the last twenty years. Classroom teachers control their organizations, both
the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and
teachers in most places have collective bargaining or some kind of negotiations allowing
them to use power relationships to influence school policies.
But at the same time that teachers have improved their ability to influence school policy
through power, they have continued to lose professional authority. Professional authority
assumes that teaching is an intellectual discipline requiring of practitioners thoughtful
study and insight. In other words, if teachers had authority, teachers would be recognized
as the experts on how to teach at a given grade level and/or in a given subject area. But
this is not the case. In fact, authority for K-12 teaching has been completely conferred on
those who do not teach in K-12 classrooms.
But what is wrong with that? And if something is wrong with that, what causes the
problem and what can be done to correct it? These are the two questions which this
article will address. First, what is wrong with K-12 teachers having no professional
authority? One problem is the same one Paracelsus found in the medical treatments of the
sixteenth century. That is, medicine at that time was practiced by having doctors read
books and give written rules to routine workers who were the ones who actually treated
patients. Paracelsus argued that on-the-spot diagnosis was a critical step in medical
treatment, no two patients or situations being exactly alike, and that doctors should treat
patients, not just read books.
The issue is the same in teaching. Can the teachers be routine workers who follow the
written rules of the experts? The answer largely depends on one’s theory of learning. If
one assumes, as does a behaviorist, that learning is an ordered pattern of stimulusresponse-reward, then teacher-proof materials are possible and teachers can be routine
workers without professional authority. The major problem in such a learning theory is
how to make the stimulus discrete enough so that the subject gets rewarded for exactly
the right response. In writing programs, such an approach to teaching takes the form of a
series of drills focusing on small (discrete) items, for instance, the floating -s in subjectverb agreement problems. The teacher’s job is routine—know the correct answer and
mark papers with appropriate rewards (grades, checks, stars, M&M’s). In the meantime,
the experts can experiment with more efficient ways of presenting the stimulus and the
reward.
Teacher-proof materials are also possible in an imprinting model of learning. This model
assumes that there is an innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD) in the head and that
if the LAD is triggered by the sound or appearance of language, the child will imprint on
the language and begin to speak and then write. Learning in this model is very similar to
what ducks do when they imprint on another duck or Konrad Lorenz. In other words,
language learning eventually happens if children are surrounded by language. The task of
the teacher is to surround the child with whatever language is available. In reading,
teaching takes the form of Dan Fader’s approach in Hooked on Books, and in writing, this
task is the write-everyday-as-much-as-you-can approach. In the meantime, the experts
prepare new and longer writing assignments which have been tested on different groups
for imprinting effects. The 5,000 Topics for Classroom Writing is a classic from this
tradition.
Both the imprinting and behaviorist models have been dominant influences in the
teaching of reading and writing over the last fifteen years. But vestiges of an earlier
model still linger. In this earlier model, the original-sin approach, students were assumed
to be flawed (but improvable), and the purpose of school was to have students suffer a
little so they could expiate their sins. Instruction required students to memorize and copy
the words of such saints as Emerson and Bacon and to imitate the forms of argument
identified by Cicero. In the early days of the original-sin approach, teachers were
endowed with a moral authority very much like that conferred on preachers. As schooling
became more secularized, however, the teacher’s role became more like that of Emily
Post, emphasizing the writing manners of tasteful people. Finally under behaviorism all
authority for teachers was stripped away.
***
But a new model of learning has been emerging in the last twenty years, and this model
requires that teaching authority once again be conferred on those who teach. Says Jerome
Bruner, “What has emerged is a theory of mother-infant interaction in language
acquisition—called the functioning theory—that sees language mastery as involving the
mother as much as it does the child. According to this theory, if the LAD exists, it hovers
somewhere in the air between mother and child” (Bruner, “Learning the Mother Tongue,”
Human Nature, September 1978). The functional theory sees language as the result of
interactions and the mother or teacher must use a caretaker language appropriate to the
given child. In the classroom, the teacher must see writing assignments not as strict
imitation or S-R-R, but as situations in which writing has a functional role. In this
approach the teacher is organizing class projects and varying distances from speaker to
audience and speaker to subject, always monitoring the interactions of individual
students. In such an approach teachers must have a sense of authority. They cannot
follow rules blindly. They must diagnose responses, must reflect on their experiences,
and must think of themselves as scholars of their craft. As long as staff development
programs treat teachers as if they are sick people who need treatment, teachers will
behave like sick people. As long as teachers are treated as if they did not know anything,
they will go in their classrooms and behave as if they do not know anything. Knowing
nothing may be a workable assumption for teachers in behaviorist and imprinting models
of learning, but it is not a workable assumption in a functional model of learning.
Therefore, if a functional model of learning is to become a usable approach in
classrooms, teaching authority must be taken from non-teachers and conferred on those
who teach. This leads to question two: what causes the problem and what can be done to
fix it? What causes the problem is primarily the way the role of researchers is defined in
Schools of Education and government funding. Schools of Education in a University
justify their existence on the grounds that they conduct research on issues of teaching.
Yet much of the education research in these schools is related more to general issues of
psychology and linguistics than to specific problems of teaching, and many of the
researchers in Schools of Education have little or no experience in the public schools and
cannot translate research findings into language understandable to teachers.
But in both government funding agencies and in Schools of Education the assumption is
that educational research will lead to rules for teachers to follow. The National Institute
of Educations’s Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study in California had the stated purpose
of using “research in the teaching evaluation area... in order to establish baseline entry
skill data for beginning teachers” (1972) and researchers at NIE’s 1974 conference on
studies in teaching repeated more than once their belief that studies of teaching should be
used “to solve such problems as the selection and education of teachers” (N. L. Gage, p.
5, panel two of report). The way research begins as a correlational study and ends as
assertions about cause-effect, all for the purpose of postulating rules for teachers, is
nicely illustrated in these sentences from California’s Beginning Teacher Evaluation
Study:
The necessary condition for predicting that two variables are causally related is
that one of them occurs prior to the other (p. 36)… Since we have reason to
believe that the two variables are causally dependent, and since the path
coefficient is significant, we infer a causal relation because the association
between the variables cannot be attributed to their association with any other
variable (p. 42)... As is well known, a causal inference cannot be made directly
from a significant correlation between two variables. The complementary
principle is, however, frequently ignored, namely, that when a significant
correlation is found a causal relation exists somewhere (p. 50).
When researchers into teaching and learning move from research to rule-making for
teachers, these researchers have left their area of expertise and crossed over into an area
where they are no better than the worst amateur. They have blurred the difference
between a correlational finding in a research study and the causal relations implied in the
rules given to teachers. The effect of these rules, other than their frequent uselessness and
occasional negative effects, is that the teacher is taught not to trust what he/she already
knows and can learn through sensible inquiry. Not all teachers succumb. Duckworth
(1972) reports:
The colleagues I admired most got along very well without any special knowledge
of psychology. They trusted their own insights about when and how children were
learning, and they were right. Their insights were excellent.
Several researchers have called for a review of the relationship between researchers and
teachers, Schools of Education and the teaching profession. Courtney Cazden in a
reflection on her one year as a full-time public school teacher in 1974 reports:
…the teachers all have to take courses at local colleges for salary increments and
advanced degrees and rightfully resent being told what to do by professors
who’ve never been in a classroom (p. 76)... Of course, research knowledge about
language isn’t the only basis for improved action. I think it’s fair to say that there
is a general trans-Atlantic contrast at this point. Whereas Americans like me have
worked “down,” trying to derive implications for education from theories about
language and its development, colleagues in England have worked “up” from
instances of the best classroom practice... (1976, p. 81).
McLaughlin and Marsh (1978) in summaries of the Rand Corporation’s findings (NIE
Grant G74- 0055) have explained why the ”rules” of researchers are often not helpful to
teachers:
…in teaching as in other clinical settings, the appropriate strategy to resolve
problems is unclear. To this point, the state of educational research is such that it
is difficult to reach consensus concerning the value of most any set of teaching
strategies. For teachers, the learning task is more like problem solving than like
mastering “proven” procedures. Consequently, outside experts and tightly
structured training are relatively less helpful than they are in technologicallydominant activities such as industry. (McLaughlin and Marsh, 1978, p. 87)
Eleanor Duckworth describes how a set of rules from a research study can have negative
effects on teachers who have no sense of professional authority:
It is just as necessary for teachers as for children to feel confidence in their own
ideas. It is important for them as people, and also important if they are really
going to feel free to acknowledge the children’s ideas. If teachers feel that their
class must do things just as the book says, and that their excellence as a teacher
depends upon that, they cannot possibly accept children’s divergence and
children’s creations. A teacher’s guide must give enough indications, enough
suggestions, so the teacher has ideas to start with and to pursue in some depth.
But it must also enable the teacher to feel free to move in directions of her own
when other ideas arise.
For instance, the teachers’ guides for his program include many examples of
things children are likely to do. The risk is that teachers may see these as things
that the children in their classes must do—whether or not the children do them
becomes a measure of successful or unsuccessful teaching.
In Duckworth’s example, the guide is given to teachers as part of a deficit model of staff
development. This model clearly establishes that teachers have no professional authority.
In general, the deficit model of staff development is characterized by the view of
other educators that teachers need staff development because they lack the
necessary skills to teach successfully. This characterization has several elements
that must be understood if the deficit-model approach to staff development is to
be changed. First, the deficit model is a collective view supported by members of
diverse role groups such as principals, school district administrators, university
professors, state department of education officials, and legislators. This leaves
teachers with the belief that everyone is critical of them. Secondly, these outside
groups bring to bear administrative regulations, credential requirements,
university degree requirements, and state law as a network of reinforcement for
their belief. The critical view of other educators is being powerfully
communicated to teachers. Thirdly, teachers have typically been excluded from
any discussion of their “deficit” or any discussion about how to carry out its
removal and, finally, the deficit model has been based on the dogmatic belief of
other educators that they know, and can justify, their statements about what
constitutes good teaching. Though educational research developed over twentyfive years has not resolved the dilemma of what constitutes good teaching, deficit
model outside experts or central office specialists often act as though they know.
(McLaughlin and Marsh, 1978, p. 89)
The cause of the problem, then, is first the misunderstood relationship between theory
and practice and second the financial pressures which force many Schools of Education
and educational researchers to claim practical expertise, particularly in teaching. Now the
final question: what can be done to correct the problem? The first step is a good theory
for a staff development model which gives authority to teachers. We already have a good
learning theory in the functional theory or interaction theory of language acquisition. This
theory of language development requires a teacher who is an active agent, flexible, and
adaptive in the classroom. From philosophy comes a useful theory for staff development.
T. F. Green argues that the purpose of teaching is to lead students from what is
subjectively reasonable for them to believe to what is objectively reasonable for them to
believe.
This is, of course, what the summer institutes of the Bay Area Writing Project do. First,
teachers are invited to the institutes as Fellows of the University. The title is the first step
toward developing a sense of professional authority. Second, teachers are asked to
present one idea that works. Teachers come with a set of beliefs that seem plausible
(subjectively reasonable), at least as measured by experience, but in the course of the
five-week institute the experiences of other teachers and findings of research are focused
on these subjectively reasonable beliefs to arrive collectively at some understanding of
what seems objectively reasonable. The aim is to transform subjectively reasonable
beliefs to objectively reasonable beliefs. During the summer institute, there also develops
a common language about writing, which enables teachers to engage in collective inquiry
on the issues. The purpose of research and theories is not to form rules which teachers
must follow but to provide alternative frameworks for examining what seems objectively
reasonable about what one subjectively believes from experience. In time, as in any
discipline, a concensus model begins to evolve. This same pattern is used in follow-up
programs where only teachers are used as workshop leaders. It is teachers, not
researchers, who can find ways to translate research into objectively reasonable insights
because it is the teachers who know the culture of the school.
School has a culture all its own, and curriculum theorists ignore it at their peril. Grades
and points are one example. Students who have internalized the school culture want
grades and, if possible, points. For such questions as “Do I get a grade on this? What is it
worth?” and “How long should it be?” teachers need ready answers:
“Yes, it will be graded by me or one of your peers. This assignment is worth
twenty-three points, seven more than yesterday’s.”
“And how long? Fold your paper in half. Notice where the crease appears. Write
to there in the next ten minutes.”
To argue that the questions are absurd and should be ignored or that teachers should give
up grades and give freer, more open assignments is to ask many teachers to change the
culture of their schools and communities. For many parents who already doubt the
concern of teachers for their children, a teacher’s claim “I don’t give grades” is another
way of saying, “I don’t much care what the students do.” And for many students, a
teacher’s instruction to “write on whatever you want, as long or as short as you want to
make it,” creates not liberation, but a sickening sense of existential nausea. Such students
do not know what to do until the teacher assigns a topic, rigid and specific:
“Everyone will write 423 words on why Oakland High School is the most
beautiful spot on God’s green earth.”
At that instant nine out of ten will have a topic— some will affirm, some oppose, and the
rest will realize that they want to do something else, knowing this only after the teacher
has told them what they must do.
Or take directions. Curriculum researchers often tell us to give clear and complete
directions so that students understand what to do. For example, in a Phi Delta Kappan
article, (“News, Notes, and Quotes,” May-June 1977), Arthur L. Costa says, “Research
by Kounin (1970) and Dalis (1970) indicates that the clarity of the teacher’s directions
affects the student’s behavior. If the directions are confusing, incomplete, or too complex,
the students will not be able to focus properly on the learning activity, and the chances
for deviance will increase. Learning objectives must be stated precisely...” In the culture
of the school, the theory of clear directions is often doomed. No matter how clear, no
matter how complete, once the teacher says, “Get started,” the hands go up: “What do we
do?” Has the teacher failed to give clear and complete directions? No. The students want
the individual attention of the teacher explaining one-to-one. In such a situation, teachers
might be better advised to mumble something unintelligible, say clearly, “Get started,”
wait a minute for the hands to go up, and start around the room.
Or spelling tests. Research may tell us that they don’t improve spelling very much, but
for many classrooms spelling tests are like a mantra. The world has a center after all.
Here is something we know is English. Here is something with a definite beginning,
middle, and end—all within a short time span. The world, alas, has recognizable order.
Many junior high teachers know that the routine of a spelling test helps calm students,
helps center them, making more complicated lessons possible.
Or books. Researchers often treat books as if they were only texts to be read. In schools,
books are as much emblems, part of the uniform of school, as they are texts to be read.
Many students desire books because they are part of the school uniform, and some
students consider it a status symbol to be carrying a book which the students cannot read.
An objective rule about readable texts is bound to be destructive to some subjectively
reasonable beliefs understood by teachers.
The model of the Bay Area Writing Project is, then, not just a way of improving the
teaching of writing. It is a staff development model which recognizes both the authority
of researchers for research and the authority of teachers for practice, and which attempts
to establish a new relationship between Universities and the K-12 teaching profession and
a new integration of theory and practice.
A bibliography will be sent upon request. Write Miles Myers, Bay Area Writing Project.
Miles Myers is Administrative Director of the Bay Area Writing Project, U.C. Berkeley.