Annotated Table of Contents. Supervion: Change

Teaching English, How To.... by Raymond Stopper

Part Seven: Supervision

Chapter 29. Supervision Lesson #3. Change.

What is needed for successful change in education? During my years in education, I have watched administrators make changes because of prevailing enthusiasms in the profession. The use of learning centers, behavioral objectives, whole language, the writing process--all of these changes were, in my experience, imposed on teachers from above. All were based on some good ideas, but all had some harmful effects as well.

And the results of pressure for change on the staff were predictable: a small core of enthusiasts embraced the change; the large majority went along with it but not enthusiastically, and, as soon as the pressure was off, dropped the procedure from their teaching; and a minority fought the change because they felt that it was not right, that it could even hurt students.

In this chapter, I discuss what happened when the need for change was clearly understood by just about everybody. But even with a clearly defined need for change, watch out for the side-effects. Evaluation is necessary to help avoid and correct the problems that are inevitable with change.