As my project winds down, I have the opportunity to reflect on what I have seen and heard. The biggest challenge for me is to articulate what I have learned concisely with accuracy.
So how to bring home the huge impact of autonomy?! As I listen to my recorded interviews of teachers and principals, the most common response is "It depends." Why is that phrase a common response you might ask. Often when I inquire about a particular strategy or framework, given the school and the teachers have autonomy, the teachers have the principals' support to design and implement what they determine to be the most effective approach to meet the identified need. While this may seem obvious, my experiences in Chicago have shown me that both schools within the district and teachers within the schools are extremely limited by all the education requirements and funding formulas.
Finland is open and deliberate about their national approach to present the National Board of Education curriculum (links to the right) and then make each city, each school, and each teacher self-sufficient with the power and the independence to self-govern. Isn't that what autonomy should truly be? My next post will be about how some schools use this autonomy to support struggling learners with mathematics.
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