A Teacher -Initiated and Managed School Improvement Effort: Teachers' Perceptions of Its History and Issues of Implementation

283 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1999.This case study examines the history of a teacher-initiated and managed school improvement effort in a small elementary school in East Central Illinois. It also explores teachers' perceptions of the internal and external issues they encountered as they struggled during the third year of implementing their school improvement goals. The specific issues that emerged as factors were the presence of teacher subgroups, difficulties with negotiating new teacher leader roles and relationships, ineffective principal leadership style, and incompatible or poorly aligned school, district, and state policies, agendas, and measures for teacher and student accountability. Data analysis suggests that school reform efforts, especially those that are teacher-initiated, can benefit from a deeper understanding of and appreciation of the differing personal and professional development needs of individual teachers as distinct from those of the school as an organization. By embedding democratic principles and ideals within the process of planning and purpose of school reform, teachers may significantly alter how they and others think and talk about what and who needs to change, and how and why this change might occur.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD