From Plaques to Practice: How Schools Can Breathe Life into Their Guiding Beliefs

Abstract

describes five problems that help cause schools to ignore their guiding statements, and he recommends six ways by which schools can overcome that shortcoming.

Cognitive Bases for Effective Participation in Democratic Institutions: Argument Skill and Juror Reasoning

“…, 1994Meehan, 2001;Riley, 1997;Townsend, 1994;Wade & Everett, 1994). Like many well-intended but vague platitudes that school mission statements comprise, expressions of the goal of citizenship education generally are accompanied by neither suggested means for achieving that goal, nor any clear statement of behavioral objectives that would allow teachers to enact the goals or evaluate whether the goals have been achieved (Allen, 2001). Moreover, although stated as the goal of schooling in general, often no one has the specific task of carrying out this goal.…”

From Votes to Dialogues: Clarifying the Role of Teachers' Voices in School Renewal

“…To this end, she first leads them in a democratic process that results in the creation of a mission statement for the school that includes: 1) what the teachers want their students to know and be able to do, 2) the types of instructional practices they believe will lead to these desired results, and 3) how they will assess and monitor their efforts. 4 As in the earlier scenario, the principal and the teachers form a leadership team, but this time they all understand that their job is to bring the school's mission statement to life in such a way that every teacher has opportunities to express all four types of voice: voting, advisory, delegated, and dialogical. The teachers' broadened definition of voice helps them to recognize that the main responsibility of those not elected to the leadership team is not to complain about the decisions made by those who were but to constructively participate in the process.…”