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Best Practices

Teacher Demoralization

Posted on 23 September 2019 by Kevin Smith

As teachers are placed under greater levels of scrutiny and "accountability," there are less and less opportunities to discuss the values, beliefs and philosophical considerations of teaching that serve as the foundation for their practice and sense of purpose in their work.

Best Practices vs Enacted Values

Posted on 20 July 2019 by Kevin Smith

"...rather than empowering teachers when we claim to offer them "best practices" for the 21st century classroom, we are, in fact, disempowering them. First, it makes them "objects" of other specialists' research and reduces them to mere consumers of pre-packaged products that someone else in the edutocracy created and will profit from. This perpetuates a cycle of consumerist desire, a constant and regenerating market for education consumption. Second, it also fails to equip teachers to live fully into their calling and, especially, to do the very things we so often say we value, namely to improve the lives of the young people in our charge."