Gary Schumacher

What Learning Environments Best Address 21st-Century Students’ Perceived Needs at the Secondary Level of Instruction?

The purpose of a recent study was to determine what learning environments best address the needs of 21st-century students at the secondary level. This study concluded that the presence of a positive 21st-century learning environment is related to student satisfaction and student-teacher relationships. While the majority of the literature on 21st-century students concerns technology, this study found that students were not as concerned with technology as they were with autonomy, relevance, and connectedness.

Determining Effective Teaching Behaviors through the Hiring Process.

Purpose – One bad hiring decision can lead to low student achievement. Research supports that teachers are the most influential factor in student success. As a result, principals’ current practice of hiring teachers based on intuition and likeability must change. Given the current high stakes era, principals need reassurance that the teachers they hire can indeed meet the needs of the students and the goals of the school. The purpose of this paper is to determine which interview protocol questions would predict high levels of effective teaching behaviors exhibited by teachers in the classroom. Design/methodology/approach – A convenience sample of 600 working teachers responded to a 93-item Likert-scale online questionnaire related to the four domains of effective teaching behaviors: classroom management, organizing instruction, implementing instruction, and monitoring progress and potential. The researchers first analyzed the teacher responses to assess their reliability and validity. A regression analysi...

Teacher Dismissal for Cause

This case presents a discussion of events that led to the dismissal of a teacher for cause. A first year high school principal is confronted with teacher behavior that creates a dangerous situation for students. The decision process to determine the appropriate organizational response involves a number of individuals and systems. The administrative recommendation ignores research on decision making and the result is a negative outcome for the school district and the career of the new principal.

There’s Battle Lines Being Drawn

This case is written for graduate students in a superintendency seminar course, a school–community relations course, or a school leadership course, such as a school politics course. It presents a highly charged school referendum issue in a school district that is comprised of two distinctly different communities. An initial referendum to construct a new middle school failed by a wide margin. The voting outcome was split along community lines. The ensuing backlash was serious and threatened the very existence of the school district. The case provides an opportunity to examine two issues: potential causes for the failure of the first referendum and an analysis of change theory and its application to a planning process that will lead.

Learning Research and Community Decision Making

This case presents a situation in which a reformist superintendent attempts to achieve a systemwide, yet simple change in the school time schedule to incorporate well-established neurocognitive sleep research to enhance student learning. The public discussion of the reform proposal brought forth a very negative, single issue group who took over the dialogue process using intimidation. The board of education ended the dialogue and dismissed the superintendent. Governance design and political practices trump established learning research to accommodate small group resistance.