1. Asst.Prof.Dr. Bengi Sonyel Faculty of Education EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN UNIVERSITY (November,2006)

2. “Building reflective communities through exploring the role of teachers’ and senior managers’ voice in decision making”
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3. Introduction
The aim of this research is to understand more about the nature of reflective practice and in particular the contribution of teachers’ and senior managers’ voice in a reflective school community.
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4. The focus is on exploring the views of senior managers (or administrators, as they are the decision makers within an educational institution) and of teachers on their understanding of teachers’ voice within the context of building a reflective community.
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5. Literature Review
In the first part, I explored key constructs (teaching and reflection, understanding voice in reflection, and building a reflective community) in the literature pertaining to this research before presenting the data and analysis.
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6. Teaching and reflection
Teaching is a complex activity that requires teachers to think, take certain actions and reflect within a given context. As Goodson indicates:
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7. “Teacher thinking, action and knowledge are of vital importance in the endeavour to understand how classrooms are the way they are. How teachers’ thoughts, actions and knowledge have evolved and changed throughout their personal and professional lives will help us to understand how classrooms have come to be the way they are and how they might become otherwise.” (Goodson, 1992, p.57)
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8. As Jackson et al allude more explicitly to the moral
responsibilities of teachers:
“ …teachers must be seen as occupying key roles in classrooms – not simply as technicians who know how to run good discussions or teach encoding skills to beginning readers
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9. but as persons whose view of life, which includes all that goes on in classrooms, promises to be as influential in the long run as any of their technical skills. It is this extended view of teacher’s responsibility that makes it appropriate to speak of teaching as a moral enterprise.” (Jackson et al., 1993, p.227)
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10. Furthermore, Day recommends:
“A necessary condition of effectiveness as a teacher is regular reflection upon the three elements that make up teaching practice: the emotional and intellectual selves of the teacher and students; the conditions that affect classrooms, schools and students’ learning and achievements; the experience of teaching and learning.” (Day,1999, p.116)
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11. Building on these tenets from my
own perpective as researcher and
teacher educators, the purpose of
reflective practice is three folds:
to engage teachers to be more aware of their teaching styles
to help attain professional self awareness
to focus on, identify and engage in professional development
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12. Reflective practice and building up reflective communities
It is fundamental to community
building, that we, as teachers need
to engage in professional discourse
and reflective action to adjust
ourselves into the developing and
changing era and avoid becoming
alienated from our own needs and
feelings.
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13. This engagement is fundamental to
promoting not only reflective
teachers/senior managers but also
reflective communities in a school
setting.
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14. This could be achieved through building up networks between
teachers ↔ teachers, senior
managers ↔ teachers and senior
managers ↔ administrators in the
Ministry of Education and
teachers ↔ administrators in the
Ministry.
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15. The significance of voice in
reflective practice and
building up reflective
communities
In order to achieve breaking
The ‘typical collusion of silence'
teachers need to voice their
voices.
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16. Therefore, the notion of voice is fundamental to reflective practice
when it is perceived as being
situated in a wider social context.
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17. Hargreaves (1996) and Goodson
(1992) stated that:
‘Voice’ is an inclusive idea. It
recognizes different ‘voices’ and
the diverse nature of individual
experience.
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18. ‘Voice’ is about issues of
participation and empowerment. ‘
‘A key consideration of any
approach concerned with ‘voice’ is
the need to examine and challenge
the process that silence people.’
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19. Research Questions
How are teachers and senior managers engaged in reflection?
How do teachers and senior managers in reality use their voice in decision-making contexts?
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20. What is the role of voice in building a reflective community?
This study was carried out in the
Eastern Mediterranean High
School with teachers and senior
managers.
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21. students ranging in their age from (13-17) and 41 full time teachers,
In the school there are 363
students ranging in their age from
(13-17) and 41 full time teachers,
including senior managers
(administrators) and 18 part-time
teachers.
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22. Methodology
In order to explore further these issues a small-scale investigation in a private college of North Cyprus, Eastern Mediterranean High School, was taken as a case study and the senior managers and teachers of this school were interviewed.
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23. Four teachers (T1, T2, T3, T4) and four senior managers (SM1, SM2,
Participants
Four teachers (T1, T2, T3, T4) and
four senior managers (SM1, SM2,
SM3, SM4) were selected
randomly for face to face
semi-structured interviews.
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24. Findings and Discussion
Teachers and senior managers agreed on the issue that being engaged in continuous reflection enables individuals to be responsible, give and receive effective feedback, reevaluate actions, ideas and develop self professionally.
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25. Both teachers and senior managers supports the idea of building up ‘reflective communities’ in schools, in order to voice their voices during the decision-making process and, at the same time, to develop themselves further in their professional lives.
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26. There was a consensus between both teachers and senior managers that teachers’ voice is crucial in community building and that, moreover, this can be facilitated through reflective practice.
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27. As it is supported in the literature by scholars like (Day 1999,
Recommendations
As it is supported in the literature
by scholars like (Day 1999,
Osterman and Kottkamp 1993,
Argyris and Schön 1974), keeping
journals is one of the best
techniques used to reflect and
evaluate the views of individuals.
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28. As a reflective practitioner, I believe that the process of carrying out research into reflective practice can help researchers to develop their own voice as a researcher, teacher educator and theoretician through both the content and process.
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29. THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION & ATTENTION...
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