Professional Documents
Culture Documents
7 Estrategias
7 Estrategias
University, USA;
bUniversity
10JulianElliott
32
joe.elliott@durham.ac.uk
000002005
Educational
10.1080/03055690500416074
CEDS_A_141590.sgm
0305-5698
Original
Taylor
2005
and
&
Article
Francis
(print)/1465-4300
Francis
StudiesLtd
(online)
In this paper, we highlight the importance for teachers of having sound practical skills in interacting
with students, parents, administrators and other teachers, and argue that the development of such
skills is often insufficiently considered in professional training. We then present a new framework
for conceptualizing practical skills in dealing with others that follows directly from Sternbergs theory
of successful intelligence. Finally, we outline and discuss an approach to measuring teachers preferred
strategies for dealing with others that we believe has promise, both for future research into the nature
and characteristics of effective teachers and schools, and for the development of teacher expertise.
CREATIVE
ANALYTIC
SUCCESSFUL
INTELLIGENCE
PRACTICAL
Dealing with
Self
Dealing with
Supervisors
Figure 1.
Dealing with
Others
Dealing with
Peers
Dealing with
Tasks
Dealing with
Subordinates
STRATEGIES
Comply
Consult
Confer
Avoid
Delegate
Legislate
Retaliate
Illustration of how the strategies fit within the broader framework of the theory of
successful intelligence
are most often interpreted, because they are observable. People may later try to infer
intentions, but misinterpretations may arise due to a variety of attributional errors
(Aronson et al., 2001). From a theoretical standpoint, the socially skilled person is
keenly aware of what behavioural actions interact with which situational contexts to
yield the desired outcomes.
Consult
Avoid
Retaliate
Legislate
Delegate
Comply
Confer
Strategy
Inappropriate use/potential
disadvantages
Appropriate use/potential
advantages
4
Neutral
7
Strongly
disagree
1. [Comply] By tomorrow morning, Mrs Smith should write back to Mike saying
how much she appreciated his note
2. [Consult] Mrs Smith should speak to another teacher who knows Mike and get
his/her advice on how to respond
3. [Confer] Mrs Smith should take Mike aside and thank him privately right after
she reads the note
4. [Avoid] Mrs Smith should do nothing, just ignore the note
5. [Delegate] Mrs Smith should ask the school psychologist to talk to Mike
6. [Legislate] Mrs Smith should announce to the class that any letters that she gets
from students will be kept private
7. [Retaliate] In the presence of the whole class, Mrs Smith should tell Mike that
writing love letters to the teacher is not appropriate behaviour
Figure 2.
the first paragraph of this paper. The figure shows that the item stem is followed by a
list of potential response options. For illustrative purposes the corresponding strategy
is listed in parentheses. Note, however, that the strategy was not listed on the actual
questionnaires for the respondents to see. Furthermore, the ordering of the response
options was counterbalanced across items, so that responses illustrating various strategies did not always occur in the same order (e.g avoid was sometimes at the beginning of the response set, sometimes at the middle and sometimes at the end). Finally,
on the actual instruments, there may have been more than one response that illustrated a particular strategy (e.g. at times there were two or more responses that fit
within the comply category). Figure 3 presents an example item from the tacit
knowledge inventory for high school teachers. This represents the subcategory of
dealing with peers.
Figure 3.
2. Example of high
elementary
school school
scenario
scenario
(Dealing
(dealing
with peers)
with students)
Strongly
agree
Neutral
7
Strongly
disagree
1. [Comply] Mr Thompson should reiterate his opinion about the curriculum but state
that he is willing to go along with the group
2. [Consult] After the meeting, Mr Thompson should ask one of the other teachers
how he or she thinks he should deal with his colleague's comments
3. [Confer] Mr Thompson should talk privately with his colleague and say that he
felt the personal attack was inappropriate and out of line
4. [Avoid] Mr Thompson should ignore the attack and continue his discussion with
another teacher
5. [Delegate] Mr Thompson should ask the principal to speak to the colleague about
his behaviour
6. [Legislate] Mr Thompson should propose the establishment of formal rules of
order for faculty meetings
7. [Retaliate] Mr Thompson should state that he is not interested in responding to
petty personal attacks, but will be happy to answer questions about his opinion of the
programme
Figure 3.
rubric. The next step was to ask two independent raters not previously involved in the
project to evaluate each of the items according to the scoring rubric. The independent
raters recruited were teachers who had practised in the classroom within the past two
years. The results of the inter-rater reliability estimates between each of the two independent raters and the development teams ratings are presented in Table 2.
The results in the first column of Table 2 indicate the percentage agreement, by
rater and by strategy, across all surveys. The results indicate fairly high levels of agreement between the classification of each response option between the raters and the
development team. The percentage agreement overall for Rater 1 ranged from 67%
to 97%, with a median percentage agreement of 79%. The percentage agreement for
Rater 2 with the development team was slightly lower, ranging from 61% to 81%,
with a median of 67% agreement.
The percentage agreement between each of the raters and the development team
was also consistent across the three instruments, with a median percentage agreement
of 73% for the elementary school instrument, 82% for the middle school instrument
Strategy
Overall
Elementary
Middle
High
Comply
R1: 67
R2: 61
R1: 97
R2: 67
R1: 79
R2: 67
R1: 94
R2: 81
R1: 81
R1: 71
R1: 78
R2: 78
R1: 73
R2: 64
R1: 67
R2: 78
R1: 100
R2: 56
R1: 56
R2: 67
R1: 89
R2: 88
R1: 63
R2: 63
R1: 88
R2: 88
R1: 89
R2: 56
R1: 75
R2: 67
R1: 92
R2: 75
R1: 83
R2: 58
R1: 100
R2: 82
R1: 82
R2: 55
R1: 83
R2: 83
R1: 83
R2: 67
R1: 58
R2: 42
R1: 100
R2: 67
R1: 92
R2: 75
R1: 92
R2: 75
R1: 92
R2: 92
R1: 67
R2: 67
R1: 50
R2: 67
Consult
Confer
Avoid
Delegate
Legislate
Retaliate
and 71% for the high school instrument. Overall, the results provide preliminary
evidence supporting the idea that the seven categories are empirically distinguishable
from one another. Our next step is to continue to examine and refine the item
response options in light of our findings.
Conclusion
Reflections on the work of teachers often give the misleading impression that their
duties solely concern the provision of instruction (Stigler et al., 1999) and neglect
the fact that teaching routinely involves social interactions with students, parents,
administrators and other teachers.
We believe that how a person chooses to deal with interpersonal interactions is not
simply a matter of personality differences, but also involves the extent to which the
person has in his or her mind a systematic framework for choosing among different
response alternatives. Although each social interaction in real life is unique, we
believe that the seven strategies presented here provide a framework for evaluating
potential responses to various situations that will encompass a broad array of the most
common courses of action that a teacher could pursue. The seven strategies will
provide a broad palette of actions from which to choose in thinking about how to react
to the myriad social interactions that teachers face.
The seven strategies for dealing with others described in this paper offer a new framework that may prove valuable both for research and for professional development.
Research studies based on our developing model may help to delineate in finer detail
characteristics of successful teachers and of effective organizations. In a follow-up
This paper was prepared under subcontract to the Temple University Laboratory for Student
Success (LSS) as part of a grant from the United States Department of Education (Award #
311992701), Institute for Educational Sciences. Their financial support does not imply their
acceptance of the ideas presented in this paper.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge Krista Merry for her contribution
to the preliminary development of what eventually evolved into the seven strategies
discussed in this paper.
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