Dans son dernier billet, Larry Cuban s’inscrit en faux contre la résistance des enseignants au changement. Il pointe par contre des différences d’attentes, d’approche et de mesure du changement suivant que l’on soit responsable politique (éducatif) ou enseignant. Larry Cuban invite les responsables éducatifs à envisager leurs réformes à partir des trois questions que se posent les enseignants devant une innovation pédagogique. En définitive, Larry Cuban décrit les enseignant comme des pragmatiques sceptiques devant l’innovation.

Teachers and policymakers judge the worth of classroom changes differently

Policymakers determine the worth of proposed changes in curricular, instructional, and school practices on the criteria of organizational effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. Teachers  accept, modify, and reject innovations and mandates on the basis of similar criteria but with the focus on students and classrooms. In doing so, they ask substantially different questions than policymakers who focus on the system, not individual classrooms.

Called the “practicality ethic ,” teachers ask:

1. Will the innovation or change directly help me solve learning and teaching problems I face now, not problems someone else has defined?

2. If the change helps me, how much of my time and energy will the innovation take to learn in order for students to benefit?

3. How can I adapt the change to fit my particular students?

Few designers of innovative programs or policymakers who adopt changes consider such practical questions that teachers, the implementers of the change, ask. Pity.

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Teachers do adopt changes but they are, and will be, skeptical pragmatists of classroom-directed policies, not “stone-age obstructionists” all too often blamed for reforms failing  (practicality ethic, p.3).

via Teacher Resistance and Reform Failure | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice.