The New Role of the Teacher as Decision Maker

Abstract

Until quite recently, the traditional role of the teacher in the American system of public education has been that of a follower of orders. Someone else has made decisions about the structure of the school, what was taught, who taught it, where they taught it. The teacher may have appeared to have a certain degree of latitude to direct the instructional process for students, at least within the four walls of the classroom. However, this apparent freedom was mostly a fraud in a great number of school systems, The physical isolation of teachers through compartmentalization and the adoption of “teacher-proof” curricula served to limit the use of discretion by the classroom teacher to the most mundane minutia, such as whether students should be allowed to chew gum in school.