Collaborative Model of Curriculum Restructuring.
Teacher growth is facilitated by doing, exploring, trying, failing, changing and adapting strategies, overcoming obstacles after many trials, sharing failures and successes and techniques that work (McKenzie, 2002). However, it is the process of failing and facing obstacles that often causes teachers to give up.
Research on teacher growth has identified a number of such obstacles. Some come about because of insufficient attention being given at the beginning of the initiative to issues such as teachers’ inclination, philosophy, readiness and support (McKenzie, 2002). Foremost amongst the obstacles that have been documented are financial constraints, resistance to changing roles and communication problems (Bullough and Kauchak, 1997).
Another can be a lack of sufficient emotional support from peers or others at difficult times (Cole, 1992). A further obstacle to sustain teacher growth is that the initiative can often fall apart when the main instigator or supporter leaves (Mullen and Sullivan, 2002). In order to overcome these obstacles, teachers need the support of different people, including school leaders, outside experts and their own peer networks (Bullough and Kauchak, 1997) at different times, and there needs to be considerable involvement and sharing of responsibility by all partners (Hough, 1975).
Hence, for the project reported here, it was considered essential to have a team of partners who were all able to contribute in different ways at different phases of the teachers’ growth, according to the obstacles they were facing at those times.
