Teacher as decision maker

"More than other professionals, teachers must learn through on-the-job experience, using both their successes and failures as road maps for future actions and decisions. Every day, the modern teacher must resolve countless conflicts and contradictions, both inside and outside the classroom. As the complexity of our school systems increases, teachers find it more and more difficult to make informed, problem-solving decisions that will increase their effectiveness as educators and help their students concentrate on learning." "In Teacher as Decision Maker, authors Dale L. Brubaker and Lawrence H. Simon first explain how schools function as social systems. Then they present a series of case studies and exercises drawn from the day-to-day experience of teachers dealing with students, parents, administrators, and other teachers." "To capture the real world of schools, the authors use two different kinds of cases for study.^ The first is a philosophical one and requires teachers to acknowledge their own personal orientation toward teaching. After presenting each philosophical case situation, the authors describe two responses at different ends of a continuum --^ from extreme essentialist