Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Ethics in Professionals Essay Example for Free
Ethics in Professionals Essay . Salgo v Leland Sanford University Board of Trustees notes that if the health professional do not present all the necessary facts that will form the basis for the decision of the patient, the professional has committed a violation. The patient has to undergo an operation in the heart, in his aorta. Before the operation, he is well. After the operation, the patient experienced paralysis in his lower extremities and that the condition is permanent. There has been negligence in the part of the doctors and they fail to explain to the patient all the details of the procedure (Standford 1957). 2. Arato v. Avedon states that the physicians must present the accurate statistics regarding the life expectancy of patients regarding their case so they could plan for their death. Arato was suffering from an illness in his pancreas. He was told by the doctors to undergo F. A. M. chemotherapy. The doctors have failed to give the patient the chances of recovering after the chemotheraphy (LSU Law Center 1993). 3. The Schloendorff case has been part of the history of informed consent when the concept was made upon the decision of the judge that adults and those who are capable of thinking well can determine what can be done to his body and that any professionals who work on a patientââ¬â¢s body without the latterââ¬â¢s consent is guilty of assault and is liable of any charges. It says that as long as the patient is capable of right thinking, he can give his consent regarding the operation to his body. The victim has some problems in her stomach. When she was under anesthesia, the doctor performed removal of fibroid tumor. The patient only gave her consent to have ether examination. After the operation, the patient has to be amputated because of infection and gangrene (Szczygiel). 4. Canterbury v. Spence also states that all information regarding the result, the risks, benefits of the operation must be revealed to the patient. The patient was suffering from back pains. The doctors performed an operation which resulted in paralysis. The doctors failed to disclose the risks of the operation (Stanford, 1972). 5. The Patient Self-Determination Act provides a document of the rights of the patients to participate in making decisions for their own safety and make directives. It also says that violation of it makes the health professionals ethically liable. B. Timeline Schloendorff case (1914) ? Salgo v. Leland Sanford University Board of Trustees (1957) ? Canterbury v. Spemce (1972) ? Arato v. Avedon ? Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) (1991) C. Informed Consent Informed Consent involves the participation of the patient regarding the decision to whether a procedure will be done to the patient or not. The patient has the right to give consent. Informed consent means that the patient is informed regarding all the information that is necessary for the patient to have a basis in making his decision. Information includes the status of his illness, the life expectancy, the treatment that could be done and its risks and benefits, and all other possible treatments. The patients must also be informed to the possible consequences of not performing the treatment or even the consequences if the treatment is performed Works Cited: LSU Law Center. 1993. No duty to inform patient of non-medical information ARATO v. AVEDON 858 P. 2d 598 (Cal 1993) available from http://biotech. law. lsu. edu/cases/ consent/ARATO_v_AVEDON. htm [15 February 2009] Stanford University. 1957. Salgo v. Leland Stanford etc. Bd. Trustees, 154 Cal. App. 2d 560 available from http://www. stanford. edu/group/psylawseminar/Salgo. htm [15 February 2009] . 1972. Canterbury v. Spence. , 464 F. 2d 772 (D. C. Cir. 1972) available from http://www. stanford. edu/group/psylawseminar/Canterbury. htm [15 February 2009] Szczygiel, Tony. 1914. Mary E. Schloendorff, Appellant, v. The Society of the New York Hospital, Respondent available from http://wings. buffalo. edu/faculty/research/ bioethics/schloen0. html [15 February 2009]
Monday, August 5, 2019
Different viewpoints and opinions on education
Different viewpoints and opinions on education Indoctrinational vs. democratic/participatory teaching methods and techniques John Dewey argued that education should use a critical democratic approach to raise student consciousness about values, attitudes and worker responsibilities. He stated that the primary purpose of education in United States was to foster the growth of democratically minded citizens, and Dewey made no distinction in the education of those who would manage the companies and those who would work on the shop floors. Dewey strongly advocated vocational exploration as a means to acquire practical knowledge, apply academic content and examine occupational and societal values. However, he adamantly opposed the use of vocational education as merely trade education as it would overemphasize technical efficiency. If this occurred, and some would argue it has, education would then become an instrument of perpetuating unchanged the existing industrial order of the society, instead of operating as a means of its transformation (Dewey, 1916). Dewey believed that it was educations role to combat soc ial predestination, not contribute to it. In contrast, Charles Prosser and David Snedden advocated an indoctrinational approach for teaching work value and attitudes; students should learn, without question, the ethical standards of dominant society and the professional ethics of the desired professional area (Prosser, 1939). Supporters of this approach believed the primary purpose of public education was the development of human capital for the success of industrial economy. To accomplish this, they argued that scientific management principles, drawn from the industrial sector, were employed in the public school setting, creating a hierarchically structured and production oriented educational system (Spring, 1990). Prossers sixteen theorems of vocational education support this vision of schooling. According to him, vocational educational should replicate the occupational environment (i.e. processes, machinery, tools), emphasize efficiency (e.g. outputs, costs) and teach functioning facts rather than in the mere acquiring of abstract and socially useless knowledge (Prosser Quigley, Vocational education in a democracy, 1949). In the past thirty five years the argument initiated by Dewey, Prosser and Snedden has resurfaced between educational theorists, outside the realm of vocational education, and business leaders concerned about the decline of industrial productivity in industrialized nations. Expanding upon Deweys perspective, these educational theorists have used a socio-political-economic framework to guide their critique. Specifically reproduction theorists have criticized vocational education for transmitting work values and attitudes necessary for a compliant workforce as well as primarily employing indoctrinational pedagogies for work values and attitudes instruction (Bowles Gintis, 1976). Reproduction and critical theorists have argued that the indoctrinational approach is exploitative because it produces attitudes in students that correspond to the type of work in which students will most likely participate upon completion of their formal education (Anyon, 1980); (Giroux, 1983); (Macleod, 1987 ). Another facet of this debate was represented in the report Americas choice: high skills or low wages! which focused on corporate organizational structure and its relationship to worker behaviors (National Center on Education and the Economys Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 1990). It stated that about 80% of United States companies utilize a pyramidal mass manufacture model that values reliable and compliant workers who perform their tasks almost robot like. This is in contrast to democratically structured organizations that need workers who are adaptable, resourceful, critical and capable of making decisions. While Dewey and critical theorists are concerned primarily with implementing democracy in the schools and the workplace to create a more just and equitable society, the industrial sociological literature has provided evidence that work organizations that employ democratic processes or participatory management also increase worker productivity (Hall, 1987); (J ain, 1980); (Zuboff, 1983). The Commission suggested that, while there is a trend towards companies implementing more participatory management, vocational education needs to teach democratic skills and utilize primarily democratic strategies so that future workers will be prepared to participate in, and assist in transforming companies into high performance organizations. Ineffective learning The nature of work has changed and our understanding of how people learn has also changed. Both developments call into question the organization, goals and pedagogy of our educational system. What makes these developments so powerful is that our new understanding of both work and learning suggest very similar directions for reform. Strengthening the educational system so that it conforms more to the ways people learn will also directly enhance the ability of that system to prepare students for the type of workplaces that are emerging in factories and offices throughout the industrialized world. The following discussion of effective learning emerges from a powerful knowledge base known as cognitive science. From the perspective of cognitive science this discussion purports to underscore two basic points about learning and teaching. First, school routinely and profoundly violates what we know about how people learn effectively and the conditions under which they apply their knowledge appropriately to new situations. Second, these practices seem to permeate all levels and sectors of education and training in developed countries right from elementary grades to corporate training. Mistaken assumption # 1: The educational enterprise assumes that people predictably transfer learning to new situations As a society, we presume that the ultimate point of schooling is to prepare students for effective and responsible functioning outside of school. Accepting this assumption means that we have to confront what is known as the knowledge transfer problem. Knowledge transfer simply means the appropriate use in a new situation of concepts, skills, knowledge and strategies acquired in another. Historically, lower-skilled workers had a very limited need for transfer. Transfer becomes important when you encounter the unfamiliar and non-routine, and lower skilled workers encountered little that was not familiar and did not have the responsibility for handling the non-routine that they did encounter. Goods and services were limited in number, allowing long production runs of the same thing or service and reducing the number of events that have not been previously encountered. Within this limited product or service range, companies organized the work as specialist work workers had responsibility for a narrow range of activity. Supervisors and managers were expected to handle the non-routine events that did occur within this narrow, repetitive world. That is, responsibility for events that required problem solving, judgment, heuristics, analogues, or other mental activities enhanced by the access to knowledge and skills acquired in other situations was detached from lower-skill jobs and vested in middle-skill managerial jobs. However, technological innovations and changed market conditions ushered by globalization and in its wake increased competition means an increased number of non-routine events. Companies in developed countries are gradually shifting from highly specialized and repetitive jobs at lower skill levels toward teams expected to handle a broader range of activities, and they are also increasingly vesting problem-solving, supervisory responsibilities in these teams. Thus, a broader range of workers is being asked to exercise the mental activities enhanced by access to knowledge and skills acquired in other situations. Extensive research, spanning decades, shows that individuals do not predictably transfer knowledge in any of the three situations where transfer should occur. They do not predictably transfer school knowledge to everyday practice (Pea, 1989); (Lave, 1988). They do not predictably transfer sound everyday practice to school endeavors, even when the former seems clearly relevant to the latter. They do not predictably transfer their learning across school subjects. We focus on the first two transfer problems: from school to nonschool and from nonschool to school. Transferring from school to outside of school: This transfer situation is at the heart of schooling. Usually, the major claim for school-type instruction is its generality and power of transfer to situations beyond classroom (Resnick, 1987). The fundamental question is whether knowledge, skills and strategies acquired in formal education in fact get used appropriately in everyday practice. Students in college physics courses designed for physics majors can solve book problems in Newtonian mechanics by rote application of formulae. However, even after instruction, they revert to naÃÆ'à ¯ve pre-Newtonian explanations of common physical situations to which their school learning is relevant (diSessa, 1983). Studies of expert radiologists, electronic troubleshooters and lawyers all reveal a syrprising lack of transfer of theoretical principles, processes or skills learned in school to professional practice (Resnick, 1987). For example, Morris and Rouse found that extensive training in electronics and troubleshooting theories provided little knowledge and fewer skills directly applicable to performing electronic troubleshooting (Morris Rouse, 1985) Transferring from outside of school to school: People learn outside of school all the time. The question then is what people do with what they learn outside of school when they move into school. Does sound, everyday practice get transferred to get used in school learning? How does incorrect learning outside school affect correct learning inside school? Dairy workers, although almost errorless in their use of practical arithmetic at work, performed badly in on arithmetic tests with problems like those encountered in their jobs (Scribner Fahrmeir, 1982). Brazilian street vendor children successfully solved 98% of their marketplace transactions, such as calculating total costs and change. When presented with the same transactions in formal arithmetic word problems that provided some descriptive context, the children correctly solved 74% of the problems. Their success rate dropped to 37% when asked to solve the same types of problems when these were presented as mathematical operations without descriptive context (Carraher, Carraher, Schliemann, 1985). Other studies show that training on one version of a logical problem has little, if any, effect on solving an isomorphic version that is represented differently (Hayes Simon, 1977). Teaching children to use general context-independent cognitive strategies has no clear benefits outside the specific domains in which they are taught (Pressley, Snyder, Cariglia-Bull, 1987) Cognitive experts agree that the conditions for transfer are not fully understood. Even though studies cited in previous paragraphs continue to find no evidence of transfer, others identify conditions under which transfer seems to occur (Holyoak, 1985); (Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, Cheng, 1987); (Lehman, Lempert, Nisbett, 1988); (Singley Anderson, 1989). We know that people routinely apply skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic to new situations with some success. These skills are used most effectively in well understood content domains. For example, readers get more out of their reading when they know something about the domain in which they are reading than when they do not. Nonetheless, skills such as reading do let us enter unfamiliar content areas we do use these skills in new situations, and they do help us. At the same time, we also keep finding lack of transfer. We now know that certain practices in school impede learning. More effective learning may not be sufficient for transfer, but poor initial learning will certainly impede it. Mistaken assumption # 2: Learners are best seen as passive vessels into which knowledge is poured In a typical schoolroom or a corporate training session, the teacher or expert faces the learners in the role of knowledge source. The learner is the passive receiver of wisdom a glass into which water is poured. This instructional arrangement comes out of an implicit assumption about the basic purpose of education: the transmission of societys culture from one generation to the next. The concept of transmission implies a one-way flow from the adult members of the society to the societys young, or, from the expert to the novice (Lave, The culture of acquisition and the practice of understanding: Report No. IRL88-0007, 1988). In fact, schooling is often talked about as transmission of canonical knowledge in other words, of an authoritative, structured body of principles, rules and knowledge. Education as canonical transmission thus becomes the conveying of what experts know to be true, rather than a process of inquiry, discovery and wonder. This view of education leads naturally to the student as the receiver of the word, to a lecture mode of teaching, and to the teacher as the controller of the process. This organization of learning, with the teacher as order-giver and the student as order-taker, fits the traditional organization of work for lower-skilled workers in both civilian workplaces and the military. The workers à ¢Ã¢â ¬Ã ¦ responsibility was à ¢Ã¢â ¬Ã ¦ to do what he was told [to do by the management] (Callahan, 1962). Ben Hamper, an auto assembly line worker, uses more colorful language: Working the line at G. M. was like being paid to flunk high school for the rest of your life (Marchese, 1991). The assumption that the teacher is the pourer and the student the receptacle has several unfortunate consequences. Passive learning reduces or removes chances for exploration, discovery and invention: Passive learning means that learners do not interact with problems and content and thus do not get the experiential feedback that is key to learning. Students need chances to engage in choice, judgment, control processes and problem formulation; they need chances to commit mistakes. The saying, experience is the best teacher, is borne out by the research you learn what you do. While not sufficient for effective learning, doing is nonetheless necessary. However, schools usually present what is to be learned as a delineated body of knowledge, with the result that students come to regard the subject being studied mathematics, for example as something received, not discovered and as entity to be ingested, rather than a form of activity, argumentation and social discourse. This organization of learning mirrors the traditional organization of work, especially for lower skilled workers. Under the system of industrial management known as scientific management or the Taylor System, each mans task was worked out by the planning department. Each worker received an instruction card which described in minute detail not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it' (Callahan, 1962). This system was highly prescriptive; it left no room for deviation or innovation. Passive learning places control over learning in the teachers, not the learners, hands: Passive learning creates learners dependent on teachers for guidance and feedback, thus undercutting the development of confidence in their own sense making abilities, their initiative and their cognitive executive skills. The example of Brazilian street vendor children may be recalled at this juncture. The researchers found that when the children tried to work school math problems, they did not check the sensibleness of their answers by relating them back to the initial problem. Although virtually errorless in their street math activities, they came with preposterous results for school math problems (Carraher, Carraher, Schliemann, 1985). In a study of supermarket shoppers use of arithmetic, the researchers assessed the shoppers command of structurally similar school math problems. The shoppers spoke with self-deprecation about not having studied math for a long time. Lave clarifies what is happening here. Individuals experience themselves as both subjects and objects in the world. In the supermarket, for example, they see themselves as controlling their activities, interacting with the setting, generating problems in relation [to] the setting, and controlling problem solving processes. In contrast, school à ¢Ã¢â ¬Ã ¦ create[s] contexts in which children à ¢Ã¢â ¬Ã ¦ experience themselves as objects, with no control over problems or choice about problem-solving processes (Lave, Cognition in Practice, 1988) in sum, control in the teachers, not the students hands undercuts students trust in their own sense making abilities. As companies have started shifting decision-making power to the shop floor, managers find that workers conditioned to depending on their supervisors telling them what to do are frightened and lack confidence in their ability to solve problems and make decisions. In addition to its effects on confidence, passive learning also undercuts the development of a particular set of higher order cognitive skills called the cognitive self-management, or executive thinking, skills. These are simply the skills that we use to govern our problem-solving attempts. They include goal setting, strategic planning, checking for accurate plan execution, monitoring our progress and evaluating and revising our plans. We now know that those who function as independent and effective learners are people with these skills. However, as Pea has observed, passive learning is disastrous for developing them. Classroom studies of reading, writing, and math and science instruction show that the executive processes for controlling thinking and learning processes are under the teachers control, not the students. These processes seem to get developed when the learning situation is structured to shift control from the teacher to the student, the teacher gradually removing the support that students need initially as they begin to show the ability to work autonomously (Pea, 1989). Passive learning creates motivational and crowd control problems: Jordan describes a Mexican public health training program designed to improve the practice of Mayan midwives. Her analysis spotlights behaviors that American teachers constantly complain about their students (Jordan, 1987). The teaching is organized in a straight didactic material in a mini-lecture format. When these lectures begin, the midwives shift into what Jordan calls their waiting-it-out behavior: they sit impassively, gaze far away, feet dangling, obviously tuned out. This is behavior that one might also observe in other waiting situations, such as when a bus is late or during sermons in church, (p. 3). We see the same behaviors in American third graders. Hass found that students were deeply engaged in team problem-solving during their drill and practice time, but invested little attention or involvement in the teachers instructional sessions. During three weeks of observation, the children did not adopt any of the specific strategies demonstrated by the teacher during general instruction time (Hass, 1988). As teachers know it so well, motivational problems often end up as crowd control problems, as illustrated by the behaviors of different groups of children at a Metropolitan Museum display of Ice Age art and artifacts. Most of the school groups were moved from one exhibit to the next, pausing before each to hear a guides or teachers lecture. Since the children were bunched in front of an exhibit, they could not all hear the lecture, and even when they could, they lacked understanding of the time frames involved or the archaeological significance of bits of bone. Teachers had not set up the museum visit so that students became involved in what they were going to see. Groups were therefore restless and crowd control became the teachers primary concern. One junior high school class behaved very differently, exhibiting a quiet intensity as they moved through the exhibit gallery. They had packets of worksheets with questions about issues and problems that they were expected to solve at the exhibit. Some questions were factual, but most required inference and thought. The students had to figure out for themselves where and what the evidence would be concerning particular questions (Farnham-Diggory, 1990). Motivational and crowd control problems with students have shown up for decades with lower-skilled workers in the forms of high turnover, absenteeism and, in extreme cases, sabotage. Mistaken assumption # 3: Learning is the strengthening of bonds between stimuli and correct responses Based on his animal experiments, the brilliant psychologist Edward Thorndike developed a new theory of learning. As Cremin observed, the theory presumed that learning was the wedding of a specific response to a specific stimulus through a psychological bond in the neural system. The stimulus [S] then regularly called forth the response [R]. the bond between S and R was stamped in by being continually rewarded; an undesired bond was extinguished through punishment or failure (Cremin, 1961). For the purpose of this research, this psychological theory had three major effects. It led to the breakdown of complex ideas and tasks into components, subtasks and items (stimuli) that could be separately trained. It encouraged repetitive training (stamping in). And it led to a focus on the right answer (successful response) and to the counting of correct responses to items and subtasks, a perspective that ended up in psychometrically elegant tests that were considered the scientific way to measure achievement. The result was fractionation: having to learn disconnected subroutines, items and subskills without an understanding of the larger context into which they fit and which gives them meaning. As Farnham-Diggory notes, fractionated instruction maximizes forgetting, inattention and passivity (Farnham-Diggory, 1990). Since children and adults seem to acquire knowledge from active participation in complex and meaningful environments, school programs could hardly have been better designed to prevent a childs natural learning system from operating (p. 146). The phrase a childs natural learning system goes to the heart of why the usual school programs do not meet their own learning objectives well. Human beings even the small child are quintessentially sense-making, problem-solving animals. The word Why is a hallmark of young childrens talk. As a species, we wonder, we are curious and we want to understand. Pechman talks about the child as the meaning maker. Fractionated and decontextualized instruction fails to mobilize this powerful property of human beings in the service of learning (Pechman, 1990). Mistaken assumption # 4: What matters is getting the right answer Bothe the transmission and the behaviorist views of learning place a premium on getting the right answer. A transmission view stresses the ability of the learner to reproduce the Word; a behaviorist view, the ability of the learner to generate the correct response. The end result is the same: students and teachers focus on the right answer, jeopardizing the development of real understanding. The focus plays out in several ways. An instructional focus on the right answer discourages instruction in problem solving: A right answer focus encourages an emphasis on facts. Facts are important, but by themselves constitute an impoverished understanding of a domain; a fact-focus does not help students abilities to think about the domain in different ways. Cognitive analyses of a range of jobs show that being able to generate different solutions to problems that are formally the same is a hallmark of expert performance (Scribner, Head and hand: An action approach to thinking, 1988).Employers and college educators both complain that American high school graduates are limited in their thinking and problem-solving abilities, deficiencies that stem partly from an educational emphasis on facts and right answers. Students resort to veneers of accomplishment: Students respond to a focus on right answers by learning to test right within the school system. They figure out what answers the teacher or the test seems to want, but often at the cost of real learning. These surface achievements have been called the veneer of accomplishment (Lave, Smith, Butler, Problem solving as an everyday practice, 1988). Also, Jordans analysis of a Mayan midwives training program illuminates basic truths about the learning and testing of American students (Jordan, 1987). She found that midwives who had been through the training course saw official health care system as powerful, in that it commanded resources and authority. They came to distinguish good from not good things to say. Specifically, they learned new ways of legitimizing themselves, new ways of presenting themselves as being in league with this powerful system, but with little impact on their daily practice. Although they could converse appropriately with supervisory medical personnel, their new knowledge was not incorporated into their behavioral repertoire. It was verbally, but not behaviorally fixed. Jordan notes that the trainers evaluated their program by asking the midwives to reproduce definitions, lists and abstract concepts. She observes that if these tests measure anything at all, they measure changes in linguistic repertoire and changes in discourse skills [not changes in behavior] (pp. 10-12) The same behaviors show up with Hasss American third graders. He noticed that in mathematics lessons the students got much practice in problem-solving methods that they had brought into the classroom with them methods that were not being taught and were not supposed to be used. The children used these methods to produce right answers, which the teacher took as evidence of their having grasped the formal procedures that she was teaching them. In fact, all that had happened was the appearance of learning. Teachers do not get behind the answers: We end up with appearances of learning because, in their search for right answers, teachers often fail to check behind the answers to insure that students really grasp the principles that they want the students to master. In typical American classrooms the time devoted to a lesson on a particular topic makes it hard to bring to the surface, let along change, the ideas and assumptions that individuals bring to the lesson. Traditional curriculum design is usually based on a conceptual analysis of the subject matter that ignores what is already in the learners head, with the result that students make mistakes that arise from undetected ideas that they brought to the lesson. Or they can play back memorized canonical knowledge and conceptions but return to their own ideas when confronted with unfamiliar questions or non-routine problems. As noted earlier,, students in college physics courses designed for physics majors can solve book problems in Newtonian mechanics by rote application of formulas, but even after instruction revert to naÃÆ'à ¯ve pre-Newtonian explanations of common physical situations (Raizen, 1989). Teachers do not focus on how to use student mistakes to help them learn: In their search for right answers, teachers tend to regard student errors as failures rather than as opportunities to strengthen students understanding. American teachers placed little emphasis on the constructive use of errors as a teaching technique, a practice that the researchers attribute to the strong influence of behaviorism in American education. Behaviorism requires teaching conditions that help learners make only correct responses that can be reinforced through praise. Mistaken assumption # 5: To insure their transfer to new situations, skills and knowledge should be acquired independently of their contexts of use This idea is often talked about as decontextualized learning, which simply means learning out of context or meaning. The rationale for decontextualised learning goes back to the presumed conditions for the transfer of learning. As Lave observes, extracting knowledge from the particulars of experience was thought to make that knowledge available for general application in all situations (Lave, Cognition in Practice, 1988). Almost seventy five years ago, John and Evelyn Dewey wrote about the learning costs of decontextualized education. A statement, even of facts, does not reveal the value of the fact, or the sense of its truth of the fact that it is a fact. Where children are fed only on the book knowledge, one fact is as good as another; they have no standards of judgment or belief. Take the child studying weights and measures; he reads in his textbook that eight quarts make a peck, but when he does examples he is apt, as every schoolteacher knows, to substitute four for eight. Evidently the statement as he read it in the book did not stand for anything that goes on outside the book, so it is a matter of accident what figure lodges in his brain, or whether any does. But the grocers boy who has measured out pecks with a quart measure knows. He has made pecks; he would laugh at anybody who suggested that four quarts made a peck. What is the difference in these two cases? The schoolboy has a result without the activity of which it is the result. To the grocers boy the statement has value and truth, for it is the obv ious result of an experience it is a fact. Thus we see that it is a mistake to suppose that practical activities have only or even mainly a utilitarian value in the schoolroom. They are necessary if the pupil is to understand the facts which the teacher wishes him to learn; if his knowledge is to be real, not verbal; if his education is to furnish standards of judgment and comparison. (Dewey Dewey, Schools of tomorrow, 1915) Get over the traditional distinctions between head and hand The indictment of traditionally organized learning was coming out of a powerful research base, cognitive science. At the heart of this research was the presumption that intelligence and expertise are built out of interaction with the environment, not in isolation from it. It thus challenged the traditionally held distinctions between: Head and hand Academic and vocational education Knowing and doing Abstract and applied Education and training School-based and work-based learning Recent EU policy indicates a reassessment both of the relationship between work and education and the role of work experience in academic and vocational programs, on the basis that globalization is generating the need for new learning relationships between education and work which will support lifelong learning (European Commission, 1995). Thus, in the case of work experience in both general and vocational education, it is now envisaged that it could fulfill an important new role, providing an opportunity for those young people in full-time education and training to develop their understanding about changes in the world of work, to enhance their key skills and to make closer links between their formal programs of study and the world of work (Green, Leney, Wolf, 1999). However, although there has been
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Media Essay - Itââ¬â¢s Time to Ban the Advertising of Alcoholic Beverages
Media Essay - Itââ¬â¢s Time to Ban the Advertising of Alcoholic Beverages Everywhere we go, we're bombarded by all sorts of advertisements. We can seldom go through one day without receiving at least one phone call from a telemarketer. Turn on the TV for 15 or 20 minutes and you'll see at least one 5-minute commercial break. Advertisements are abundant everywhere we go: alongside roads, at airports, and at train stations. Why is advertising so popular, why do so many companies pump millions of dollars each year into advertising? The answer is simple: ads inform people of products they otherwise wouldn't have heard of, they make products look appealing to so that people will buy them, and they allow advertisers to influence the general public to purchase their product. Generally speaking, this isn't a problem ââ¬â companies make money and people get the products they need and want. What about products, though, that hurt, rather than help, people, products such as alcohol? Should advertising of such products, products that give way to so much harm, be al lowed? The biggest argument for the banning of advertising for alcoholic beverages points out the strong negative effects of alcohol on our society and the problems associated with alcohol. Alcoholism is a disease. According to the government-run NIAAA, or the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, alcoholism has a few easy to recognize symptoms. First of all, alcoholics have an addiction to alcohol. They constantly have a desire to consume more alcohol. This strong desire for alcohol leads to a loss of control. Rather than choosing when to drink and limiting the amount of alcohol consumption, alcoholics are controlled by their alcoholism. This desire is often overwhel... ... is no longer the popular thing; people are often looked down upon for it. We can accomplish the same with alcohol abuse. Works Cited "Alcoholism is a Family Disease." FamilyFun. (Online). Available http://family.go.com/yourtime/relationships/feature/kypa107alcohol/kypa107alcohol.html, February 25, 2003. "Frequently Asked Questions ââ¬â Alcohol." National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (Online). Available http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/faq/q-a-text.htm, February 25, 2003. Hanson, Prof. David J., Ph.D. "Alcohol Advertising." Alcohol: Problems and Solutions. (Online). Available http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol-info/Advertising/Advertising.html, February 25, 2003. Youth-Oriented Alcohol Advertising . 1997. Issue Briefs. Studio City, Calif.: Mediascope Press. Also available online at http://mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/yoaa.htm, February 25, 2003.
Flawless Use of Parallelism in Shakespeares King Lear :: King Lear essays
Flawless Use of Parallelism in King Lear à à à Many twists and turns characterize the television soap operas of today. Subplots are a distinctive trait of these daylight dramas, for they keep audience on the edge of their seats. Subplots keep the material fresh and the audience wanting more. Shakespeare uses secondary plots as a literary device to greatly dramatize the action of the play and to spark a contrast to his underlying themes in King Lear. The secondary plots can incalculably improve the effect of dramatic irony and suspense. The effective usage of subplots in King Lear, as a form of parallelism, exhibits analogous traits of prominent characters. Using such literary device permits the audience to understand the emotions of the essential characters in the play. The magnificent similarity of different plots and characters can illustrate Shakespeare's perfect use of parallelism in King Lear. à Parallelism is greatly enhanced by the use of subplots, for it creates emphasis and suspense. The parallel between Lear and Gloucester displayed in the play cannot possibly be accidental. The subplot of Gloucester corresponds the major plot of Lear. The two fathers have their own loyal legitimate child, and their own evil and disloyal kin. Gloucester and Lear are both honorable men, who have children that return to them in their time of need, and are sightless to the truth. Like Lear, Gloucester is tormented, and his favored child recovers his life; he is tended and healed by the child whom he has wronged. Their sufferings are traceable to their extreme folly and injustice, and to a selfish pursuit of their pleasure. In the early beginning of King Lear, Cordelia says that her love for her father is the love between father and daughter, no more, no less. à "Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; nor more nor less." (Shakespeare.I.i.93-95) à In response, Lear flies into a rage, disowns Cordelia, and divides her share of the kingdom between her two unworthy sisters. Such folly and injustice is encountered by Gloucester in the secondary plot. à "O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter. Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested, brut- ish villain; worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him. I'll apprehend him. Abominable villain! Where is he?" (I.ii.80-84)
Saturday, August 3, 2019
COLD SASSY TREE Essay -- essays research papers
Cold Sassy Tree, a novel by Olive Ann Burns, is an incredible story about the southern town of Cold Sassy, and a young man named Will Tweedy. In 1906, fourteen year old Will Tweedy is just starting to realize what it means to be a man, and all the responsibility that comes along with growing up. In Cold Sassy GA, the town is filled with gossip surrounding the townââ¬â¢s newest newlyweds. Will Tweedy finds himself eyewitness to it all. Grandpa E Rucker Blakeslee has ââ¬Ëtied the knotââ¬â¢ with the young milliner, Miss Love Simpson. With it being only three weeks after the death of his last wife, the family and town alike are shocked. Confused but curious about it all, Will observes what it means to be husband and wife and what it really means to love. Puzzled by the secrets shared between the two, he tries to figure out just why Grandpa Blakeslee asked Miss Love for her hand in marriage and why she even agreed. While Grandpa Blakeslee is experiencing his second adolescence, Will is trying to make it through his first. When Will gets hit by a train and is still alive to tell about it, Grandpa Blakeslee gives him a lesson on Godââ¬â¢s Will. And Will starts to realize not everyone interprets things the same way. When the mill child, Lightfoot crosses Willââ¬â¢s pa th his heart skips a beat. With all Willââ¬â¢s new found attractions and desires he decided to try his luck with the girls. Thatââ¬â¢s when he experiences his first kiss, and also his first heartbreak. After the innocent Uncle Camp killââ¬â¢s himself due to Aunt Lomaââ¬â¢s constant criticism, Will starts to question how he treats people. He starts to wonder if maybe he helped his uncle pull the trigger. Soon after that Grandpa Blakesleeââ¬â¢s store isnââ¬â¢t doing all that well. Two unidentified strangers come and rob Grandpa Blakeslee blind, in the process beating him up ââ¬Ësomething awfulââ¬â¢. With his weakness effecting his immune system, he catches a bad case of pneumonia and soon passes away. But not before Miss Love could tell him what he had been waiting to hear his whole lifeâ⬠¦. He would soon have a son to carry on the family name. Not at all scared of death or the unknown, Grandpa Blakeslee orders a letter to be read concerning his funeral and remains. But to everyoneââ¬â¢s surprise he orders the cheapest and lowest class funeral and orders himself nothing, but a wooden box. Wanting no one to mourn over him and everyone to know that he was dead... ...d soon before she died of cancer in 1994. She never finished Leaving Cold Sassy. Burns was born in 1924 on a farm in Banks County GA. Her childhood school was what modeled in her novel Cold Sassy Tree. She received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina, and later went on to join the Sunday magazine staff of Atlanta Journal and Constitution, were she stayed for ten years. Her marriage of the magazineââ¬â¢s editor, Andy, soon produced two children, Becky and John. The novel Cold Sassy Tree was based on the stories her father told her as a young child. à à à à à This book left me with the impression that life in the south in 1906 maybe wasnââ¬â¢t as bad as it seemed. Even without all the modern technology there is today, people had fun in other ways. In a lot of ways life was better back then. But there was still some of the crime and injustice we still see today. Religion seems to be a big part of their everyday lives. I believe otherââ¬â¢s should read this book if they want to relive life in the south, and watch how a young southern boy finally grows up. à à à à à à à à à à à à à à Ã
Friday, August 2, 2019
Work Hard Play Hard
Jonathan White Professor Caldwell English 201 28 September 2012 Work Hard; Play Hard Work hard. Play hard. Two completely different things but they should coincide. So many people these days get by with the smallest amount of effort, and so many people play too much. An equal balance of the two makes for a high-quality pleasurable life. The harder you work the more you deserve to play, and trust me; youââ¬â¢ll feel better about it. Hard workers in this day and age can sometimes be very hard to come around. There are so many younger people that grow up getting almost everything handed to them.This, from the get go, doesnââ¬â¢t instill good work ethics in a person growing up. The younger generation needs to learn how to earn a good living in order to pass it on to future generations. I think hard work is challenging oneââ¬â¢s self. Whatââ¬â¢s the point of living without a challenge? Thatââ¬â¢s a boring life if you ask me. Everybody wants to live a life thatââ¬â¢s bett er than their surrounding citizens. That goal can be reached by working hard. Most people will do whatââ¬â¢s easiest and avoid hard work. That is precisely why you should do the opposite.The easiest opportunities of life will be attacked by crowds of people seeking whatââ¬â¢s easy. The much tougher challenges will usually see a lot less competition and a lot more opportunity. When you discipline yourself to do what is hard, you gain access to a field of results that are refused to everyone else. The willingness to do what is difficult is like having a key to a unique private treasure chest. The nice thing about hard work is that itââ¬â¢s universal. It doesnââ¬â¢t matter what industry you work in, hard work can be used to achieve positive long-term results no matter what the specifics are.If you work hard it will pay off. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more opportunities you will find yourself confronting. The deeper you can dive, the more treasure you can p ossibly find. There are so many different things that require hard work. Being healthy is hard work. Finding and then maintaining a successful relationship is hard work. Raising children is hard work. Becoming and staying organized is hard work. Setting goals, making plans to achieve them, and staying on the right track is hard work. Sometimes even being happy is hard work. As I stated earlier, if you work hard you DESERVE to play hard.Youââ¬â¢ve earned the right to a weekend in Vegas, or a week on the beach in Cancun. Sometimes not having a good mix of work and play can lead to disaster. Everyone needs to relieve stress sometimes and one of the best ways to do it is to play hard. Take some time off once and awhile and do something new and exciting. Iââ¬â¢m not saying go do something dangerously suicidal but maybe thrilling thatââ¬â¢ll get your adrenaline pumping. Donââ¬â¢t let your life get 100% work orientated. Spend time with your friends and families, these things ar e important and everybody needs them.Youââ¬â¢ll regret it in the future if you do not. Keep a good balance between everything and try your best to keep it that way. Working and playing coincide and should be kept equalized, but they should also be kept separate. When you are working hard, donââ¬â¢t play. When youââ¬â¢re playing hard, donââ¬â¢t work. Itââ¬â¢s very simple but sometimes it can be hard not to forget. If you remember everything Iââ¬â¢ve said and apply it to your own life there will only be success headed your away. Everybody around you will notice and you will be appreciated for it no doubt.You may also find that things will come a lot easier than they did prior. Most importantly, you will be proud of yourself. There is no better feeling than having the people that you are surrounded by proud of you except for the feeling of being proud of yourself. Itââ¬â¢s like the feeling of reaching the top of a massive hill covered in snow. You can look down and see all that you have accomplished and say to yourself. ââ¬Å"Wow, I did that. â⬠Now the hard work is over. Take a deep breath, and slide down to the bottom. That was fun! Work hard, play hard. Work Hard Play Hard Jonathan White Professor Caldwell English 201 28 September 2012 Work Hard; Play Hard Work hard. Play hard. Two completely different things but they should coincide. So many people these days get by with the smallest amount of effort, and so many people play too much. An equal balance of the two makes for a high-quality pleasurable life. The harder you work the more you deserve to play, and trust me; youââ¬â¢ll feel better about it. Hard workers in this day and age can sometimes be very hard to come around. There are so many younger people that grow up getting almost everything handed to them.This, from the get go, doesnââ¬â¢t instill good work ethics in a person growing up. The younger generation needs to learn how to earn a good living in order to pass it on to future generations. I think hard work is challenging oneââ¬â¢s self. Whatââ¬â¢s the point of living without a challenge? Thatââ¬â¢s a boring life if you ask me. Everybody wants to live a life thatââ¬â¢s bett er than their surrounding citizens. That goal can be reached by working hard. Most people will do whatââ¬â¢s easiest and avoid hard work. That is precisely why you should do the opposite.The easiest opportunities of life will be attacked by crowds of people seeking whatââ¬â¢s easy. The much tougher challenges will usually see a lot less competition and a lot more opportunity. When you discipline yourself to do what is hard, you gain access to a field of results that are refused to everyone else. The willingness to do what is difficult is like having a key to a unique private treasure chest. The nice thing about hard work is that itââ¬â¢s universal. It doesnââ¬â¢t matter what industry you work in, hard work can be used to achieve positive long-term results no matter what the specifics are.If you work hard it will pay off. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more opportunities you will find yourself confronting. The deeper you can dive, the more treasure you can p ossibly find. There are so many different things that require hard work. Being healthy is hard work. Finding and then maintaining a successful relationship is hard work. Raising children is hard work. Becoming and staying organized is hard work. Setting goals, making plans to achieve them, and staying on the right track is hard work. Sometimes even being happy is hard work. As I stated earlier, if you work hard you DESERVE to play hard.Youââ¬â¢ve earned the right to a weekend in Vegas, or a week on the beach in Cancun. Sometimes not having a good mix of work and play can lead to disaster. Everyone needs to relieve stress sometimes and one of the best ways to do it is to play hard. Take some time off once and awhile and do something new and exciting. Iââ¬â¢m not saying go do something dangerously suicidal but maybe thrilling thatââ¬â¢ll get your adrenaline pumping. Donââ¬â¢t let your life get 100% work orientated. Spend time with your friends and families, these things ar e important and everybody needs them.Youââ¬â¢ll regret it in the future if you do not. Keep a good balance between everything and try your best to keep it that way. Working and playing coincide and should be kept equalized, but they should also be kept separate. When you are working hard, donââ¬â¢t play. When youââ¬â¢re playing hard, donââ¬â¢t work. Itââ¬â¢s very simple but sometimes it can be hard not to forget. If you remember everything Iââ¬â¢ve said and apply it to your own life there will only be success headed your away. Everybody around you will notice and you will be appreciated for it no doubt.You may also find that things will come a lot easier than they did prior. Most importantly, you will be proud of yourself. There is no better feeling than having the people that you are surrounded by proud of you except for the feeling of being proud of yourself. Itââ¬â¢s like the feeling of reaching the top of a massive hill covered in snow. You can look down and see all that you have accomplished and say to yourself. ââ¬Å"Wow, I did that. â⬠Now the hard work is over. Take a deep breath, and slide down to the bottom. That was fun! Work hard, play hard.
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Difficult Teachers: Recent Development on how they can be dealt with
Competition as a factor plays an important role in shaping up nearly all sectors in the present operational environment. Competition is rife in all sectors and education is swimming within these tides. Success of the teaching staff is largely guided by results and having even two ineffective teachers could lead to a bad name to a principal and his administration (Brock, & Grady, 2003). Inefficiency of the teaching staff can lead to loss of accountability and even place a school at risk of losing its reputation or failing to develop any.Like in the result oriented business world the ability of the teaching staff to set standards of peak performance or be close to the top performers is important in ensuring that parents and hard working teachers remain motivated and always seeks the best for students. Such levels of motivation are bound to trickle down to students and the result may be improvement in the levels of performance and development of a culture of success (Hopkins, 2009).It i s thus upon administrators especially principals and head of department to ensure they develop creative, humane, supportive, tough and timely approaches to deal with teachers who are not performing for one reason or the other. This is further complicated if the teachers being referred to are difficult to deal with. Appreciation of the Problem In practical teaching, many principals confess of having dealt with difficult teachers in more than one occasion. It is generally believed that each institution has what can be referred to as troubled teacher (Hopkins, 2009).The fact that the teachers are difficult to deal with must not be assumed to be directly correlated to their performance. In some cases the best teachers can prove to be hard to deal with which presents a larger problem considering the impact they could have on a school if they were to quit or their problem addressed badly. It is generally true that troubled, exhausted and even confused teachers have multiple negative impac ts on morale and school environment.Such troubled teachers have the ability to single handedly break the team spirit that is critical to staff success which results in fragmentation that is a breeding ground to failure in issues relating to school improvement initiatives. Difficult teachers have been termed by some researchers as a proverbial elephant in the staff. All in the staff are often aware of the existence of such a character but none is willing to confront for the fear of losing or what most refer to as being ââ¬Ëtrampled'.Many low performing and even high performing (based on result) institutions are overrun by such teachers who appear to be operating within their own code. It has been observed that some principals are even scared of such troubled teachers and though they are aware of their existence they do little to address the situation (Wilmore, 2007). The reality is that ignoring the existence of such teacher does little to address the situation which is let to man ifest within the teaching environment and with time the negative effects may even be observed in the levels of performance that can be attained by a staff (Brock, & Grady, 2003).Failure in performance may not only result to the ousting of a principal but also affect the lives of students who may have had better futures had it not been for the failure of the administrators in addressing difficult teachers. Principals must be appreciative of the fact that their roles as leaders is worth the risk because the goals seek more than material gain or advancement. This should also involve appreciation of the fact that the lives of the people within the school community and even outside the school community thus the society is dependent on the school system to provide meaning and purpose.This appreciation must be reinforced by personal assessment of the administrators to determine if they have the ability to effectively handle difficult teachers. Principals as managers and leaders have the ro le to ensure that the school community is motivated by dealing with the challenges to high levels of motivation and ensuring that impediment or threats to achievement of educational goals are addressed (Brock, & Grady, 2003). Administrators have the ability to misjudge a straight or good teacher for a trouble maker. This is especially true for administrators who are still getting the feel of being in a new environment.Depending on the existing administration for support is cited as a possible avenue to ensuring that new administrators get a feel of the environment and therefore develop objective assessment of the staff including their own ability to effectively manage the challenges presented by the environment they are in (Wilmore, 2007). Difficult teachers can come in hordes or could be unique in a staff that is highly cooperative. Even in a dysfunctional school community, there are teachers who are considered difficult. Researchers have come up with values that they view as being important in dealing with difficult teacher in varied conditions.The values that must be inherent of administrators can be developed and play a role in ensuring that difficult teachers are dealt with in both functional and dysfunctional environments. Assertive administration is cited as one of the critical success factors in dealing with difficult teachers. The term difficult in difficult teachers is not out of their knowledge of martial arts or spiritual ability rather is assertiveness that manifests negatively. The level of assertiveness that such teachers display has been cited by some as being manifested in difficult to deal with but successful teachers in class.Disregard for the existing systems and rule on a regular basis that defines difficult teachers is a manifestation of a negatively developed assertive nature (Brock, & Grady, 2003). It is only an assertive administrator that can effectively manage such a teacher and even reform his ways into those accepted within the est ablished systems. Character building is an important quality that administrators should possess if they are to effectively deal with difficult teachers. Character building is the ability to mould the perception and thereafter actions of a teacher in a manner that leads to their entry or fit into an existing set of values.Character affects perception and therefore actions and should thus be developed in a manner that is positive if the actions are to lead to generation of value to both students and other teaching staff (Wilmore, 2007). Many researchers have come up with findings that blame the behavior of difficult teacher on the nature of their cognition. Such difficult teachers display their negative character irrespective of the nature of administration thus addressing the character issues appear to be the best approach to dealing with difficult teachers.Communication is considered one of the important tools that managers and leaders have in ensuring that goals are transmitted thr ough out a system and people are motivated towards achieving set goals. Under constrained teaching environment, teachers may take on repulsive behavior to gaining the attention of the administration to issues that may be affecting their efficiency in teaching. While a negative teaching environment is not a precondition for difficult teachers it is a possible cause of negative teachers (Wilmore, 2007).Communication is an avenue through which the nature of difficult teachers can be discerned and it is only from this understanding that suitable intervention measures should be developed. Administrators must study and personalize the art of affective communication if difficult teachers are not to arise from a teaching environment and to also ensure a proper understanding of the negative teaching behavior. Developing a positive school culture has come up as one of the critical success factors in reducing the prevalence of difficult teaching.Poorly performing schools have been recorded as being a breeding ground for difficult teachers (Whitaker, 2002). A poor school culture develops a negative picture of what is expected of a teacher and develops a breeding ground for negative perception and energy that could result in difficult teachers. Some researchers have tried to develop a theory in a bid of have a clear image of difficult teacher formulation in an environment which postulate that a negative culture direct the otherwise positive energy that could have been channeled into positive development to poor interaction with students and other members of staff (Wilmore, 2007).The role of developing a positive culture has been studied in business and involves interaction with positive people and promotion of positive norms and values. The role of managers and leaders is prominent in this phase and could be the defining factor between failure and success. Contribution of the administrators to teaching and addressing issues that teachers and students are faced with plays a n important role in ensuring that administrators are appreciated as part of the school systems.By contributing to issues relating to staff development administrators are placed in a position where they can effectively monitor events within their environment (Whitaker, 2002). This is in line with proactive approaches to issues where reporting systems are a formal or documentation systems and not an avenue through which leaders gain insight of problems. By actively contributing to the school community and being at the fore in addressing issues, administrators are put in a position where they can be effective in ensuring overall school development.Conducting assertive interventions and timeliness are the other important values that administrators must display to be able to effectively manage difficult teachers. It is generally believed that the most effective way to deal with students is addressing the teachers. A school in its basic definition takes on a hierarchical structure was the teachers act as a bridge between students and the administration (Whitaker, 2002). Assertive intervention systems are important in ensuring that other teachers whom are often aware of the existence of a problem become informed of strategies that are being taken to address them.Timeliness is a value that is of critical importance in minimizing the negative effects of difficult teachers in a school community. Procrastination has been cited as one of the avenues through which administrators let negative effects of difficult teachers affect existing systems with negative repercussion (Whitaker, 2002). Addressing procrastination is therefore a critical success factor and can only be attained if timeliness as a factor is ingrained within systems seeking solutions. Manifestation of Difficult TeachingThe ability to identify problematic teacher is important in ensuring that the effect that he has on other members of the teachings staff are mitigated. Difficult teachers come in different for ms according to a recent survey that seeks to develop a clear understanding of difficult teachers (Whitaker, 2002). Understanding the exact manifestation of difficult behavior in teachers and interaction with other staff members and administration is important in devising strategy that can be used in dealing with threats that they pose.Complaining and negative teachers have been cited as the most difficult to deal with. It is advisable that such teachers be directly and confidentially addressed (Waterman, & Waterman, 2006). Ensuring that teachers are aware of the effects that their behavior has on existing system and achievement of the educational goals and presenting a platform for them to raise issues that may be affecting them in a confidential manner is important in ensuring the interventions do not manifest negatively. Research shows that some principals however choose to ignore the negative comments from difficult teachers.Though success of the interaction in such a case is de pendent on the degree with which the administrators can focus on positive staff members, ignoring the negative staff members is misplaced and could be counter-productive. Stating expectations and offering assistance have for a long time been considered vital steps in dealing with difficult teacher; however, the change in environment and the need for leaders and managers to be proactively involved in day to day running of their systems has led to increased requirement on administrators (Whitaker, 2002).Noise makers and anarchist are considered the second most common characteristic of difficult teachers. Directly addressing their behavior groups is considered the first step to addressing issues they may be faced with. Stating what is expected of them including policies, behavior and expectation while monitoring progress are also considered success factors (McEwan, 2005). Research shows that if the initial intervention framework fails in developing observable change in the teachers pla cing them on an improvement plan is considered the next phase by many.In most cases, the intervention system for these behavior group end with a teacher being asked to leave a faculty after all measures fail in developing positive behavior change. Difficult teachers can also be defined by high propensity to gossip. While gossip may be considered a form of communication in any social setting if it continues to grow it could prove difficult for administrators to replace it with the truth. A factor that is widely appreciated as being a stumbling block to effectively addressing issues that an organization is faced with is gossip which affects the level of efficiency that can be attained in communication.Administrators must ensure that such members of staff are made aware of the negative effects that gossip could have to the attainment of school goals. Most leadership experts point to the fact that openly showing disgust and disapproval of gossip could lead to positive results (McEwan, 2 005). Institutions that are aware of the negative effects that continual gossips has on communication efficiency have in the past asked difficult teachers to consider leaving a faculty if they could not deal with their love for gossiping.Backstabbers are another problem group where the direct approach is cited as being most effective. In fact a more direct approach than in all other cases has to be used in confronting culprits with questions on the why, what, where and when regarding a case. Depending on the magnitude of a case the intervention systems may either involve letting the culprit be aware of the fact that his actions have been brought into light and citing insubordination which may also involve restating expectation of behavior and initiation of an improvement plan (McEwan, 2005).Research shows that most principals are aware of the existence of such backstabber but consider their actions less influential on attainment of goals. Backstabbing is viewed by principals as diff ering opinions rather than lack of appreciation of the input of other members. This is a negative perception that is reflective of the differences that exist between practice and research. Discussion There appears to be a wide appreciation of the extent of difficult teachers. Researchers have tried to dissect the problem from different dimensions to ensure that its emergence, manifestation and even approaches to its management are well understood.Behavior development; nature of experiences that a teacher has undergone; the nature of the operational environment and objectives of the teachers are factors cited as being vital in defining the extent and effect of difficult teachers. There is no doubt on the effects that such teachers could have on the levels of morale and even attainment of administrative goals. One of the most important developments in recent research is an effort to develop a clear understanding of the different behavior groups and how each group can be addressed.Dire ct measures and restatement of the vision have been stated as being vital in ensuring effective management of different cases. The role of the administrators and the critical success values are applicable in the measures that have been developed for different behavior groups. It is apparent that there is little that can be done by researchers to address individual cases however administrators can pick from the general guidelines that have been developed to come up with measures in management and leadership that can ensure difficult teachers are dealt with in a manner that leads to professional development.Critical review of success factors and steps involved in mitigating and addressing specific behavior problems points to the fact that effective leadership and management are important in identification and address of difficult teachers as a key problem in achievement of schooling goals. The art and science aspect of management have to be reinforced with appreciation of the potentia l effect that problem teachers have on attainment of a school's objectives and facilitation of communication and transmission of positive values in attaining efficiency.There is no doubt on the role played by innovation, creativity, skills, experience, coordination and overall strategic management in ensuring difficult teachers are managed and their effects addressed. Conclusion Difficult teachers have the potential of disrupt learning and lead to loss of morale in the teaching staff. Understanding the teachers which involve ensuring high levels of interaction with them and application of strategic management principles in addressing the challenge they present have widely been discussed by researchers.There however appears to be a gap between research and practice in that some principals and administrators despite the effects that difficult teachers have on attainment of school goals ignore their existence. Researches on how this appreciation can be developed are lacking and are one of the key areas that have to be addressed if the current state of research is to be helpful to practicing administrators. Little has been done with regards to difficult administrators who may in fact pose a greater threat to attainment of schooling goals.A further understanding of the cause of difficult behaviors among teachers must be developed to create a good platform for administrators to base their interventions. In a nutshell, the current researches provide a suitable platform for definition of strategic directions that can be taken in addressing difficult teachers; it is however upon administrators and the entire school community to develop specific approaches that are relevant to their cases which differ different owing to different values and expectations that characterize schools.
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