Negotiating Work Roles: Teaching Behavior in the United States

One aspect of teacher behavior in which teachers appear as brokers of policies, changing and modifying their behavior to meet multiple expectations, is reported in this study. Nine elementary school teachers were observed at work in an attempt to relate what they did to the web of educational policy surrounding them. The purpose was to gain a snapshot of their teaching behavior rather than an ethnography of their occupational lives. Field notes were taken on what the teacher did, what students did, the use of resources, and the interaction with the environment. Through interviews with the teachers, explanations were sought for behaviors. The teachers were seen as negotiators in interactions with students and also between the educational policy within which they operated and their classroom practices. The patterning effects of policy were seen in five different areas: (1) lesson content; (2) text use; (3) program structure; (4) resource rationing; and (5) internalization of the organization's mission. Within each area, teachers also engaged in policy negotiation, either explicitly with school administrators or tacitly in the particular way they responded to policy dictates. (JD)