The Dilemmas of Deskilling Reflections of a Staff Developer

Nancy P. Kraft
Effective staff development programs need to minimize teacher deskilling
practices and instead engage participants in critical, democratic, and
participatory learning experiences.

I have been a staff developer for the past 10 years working with teachers and
educators to help them learn about their teaching through the processes of selfstudy, reflective practice, and action research. I believe that staff development
should encourage educators to be more critical, self-analytical, and reflective.
Unfortunately, much of todays staff development consist of giving teacher then
nuts and bolts and the how-tos rather than creating learning opportunities for
teacher to examine the nature of process of educational change and reform
imitative. In effect, these practical staff development approaches without selfstudy and reflection actually cause teacher s to be deskilled, to limit their
improvement.
The deskilling approaches separate the conception of curriculum form execution
of curriculum; these approaches have experts do the thinking while teacher are
reduced to doing the implementing. Giroux (1988) concludes that the effect is
not only to deskill teachers, to remove them from the processes of deliberation
and reflection, but also to routinizes the nature of learning and classroom
pedagogy (p. 124). If one major outcome of education for children to create
individual who are tinker and problem solver, hoe

Page 406
Regarding deskilling practices. In addition to sharing my journal reflections from
this workshop, I describe set of strategies that I use as a staff developer to
encourage teachers to actively participate in their own learning

THE EMPEROR IS WEARING NO CLOTHES

The emperors new clothes are here. There she is parading before the audience.
No one is telling her she got nothing. As I read these words written on the
reflection sheet I received form one participant during the second day a threeday workshop, I suddenly felt every dejected and extremely discouraged. I was
facilitating learning for 35 chapters 1 teacher in a workshop which covered a
broad array of topics ranging from getting on touch with yours belief , values ,

and assumption about knowledge and learning to hoe to get meaningful

parent involvement in chapter 1 programs.
In my own journal, I had noted resistance from some of the participants
who were expecting the traditional sit and get type of workshop, but I thought
that by the end of the first day I had been rather successful in presenting a
different kind of staff development opportunity one that required the
participants to think and engage in critical discourse. After all, I reflected in my
journal, attends had been actively participating in their own learning, exploring
their beliefs about education and assumption of chapter 1 students, and willingly
sharing their craft with each other. Even though I had encouraged critical
reflection on the events of the workshop the criticism by this participant hurt me.
I questioned the source of this participants criticism: Was it my style or
the content of my workshop? Was it because I was requiring her to think and
become more analytical about her own teaching situation (something she may
not have had to do in long time)? I wondrered hoe I could find ways to vlasidate
her feelingsm but at the same time find ways to help her reconceptualize staff
development as an opportunity to reflect and engage in critical discourse.
APPROACHES TO STAFF DEVELOPMENT
I see two approaches to staff development the traditional approach which
essentially tells teachers what to do and critical theory approach which has
teachers engage in critically reflective analyses of educational construct and
their belief, values, and assumptions.
THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH
So much of staff development has traditionally focused very narrowly on
effecting change through telling teachers what to do and how to do it. Teachers
havent been involved in their conceptualizing what change should look like or in
deciding. They are typically relegated to technician status in implementing
others idea or recipes for change. In a critique of the process of educational
reform, Giroux (1988) says:
Many of the recommendation that have emerged in the current debate either
ignore the role teacher play in preparing learners to be active and critical citizens
or they suggest reforms that ignore the intelligence, judgment, and experience
that teacher might offers in such a debate. Where teachers do enter the debate,
they are the object of educational reforms that reduce them to the status of highlevel technicians carrying out dictates and objectives decided by experts far
removed from the everyday realities of classrooms life. The message appears to
be that teachers do not count when it comes to critically examining the nature
and process of educational reform. (p. 121)
THE CRITICAL THEORY APPROACH
The critical theory approach allows teachers to examine society from the
perspective of power relationship within that society; it allows staff developers to

engage participants in questioning power relationships within schools. Thus the

critical theory approach allows teacher