Преодоление стереотипа в организации и проведении педагогического совета колледжа: нестандартный подход и эффективность

Overcoming stereotypes in the organization and conduct of the teachers’ council at a College: non-standard approach and efficiency

A contemporary educational institution is a complex multilevel system the efficiency of which is ensured by many structural subdivisions directly involving its academic staff in the process.

The teachers’ council is a permanent collective body of self-management of academic staff. The teachers' council works to define the strategy for resolving problems in the key areas of the educational institution's activity (a college in this context). The teachers' council consists of the Head of a

College, his/her deputies, teachers, a social teacher and librarians. The teachers' council is chaired by the Head of the educational institution or his/her deputy (for the period when the Head is absent).

Modern teachers' council is multifunctional. All these functions can be divided into four groups: management (administration), methodical, educational and social and pedagogical functions (presented at the scheme).

Figure. Functions of the teachers’ council

O.В. Prokhorova

Management (administration) functions of the teachers' council consist in the following:

• 1)    taking collective decisions by means of open voting, and such decisions are binding for every employee;

• 2)    discussion of intrinsic information on the situation in educational and teaching process and development of recommendations;

• 3)    performance of experiments and tests, social and psychological research;

• 4)    discussion of prospects for further college development, planning of the college activity;

• 5)    listening to the college reports and conclusions on the activities performed by college structural subdivisions;

• 6)    making changes and amendments to the college work plans.

Methodical functions of teachers' council consist in:

• 1)    informing about the progress of teaching and educational process and the ways of its improvement;

• 2)    analysis of the progress of teaching and educational process, generalizing and analysis of teaching experience;

• 3)    development of teaching excellence, acquisition of various teaching forms,

methods and skills, application of advanced educational technologies;

• 4)    advanced training of academic staff;

• 5)    stirring up each teacher to work on his/ her methodical topic.

Educational functions of the teachers' council have an objective of shaping of each teacher individuality, public opinion, willing discipline inside the teaching group.

Social and pedagogical functions of the teachers' council consist in:

• 1)    links maintained by academic staff with parents and students;

• 2)    social security of students and teachers, compliance with legal provisions in relation to educational process participants.

The teachers' council elaborates solutions for the most urgent issues occurring in the college, identifies the outcomes of both the activity of the whole organization and of its separate structural subdivisions. Currently, the teachers' council is a substantial way of involving a whole academic staff into the college management process as it is the format of teachers' council that enables discussion of opposite opinions on one and the same issue, expressing judgments on the viability of planned actions, determination of college development prospects [1].

At the same time, a significant part of academic staff hardly takes an active part in the work of the teachers' council. Frequently enough, teachers participate in the work of such council without appropriate will and interest and do “their own business” (as a rule, work with documents). Consequently, there is some factor that does not encourage teachers to take an active part in the teachers' council work and does not give them an opportunity to manifest themselves in terms of self-management.

In particular, we can identify the following factors:

• 1)    issues being discussed concern a very limited part of attending teachers, thus, it is difficult for others to participate in the discussion;

• 2)    the atmosphere of the meeting and the tone being set (often being quite

top-bottom and not encouraging for expressing of your own opinion);

• 3)    a long-standing stereotype of seeing the teachers'councilasalow-efficientactivity that is time consuming and distracting from the work (misunderstanding of the nature of teachers' councils).

Such opinion is very often accompanied by the belief that a teacher opinion is not taken into account when top management makes decisions, and interests and needs of academic staff are not important for top management. But it is very difficult to take into account opinions that were not expressed and justified.

It is possible to make the work of the teachers' council more beneficial for everybody and to ensure its work efficiency by means of variation of its conduction forms. As proved by practice, a traditional approach to organization and conduction of the teachers' council including preparation and delivering of reports, speeches, is inefficient in terms of decision taking and does not involve many teachers. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate top-bottom approach to conduction of teachers' council meetings, superficiality of issue discussion (frequently, instruction replaces discussion), abstractivenesses and excessive theoretical character of reports [2].

To attract teachers to the teachers' council work, it is necessary to awake their need of participating in substantial business discussion, stimulate their will to influence the state of things in their college. Hence, it is necessary to find non-standard ways for conduction of teachers' council meetings aimed at an intensive continuous teacher work during the whole meeting [4].

Teachers' councils can be divided into traditional and non-traditional in terms of the methods of their preparation and conduction. Traditional teachers' councils assume delivering of a report with a followup discussion, joint reports. Non-traditional councils can be prepared and conducted in the form of a dispute discussion, a creative report, a contests, a festival, a business game, a round-table, a presentation, an many others

Overcoming stereotypes in the organization and conduct of the teachers’ council at a College: non-standard approach and efficiency

O.В. Prokhorova

(variety of ways can only be limited by the imagination of council organizers) [8;10].

To boost participants of the teachers' council, a decision was taken to conduct it in the form of a business game. A teachers' council as a business game is a game simulation where each participant is assigned a specific role. A business game gives an opportunity to participants to manifest themselves, enables their professional development and teaches them to be active.

The following conditions are necessary to conduct a meeting of the teachers' council in the form a business game:

• 1)    an issue and a task to be resolved by an academic staff;

• 2)    imitation of a real-life situation with specific roles;

• 3)    existence of interests and opinions.

All process can be divided into six stages, each having own peculiarities and conditions necessary for its implementation.

First stage is game development, making a scenario. The business game “Brainstorm”. Academic staff is divided into four equal teams representing social groups “Administration”, “Teachers”, “Parents” and “Students” according to opinions they will express.

The second stage is an organizational one: it is necessary to explain the aims and the essence of the game to its participants, get them familiar with its programme and rules, assign the roles and set specific tasks. Each group receives a particular task: basing upon the materials of the final instruction guidance meetings and the outcomes of the activity of each college structural subdivision for the first half of an academic year to identify successes and failures and set tasks for the second half of an academic year from the point of view of each social group.

The third stage is search of decisions inside each group. At this case a preliminary work was organized to prepare a group address to the teachers' council. The work was performed jointly taking into account opinions of all group participants. Each group had time for preparation during two weeks. What's more, participants were proposed to choose the format of the address format (report, adaptation, dispute, etc.) y themselves.

The fourth stage is intergroup discussion: group addresses, defense of ideas and projects. At this stage all groups could resent the results of their preparation and express their opinions. The address of each group evoked an active response of other business game participants: raised issues were topical while the proposed decisions were new and non-standard. The way of delivery was also different: a philosophical address of the “Administration” group; an issue-raising address of the “Teachers” group; an official address of the “Parents” group; a creative address of the “Students” group.

The fifth stage consists of summarizing the results of the teachers' council conducted in the form of a business game. Problems and issues considered during the business game were analyzed in a thorough way, the conclusions made were generalized, a joint decision was made, and it was elaborated with account of opinions and preferences of the teachers' council participants.

The sixth stage is transfer of a business game experience into the realm of an educational institution: making corrections in the college work plan for the second half of an academic year, consideration of conclusions and proposals for planning of college activities in the next academic year.

The advantage of such non-standard modern intensified forms of a teachers' council conduction is undeniable. First and foremost, it includes focus on a practice-oriented solutions of the problems occurred; secondly, it means active involvement of each teaching process participant as opposed to the passive involvement as a listener, and such active involvement presumes his/her personal contribution into the solution search.

An active teacher participation in the teachers' council work assumes the following:

• 1)    knowledge of the theory and/or the prehistory of the considered issue/the problem being resolved;

• 2)    thorough awareness about the contemporary status of the considered issue/ the problem being resolved;

• 3)    presence of a personal justified point of view on the problem;

• 4)    getting to know opinions of colleagues on the specific issue;

• 5)    development of the strategy for problem solution.

A positive aspect of a teachers' council consists in a psychological view of the problems: a person is influenced by the moral and psychological atmosphere of a group discussion, emotional behavior of participants and the underlying ideas of comments. Such advantages of the teachers' council can manifest themselves only when organizers decide to move away from stereotypes and traditional models in terms of organization and conduction of such meetings, when they dare to give up familiar patterns and introduce new ways in a proactive way.