| Cooperative efforts consist of collaboration between teachers related to the integration of vocational and academic education that does not specifically focus on curriculum or instruction. Cooperative efforts emphasize (1) knowing, or learning about one another as a basis of mutual support; (2) helping each other by sharing information about students and instruction; and (3) coordinating planning and instruction. |
After Jane discussed various integration strategies with a number of teachers and received their reactions, she decided to appoint a committee of five teachers to start to work on integrating the ninth grade curriculum. The committee members were to design a project that could be implemented among the English and vocational teachers. In anticipation of eliminating the general curriculum, the project was to focus on some sort of career exploration activity. Talking with Elsworth Haman, Jane noted that "I deliberately, as a calculated risk, selected one vocational teacher who was positive toward the idea of integration and one who was negative. The situation was the same with the English teachers; one was positive toward integration and the other was negative." Jane also decided that the librarian, who was neutral toward the idea of integration, should be appointed to the committee.
Jane sensed that Ross Rotouski, the negative vocational teacher, felt the whole idea was a bunch of nonsense. Ross thought that he should teach only technical skills in his building construction classes. Jack Bates, the positive vocational teacher, however, asked Ross if his students didn't use math, science, and writing skills in his class as well as later on the job. Ross had to agree that they did and eventually he started to support the integration project the committee was designing.
Elizabeth Johnson, the negative English teacher, also seemed to resent the idea of changing the assignments she had typically used with her students. In discussing her classes, she has often noted to other teachers that she focuses on teaching abstract thinking skills and that the writing assignments she uses are highly effective in developing these skills. They involve interpreting classical literature and she feels they are particularly worthwhile for the college-bound students.
After several meetings, the committee members decided that the ninth grade career exploration project would require students to develop research and interviewing skills and culminate with them preparing written reports and presenting the reports orally in their English classes. The students would need to work extensively in the library to develop their projects. Jane had hoped that the project would evolve in this way. That is why she appointed the librarian to be on the committee. The English teachers and the librarian would spearhead the library research phase of the project. The vocational teachers would spearhead the phase that involved the students interviewing people in the business community so they could learn firsthand about requirements for different occupations. In grading the projects, the vocational teachers would evaluate them for accuracy of content while the English teachers would grade them for quality of both written and oral presentation skills.
As the committee members worked through the details of the project, they became more and more committed to it. The positive teachers kept emphasizing that the purpose of the project was to help students develop skills they would really need throughout their lives. The two negative teachers, Ross and Elizabeth, seemed to develop enthusiasm for the integration effort. When details of the project were complete, the committee members, in turn, discussed with their colleagues in the English and vocational education departments the merits of it and on working together. Although consensus was reached on the project, the trust level between the two groups of teachers was still precarious. The teachers realized that they would need to monitor the project as it was implemented and revise it along the way.
2. What educational outcomes should the committee focus on?
3. What strategies might Jane use to help Ross and Elizabeth develop a feeling of commitment to the integration project?
4. If you were Jane, what strategies would you use to improve the collaboration efforts of the academic and vocational teachers in designing the integration project?
5. In this case study, Ross and Elizabeth gave reasons for feeling negative toward the integration project. What other reasons might they have to feel negative toward integrating vocational and academic education?
6. How could the career exploration project help set the stage for eliminating the general curriculum at Bakersfield High School?
7. Should integration activities start at the ninth grade level as Jane perceived, or can they just as well start at the eleventh and twelfth grade levels? Why or why not?
8. What can Jane do to ensure the project continues beyond one year?
Ten teachers were interested in attending the conference and applied for the funds. The two selected to attend were Kevin Bradenberg, a business teacher, and Santanya Murphee, an English teacher. Both had been at Wilhollow for a number of years and were well-respected by other faculty. Part of the reason they were selected is that the two had already jointly developed a project that involved giving students a common assignment across their classes. The assignment included report preparation, word processing, and graphic presentation of information.
Before the regional meeting took place, Kevin and Santanya learned that they would participate in a special workshop at the conference on reading- and writing-in-the-content-area. While traveling to the meeting, they talked at length about how important technical reading and writing skills had been for their students to complete the reports assigned between their classes. They also discussed how they wanted to improve the projects next year so that they would be even more closely aligned with the on-the-job expectations their students would soon encounter. Kevin and Santanya were anxious to learn strategies they could use to help their students improve their technical reading and writing skills.
The workshop actually turned out to be better than Kevin and Santanya expected. In fact, they learned a number of down-to-earth strategies for helping students improve their work-related reading and writing skills. As an outcome of the workshop, they developed several new projects for students from their two classes to complete.
When they enthusiastically told their principal, Jack Kilgannon, about what they had learned, he suggested that they provide an inservice session for other teachers at the high school. Thus, all teachers at the high school could benefit from their attending the regional conference. Preparing for the inservice day proved quite time consuming, but both teachers were so convinced that what they had learned was of value to all teachers that they were more than willing to give the time needed. As the inservice day progressed, the other teachers at Wilhollow High School quickly grasped how they could use the reading- and writing-in-the-content-area strategies that Kevin and Santanya presented. Before the day was over, a number of the teachers had begun to discuss cooperative projects that could be carried out between their classes.
When the principal saw how effective the inservice session had been for the Wilhollow High School faculty, he suggested that Kevin and Santanya provide a similar inservice session for teachers from the Wilhollow Technical Center. Many students at Wilhollow High School attend the technical center, located five miles away, for their half-day occupational programs. The long-range goal for integrating vocational and academic education included involving teachers from both the high school and the technical center. Mr. Kilgannon saw the session that Kevin and Santanya had prepared as an initial step in getting members of the two faculty groups to cooperate with one another.
Teachers from the high school and the technical center had little, if any, contact with one another. However, two occupational teachers from the technical center, the welding teacher and the cosmetology teacher, had also attended the regional conference. They participated in sessions on integrating mathematics into the vocational curriculum. At the conference, the four teachers became friends and often ate their meals together. They could not help but comment on how strange it was that they had to attend a regional conference to get to know one another.
Since Kevin and Santanya were already friends with the two teachers from the technical center and had already prepared the materials needed for the inservice session, they did not hesitate in agreeing to provide the session for the technical center faculty. The day that they arrived to provide the session, they immediately sensed a feeling of hostility on the part of a number of the technical center teachers. The teachers noted that the examples Kevin and Santanya used did not relate to the materials their students read. Further, they said that students did very little writing in their classes. By the end of the day, Kevin and Santanya as well as the teachers at the technical center were all frustrated.
Later, when talking about the experience they had at the technical center with their principal, Kevin and Santanya began exploring why the inservice session had not been the success it had been at the high school. They knew from what they had learned at the regional conference that for the integration of vocational and academic education to occur at an effective level all faculty would have to cooperate. They were disappointed that the faculty at the technical center did not hold the same view.
2. To what extent is giving more emphasis to basic skills in classes an effective way to integrate vocational and academic education?
3. What should teachers know about one another and what others teach before they try to help one another?
4. What characteristics should inservice sessions have to be directly related to what teachers actually encounter in their classes?
5. To what extent is reading- and writing-in-the-content area a good place to start when developing activities that are integrated across classes? Are there other places to start?
6. How could Mr. Kilgannon have helped Kevin and Santanya avoid the hostility from the technical center faculty that they encountered?
Since the school first opened some 15 years ago, the Future Horizons faculty had prided themselves in student preparation. Students who completed programs at the school had gained the technical skills needed for a variety of employment opportunities in the city, including transportation, building construction, electronics, business, and marketing occupations. Students attend Future Horizons full-time in grades 10 through 12, receiving both vocational and academic instruction.
The faculty, who had arranged themselves at the faculty meeting in their typical pattern of vocational teachers on one side of the room and academic teachers on the other, were delighted to hear the principal's good news. They quickly started talking with colleagues seated next to them about how they would like to use the funds. The vocational teachers focused on equipment they needed; while the academic teachers focused on resource materials and computers they needed.
Then Ellen started to describe what use of the funds would involve. The teachers were to form teams of vocational and academic teachers to align curriculum so that students' communication skills would be improved. The math and science teachers inadvertently gave a sigh of relief. Even though they wouldn't get the extra funds, at least they wouldn't have to be involved in rewriting their curriculums and changing their instruction. Many of the vocational teachers did likewise, thinking that little would be required of them since communication skills were hardly the focus of their instruction; they concentrated on teaching technical skills.
As Ellen continued to explain the curriculum development task that would be done, the teachers soon realized they would all have to work together, focusing on developing both the written and verbal communication skills of the students. Ellen told the group she had written the proposal based on input from the school's advisory committee. One of the advisory committee's big topics for the past year had been the changing nature of jobs in the city. New jobs as well as those already in place were changing, requiring workers to communicate much more extensively than in the past. A report from the advisory committee had been prepared with the help of Ellen and two vocational teachers who served on the committee, Joe Wyzinsky and Marilyn Boyle.
The teachers, Ellen noted, would have to develop projects that the students completed across all their classes. All teachers would be involved. The vocational teachers looked across the room at the academic teachers and the academic teachers looked across the room at the vocational teachers. Each was thinking, "You are not going to step on my toes, you are not going to start changing what is in my territory." Joe and Marilyn did not realize that the advisory committee report would impact their classes.
As the meeting was drawing to a close, the principal asked the teachers to form teams. Of course, some of the teachers were more receptive than others to accepting the new challenge. Most of the teachers formed teams with other teachers they knew and felt comfortable with. A few who did not buy into the idea of changing what they were doing were assigned to teams by the principal. Many of the teachers not wanting change ended up on teams together. Ellen asked that by the next faculty meeting each team present some suggested ways that curriculum could be aligned between vocational and academic courses as required for use of the funds. She then distributed to each faculty member a copy of the proposal she had prepared.
At the faculty meeting three weeks later, some of the teams sat together while others kept to their old habits, with vocational teachers on the left and academic teachers on the right side of the room. A variety of comments could be heard throughout the room. For example, Judy Condor, an electronics teacher, noted to those around her, "If this plan for integration began before classes started, my blood pressure wouldn't be so high." Jim Arbaugh, an English teacher was heard saying, "This is not working; the vocational teachers don't see any need to change and I don't either." Margaret Sajac, a business teacher, commented, "Students need these communication skills before they come to my classes." And Zelinda Juarez, a home economics teacher noted, "I am already doing this--I always have."
When it was time for the committee reports on what changes might be feasible to help align the curriculums, the teachers mostly gave reasons as to why they shouldn't change. One of the committees even reported that they did not see how they could conduct a project that they had not designed.
2. Should vocational teachers focus on technical skills first, then give attention to other skills such as communication skills only as time allows? Give reasons why some teachers might favor this approach. Also, give reasons why some teachers would not favor it.
3. Why did so many teachers react negatively to the integration projects?
4. What are some ways that vocational and academic teachers can get to know one another and what others teach?
5. What suggestions can be provided to vocational and academic teachers to help them get started with the task of integrating their curriculums and their instruction?
6. Why would some vocational and academic teachers welcome this change while others might resist it?
7. How could the teacher teams have been formed so that they would have been more functional?
8. What are some "lessons learned" from this case study?
Four individuals applied for the workshop fellowships. Two were from the city's Bayside High School: Joyce Morris, an innovative physics teacher, and Walt Axelrod, a mathematics teacher who specializes in showing his students hands-on applications of math principles. Two were from the Bayside Technical Center: Genivive DeAngeles, the electronics teacher, and Walter Vaughan, the principal. The team members were all excited when they learned they received the fellowships, with the science and math teachers being especially pleased because they had been feeling left out of the ongoing integration activities at Bayside High. They were glad that Genivive was part of the team as her students consistently won recognition for outstanding performance in Vocational Industrial Clubs of America competitive events at the regional and state levels. Further, several had even won at the national level.
After the first three days of the workshop, Walter Vaughan began to wonder how in the world his team was going to face up to all of the extra work required of the teachers. Participants attending the workshop from five other high schools across the state were already complaining about the extra time needed to plan for integration activities. The workshop leaders decided to give the group the afternoon off so they could get together as teams and discuss how they were going to approach the integration process.
When the teachers from Bayside sat down together, Genivive, the electronics teacher, mentioned problems she had in teaching Ohms Law, which involves both math and science. All at once the three teachers started brainstorming about how they were going to approach integration. Within an hour, the three teachers had roughed out nine weeks worth of integration activities involving science, mathematics, and electronics applications. The science and math teachers were planning to take theory into application so they could reinforce the hands-on skills needed in electronics. As the afternoon progressed, the three teachers developed a matrix showing how concepts for math, science, and electronics overlapped. They planned a weekly project list of things they could do in either a team teaching situation or by actually switching classes with one another.
The next day, the Bayside team shared their plans with other participants at the workshop. Workshop leaders from the university were amazed at how quickly the Bayside team had laid the groundwork for what they planned to do.
During the latter part of the first semester following the workshop, the university workshop leaders came to Bayside to observe what the three teachers were doing and to discuss how the integration activities they had planned were progressing. They learned that most of the integration activities the team had planned turned out to be successful. Further, they learned that the team was busy planning additional integration activities.
The university people also spoke with Walter Vaughan, asking him how much extra time the three teachers had for planning. He reported that the three teachers meet before school, after school, during lunch, and at any other times they can manage to get together. He continued, "I could have helped these teachers secure extra planning time, but it was not necessary. They are so enthusiastic about what they are doing that they find time to get together."
2. What incentives--for example, workshop fellowships--will encourage teachers to integrate vocational and academic education?
3. To what extent does the availability of planning time impact on integration?
4. What are some possible reasons why the Bayside science, math, and electronics teachers were able to work together so effectively?
5. Why did the team approach used by the Bayside science, math, and electronics teachers seem to work? How could you apply the team approach to integration at your school?
During the next several weeks, Melissa continued to think of ways the physical science concepts she taught could be demonstrated in the machine tool laboratory. She decided that at the next integration session planned for the last Thursday of the month, she would talk with Wendell about bringing her students to the machine tool laboratory. They could then gain first-hand knowledge of how to apply the concepts she taught. Before the meeting started, Melissa talked with Wendell and learned that he would be glad to have his students serve as hosts for the physical science students. Melissa and Wendell agreed on three class dates that the students would visit: the first Thursday of the next three months.
In preparation for the students' first visit, Melissa went to the machine tool laboratory before school on Tuesday morning. She and Wendell discussed and agreed on what concepts would be demonstrated and on which pieces of equipment; they also agreed that Wendell's students would operate the equipment, and that Wendell would describe what was happening. Melissa would then explain the physical science concepts being used.
When the "big day" arrived for the first visit from the physical science students, Wendell and his students had everything ready and had even practiced the demonstrations they would give. As the demonstrations proceeded, Wendell realized that he did not use the same terminology as Melissa in discussing what was happening in the demonstrations. He felt that her terminology was much more impressive.
Later in the day, Wendell was discussing with another vocational teacher what happened when the physical science class came to his laboratory. Wendell explained, "Before I have the physical science students visit again, I feel as if I need to brush up on my terminology. It is difficult for me to put a label on things the way that Melissa does. I know what all the things are, what they do, and how they work, but I don't use the proper terminology. I felt inadequate in describing things. At times, I felt as if the physical science students were looking at me as if I were kind of dumb. When planning the visit, Melissa did not say anything to me about the terminology being a problem."
He continued, "Melissa and I need to sit down together so that when the students visit again we act as a team. The situation for this initial visit was one of her being a visitor and my being a speaker without the basic knowledge needed for the subject I was discussing."
2. Is it a good idea to have academic classes, such as the physical science class in this case, visit vocational classes to have hands-on demonstrations of academic concepts? Why or why not?
3. What help does Wendell need so that he will gain confidence in his ability to demonstrate the application of academic concepts?
4. Why didn't Melissa recognize the problem with Wendell's use of the terminology prior to her students visiting the machine tool laboratory?
5. How can vocational and academic teachers effectively share information about what they teach and the terminology they use?