How Can I Fix It?

by Cuban, Larry

• ISBN13: 9780807740491
• ISBN10: 0807740497
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Teachers College Pr

Summary

With this highly accessible and unique little guide, Larry Cuban offers educators indispensable tools to make sense of the daily complexities they encounter in their work. Teachers face dozens of classroom situations where conflicts occur. Similarly, principals wrestle with school issues that call for changes in attitudes, behaviors, and procedures. Because the process is so familiar, even expert teachers and principals often have difficulty in explaining what it is that they do and how they go about solving problems and coping with dilemmas in their classrooms and schools. Using concrete and varied examples drawn from the workplace, Cuban presents vivid and provocative case studies of practitioners' experiences in urban and suburban schools that deal with the routine conflicts of school. He draws on his own extensive experience in public schools and his research into teaching and administration to set forth a practical framework for identifying, defining, and coping with both puzzling problems and tension-filled dilemmas. A much-needed resource for both new and experienced practitioners, How Can I Fix It?focuses on common skills that practitioners have?but seldom take time to consider?and applies these skills to concrete situations.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Framing Problems and Dilemmas	p. 3
What Is a Problem?	p. 4
The Problem-Solving Process	p. 5
Framing a Problem: The Blame Trap	p. 8
Tame and Wicked Problems (a.k.a. Dilemmas)	p. 9
Analyzing a Dilemma	p. 12
Is the Distinction Between Tame Problems and Dilemmas Useful?	p. 14
The Case of the Disappointed High-School Department Head	p. 17
Questions	p. 20
How to Analyze Situations in Framing Problems and Dilemmas	p. 20
Reframing Problems and Dilemmas	p. 22
Common Questions That Arise When Practitioners Begin Reframing Problems and Dilemmas	p. 27
Applying Problem and Dilemma Framing to Actual Cases	p. 31
The Parent-Teacher Conference	p. 32
Questions	p. 34
Placing Students at Christa McAuliffe Elementary School	p. 34
Questions	p. 35
The Trials of a First-Year Teacher	p. 35
Questions	p. 40
Change	p. 41
Thinking and Doing Change	p. 41
Types of Planned Change	p. 43
Incremental Changes	p. 43
Fundamental Changes	p. 44
Is the Distinction Between Incremental and Fundamental Change Important?	p. 46
Applying Concepts of Change to Actual Cases	p. 47
Making Hummer a Good School	p. 51
Janice Sunshine's 5th Grade Class	p. 53
Questions	p. 56
The Case of the Disappointed High-School Department Head: My Answers to Questions	p. 57
Reframing the Dilemma of the Disappointed High-School Department Head	p. 61
Notes	p. 63
References	p. 67
About the Author	p. 69
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