The teacher and the system

 The Teacher and the System

 The 'good teacher' inside of individuals is a potential. The teaching system that socializes people into teachers, or socializes the entire society to value teaching, education and the teaching profession is the extant reality. The emphasis on evaluation must address both the teacher and the system.

Part of the answer to a good educational system is the teacher, but let's not exaggerate the personal responsibility. There is an institution of education which dovetails with several other institutions. If the connections between the institutions, and within each institution, are too far apart, too differentiated, and not integrated enough, then individuals stick out as problems when the institution does not produce achievement. There are many stakeholders who are responsible from parents, to community leaders and politicians, to universities and especially graduate schools, to professional organizations, to unions, and ultimately to funding decisions made at the political level - the primary system of the social system!

Blaming the teacher is only appropriate in certain cases, most teachers having qualified through the university system by acquiring credentials. Supervision of teachers is perhaps an especially important key area because individuals have to be socialized on the job to perform; resources and training for the specific curricula and student population - the school or community - must be present and must be good for results to be forthcoming.

Look to the organizational dynamics of schools and schooling as a system, an institution. For example, you can teach a curriculum as best as you possibly can but if the students are closed, will not pay attention, or do the reading, education does not work. Getting under the surface problems to motivations, values and especially norms in the community, historically, and socially is very important to creating change in the teaching-learning dynamics in the classroom. 

Some teachers can bear the burden of the entire social force and come through looking good with high rates of student approval and achievement, but these stars are few. More importantly is the issue of motivation, norms and values regarding learning, lifelong learning, not just for the degree, or for the job. This enters into questions of the spirit of a people, their interests, and their appreciation of knowledge!

Multidimensionality

 Multidimensionality

Multidimensionality is an approach to complex problems like action or order that rejects linear analysis and one-dimensional thought. One-dimensional thinking is usually empirical but can be normative where material conditions and social problems are minimized. 

Multidimensionality means that all dimensions are considered and in this sense is considered formal although strictly formal analysis may conflate dimensions or displace one level of analysis by another. For example, one critic will evaluate a theory for its normative emphasis while another critic will emphasize the focus on empirical, material conditions. 

Multidimensional analysis takes the variety of variables and the levels of analysis into consideration; presuppositions and assumptions are analyzed, the subjectivity of actors and groups are examined, objective conditions and events are related to the normative order and the actual behaviors. 

Multidimensionality entails complexity and rejects reduction or simplification. For example, each theorist is faced with selectivity issues like expectations, belief systems or ideology, culture, and systems such as personality and society or social interactions. She does not merely address an issue as normative or empirical or an exigency, but interrelates these levels. And, the theorist is constantly taking up contingent processes and describing their relevance and impact. 

However, multidimensionality is not just methodological or epistemological, presuppositions are addressed; multidimensional approaches synthesize all relevant theories as analytic elements.