Annotated Bibliography
Concepts, Liberty. "Teacher Autonomy Definition." The Glossary of Education Reform. Great Schools Partnership, 12 Aug. 2014. Web. 27 Feb. 2017.
This source gives an excellent background information on what exactly “teacher autonomy” is and then it talks about all the basics the average person should know about it. It first discusses the pro and cons and then details the issues and problems surrounding it. It then goes more into detail about the testing, curriculum, and standard policies. This source is different from my others because it just gives background information about teacher autonomy as a whole, whereas my other sources go deeper into the issue. The one weakness this source has is that it is not a peer reviewed, academic, or scholarly source. This means that it is not really backed up by anything. However, it does come from the Glossary of Education Reform which I would consider to be relatively decent source, even if it is not peer reviewed. I found this article interesting mostly because I think it is very helpful in understanding just the very basics of teacher autonomy.
Greene, David. "The Long Death of Creative Teaching." U.S. News. U.S. News and World Report L.P., 14 Mar. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.
This source basically talks all about the Common Core Standards and gives a brief overview of the history and the background behind it. This would be important to my research because it gives basic ideas about the origin of the standards and would give my audience a solid background to understand what exactly Common Core Standards are. This would then further their understanding of my overall topic and how the standards ultimately effect both teachers and students alike. This source is different from my other sources because it only focuses on the Common Core Standards and not really on my topic, but it is necessary background information that is useful. This source is one of my non-scholarly sources but I still believe it is reliable because it came from the U.S. News website and I have seen similar information from other places which means the content is most likely true.
Harbour, Kristin E., et al. "A Brief Review of Effective Teaching Practices that Maximize Student Engagement." Preventing School Failure 59.1 (2015): 5-13. Print.
This source is useful because it highlights the fact that how teachers choose to teach is directly correlated to how students learn and furthermore, how well they learn. It also focuses on how teaching styles can affect all types of student engagement; behavioral, emotional, and cognitive. This source also touches on the ideas of high-stakes testing and educational accountability, which are two very important topics that go hand in hand with teacher autonomy. This source is like all my others sources in that it focuses on issues that are correlated with teacher autonomy. It is different from my other sources in that it does not directly talk about autonomy but instead focuses more on how teaching affects the actual students. It is important to note that the students are some of the biggest factors when it comes to the idea of teacher autonomy. The bit of information I found most interesting about this source is how it tied in high stakes testing and accountability into the issue. Other than the standards teachers must follow, those two things probably have the biggest impacts on overall autonomy.
Koehler, Michael. "Teacher Autonomy: Just how Far have we Come?" Clearing House 64.1 (1990): 51. Print.
This source is pretty much talking about teachers and the decisions they make as well as school board members and administrators and overall, how those decisions affect them and their students. It also hits upon the idea of a laissez-faire approach in education and the separate pros and cons of that. This source relates to my research paper topic in that it questions the idea of teacher autonomy and further questions the role teachers have in their own decision making. This source is different from my other sources because it talks less about teacher autonomy and more about the decisions teachers make, yet it still relates to teacher autonomy. One unique weakness I think this paper personally has it that it isn’t written very well. There seems to be just a bunch of facts put together and they don’t flow very well yet there is still decent and peer reviewed information. Overall, I found the idea of “laissez-faire” very interesting, especially when talking about teaching standards.
Nawaz, Qayyum, et al. "Effect of Cooperative Learning on the Academic Achievement and Self Concept of the Students at Elementary School Level." Gomal University Journal of Research 30.2 (2014): 127-35. Print.
This sources focuses on how elementary school students learn as well as concepts of academic achievement and cooperative learning. It also discusses the ideas of personality, emotional learning, and different educational techniques when it comes to elementary school kids. This source is like some of my other source because it talks about how certain things affect students and student learning. It is different from all my other sources because it really hones in on just elementary school students and how they learn. I found this source really interesting because it talks a lot about how personality can affect how students learn as well as how teachers teach.
Parker (nee Richardson), Gemm. "Teachers' Autonomy." Research in Education 93.1 (2015): 19-33. Print.
This source is incredibly useful to my research paper because it really highlights the whole idea of just how important teacher autonomy is and it also brushes against the idea of how certain educational reform has impacted teacher autonomy. What I found most interesting about this source is how it talks about how teachers need a certain amount of freedom combined with other things like their training and content to be exceptional beneficial teachers. This source essentially backs up my entire paper topic by giving a lot of useful and well written comments to explain the overall theories and ideas well. This source is also unique in that is discusses how teacher autonomy affects and influences teachers’ perceptions as well as the limits and genres of autonomy. In this way, it gives me a different view of teacher autonomy that could be useful in just understanding.
Tedx Talks. Shut Up! And Let Me Teach: Ending the Assault on Teacher Autonomy. Chandra Shaw. TedxlscTomball. Online Video Clip. Youtube, 10 February 2016.
This source is incredibly important, in fact, I would say that this source, the video, is what inspired my research paper topic. In summary, it is a Ted Talk that deals with the issue of teachers not being able to teach creatively because they are being suppressed by standards that the government and their local counties and cities and even states are putting on them. The speakers main point is that it should be okay for teachers to teach creatively and not only follow boring standards if it means that they are learning the information. The speaker also hits upon the idea that most of the people implementing these standards are not teachers and do not have any experience inside a classroom or any knowledge about how a child best learns. That being said, some people should back away from enforcing these and, like the title says, let teachers, teach. The one weakness this source may have is that it is a video and it is a Ted Talk, which means that it isn’t not academic, peer-reviewed or scholarly. However, it is still important because it really brings up the huge issue of teacher autonomy in a large way.
Toscano, Michael. "The Common Core: Far from Home." Academic Questions 26.4 (2013): 411-28. Print.
Overall, this paper touches on the idea of the Common Core Standards and talks about the implications that it has in our schools as well as with our teachers. It focuses a lot on how the Common Core Standards were created to improve Americas schools and in doing that, improve our economy. It also touches on multiple initiatives that were made to help our schools such as the infamous “No Child Left Behind” act and others that our countries leaders put into action. This source also talks about “top down” and “bottom up” approaches which is useful. This source relates to my other sources in that it talks about the standards and why they were implemented in the first place, which gives a good background and history for my overall topic of teacher autonomy. I really thought that this article was interesting because it focuses on topics that I do not know much about but I think that I could definitely use them in my research paper.
Wallender, Jennifer. "The Common Core State Standards in American Public Education: Historical Underpinnings and Justifications." Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin 80.4 (2014): 7-11. Print.
This source is another article talking about the Common Core Standard except this time, it is a peer reviewed source, which means it is a bit more reliable than my other source talking about the standards. This source highlights a lot of the general basics of Common Core but it focuses on Math and English. It also overviews the basics of what the Common Core Standard aims to do as a program. This information is the most useful and it is the biggest reason I chose to use it. Although it does not directly relate to my research topic, it does provide important background information that is imperative for my audience to know and understand. This source will hopefully help my overall research question become much more clear. This source is interesting to me because it talks about the start of the standards and what the developers intended to do and from personal experience, I already see the ways the standards succeeded and failed.
Yurdakul, Bunyamin. "Perceptions of Elementary School Teachers Concerning the Concept of Curriculum." Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice 15.1 (2015): 125-39. Print.
This source is very useful because it focuses on curriculums and how elementary teachers perceive their own curriculums and how they should teach. This source is a bit of a tangent off my research paper topic but it still relates and I know I can use it to provide important information because curriculum goes hand in hand with how teachers choose to teach creatively which then goes back to teacher autonomy. Often teachers are so limited by the curriculum that they can’t teach the way they want to and this source gives many examples of that through the genre of curriculums. The source also mentions how certain other factors have an effect and need to be taken into consideration. Factors like teacher and student characteristics, motivation, content, resources, and time. Overall I found this source interesting because it gave an overview of how other concrete things can affect a teacher and teacher autonomy.