Wood, 1994

Wood, S. (1994). Collaborating to change the psychological culture of the school: Effects on teachers of a goal theory approach. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1994). Dissertation Abstracts International, 56, 57.

In 1989-90, a University of Michigan team replicated the Ames program with 29 teachers in 5 local schools. They found that school-level policies worked in opposition to task-focused strategies that teachers were trying to implement in their classrooms. Policies like honor roll, reading program rewards, year to year placement from task to ability oriented classrooms were all perceived by teachers as negatively influencing their work in implementing goal change. Teachers' good intentions to make their individual classrooms as task-oriented as possible are sometimes undermined by the existence of schoolwide policies that stress ability goals.

Suggests that teachers, like students are subject to the goal stresses in their environment and in turn put similar stresses on their subjects. "If we are to create a task-focused environment for students, we've got to work in one."

Issues relating to the schedule, the needs of gifted and talented students, and the availability of electives like band took precedence, and not only inhibited change but demoralized the members of the [leadership] team. It seems to me they did not follow their own advice, grouping of gifted kids, departmentalized approach to curriculum, scheduling by groups of ability all fall into the kinds of things that should be changed. But they describe these things as unchangeable, constraints.