Chapter 6: Review of Research on Teacher Participation in School Decision Making

Teacher participation in school decision making remains a persistent theme in this country's educational reform movement. In 1986, the Car-negie Commission called for "giving teachers a greater voice in decisions that affect the school " (p. 57). A second Carnegie Foundation report based on a national survey of public school teachers found that a majority of teachers are not "asked to participate in such crucial matters as teacher evaluation, staff development, [and] budget " (Carnegie Foundation, 1988, p. I).1 In 1986, an association of the nation's governors called for teachers to become "involved integrally in making [school] decisions " (National Governor's Association, 1986, p. 6). Finally, the nation's largest teachers' union and administrator organization jointly produced a report calling for teacher participation in "identifying the purposes, priorities and goals of the school " (National Education Association/National Association for Secondary School Principals, 1986, p. 16). These observations have the common goal of increasing teacher in-volvement in a wide array of school decisions (e.g., teacher development and evaluation and facilities planning). School governance councils, for example, have been implemented in various forms to achieve this aim. The research literature on teacher participation has been outpaced by these developments, however, because discussion of teacher involvement is often restricted to a narrow range of instructional policy-making areas, such as shaping the curriculum (Conley, Schmidle, & Shedd, 1988). Pol-icymakers who seek to provide teachers with the broader decision-making responsibilities clearly called for in the reform reports might be helped