When Standardization Replaces Innovation
Imagine your principal has commissioned another teacher to "fix" your classroom by rearranging the furniture and taking down students' work to make more room for posting school rules.
Imagine you are a teacher in an inner-city elementary school. You are dedicated to providing your students with a rigorous academic education, and to creating a caring and stable environment. Today you arrive early, as usual, to review student work and prepare the day's lessons. As you walk into your classroom, you find it totally rearranged: All of your students' work has been taken down from the walls, the desks are rearranged, and new, ready-made posters have been put up to replace the student work. This is not a case of vandalism, you discover. The principal has commissioned another teacher to "fix" your classroom by putting the furniture in proper order and making more room for posting school rules and motivational slogans.
After hearing this story from a public school teacher in the nation's capital, I began to think about my own experience and how professional autonomy affects not only the quality of my work, but also of my life. Since I work with teachers, I've been tuned in to the decidedly unprofessional way they are often treated. Only recently, however, have I started thinking more critically about what the differences are between my professional life as a researcher at a nonprofit organization and that of a public school teacher.
Every day, I arrive at work with specific tasks I need to accomplish. But how I accomplish them is up to me. I decide when and how I will get my work done, making the needed phone calls or visiting colleagues at times of the day that best meet my workload. I also have the opportunity to experiment with new ways of approaching problems. Sometimes this means learning that the first plan didn't work and trying something new. While I'm held accountable, I am not penalized for preliminary failure, so long as I meet the goal in the long term. My supervisors trust that I will produce high- quality work in a timely manner, yet the hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute details of how I get there are up to me. This kind of autonomy makes the work environment tolerable—and makes me love and...
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