How Can I Fix It? Finding Solutions and Managing Dilemmas, An Educator's Road Map / Edition 1

by Larry Cuban

Overview

With this highly accessible and unique little guide, Larry Cuban offers educators indispensable tools to make sense of the daily complexities they encounter in their work. Teachers face dozens of classroom situations where conflicts occur. Similarly, principals wrestle with school issues that call for changes in attitudes, behaviors, and procedures. Because the process is so familiar, even expert teachers and principals often have difficulty in explaining what it is that they do and how they go about solving problems and coping with dilemmas in their classrooms and schools.

Using concrete and varied examples drawn from the workplace, Cuban presents vivid and provocative case studies of practitioners’ experiences in urban and suburban schools that deal with the routine conflicts of school. He draws on his own extensive experience in public schools and his research into teaching and administration to set forth a practical framework for identifying, defining, and coping with both puzzling problems and tension-filled dilemmas. A much-needed resource for both new and experienced practitioners, How Can I Fix It? focuses on common skills that practitioners have—but seldom take time to consider—and applies these skills to concrete situations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807740491
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	04/13/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Larry Cuban is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University. In addition to How Teachers Taught, his books include Teachers and Machines, Frogs into Princes: Writings on School Reform, Why Is It So Hard to Get Good Schools? and How Can I Fix It? Finding Solutions and Managing Dilemmas.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	1
Part I	Framing Problems and Dilemmas	3
	What Is a Problem?	4
	The Problem-Solving Process	5
	Framing a Problem: The Blame Trap	8
	Tame and Wicked Problems (a.k.a. Dilemmas)	9
	Analyzing a Dilemma	12
	Is the Distinction Between Tame Problems and Dilemmas Useful?	14
	The Case of the Disappointed High-School Department Head	17
	Questions	20
	How to Analyze Situations in Framing Problems and Dilemmas	20
	Reframing Problems and Dilemmas	22
	Common Questions That Arise When Practitioners Begin Reframing Problems and Dilemmas	27
	Applying Problem and Dilemma Framing to Actual Cases	31
	The Parent-Teacher Conference	32
	Questions	34
	Placing Students at Christa McAuliffe Elementary School	34
	Questions	35
	The Trials of a First-Year Teacher	35
	Questions	40
Part II	Change	41
	Thinking and Doing Change	41
	Types of Planned Change	43
	Incremental Changes	43
	Fundamental Changes	44
	Is the Distinction Between Incremental and Fundamental Change Important?	46
	Applying Concepts of Change to Actual Cases	47
	Making Hummer a Good School	51
	Janice Sunshine's 5th Grade Class	53
	Questions	56
Appendix A	The Case of the Disappointed High-School Department Head: My Answers to Questions	57
Appendix B	Reframing the Dilemma of the Disappointed High-School Department Head	61
	Notes	63
	References	67
	About the Author	69

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This new book is vintage Larry Cuban. His analysis of the centrality of
dilemmas in educational leadership is superb."
—Lee S. Shulman, President, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

“Three cheers for Larry Cuban! In a world of mega-solutions (standards, testing, vouchers, etc.) Cuban's slight, sane book reminds us that in schools lasting change comes incrementally, from the day-to-day decisions made by practicing teachers and principals. What a welcome relief for practitioners on the firing-line!”
— Tom Sobol, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Outstanding Educational Practice, Teachers College, Columbia University

“Teachers and administrators alike should read this book, particularly those who seek change and want to increase their understanding of the intractable dilemmas that continue to return to frustrate and haunt us."
—Lee Swenson, social studies teacher at Aragon High School, San Mateo, California