Teacher Autonomy in a Site-Managed Charter School: Views of Autonomy, Autonomy Support, and Their Educational Impact.

The purpose of this study was to discover how pre-service teachers (PSTs), classroom teachers, and administrators in an urban charter school perceive their own levels of professional autonomy and administrative support by the school, and how the balance of autonomy and support impact their instructional practices. In my aim to construct a deep understanding of the many viewpoints, I designed and implemented this research as a single case study of Highland Charter School (a pseudonym), in a Midwestern U.S. city. This study involved seven elementary and middle school teachers, three pre-service teachers completing the student teaching component prior to college graduation, six building administrators, and one administrator at a local university. In this project, the case is an independent charter school serving mainly students of low socioeconomic backgrounds, from Kindergarten through Eighth-Grade. Originally intended to focus on instructional technology, I began the study with an open online survey and unstructured interviews. The iterative data collection and analysis process I followed allowed me to quickly identify weak areas within the original protocol and helped me to redesign the work as a much broader case study, focused on all areas of teaching innovation as effected by teacher autonomy and administrative support. At the beginning, the interviews were loosely structured and informed by classroom observations. As I became familiar with the different teachers, the interview questions became more focused but remained open-ended. Constant comparison of participants’ approaches and their reflections helped to reveal their own beliefs about student engagement and the importance of teacher autonomy in meeting student needs. By TEACHER AUTONOMY AND AUTONOMY SUPPORT IN A CHARTER SCHOOL 3 developing partnerships with these teachers, employing several data sources, and leaving a clear audit trail, I worked to establish and maintain reliability within the project. There were many lessons to be learned throughout this endeavor. First, Highland’s leaders had cultivated an environment which balanced professional autonomy with administrative support. However, the autonomy was defined differently by each player, depending on his or her role in the school. Overall, teachers felt empowered and supported by the school administration, but they desired more direct guidance in terms of classroom technology and preservice teacher training. Teachers were encouraged to explore creative teaching strategies to meet the needs of their exceptionally diverse student body, and the Common Core was viewed by all as merely a supportive document to help teachers develop learning objectives for their children. Teacher agency extended to their use of technology, and was generally seen as a tool for learning rather than a centerpiece. Finally, instructional planning was deeply impacted by the personnel’s shared commitment to character education, and their endeavor to meet student needs through project-based learning. TEACHER AUTONOMY AND AUTONOMY SUPPORT IN A CHARTER SCHOOL 4