Educational values and economic constraints at Pennsbury schools (Pennsylvania).

摘要

The purpose of the Pennsbury School District is to provide for the educational needs of its students. It accomplishes this by using resources to establish schools and to facilitate the education that takes place in the schools. These resources are economic, like labor and capital, as well as non-economic, like knowledge and beliefs. The supply of resources is limited, but the educational needs are practically limitless. Therefore, the demand for resources can be expected to exceed the supply. In this situation, Pennsbury will have to seek the optimum allocation of resources to produce educationally valuable results. In order to accomplish this allocation, Pennsbury administrators need to know what educational results are most valuable and how to allocate resources to accomplish these results. This qualitative research case study identifies the educational values of respected Pennsbury educators. These values are the beliefs, norms and practices reported by the educators to be important to teaching and learning. The few most important values are described, and relationships between them are explored. In addition, the study investigates tensions between educational values and resource allocations that educators have experienced or observed. Advice from the educators about how to reconcile educational values and economic constraints is then reported. The study concludes with an examination of policy implications and a presentation of recommendations for governance, administration and education at Pennsbury.