| The purpose of this study was to examine the meaning of teacher quality as it is enacted in practice at the local school level. Specifically, I sought the voices, experiences, and perspectives of administrators, teachers, and students to identify what they envision and know quality teaching to be. I explored the individual and collective dimensions of teacher quality in a way that is sensitive to the complicated and nuanced features of the school context. This study drew on the experiences of urban educators and their expertise that are often not captured in research and may reveal and demonstrate that there needs to be a shift in focus on quality teaching from the individual to the school.;This study used a qualitative research design grounded in the interpretivist paradigm, in order to understand quality teaching as a more complex and multidimensional activity. The findings of this study are: (1) teacher quality involves an integration of affect, expertise, and experience while at the same time taking into consideration the context and conditions of teacher work as they affect the individual teacher and the teaching and learning process; and (2) teacher quality may be more usefully thought of as an organizational rather than as an individual phenomenon, since teaching occurs within a community of learners formed in groups within a school organization.;The meta-themes of this study were six-fold and include: (1) quality teachers accept the pressure of a need to know; (2) communities of teachers enact quality together; (3) teaching is entirely about relationships; (4) quality teaching is mutually responsive with school context; (5) school culture enables quality teaching and learning; and (6) organizational learning sustains a culture of quality.;The findings of this study are useful to several audiences, including, but not limited to, regional administrators, principals, teachers, new teacher mentors and coaches, and teacher associations and unions. |
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