Learning Teaching from Experience: Multiple Perspectives and International Contexts 9781472512987, 9781472593313, 9781472509918

Table of contents :
FC
Half title
Also Available from Bloomsbury
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of figures and tables
Contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Learning teaching ‘from experience’: Towards a history of the idea Viv Ellis and Janet Orchard
Part 1 Multiple Perspectives on Learning Teaching from Experience
2 Acculturation or innovation? The pedagogical practices of teachers on an ambitious, alternative certification programme Daniel Muijs, Chris Chapman and Paul Armstrong
3 Learning from experience in teaching: A cultural historical critique Anne Edwards
4 The rhetoric of experience and ‘The Importance of Teaching’ Tom Are Trippestad
5 Learning from experience: A teacher-identity perspective Brad Olsen
6 Teachers’ storied experience: Rules or tools for action? Eli Ottesen
7 Already at work in the world: Fictions of experience in the education of teachers Madeleine Grumet
Part 2 Perspectives in International Contexts
8 The authority of experience, deficit discourse and teach for America: The risks for urban education Heidi Pitzer
9 Restoring higher education’s mission in teacher education: A global challenge from a Canadian perspective Elizabeth Sloat, Ann Sherman, Theodore Christou, Mark Hirschkorn, Paula Kristmanson, Lynn Lemisko and Alan Sears
10 Experience as a contextual basis to connect professional concerns and conditions of practice: A case study of teachers implementing a curricular reform in Italy Paolo Sorzio
11 Learning from experience as a continual process of design: A Norwegian case study Anne Line Witte
12 Vertical integration as a mode of professional production: Teachers’ resistance to the business of teaching Torie L. Weiston-Serdan and Sheri Dorn-Giarmoleo
Part 3 The Experience of Learning to Teach English, Maths and Science
13 Negotiating conflicting frames of experience: Learning to teach in an urban teacher residency Lauren Gatti
14 Developing knowledge for teaching from experience: Mathematics teaching and professional development in the United States of America Erik Jacobson
15 Creating a shared pedagogical language: Interpreting how teacher candidates learn from experience experiences in a science methods course Shawn Michael Bullock
Part 4 Afterword
16 The politics of learning to teach from experience Ken Zeichner
Index

Citation preview

Learning Teaching from Experience

Also Available from Bloomsbury Subject Knowledge and Teacher Education: The Development of Beginning Teachers’ Thinking, Viv Ellis Rethinking English in Schools: Towards a New and Constructive Change, Viv Ellis, Carol Fox and Brian Street Teacher Education and the Development of Practical Judgement, Ruth Heilbronn

Learning Teaching from Experience Multiple Perspectives and International Contexts Edited by Viv Ellis and Janet Orchard

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Viv Ellis, Janet Orchard and Contributors, 2014 Viv Ellis and Janet Orchard have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Volume Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the editors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-4725-0991-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Learning teaching from experience : multiple perspectives and international contexts / edited by Viv Ellis, Janet Orchard. pages cm ISBN 978-1-4725-1298-7 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4725-0517-0 (epub) -ISBN 978-1-4725-0991-8 (epdf) 1. Teachers--Training of. I. Ellis, Viv, 1965- II. Orchard, Janet, 1966LB1707.L43 2014 370.71’1--dc23 2013036205 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

For Jamie Lawes

Contents List of figures and tables Contributors Acknowledgements 1

Learning teaching ‘from experience’: Towards a history of the idea  Viv Ellis and Janet Orchard

ix x xiii

1

Part 1  Multiple Perspectives on Learning Teaching from Experience 2

3 4 5 6 7

Acculturation or innovation? The pedagogical practices of teachers on an ambitious, alternative certification programme  Daniel Muijs, Chris Chapman and Paul Armstrong Learning from experience in teaching: A cultural historical critique  Anne Edwards The rhetoric of experience and ‘The Importance of Teaching’  Tom Are Trippestad Learning from experience: A teacher-identity perspective  Brad Olsen Teachers’ storied experience: Rules or tools for action?  Eli Ottesen Already at work in the world: Fictions of experience in the education of teachers  Madeleine Grumet

21 47 63 79 95 109

Part 2  Perspectives in International Contexts 8

The authority of experience, deficit discourse and teach for America: The risks for urban education  Heidi Pitzer 9 Restoring higher education’s mission in teacher education: A global challenge from a Canadian perspective  Elizabeth Sloat, Ann Sherman, Theodore Christou, Mark Hirschkorn, Paula Kristmanson, Lynn Lemisko and Alan Sears 10 Experience as a contextual basis to connect professional concerns and conditions of practice: A case study of teachers implementing a curricular reform in Italy  Paolo Sorzio 11 Learning from experience as a continual process of design: A Norwegian case study  Anne Line Wittek

127

143

159 175

viii Contents

12 Vertical integration as a mode of professional production: Teachers’ resistance to the business of teaching  Torie L. Weiston-Serdan and Sheri Dorn-Giarmoleo

191

Part 3  The Experience of Learning to Teach English, Maths and Science 13 Negotiating conflicting frames of experience: Learning to teach in an urban teacher residency  Lauren Gatti 14 Developing knowledge for teaching from experience: Mathematics teaching and professional development in the United States of America  Erik Jacobson 15 Creating a shared pedagogical language: Interpreting how teacher candidates learn from experiences in a science methods course  Shawn Michael Bullock

207

223

239

Part 4  Afterword 16 The politics of learning to teach from experience  Ken Zeichner

257

Index

269

List of figures and tables Figures 9.1 Emergent self as reflective practitioner 14.1 One student’s incorrect labelling of fractions on a number line in Brian’s class 14.2 A reproduction of Diane’s representation of equivalent fractions 14.3 Diane remediating the student’s error: ‘How many halves do we have here? [Counting] one, two, three …’

152 228 228 229

Tables 2.1 2.2

Teacher self-efficacy scale mean scores 30 Responses to the head teacher survey on variability of quality (percentages) 31 2.3 Percentage of keywords relating to Teach First teacher characteristics 32 2.4 Responses to head teacher survey on innovative teaching methods (percentages) 33 2.5 Teach First participants’ views of their own pedagogical approaches (percentages) 41 2.6 ISTOF mean scores 42 10.1 A model of teachers’ learning from experience 163

Contributors Paul Armstrong is Research Officer for the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Global City Leaders project at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Shawn Michael Bullock is Assistant Professor of Science Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. His research focuses on how science teachers learn from experience. Chris Chapman is Professor of Educational Policy and Practice at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research interests focus on the improvement of educational outcomes in disadvantaged settings. Theodore Christou is Assistant Professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His teaching and research concern social studies, history and philosophy of education. Sheri Dorn-Giarmoleo is an activist, transdisciplinary educator and PhD candidate at the Claremont Graduate University, California, USA. Anne Edwards is Professor in the Oxford University Department of Education, UK, where she co-convenes the Oxford Centre for Socio-cultural and Activity Research. Viv Ellis is Professor and Head of Education at Brunel University, London, UK and Professor II at Bergen University College, Norway. Lauren Gatti is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA. She received her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. Madeleine Grumet is Professor of Education and Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, USA. She theorizes curriculum and teaching through lenses of feminism, psychoanalysis and the arts. Mark Hirschkorn is Associate Professor of Science/Teacher Education at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. He works on increasing Canadian teacher education collaboration.

Contributors

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Erik Jacobson is Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, USA. His research interests include teachers’ professional knowledge and mathematics teacher education. Paula Kristmanson is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and Researcher with the Second Language Research Institute of Canada. Lynn Lemisko is an Assistant Dean at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Her teaching and research interests include social studies/teacher education, history and philosophy of education. Daniel Muijs is Professor of Education at the University of Southampton, UK. He is currently mainly working in the areas of teacher effectiveness and school networks. Brad Olsen is Associate Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. Janet Orchard is based at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK, where she is PGCE Course Director. Eli Ottesen is Vice Dean at the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at the University of Oslo, Norway. Heidi Pitzer is a doctoral candidate at Syracuse University, USA. She specializes in the sociology of education, educational inequalities, teachers’ work and social justice education. Alan Sears is Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Ann Sherman is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Her research focuses on teacher education, early childhood and science education. Elizabeth Sloat is Professor at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Her research and teaching focus on teacher education, reading and writing development and large-scale assessment. Paolo Sorzio is a lecturer at the University of Trieste, Italy. His research interests include the study of professional development in educational settings and qualitative methods in education.

xii Contributors

Tom Are Trippestad is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Educational Research at Bergen University College, Norway. Torie L. Weiston-Serdan is a PhD graduate of the Claremont Graduate University, USA and a high school English teacher in Rancho Cucamonga, California, USA. Anne Line Wittek is Professor in Pedagogy at Vestfold University College, Norway. She researches learning and teaching in higher education from sociocultural/dialogical approaches to learning. Ken Zeichner is Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington, USA and Emeritus Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.

Acknowledgements As editors, we are grateful to the Society for Educational Studies for a Seminar Grant in 2011 that first brought together the contributors to this volume. We would also like to thank Phil Richards, Prabhat Rai and Ian Finlay, all of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, who helped to make the initial seminar such a success. Every chapter in this book has been peer-reviewed. In addition to the chapter authors themselves, we are also grateful to the following individuals who generously gave of their time in the review process: Gert Biesta (University of Luxembourg and Brunel University), Tony Burgess (University of London, Institute of Education), Ann Childs (University of Oxford), Ruth Heilbronn (University of London, Institute of Education), Lorraine Foreman Peck (University of Northampton), Morwenna Griffiths (University of Edinburgh), Jamie Lawes (Sydney Russell School, Dagenham), Meg Maguire (King’s College, London), Jane McNicholl (University of Oxford), Joce Nuttall (Australian Catholic University), Pam Sammons (University of Oxford), Gabriel Stylianides (University of Oxford) and Sue Walters (University of London, Institute of Education). Christine Preston has helped us with the mechanics of preparing the manuscript, and Boda Sedlacek offered invaluable support in the earlier stages. To both, we offer our sincere thanks. Viv Ellis and Janet Orchard May 2013

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Learning teaching ‘from experience’: Towards a history of the idea Viv Ellis and Janet Orchard

Introduction What do teachers learn ‘on the job’? And how, if at all, do they learn from ‘experience’? This book presents research-based perspectives from Europe and North America on perhaps the central problem in policy-making and professional practice – the role that experience plays in learning to teach in schools. In both policy and research, experience is often weakly conceptualized, sometimes simply used as a proxy for time – the weeks, months or years spent in a classroom. The longer you spend in a classroom, so it goes, the more experience you have accumulated and, therefore, the more effective you are assumed to be as a teacher. At the heart of this book, instead, lies an examination of the conceptualizations of experience in a range of educational research traditions, exemplified in a variety of empirical and theoretical studies, each focused on what and how teachers learn. Distinctive conceptualizations that inform the chapters that follow include school effectiveness, sociocultural psychology, the philosophy of education, the sociology of education, identity studies, critical pedagogy, activism and action research. However, no one perspective can claim privileged insight into what and how teachers learn from experience; rather, this is a matter for a truly educational investigation, one that is both close to practice and seeks to develop theory. Unlike many education research books, we have actively sought diverse perspectives on our guiding question: what and how do teachers learn from experience? The strength of such an approach is that, together, the chapters demonstrate the vibrancy of research traditions in Education, a discipline that draws on a variety of tools for knowledge creation and procedures for evaluation but one that is motivated by educational interests (cf. Biesta 2011, Ellis 2012).

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At a time when policy-makers in many countries seek to make teacher education an entirely school-based activity, Learning Teaching from Experience offers an essential examination of the evidence-base, the traditions of enquiry – and the limits of both.

Valuing experience: From traditional to alternative, from university-based to school-led Reforms to teacher education internationally are placing much greater emphasis on teachers learning to teach in extended practice periods in schools. In the UK this move is reflected in the rise of School Direct as one of the Coalition government’s distinctive reforms of teacher education (NCTL 2013). School Direct channels the funding for initial (pre-service) teacher education towards schools rather than to universities, even though the schools may, in the end, purchase services from university departments of education. In the US Urban Teacher Residencies – where trainee teachers or ‘residents’ are based in schools full-time – are expanding and are seen as one potential solution to the problems of the poverty-related attainment gap (in terms of pupils’ achievement) and the crisis of teacher recruitment and retention in urban schools (Berry et al. 2008). In other parts of the world, where strong higher education-based systems of teacher training have existed, new courses are being designed to incorporate longer periods of student teaching in schools. Teach First Norway (modelled on the US Teach for America programme) is just one example of a new ‘alternative’ programme that places a higher emphasis on school-based experience (and often in ‘challenging’ or ‘urban’ contexts) than is the case in other teacher education programmes in those countries (http://www.teachfirstnorway.no). Non-profit as well as for-profit ‘alternative’ providers of teacher education promote their programmes with reference to ‘on the job’ training and classroom relevance, and this is seen as distinct from ‘traditional’ university-based programmes. In many countries, school-based, ‘experiential’ training is expanding, often in close relationships with philanthropists and charities that are seeking to reform urban schooling in particular (Saltman 2010, Lipman 2011). Classroom ‘experience’ has come to be highly prized within the value-systems of teacher education reform and often in distinction to (or even opposition to) theory, reflection or deliberative discourse of any kind. Experience simply becomes a proxy for going through the motions, motions determined by someone else and for someone else’s meaning and purposes, but with high exchange value. To the question ‘Are you experienced?’, there can be only one good answer, it seems.



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Learning from experience – and experience in learning – has been of enduring interest to philosophers, psychologists and educators as well as featuring in everyday conversations about how we as human beings interact in the social world (‘What an experience!’). In the next section we explore some of the history of the ‘learning from experience’ idea; we show how questions elaborated in classical philosophical texts have been shaped and reshaped through various disciplinary, social and political lenses, from Aristotle to the twenty-first century. We do not attempt to offer a comprehensive sweep of more than 2,000 years of intellectual history, of course, and our use of the preposition towards is meant to signal that limitation. Instead, we hope to draw out some of the lines of thinking and the shifts in meaning around learning from experience as an idea, particularly in relation to learning to teach, as they are relevant to the chapters and arguments that follow.

‘Learning from Experience’: Towards a history of the idea A philosophical story: Empiricists, rationalists and beyond Recognition of the role that experience plays in human learning and development is far from new. Indeed, interests in learning from experience can be traced back from the present day, through the Western philosophical tradition to Aristotle. He shared with Plato the view that the primary purpose of learning was preparing for a life lived well. Yet teacher and pupil disagreed fundamentally on the source of such knowledge. Plato regarded ‘the Good’ as an abstract form or ideal to be perceived by a particular intellectual ability that is innate to a select few and independent of experience of the social world (1987). Aristotle rejected this assumption (1953), regarding all citizens capable of understanding both what a flourishing life entails at the level of principle and how practically one might live it. He suggested that the kind of knowledge they require combines a theoretical grasp of those abstract principles that underpin the notion of a good life with non-theoretical forms of how to know and to sense it (1953). Aristotle argued that lived experience – or, as he defined it, engagement in the common life with one’s fellows (1953) – is necessary to the formation of the knowledge and understanding, as well as personal characteristics and dispositions that enable people to flourish. This process of social education begins in early childhood, through the sensation of enjoyment when engaged in activity

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(characterized by Aristotle as ‘virtuous’ activity) and is further enhanced by ethical reflection as the rational faculties of the child develop. This view that shared, lived experience is integral to the development of human understanding is then taken up by other philosophers. To pursue further the current example of learning moral understanding from experience, Hegel (1991) suggested that moral understanding begins to develop as people become immersed in the habits, customs and traditions of the society in which they are situated. However, while that experience is necessary to understanding, it is not sufficient; the complex, dialectical nature of that learning process needs also to be appreciated. Rather than absorbing ‘truths’ literally and at face value from exposure to practice, people develop the capacity to reflect on them critically over time. This process takes place on several levels; at the micro level, within the consciousness of individual people as well as the macro level of society itself, as groups of people within civil society wrestle with the tension between those norms reflected in custom and practice and beliefs particular to individuals. Does what is being learned by this means count as ‘knowledge’? Some philosophers have tentatively suggested that it does. Simply put, ‘empiricism’ is a term used in philosophy to refer to a broad theoretical approach which argues that experience is of primary importance in giving us a posteriori knowledge of the world (a posteriori literally means ‘from what comes after’, in Latin) acquired through perception using our senses (Markie 2013). The English philosopher John Locke (1997), writing in the seventeenth century, famously described the human mind as a ‘tabula rasa’ at birth, constructed over time by those concepts or ‘ideas’ which constitute human knowledge and which derive from lived experience, sensations and reflections. Hume (1955), writing in eighteenth-century Scotland, introduced an important distinction between impressions, understood as the immediate contents of our current experiences, and which we derive from our sensations, feelings, emotions; and those perceptions that we aggregate over time from those impressions. George Berkeley went further (in McCracken and Tipton 2000), arguing that we exist only in our minds as perceivers and in those things that we perceive. Experience tells me that there are acts of perceiving, willing, feeling and so on, which belong to me, and that I have sensations of a variety of kinds which usually fall into regular and predictable patterns. No experience can tell me of the existence of matter or of material substances that are alleged to exist independently of perceivers. Together, Locke, Berkeley and Hume are known as empiricists with a shared



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commitment to the development of knowledge through sensory, ‘empirical’ experience. A rationalist might begin to challenge empiricist claims of this kind by drawing attention to knowledge of concepts or abstract ideas that appear to defy sense experience. For rationalists, the development of knowledge is primarily intellectual rather than experiential. Taking the example of algebra, where does our knowledge and understanding of quadratic equations come from? Perhaps, the mind is not a blank slate, the German philosopher Leibniz suggests (1973), but rather a block of marble, ‘the veins of which determine what sculpted figures it will accept’, and reason, in some form or other, provides that additional knowledge about the world a priori (meaning, in Latin, ‘from what comes before’). In other words, there are some things that we know because concepts are part of our make-up as rational beings; our experiences of the external world trigger processes by which we come to consciously grasp these concepts and ideas. Descartes (1988) extended this notion to suggest that innate ideas that lie beyond human experience – for example ‘God’ – are placed in our minds at creation. Kant (1998), building on Leibniz’s earlier thinking, argued that our mind structures our experience through conceptual categories, such as space and time, and cause and effect, that are somehow built into it. Thus we cannot, as the empiricists argued, acquire knowledge of the world directly through our senses; but nor can we, as the rationalists argued, have purely a priori rational knowledge of the world without experience. Even our understanding of causation will have been determined by the experiences that make such understanding meaningful. Our inability to explain how certain concepts are gained from experience alone should instead lead us to accept a more limited view of our ability to describe and understand the world. A rationalist might retort that evolutionary selection is involved (e.g., Carruthers 1992); that is to say, we come to know certain things at particular stages of our life as our minds naturally develop. Were a more detailed consideration of these different schools of thought possible, we would discover that the views of individual philosophers on this matter are more subtle and complex (Loeb 1981, Kenny 1986) than a simple division between empiricist and rationalist viewpoints. Unfortunately, though, the perception of a binary relationship between theoretical and practical forms of understanding, academic and situated forms of knowing, ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’ (Ryle 1963), does persist in discussions of professional knowledge by teachers and teacher educators (Heilbronn 2008). Something of

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importance is being noted in such discussions, but the distinction mustn’t be overplayed. Each matters, but neither category on its own is entirely coherent (Hirst 1990). John Dewey (1960), at the beginning of the twentieth century, sought to make sense of the relationship between these two kinds of knowing in ways that remain highly influential almost a century later. Dewey developed the notion of ‘experimental empiricism’ in response to what he saw as an unhelpful quest for certainty in knowledge by rationalist thinkers that acted as a distraction from the task of understanding practical knowledge of the kind needed for teaching. This kind of knowledge is contingent, Dewey argued, and uncertain. Learning is best understood as a scientific form of investigation and problem-solving, where ideas emerge from interactions. Dewey’s view of knowledge has been criticized for being at times ambiguous and under-determined. However, his argument shouldn’t be dismissed on these grounds alone because, as an argument, it captures something of the nature of professional knowledge worth developing by others and offers a useful way of thinking about the interrelationship between theory and practice.

An educational story: Experience as ‘the royal road to learning’ Whether or not John Dewey actually met the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky in Moscow in the 1920s (Prawat 2000), their two perspectives on learning and development have come to be regarded as having common aspects, if not quite being members of the same family. Greeno et al. (1996) termed the general approach ‘situative/pragmatist socio-historic’, drawing attention to shared concerns with an active engagement with context, the importance of the materiality of the social situation of development and the dialectical relationship between the person and the historically-developed tools they use to act on their situation. The situative/pragmatist socio-historic approach recognizes the importance of the person-in-context – the lived and shared experience of the developing subject – but does not regard the context as determining nor the subject as bound by or locked-into their situation. The approach is a radically optimistic one underpinned by modernist ideals of progress and with a future orientation. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that such an approach has been taken up – sometimes in fairly limited interpretations – by Education as a discipline and especially by educationists with a commitment to the development of schools as institutions and the professional preparation of teachers.



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Often such an approach can appear to have a very linear and rational view of learning and development. Active experimentation combined with rational choices will lead to progress, the situative/pragmatist socio-historic approach can seem to propose. Pedagogy comes over as a benign technology and one divorced from the raw messiness of life itself, what the feminist cultural studies scholar Elspeth Probyn called the ‘felt facticity’ of our experience in the social and material world (Probyn 1993). With regard to learning teaching, we underestimate the importance of felt facticity at the risk of evacuating the meaning of experience from teacher education. So, we know we may be drawn to teach because of the pleasure we think we will derive from working with young people or from an appreciation of the virtues of childhood and youth. We may be spurred on to get better at teaching by feeling rewarded by what individual students or their parents or carers say to us. Equally, we may feel despondent or ashamed when our efforts at engaging young people in pedagogic activity are rebuffed or when our authority as a teacher is exposed for what it is – the effect of a role and a conventional, hierarchical relationship and not a personal gift between peers. Experience as a concept has a strong emotional dimension and our emotional experience underpins what we often describe in purely abstract terms as ‘learning’. The scholar who has perhaps done most to draw attention to the meaning of experience in learning to teach is Deborah Britzman (e.g. 2003, 2007). Britzman has referred to the ways in which experience has come to be seen as ‘the royal road to learning’ (2007) – the most efficient, authentic and enduring means of acquiring knowledge. In recent years Britzman’s work has become more psychoanalytically-informed although her concerns with the felt facticity of the lived experience of learning to teach has been present since her earliest work. For Britzman now, the great ‘paradoxical repression’ of teacher education revolves around the experience of the student teacher: … newcomers learning to teach enter teacher education looking backward on their years of school experience and project it into the present. Teacher educators greet these newcomers as if they lack school experience and have no past. Both hold tight to deeply ingrained fantasies of education, playing out their childhoods through the idea of the teacher. They already know about good and bad students. Implicitly, the structure and ethos of teacher education rely on our childhood view: this oddly resistant childhood is cast in cement with the mantra, ‘we learn from experience’. So what can development actually mean when we cannot seem to leave our childhood of education? How is our field capable of changing itself, of developing responsibility for its representations, if

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Learning Teaching from Experience everyone involved in teacher education was once a child who grew up in school and so relies on their childhood archive of education? (Britzman 2007: 2)

Learning teaching from experience, for Britzman, is therefore something of an impossibility, a recursive exercise in creating and working through trauma in the autobiographical memory. Experience in teacher education is not merely an opportunity to accumulate fragments of knowledge but an occasion that demands increasing tolerance of increasing uncertainty. Although Britzman’s psychoanalytic perspective has done much to extend our understanding of experience in learning to teach, it would be wrong to oppose her emphasis on emotion and subjectivity with the emphasis on progress and rational choice in the situative/pragmatist socio-historic approach. In particular, Vygotsky’s writings have often been read through the particular lens of Western psychology and there has been a de-emphasis in such readings of the role of emotions in human development. Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie, for example, developed in his early work on the theatre, suggests emotional experience as pivotal in shaping our apprehension of the social world and therefore of our capacity to act in it (Van der Veer and Valsiner 1991). The relationship between perezhivanie and psychoanalytic understandings of emotions and development are underexplored in the literature.

Experience as ‘practice’ and the link to ‘quality’ Britzman’s earlier critique of experience in teacher education (2003, revised from 1993) was that ‘practice makes practice’; experience is not necessarily a royal road to learning anything new. Experience, in the ways it is used conventionally in the discourses of teacher education, is a fiction (see Grumet in this volume). That is not to say it is meaningless; far from it. Rather, Britzman intends to signal it as a construction, a narrative used for a particular purpose and one worth examining. Indeed, the examination of that narrative is likely to be helpful in surfacing the kinds of repressions Britzman thinks worth surfacing in the process of learning to teach. Britzman’s early critique can be read against the background of a certain kind of professionalization of teaching, one intended to raise its social status by providing an apparently more substantial and ‘scientific’ knowledge-base (see Ellis 2007, Chapter 3, for a discussion of this tradition). Such efforts were perhaps always doomed to be problematic given that the ownership of such a knowledge-base would always be likely to be contested in the case of a profession such as teaching (one so clearly linked to the state in modern



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democracies). So although different categories of professional knowledge might be created by various researchers and professional bodies, these categories were themselves always contingent on the definition of teaching as an activity, the objects and outcomes of teaching and the criteria for evaluating good or effective teaching. Various technologies were appropriated by the profession and by policy-makers that have sought and have achieved increasing control over the definition of teaching. These technologies have included reflection and ‘reflective practice’ (Schon 1983) and ‘action research’ (e.g. Elliott 1991), among others. Both reflective practice and action research have been largely (although not entirely) understood as a means of improving individual performance by the professional and, as such, decontextualizing aspects of the professional’s lived experience as a ‘practice’. Practice under this definition is not a sociocultural practice as it would be understood by an anthropologist but instead a routine or a ‘doing’ (going through the motions) driven by specific, often technical goals. Current twenty-first century interests in reforming teacher education take this interest in and definition of practice further. Contemporary reformers are interested in specific kinds of practices that can be shown (through statistical procedures) to raise students’ test scores, for example (see Lampert 2010). Such practices are sometimes referred to as ‘high-leverage’ in terms of their effectsize, and considerable funding has been invested by philanthropic foundations interested in narrowing the attainment gap between children from rich and poor homes, especially in a subject like mathematics (for example, http:// www.teachingworks.org/). In turn, ‘high quality’ teachers are seen as those who have the greatest degree of fidelity to the high-leverage practices, and the great hope of reformist teacher education programmes is that the experience it takes for teachers to learn how to teach better and more effectively can be short-circuited and a new cadre of teachers can be trained quickly in a narrow range of technical skills that will raise test scores (see the chapter by Gatti in this volume). The reform of teacher education around high-leverage practices is one example of the ways in which experience in learning to teach has become impoverished. It is also a good example of the way in which contrary evidence can be erased – such as the body of research that suggests the type of experience and time it takes for teachers to become successful or effective (e.g., Rice 2010, Hargreaves and Fullan 2012). Although experience has been reduced to ‘practices’ supposedly derived from the work of effective teachers, there is still no evidence of any direct or causal link to ‘high quality’ teaching by teachers from supposed ‘high quality’ teacher education programmes. Experience, it

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seems, is still a much too powerful and messy concept to be easily appropriated by reformers.

What do teachers learn from experience? A topical question The quest for a clearer, more coherent appreciation of what and how teachers learn from experience continues to exercise practitioners, researchers and policy-makers today. For example, in the classroom, where teachers (given the right professional dispositions and skills, conditions of time and space in their working life) continue to reflect on ways in which to better teach certain themes or topics, support particular learners or groups of learners. Policy-makers, concerned to ensure that those (limited) public resources devoted to schooling are distributed wisely and well, consistently identify teacher quality as a key focus for accountability (Oancea and Orchard 2012); and the particular means that many political systems have chosen to hold teacher quality to account has shaped both notions of the good teacher as well as the kinds of learning needed to best prepare them. While teachers’ effectiveness is measured according to standards, predefined indicators of successful performance, this will tend to highlight those technical dimensions of teaching which emphasize procedure, clarity, transparency and application of rules. Learning from experience may be valued highly in this context too; however, it will be learning from experience of a particular sort. Hence in England the relationship between ‘encouraging teachers to focus on the qualities and attributes that matter most’ (Gove 2011) and a universitybased period of initial preparation for teaching is heavily downplayed (see both Edwards and Trippestad in this volume). A tension may be observed with the rhetoric of teacher autonomy, empowerment and professionalism being used to argue for more school-based initial teacher education in England (e.g., DfE 2010, 2011a, 2011b), and a concern with teachers’ targets, performance indicators and milestones likely to constrain teachers. Elsewhere, taking the case of Scotland as one example, initial teacher education may be regarded as preparation for a career in the profession that strikes ‘the right balance and connections between university experience and school experience’ (Donaldson 2011: 12). Certain shared concerns are evident, including knowledge exchange between HEIs and schools, the need for teachers to be aware of the findings of educational research and the role that holding certain values plays in teacher quality (Ellis 2013, Oancea and Orchard 2012). However, there are significant differences too, in the kinds of knowledge



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teachers need and the particular kinds of research and research findings which they should be encouraged to engage with. At the level of educational research, alternative modes of accountability have been proposed which, were they adopted, would exercise considerable influence on what and how teachers might learn from experience. These emphasize, for example, the importance of ethical and relational concepts of accountability, hence the value of trust, integrity and professional responsibility (see Winch, 2001; O’Neill, 2002) in teachers’ practice. At the level of educational research, accounts of learning to teach from experience tend to be different too, depicted as a situated, educative action in a social space, operating in a paired and organic relationship with learning, and laden with moral complexity too (e.g., Ellis et al. 2010). In the final section of this chapter we describe the organization of the book and the arrangement and content of the chapters that follow.

The book in outline We have organized the book in three parts to build coherence and develop some progression among the chapters. The first part consists of six chapters that each represent a different educational research perspective on the question of what and how teachers learn from experience. These chapters pick up concepts such as effectiveness, identity, learning transfer, narrative, rhetoric, policy and biography in their discussions of a range of original research studies. Part 2 consists of chapters drawn from a variety of national contexts in Europe and North America. These chapters draw on several of the concepts introduced in the first part. Part 3 consists of chapters focused on learning to teach English, mathematics and science, and, again, these chapters deploy a range of research methods with different conceptual interests. The volume concludes with a short Afterword that draws together the themes of the volume in terms of the politics of experience and teacher education. This final chapter returns to the questions and issues we have outlined in this introductory chapter.

Part 1 In the first chapter in Part 1, Muijs and colleagues examine the evidence for the effectiveness of a particular ‘alternative’ teacher education programme, Teach First UK, taking a balanced approach to policy per se but raising important

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questions about the evidence and the nature of that evidence. This chapter is written from the perspective of school effectiveness research, one concerned with teacher quality and the measurable outcomes of programmes. This chapter, Chapter 2, is notable for its clear articulation of methods and presentation of data. Edwards, in Chapter 3, takes a more critical view of the arguments behind such alternative programmes as Teach First by asking fundamental questions about the relationship between theory and practice from the cultural psychological perspective of sociocultural and activity theory. In her examination, Edwards builds on the traditions of enquiry we outlined in the earlier part of this chapter. The themes and concepts of Chapter 3 permeate many of the chapters that follow, suggesting both the power of sociocultural theory to explain and inform teacher education but also the power of Edwards’ articulation. Chapter 4, from Trippestad, focuses particularly on arguments about teacher learning in the public sphere. Like Edwards, Trippestad is also concerned with current policy but likewise builds a critique of wider relevance using the tools of rhetoric analysis to examine a key English policy text, The Importance of Teaching. Trippestad’s chapter reminds us of the importance of understanding the public discourse around teacher education as rhetorical – strategic, motivated and agentic – and of the importance of becoming rhetorically adept if we are interested in studying teacher education. Olsen, in Chapter 5, proposes that identity is a key concept in understanding how teachers learn from experience. Explorations of teacher identity have aroused a good deal of interest in the educational research literature and the concept of identity has had increasing prominence in research on learning more generally. From a learner identity perspective, Olsen draws our attention to the teacher as a socially-constructed self and the implications of such an understanding for teacher education programme design as well as policy. Another (related) approach to understanding personal sense-making in relation to experience is one that explores the importance of narrative. Ottesen, in Chapter 6, uses sociocultural tools to show how teachers’ stories have the potential to become both tools for their learning and rules of compliance. Narratives are not presented in this chapter as ‘frozen moments’ of truth but as material for analysis by storytellers themselves, in collaboration with others such as teacher educators. Grumet, in the last chapter in the first section, offers a personal reflection on her own experience in teacher education, using literary and philosophical resources. Grumet raises important questions about the assumptions underlying



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questions of learning from experience. While previous chapters in this section have argued from a single theoretical or disciplinary perspective, this chapter is a good example of a specifically educational enquiry that transcends narrow disciplinary boundaries. Grumet’s analysis is at the same time personal and theoretical and questioning of linear accounts of learning based on the accumulation of time spent.

Part 2 Part 2 offers reports of research that draw on the perspectives outlined in Part 1 (as well as others) in different national contexts across two continents. In Chapter 8, Heidi Pitzer offers a critical policy analysis, focusing on another highly influential alternative teacher education programme, Teach for America. Pitzer is particularly concerned to explore how ‘experience’ is valorized in this model and with how, as a result, students in urban schools come to be constructed as ‘problems’. Her argument links with concerns raised in Chapter 13 by Gatti. In Chapter 9, Elizabeth Sloat and colleagues discuss the downplaying of theory in models of ‘alternative’ teacher education that have already been raised by Edwards (Chapter 3) and Olsen (Chapter 5). This chapter offers a spirited defence of a strong and continuing role for the university as a community of practice in which teachers are helped to reflect on their experience. The context of Sloat and colleagues’ work is Canada, a multicultural and multi-lingual country with a federal government and one in which they work in conditions of complexity. The influence of the cultural-historical perspective on learning teaching from experience can be seen in Chapters 10 and 11 by Paolo Sorzio and Anne Line Wittek respectively. In contrast with the previous two chapters, these contributions shift our focus from North America to Europe. Chapter 10 is concerned with a southern European context, reflecting on learning to teach in Italy. Sorzio explores the relationship between curriculum reform, personal dispositions and the conditions of practice in that country, elaborating an argument about experience as context. In Chapter 11, meanwhile, in the northern European context of Norway, Wittek is concerned with the materiality of resources in the classroom environment. She explores multiple ways in which this materiality figures in teachers’ examinations of their choices about curriculum design. Chapter 12, the final contribution in this section, comes from two authors who are themselves teachers. Torie L. Weiston-Serdan and Sheri Dorn-Giarmoleo

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offer a personal reflection on teacher education policy in their own national context, that of the US, from an activist teacher perspective. In reflecting on their own experiences they have found critical, theoretical resources helpful in better articulating those experiences, indicating that their particular analysis of alternative teacher education programmes may be more widely generalizable. The energy in their writing captures the direct connection of their immersion in teaching and their critical consciousness of the conditions within which they teach and learn.

Part 3 Part 3 focuses on three important curriculum subjects – English, mathematics and science – and explores the key questions of the volume in a subjectspecific context. In Chapter 13, another ‘alternative’ teacher education model – the Urban Teacher Residency – forms the ground on which the question of learning to teach English from experience is examined. In a beautifully written chapter and from an ethnographic perspective, Gatti shows the complexity of relations between teacher and taught with particular reference to race, ethnicity and culture. In so doing she raises significant ethical questions about who’s values should determine the nature of the good teacher, hence teacher education. In Chapter 14, Jacobson reports on a mixed methods study of two mathematics teachers’ profession development, being particularly concerned with the relationship between subject or content knowledge and standardized testing. Jacobson explores the meaning of experience for these teachers’ development and tries to account for differences in how they interpreted the programmes and how these interpretations contributed to qualitatively different outcomes for the teachers. Bullock, in Chapter 15, challenges the assertion that experience is something that ‘only’ happens out there in schools by analyzing the importance of the shared pedagogical language that can develop in a university-based teacher education course, returning to earlier arguments raised by Edwards and Sloat et al. Bullock’s chapter draws attention to the experience of university-based efforts at teacher preparation and how this experience contributes to their learning. Finally, in his Afterword, Ken Zeichner draws together the themes of the book in answer to the central question posed from the start: what and how do teachers learn from experience? The politics of experience in teacher education policy



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around the world is examined with particular reference to reform movements that prioritize ‘on the job’ training and the erasure of higher education. Zeichner’s chapter asks us to think beyond simple ‘reform’ or ‘defend’ binaries when thinking about how teachers might learn to teach from experience. In his emphasis on the need to transform teacher education, Zeichner makes an authoritative argument for the meaning of experience in learning to teach.

References Aristotle (1953). Nichomachean Ethics, The. Translated by J. A. K. Thompson. The Penguin Classics, 1976 edn. London: Penguin. Berry, B., Montgomery, D., Curtis, R., Hernandez, M., Wurtzel, J. and Snyder, J. (2008). Creating and Sustaining Urban Teacher Residencies: A New Way to Recruit, Prepare and Retain Highly Effective Teachers in High-Needs Districts. Carrboro, NC: Center for Teaching Quality, the Aspen Institute and Bank Street College. Biesta, G. (2011). Disciplines and theory in the study of education: a comparative analysis of the Anglo-American and continental construction of the field. Pedagogy, Culture and Society 19 (2): 175–92. Britzman, D. P. (2003). Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach (revised edn). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. —(2007). Teacher education as uneven development: towards a psychology of uncertainty. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice 10 (1): 1–12. Carruthers, P. (1992). Human Knowledge and Human Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Department for Education (2010). The Importance of Teaching, The Schools White Paper 2010. Online at https://www.education.gov.uk/ —(2011a). Training our Next Generation of Outstanding Teachers. An Improvement Strategy for Discussion. Online at http://www.education.gov.uk/ —(2011b). Teachers’ Standards in England from September 2012. Online at http://dera. ioe.ac.uk/13187 Descartes, R. (1988/1641). Meditations, in Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and Nature. Chicago: Open Court Press. —(1960). The Quest for Certainty. New York: Capricorn Edition. Donaldson, G. (2011). Teaching Scotland’s Future: Report of a Review of Teacher Education. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Eliot, T. S. (1963). ‘The Dry Salvages’. Collected Poems 1909–1962. London: Faber and Faber Limited.

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Elliott, J. (1991). Action Research for Educational Change. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, Ellis, V. (2007). Subject Knowledge and Teacher Education: The Development of Beginning Teachers’ Thinking. London: Continuum. —(2010). Impoverishing experience: The problem of teacher education in England. Journal of Education for Teaching 36 (1): 105–20. —(2012). Living with ghosts: ‘Disciplines’, envy and the future of teacher education. Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education 19 (2): 155–66. —(2013). Teacher education in the public university: the challenge of democratising knowledge production. In A. Edwards and G. Wells (eds), Pedagogy in Higher Education: A Cultural-Historical Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, V., Edwards, A. and Smagorinsky, P. (2010). Cultural-Historical Perspectives on Teacher Education and Development. Abingdon: Routledge. Gove, M. (2011). QTS and Core Standards: The Way Ahead, Optimus Education. Online at http://www.optimus-education.com/qts-and-core-standards-way-ahead Greeno, J. G., Collins, A. M. and Resnick, L. (1996). Cognition and learning. In D. Berliner and R. Calfee (eds), Handbook of Educational Psychology. New York: Macmillan, pp. 15–46. Hargreaves, A. and Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. New York: Teachers College Press. Hegel, G. W. F. (1991). Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heilbronn, R. (2008). Teacher Education and the Development of Practical Judgement. London: Continuum. Hirst, P. (1990). Internship: a view from outside. In P. Benton (ed.), The Oxford Internship Scheme. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, pp. 147–59. Hume, D. (1955/1748). An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Kant, I. (1998). Critique of Pure Reason. Edited and translated by P. Gruyer and A. W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kenny, A. (1986). Rationalism, Empiricism and Idealism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lampert, M. (2010). Learning teaching in, from and for practice: what do we mean? Journal of Teacher Education 61 (1–2): 21–34. Leibniz, G. (1973/c. 1704). New Essays on Human Understanding, in Leinbiz: Philosophical Writings. Edited by G. H. R. Parkinson. Translated by Mary Morris and G. H. R. Parkinson. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Lipman, P. (2011). The New Political Economy of Urban Education. New York: Routledge. Locke, J. (1690/1997), An Essay on Human Understanding. Edited by Roger Woolhouse. London: Penguin Books.



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Loeb, L. (1981). From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McCracken, C. J. and Tipton, I. C. (eds) (2000). Berkeley’s Principles and Dialogues: Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markie, Peter (2013), Rationalism vs. empiricism. In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (summer 2013 edn), forthcoming: http://plato. stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ (accessed 16 May 2013). National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) (2013). School Direct: Quick Start Guide for Schools 2014/15. London: NCTL; available at: https://www.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/201007/school_direct_ quick_start_guide_for_schools.pdf (accessed 17 June 2013). O’Neill, O. (2002). A question of trust. Reith Lectures. BBC Radio 4. Online at: http:// www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/lecture1.shtml (accessed 16 May 2013). Oancea, A. and Orchard, J. (2012). The future of teacher education. Journal of Philosophy of Education 42 (1): 4–15. Plato (1987). The Republic. Translated by H. D. P. Lee. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin. Prawat, R. S. (2000). Dewey meets the ‘Mozart of Psychology’ in Moscow: the untold story. American Educational Research Journal 37 (3): 663– 96. Probyn, E. (1993). Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Rice, J. K. (2010). The Impact of Teacher Experience: Examining the Evidence and Policy Implications. Brief 11. Washington, DC: Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. Ryle, G. (1963). The Concept of Mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Saltman, K. (2010). The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Schon, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner – How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books. Van der Veer, R. and Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky: A Quest for Synthesis. Oxford: Blackwell. Vygotsky, L. S. (1974). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —(1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Winch, C. (2001). Accountability and relevance in educational research. Journal of Philosophy of Education 35 (3): 443–59. Zeichner, K. M. and Tabachnik, B. R. (1981). Are the effects of teacher education ‘washed out’ by school experience? Journal of Teacher Education 32 (3): 7–11.

Part One

Multiple Perspectives on Learning Teaching from Experience

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Acculturation or innovation?The pedagogical practices of teachers on an ambitious, alternative certification programme Daniel Muijs, Chris Chapman and Paul Armstrong

Introduction Teacher recruitment and training has long been a key issue in education. Evidence of the importance of teacher effectiveness in student performance suggests that the quality of teachers is a key factor, second only to student background characteristics in influencing outcomes (Muijs and Reynolds 2010). Attracting high-quality graduates into the teaching profession is therefore seen as an important goal of teacher training. However, especially in schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas, it has often proved hard to achieve (Maguire et al. 2006). The Teach First programme, originally based on the US alternative certification programme Teach for America, has been operating in England for a number of years, initially in London, and more recently in the North West and West Midlands as well. The programme aims to attract highlevel graduates to teach in schools in highly disadvantaged areas with a view to them either continuing in teaching or becoming ‘ambassadors’ for education of the disadvantaged. Teach First teachers receive intensive but short training over the summer before their placement, and this lack of training when compared to other newly qualified teachers has been a source of criticism, with many questioning the extent to which they can be properly prepared to teach in disadvantaged schools in this short time frame. Teach First teachers are contracted to teach in the schools for two years during which time they receive further mentoring and professional development. It is clear, therefore, that Teach First represents a programme in which a very significant part of the learning of the prospective teachers occurs within the school, making this an example

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of a programme that draws heavily on notions of learning from experience alongside formal learning delivered in the summer school and during subsequent professional development, typically delivered by partner universities. It therefore represents an interesting case study of what and how an avowedly atypical group of trainee teachers learn in a strongly experiential setting. As yet, no research exists on the programme in England. However, US studies on Teach for America show decidedly mixed results with regards to pupil outcomes with different studies reporting positive (Glazerman et al. 2006), negative (Laczko-Kerr and Berliner 2002) and no effects (Raymond et al. 2001), and criticism having been made of such factors as the intensity of the training programme and the pressure put on participants, and the inadequacy of their training (Darling-Hammond 1994). Proponents point to the quality of graduates attracted and the advocacy role many go on to play in public life on behalf of the education of disadvantaged students. What is lacking in most extant research on this and many other alternative certification programmes is any empirical research on the actual pedagogical practices of Teach First or indeed Teach for America teachers. This omission is odd in light of the importance of pedagogy and the limitations of high-stakes standardized testing that has typically been used as the main or only evaluation method in extant studies, and the criticisms made of both the length and the content of the training programmes, in particular in the case of Teach for America (e.g. Darling-Hammond 2000).

Research on effective teaching The lens from which we will look at teaching and learning in this chapter is grounded in the field of educational effectiveness and improvement. Educational effectiveness as a field takes an overtly empiricist approach to research, focusing on the core questions ‘What makes a school good?’ and ‘How can we make a school better?’ (Reynolds et al. 2011). As such, the field is interested in a wide range of factors that can contribute to learning outcomes, including the formal and informal organization of the school, culture and leadership. One of the key findings from decades of educational effectiveness research is the importance of the classroom level as a predictor of pupil outcomes. Research has consistently shown not only that the classroom level can explain more of the variance in pupil outcomes than the school level, but that a large proportion of this classroom level variance can be explained by what teachers do in the classroom (Muijs and Reynolds 2010).



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The empiricist orientation of educational effectiveness research has taken an input–process–product approach to identifying effectiveness factors, including teacher effectiveness, usually established by correlating observed teacher behaviours to outcomes, controlling for intake characteristics. It has, of course, not been without criticism (e.g. Wrigley 2004). It does, however, in our view provide a valuable perspective in its focus on measuring what works from an empiricist perspective, and has contributed significantly to both practice and policy (Harris et al. 2012). Of course, what constitutes effective practice may remain contested even within an empiricist approach, with different conclusions potentially following from different sources of evidence; for example, the use of observations, professional judgments (including inspection evidence), valueadded measures based on student outcomes, and students’ perceptions based on surveys or teachers’ views. Effectiveness research has traditionally taken the view that effectiveness can be determined on the basis of student outcomes (which themselves can be measured in different ways), but has developed a range of correlates and predictors of such outcomes using observation, surveys and experimental evidence. As a result of this work, quite a lot is known from effectiveness research about what makes teachers and teaching effective. During the last 35 years researchers have turned to teacher behaviours as predictors of student achievement in order to build up a knowledge-base on effective teaching. This research has led to the identification of a range of behaviours which are positively related to student achievement. These studies have produced quite detailed findings that relate to the use of a suite of behaviours of teachers to student outcomes, albeit mainly in basic skills acquisition (Muijs et al. 2011). These studies point to maximizing learning time as key, and a consistent finding is that effective teachers emphasize academic instruction as their main classroom goal, have an academic orientation, create a businesslike, task-oriented environment and spend classroom time on academic activities (Brophy and Good 1978, Muijs et al. 2011). The actual teaching behaviours studied are varied, but taken together can be seen as forming a cluster of actions that has been variously described as direct instruction or, in a slightly adapted form, as whole-class interactive teaching. This teaching method relies on active leadership by the teacher. Students spend most of their time being taught or supervised by their teachers, rather than working on their own. Teacher-led discussion as opposed to individual seatwork dominates. The teacher carries the content personally to the student as opposed to relying on textbooks or schemes to do this. In this type of instruction the teacher takes an active role, rather than just ‘facilitating’

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students’ learning. Use of examples is important, and teachers should strive to make presentations lively and engaging to maximize gain (Brophy and Good 1978, Galton 1987, Lampert 1988, Borich 1996). Material is presented in a structured way, beginning with an overview and/or review of objectives. Teachers need to outline the content to be covered and signal transitions between lesson parts. Attention must be drawn to the key points of the lesson; sub-parts of the lesson should be summarized as it proceeds and the main ideas should be reviewed at the end of the lesson. Effective teachers ask a lot of questions and involve students in class discussion. In this way students are kept engaged in the lesson while the teacher has the chance to monitor students’ progress and understanding. Teachers must provide substantive feedback to students resulting either from student questions or from answers to teacher questions. Most questions should elicit correct or at least substantive answers. The cognitive level of questions needs to be varied depending on the skills to be mastered (Muijs and Reynolds 2010). Classroom climate and classroom management are seen as particularly important, especially through its influence on students’ time on task (time spent actively learning). As well as businesslike, the classroom environment also needs to be suitably relaxed and supportive for students, and teacher expectations need to be high. Behaviour management is also key, especially for less experienced teachers, and again a range of recommendations taken from research exist in this field (Muijs and Reynolds 2010). This type of research, and the whole-class interactive teaching style that stems from it, has been subject to a number of relevant criticisms (e.g. Wrigley 2004), and of course shows some key limitations, notwithstanding the strong evidence from reviews of the evidence that this type of teaching is essential in developing the basic skills without which pupils will not be able to access the curriculum, and is particularly important to pupils from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds and low attainers (Rowe 2006). A particularly justified critique is that the vast majority of this research has focused on basic skills in English and maths, largely ignoring other subjects and outcomes. This is clearly problematic in light of the need at both societal and individual level to develop students as critical thinkers fully able to participate in society. This implies that teacher effectiveness research should take a broader view of the goals of education and their implications for teaching and learning, and study outcomes such as selfregulated learning (SRL), because today’s society requires students to be able to learn in a self-regulated way during and after schooling and throughout their entire working life (EU Council 2002). This necessitates developing students’



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metacognitive skills, which research suggests is not adequately done through whole-class interactive approaches or direct instruction. Muijs et al. (2011) identified three fundamental principles for successful metacognition instruction that emerged from a review of the literature. The first is embedding metacognitive instruction in content matter to ensure connectivity. The effectiveness of this principle was empirically supported by Hattie et al.’s (1996) meta-analysis. They found that training programmes on metacognitive knowledge, skills and strategies that were situated in context, using tasks within the same domain as the target content, and promoting a high degree of learner activity and metacognitive awareness, were the most effective, not only for academic performance but for strategy use and effect and motivation as well. The second principle is informing learners about the usefulness of metacognitive activities to make them exert the initial effort (Veenman 2006). In the meta-analysis by Dignath et al. (2008), the most effective interventions were those in which instruction on metacognitive strategies was combined with metacognitive reflection. Instruction on metacognitive strategies does not improve strategy use and learning outcomes per se. Supplementary components, like feedback about strategy use and providing knowledge about strategies and the benefit of using them, are needed to make self-regulated learning effective. Moreover, these are essential to maintaining self-regulated learning over time. The third principle is therefore that prolonged teaching is needed to guarantee maintenance of metacognitive activities. Butler and Winne (1995), Hattie and Timperley (2007) and Hattie (2008) emphasize the importance of feedback in self-regulated learning. The kind of feedback given must be at the appropriate level, which is at the self-regulation level including self-monitoring, directing and regulation of action. According to Hattie et al. (1996): … strategy training should be seen as a balanced system in which individual’s abilities, insights and sense of responsibility are brought into use, so that strategies that are appropriate to the task at hand can be used. The students will need to know what those strategies are, of course, and also the conditional knowledge that empowers them: the how, when, and why of their use. (131)

It follows from this that teachers will need a broad set of skills and knowledge if they are to optimize the learning of their students, and this leads one to the question of whether an approach such as that of Teach First, which relies so strongly on learning from experience, is sufficient to develop effective teachers. The summer school training, while short, is intensive and the level of support provided during the programme is extensive, with trainees mentored both by

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in-school mentors and local university staff affiliated with the programme. Trainees also attend a variety of training programmes in local universities contracted to deliver Teach First during their two years on the programme. The programme therefore does provide formal education alongside classroom practice. However, in extent this is still far more limited than is the case in traditional teacher education programmes.

Methods In this study we intend to look more closely at the pedagogy and teaching practices of Teach First teachers, a factor that has been found to mediate the impact of teachers on student outcomes (Teddlie and Reynolds 2000) and that has also led to some controversy in the light of the ways that different experiences and backgrounds of Teach First teachers may affect their pedagogical practices. In terms of effective teaching, since the goal of the programme is to develop teaching excellence, we concentrated on teacher behaviours and beliefs as they relate to traditional ‘direct instruction’-type behaviours found to be effective in teaching basic skills, in particular to students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and constructivist and open-ended methods of teaching methods considered more effective in terms of reaching more advanced learning outcomes such as self-regulated learning and metacognitive skills (Muijs et al. 2011), so we can create measures of effectiveness in different types of teaching. In order to look at the impact of Teach First teachers on learning it was necessary to explore classroom processes to assess pedagogical strengths and relationships with students. In order to be able to study these process factors we used a mixed methods approach, employing a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to ensure both in-depth understanding and quantitative comparability. The study contains three main elements: MM

MM

MM

Surveys of participants and headteachers. Case studies of 16 participating schools. Analysis of documentary evidence.

A first survey to all second-year participants and their head teachers was sent out in December 2008. In total, responses were received from 123 teachers and 36 head teachers, a response rate of 50 per cent and 72 per cent respectively. A second participants’ survey was sent out in December 2009. Responses were



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received from 280 teachers, a response rate of 81 per cent, and head teacher survey responses were received from 45 heads, a 67 per cent response rate. Sixteen case studies were completed. During the case studies all secondyear Teach First participants were observed and interviewed, along with senior managers in the school, the Teach First coordinator, middle managers and other classroom teachers. Case studies were selected to ensure maximum variation on geographic location, type of school (e.g. faith school, academy, etc.) and diversity of intake. In order to look at the impact of Teach First teachers on learning it was necessary to explore classroom processes to assess pedagogical strengths and relationships with students. To this end, the research team conducted classroom observations of Teach First teachers in the case study schools. Lessons were videoed to ensure high levels of reliability as it can be hard to rate behaviours reliably on the spot during live observations. For example, observers are typically required to rate teacher behaviours, such as ‘the teacher uses clear explanations’. Their ratings can be subjective and unreliable if they are not subject to rigorous cross-checks and inter-observer reliability processes. This problem can be solved by using low-inference observation schedules (using counts of such things as how many questions are asked by teachers, how many girls or boys answer questions, etc.), but this wouldn’t produce the data necessary to distinguish high-quality classroom processes that develop metacognitive (reflecting on one’s own learning processes) and thinking skills, for example (Muijs 2006). Video allows multiple observations of the same lessons, done by multiple observers to ensure reliable inference. The International Systematic Teacher Observation Framework (ISTOF) classroom observation schedule was used to analyze the classroom observation data. This is an internationally validated rating scale (Tedlie et al. 2006, Kyriakides et al. 2009). The survey of Teach First teachers also contained a number of questions on pedagogy. In this way we hoped to learn more about teacher behaviours, attitudes and interactions with students. Quantitative data was analyzed using appropriate statistical methods. In particular we used regression and, where necessary, multi-level regression models to model the impact of Teach First, taking into account pupil background variables. Structural equation modelling was used to study more complex relationships in the data. Qualitative data collection and data analysis were closely integrated (Miles and Huberman 1994). This strategy allowed the team to check out hypotheses as they emerged from data analysis and refine data collection strategies as the

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study progressed. A variety of procedures was used to ensure reliability. To increase confidence in research claims the team used different data sources including interview data, document analysis, observation data and survey data, in order to provide us with robust information on the impact of the programme on teaching, leadership and pupil outcomes. Documentary and interview data were also analyzed using content analytic methods. Content analysis is a summarizing, quantitative analysis of messages that relies on the scientific method (including attention to objectivity-intersubjectivity, a priori design, reliability, validity, generalizability, replicability and hypothesis testing) and is not limited as to the types of variables that may be measured or the context in which the messages are created or presented (Neuendorf 2001). A coding scheme was developed and results quantified. Interrater reliability was tested using four researchers who were part of the research team. A satisfactory Cohen’s Kappa of .81 was achieved.

Results Views of Teach First teachers on their impact and effectiveness in teaching In general, Teach First teachers feel they are able to make a positive contribution to teaching in their schools, following a period of adaptation and induction in their first term. Some 79 per cent of interviewees stated that they had made a positive contribution. In particular they felt they are a dynamic presence in lessons, have good subject knowledge and can motivate pupils. A lot of the positives they perceive in their own teaching are related to dynamism and enthusiasm which they and their colleagues see as motivating for pupils: I’d say I was firm but fair really, I’d like to think that I’ve got quite a lot of energy, quite creative, I’m really interested in coming up with new lesson ideas, new ways around the topic. (Teach First teacher)

A difficulty some interviewees faced was dealing with the range of pupil ability. In many of these schools serving disadvantaged communities the range of ability is large, and even set classes can contain very significant variances in pupil ability. In one school which operates mixed abilities in classes, the interviewee found this hard at first because ‘you have to differentiate your teaching’ as pupils have a ‘huge range of ability’. However, as another interviewee stated,



Acculturation or Innovation?

29

‘They do prepare you to differentiate in the training we get.’ Teach First teachers also perceive themselves as confident in lesson planning as well as in the execution of those lessons: ‘I think we’re quite confident with what we do and we always plan really good lessons.’ Teachers clearly feel that particular strategies are expected of them by their schools: ‘We’re expected to always teach in the way that other teachers do when they get observed.’ This manifests itself in advice and pressure from mentors and heads of department. Teach First teachers have high expectations of pupils. Several interviewees, however, mentioned that these needed to be adapted to the reality in which they found themselves, as initial expectations may have been a ‘bit unrealistic’ (Teach First teacher). However, as one interviewee pointed out, the pupils do step up to the higher expectations and if the teacher then lowers the expectations, they can meet at a more ‘realistic’ level in the middle. Pitching expectations within the context of the highest possible goals remained a challenge for TF teachers. Teach First teachers also demonstrated this self-confidence in the survey. Participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they felt they could influence different aspects in their teaching, using a validated self-efficacy scale rated from 1 (no impact) to 9 (very high impact). Results (see Table 2.1) indicate that respondents tended to see themselves as able to make a difference in all areas, especially in being able to offer alternative explanations and in helping students to value their learning. Respondents were least confident that they could assist families in helping their children to do well, though even for this item the mean score suggests a tendency to see themselves as being able to make at least some difference. Compared to international studies of newly qualified teachers from the US, Canada, Cyprus, Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Hong Kong (Woolfolk Hoy and Burke-Spero 2005, Klassen et al. 2008, Muijs and Roe 1997, Skaalvik et al. 2008), Teach First teachers score highly in most areas; in particular in motivating students and classroom management factors (2008 survey) and in controlling behaviour and crafting questions (2009 survey). They score lower on assisting families, possibly due to the highly disadvantaged nature of the schools they are working in or the restrictive school policies that limit contact between classroom teachers and parents.

School views on Teach First teachers and their impact and effectiveness in teaching Schools are generally pleased with the teaching skills of Teach First teachers. Teach First are seen as having good control over often challenging classes. Our

30

Learning Teaching from Experience

Table 2.1  Teacher self-efficacy scale mean scores Mean in TF sample Mean in TF sample (second year (second year participants 08) participants 09) How much can you do to control disruptive behaviour in the classroom? How much can you do to motivate students who show low interest in schoolwork? How much can you do to get students to believe they can do well in schoolwork? How much can you do to help your students value learning? To what extent can you craft good questions for your students? How much can you do to get children to follow classroom rules? How much can you do to calm a student who is disruptive or noisy? How well can you establish a classroom management system with each group of students? How much can you use a variety of assessment strategies? To what extent can you provide an alternative explanation or example when working with a group of students? How much can you assist families in helping their children do well in school? How well can you implement alternative strategies in your classroom?

6.4

6.9

7.3

6.6

6.9

7.0

7.4

7.0

6.8

7.3

6.7

6.8

7.1

6.7

7.1

6.8

7.0

7.0

7.6

7.4

5.4

5.4

6.5

6.4

observations show that pupils are overwhelmingly on task (mean of 88 per cent), that is, engaged in the task the teacher has set them and not disrupting lessons. No major behaviour problems such as refusal to cooperate, verbal dissension or abuse were seen during our observations. Teach First teachers have strong subject knowledge, according to all interviewees. Initially, they are seen by some interviewees as naïve in the classroom, but they learn quickly. ‘In the second year you see a tremendous change’



Acculturation or Innovation?

31

(senior manager) – and we have observed that second-year Teach First teachers are indeed effective in the classroom (see Table 2.2). The first year is seen as challenging for Teach First teachers, ‘but by the end of the second year they have evolved into outstanding teachers’ (head teacher). The quality of the mentor assigned to the teacher within the school is important in the light of the steep learning curve they are going through, with over half of the interviewed Teach First teachers stating that this was a major determinant of successful integration in their school. Mentoring by university tutors was seen as effective by the majority of respondents. The teaching practice of Teach First teachers is largely perceived as effective: ‘Because they’re dynamic they teach dynamically, and that always works with students’ (senior manager). According to the head teacher survey, Teach First teachers are also seen as being consistent in terms of their quality as classroom practitioners and regarding their knowledge. Table 2.2  Responses to the head teacher survey on variability of quality (percentages) There is a lot of variance in the quality of Teach First teachers Agree strongly Agree somewhat Disagree somewhat Disagree strongly

Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09 Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09 Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09 Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09

6.2 8.0 18.8 24.0 50.0 48.0 25.0 20.0

Teach First teachers’ pedagogy A content analysis was undertaken of the interview data from all interviewees except the Teach First teachers themselves. In this case, keywords from interviews were measured to determine factors that are said to be typical of Teach First teachers. Keywords relating to teacher characteristics were collated and converted into a percentage of total expressions. The most common are listed in Table 2.3 below. Some 85 per cent of expressions fell in the eight categories above, seven of which were positive, and one of which (not creative) was negative. The latter accounted for just 6.4 per cent of expressions. The most common expression used was that Teach First teachers listen and learn from other teachers, followed

32

Learning Teaching from Experience

Table 2.3  Percentage of keywords relating to Teach First teacher characteristics Listen and learn from other teachers Enthusiastic Creative Not creative Hard working Resilient Energetic Adaptive

23.9 18.5 13.7 6.4 6.4 5.9 5.8 5.7

by enthusiasm and being creative (therefore, Teach First teachers were described as creative more than twice as often as they were described as not creative). The Teach First teachers appear to pick up the teaching styles of the schools they work in: ‘They very quickly adapt to the styles that are successful in the establishment they’re in, and that’s been quite clear to me’ (head teacher). The teaching styles of some of the Teach First teachers are described as innovative, creative and confident with a strong presence in the classroom: ‘Teach First teachers have a lot of creativity and energy which you might not find with teachers who have gone through the traditional route and who maybe stick to tried and tested methods instead of trying new things’ (senior leader). There is also a willingness to listen to the views of others and act on that advice. One interviewee, for example, believed that there is a misconception amongst some Teach First teachers when they are in training that regular teachers aren’t as good as them and are struggling but, … when you get into your placement you realise that it isn’t the case at all. In fact, the regular teachers (mostly) are fantastic at their jobs and, not only do you not have any idea what you’re doing, but you’re being quite arrogant to believe you can come into a school and change things instantaneously. I copy teachers all over the school, especially in terms of behaviour management. But maybe where our strengths lie is in terms of energy because you know that you may only be there for a year or two so if you want to implement a scheme you have to do it now … and because you’re only in there for a short time you have a chance to quickly try everything because you have nothing to lose.

It was noted by one interviewee that the academic success of the Teach First students may be their ‘weak point’ in that they have never experienced difficulty and so at first do not know how to deal with youngsters who do find life difficult. However, we did not observe any such issues in our case study visits.



Acculturation or Innovation?

33

The head teacher survey confirms that Teach First teachers take a relatively innovative approach to teaching, which was especially pronounced in the 2009/10 survey where over 75 per cent ‘agreed somewhat’ or ‘agreed strongly’ that Teach First teachers take an innovative approach. Table 2.4  Responses to head teacher survey on innovative teaching methods (percentages) Teach First teachers tend to use innovative teaching methods Agree strongly Agree somewhat Disagree somewhat Disagree strongly

Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09 Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09 Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09 Second year participants 08 Second year participants 09

18.7 34.2 43.8 44.0 12.5 12.0 25.0  8.8

Some Teach First teachers felt that their ability to employ innovative teaching methods was lessened by the difficult context of the schools in which some of them found themselves, as they faced challenging circumstances and a low achieving pupil population. In one school participants experienced what they felt was a lack of encouragement to be innovative in their subjects, mainly because the school was in National Challenge (a government initiative to improve the schools in which pupils are achieving least well in national tests at age 16, with less than 30 per cent of pupils achieving five A*–C grades at GCSE). This led to reluctance on the part of the school to be innovative in case results were affected. The school was under a great deal of pressure to improve and an innovation which doesn’t work would therefore be seen as potentially impacting on the life-chances of the vulnerable learners. Responses to the participant survey indicated that Teach First teachers take a measured approach to teaching. Their teaching shows both constructivist and direct instruction elements, though more of the latter than the former (see Table 2.5 in Appendix A). Constructivist teaching emphasizes the learners constructing their own knowledge through social interaction and realistic tasks, while direct instruction focuses on whole-class interactive methods aimed at mastery of small chunks of knowledge before moving on to the next step. Teach First teachers use constructivist methods like getting pupils to think about previous lessons, but in general tend towards a structured, teacher-led approach

34

Learning Teaching from Experience

that has been found to be effective with pupils in disadvantaged circumstances (Muijs et al. 2011, De Jager et al. 2005). Video recordings of classroom teaching were analyzed using the International Systematic Teacher Observation Framework (ISTOF) observation schedule. The ISTOF Teacher Observation Protocol was designed by an international team of experts in the area of teacher effectiveness to measure observable teacher behaviours consistent with effective classroom teaching (Teddlie et al. 2006). The ISTOF Teacher Observation Protocol has 21 indicators spread across seven components of effective teaching. Each indicator is represented by two or three items, resulting in a total number of 45 items. The items are rated on a five-point Likert scale with values ranging from ‘strongly agree’ (5) to ‘strongly disagree’ (1). There is also a ‘NA’ (not applicable, unable to observe) response option since some of the items may not be relevant or observable in some classroom settings. The protocol can be used in primary (from the age of six) as well as secondary education. Mean ratings on each item are presented in Table 2.6 (Appendix B) alongside the mean rating on the instrument in a number of international studies. These were conducted with a broader group of teachers who were on average both more experienced and less likely to be working in schools in disadvantaged areas than Teach First teachers (Kyriakides 2008). The scale had an interrater reliability of .78 (Cohen’s Kappa). Table 2.6 in Appendix B provides the results of the analysis of the video recordings using the ISTOF protocol. As can be seen in the table, Teach First teachers consistently rate above the midpoint of the scale for the factors observed, indicating overall high levels of teacher effectiveness. They also rate similarly to the international sample, which consists of experienced as well as novice teachers who, on average, have much more experience than the Teach First sample. However, there are clear differences in performance across the different areas. Teach First teachers are particularly strong in creating a positive classroom climate, averaging over 4 on all items. They also rate highly on classroom management, in particular on correcting misbehaviour and minimizing disruption, and on instructional skills, with lessons that run smoothly and follow a logical progression. Where Teach First teachers are somewhat weaker is in promoting active learning and metacognitive skills, rating between 3 and 4 on most items, with the lowest overall rating of 3 being on the item ‘The teacher systematically uses material and examples from the students’ daily life to illustrate the course content’. Lessons were well prepared and a high pace was maintained throughout. Pupils appeared engaged, with time on task levels of over 84 per cent in all cases.



Acculturation or Innovation?

35

Use was made of visual and audiovisual aids and especially of the electronic whiteboard. There was an appropriate emphasis on discipline as a precondition for learning and few behaviour problems were observed. Any that did occur were appropriately dealt with. It was apparent that in some schools participants were using whole-school behaviour management approaches. Pedagogies tended to follow a whole-class interactive approach, with fastpaced questioning mixing recall and higher-order questions, though often more of the former than the latter. There was appropriate use of individual work and some good use of group work was observed. The nature of the pedagogies observed tended not to be particularly focused on exploration or pupil-led work. Contingent praise was used well. Overall the standard of teaching by Teach First teachers observed was good to excellent as evidenced by the ISTOF rating means being above 3 or 4 and largely focused on whole-class interactive methods. Relationships in the classroom were good with pupils reacting positively to the teachers. There were some occasions where teachers might too easily be assuming a shared vocabulary with pupils, in the sense that they sometimes have overly high expectations of pupils’ vocabulary.

Discussion Overall, this study shows that the standard of teaching by Teach First teachers observed was good but largely focused on whole-class interactive methods and somewhat conservative in nature. The difficult circumstances of the schools worked in along with the inexperience of the Teach First teachers led to cautious approaches to pedagogy, which would appear to be better suited to the teaching of basic skills than to the development of students’ self-regulated learning. Reasons for this are varied. Some Teach First teachers did feel that their ability to employ innovative teaching methods was lessened by the difficult circumstances in which some of the schools they worked in found themselves, as they faced challenging circumstances and a low-achieving pupil population. In one school participants experienced what they felt was a lack of support to be innovative in their subjects, mainly because the school faced major challenges and accountability threats which had led to a reluctance on the part of the school to be innovative in case results were affected. The school was under a great deal of pressure to improve and an innovation which didn’t work would therefore be seen as potentially threatening.

36

Learning Teaching from Experience

Another factor is the extent to which Teach First teachers assimilate the pedagogical approaches used in the schools in which they teach. While this was seen as positive by head teachers, it can be problematic if the standard pedagogical approaches used, influenced as they are by over a decade of government intervention in teaching through a variety of ‘national strategies’, are limited. This is an almost unavoidable by-product of the focus of the programme on in-school training and support. A range of research has shown that the in-school placement elements of any teacher education programme has a strong influence on teachers’ developing pedagogical practices, and the stronger the emphasis of any programme on these elements, the more this is likely to be the case (Timperley, 2008). This is potentially a more general weakness of approaches relying on experience above formal learning, in that they may engender acculturation to existing practices rather than the development of innovative approaches. Another factor in this relatively conservative approach and lesser emphasis on teaching approaches that develop self-regulated learning may simply be the inexperience of these newly trained teachers. There is a range of research that has pointed to the impact of experience on teaching practice, and Kyriakides et al. (2009) have shown that teachers’ skills can be classified along a developmental trajectory, the first three stages of which can be seen as comprising direct and active instruction approaches with the final two being related to developing higher-order skills. As the trajectory is linked to teacher experience it is generally likely that less experienced teachers will have lacunae in their teaching of these areas. Nevertheless, it would be sensible for the Teach First organization to explore ways of introducing a more varied pedagogical approach in training. While these weaknesses are there, this study does not, nevertheless, support criticisms that have stated that it would not be possible to develop effective teachers through the training model provided. It thus provides some support for a model based strongly on learning through experience. Interestingly, the areas of strength and weakness in terms of the observational data are very similar to those found in a study of 81 English teachers who covered a range of experiences and who would typically have been trained in a more universitycentred environment. There, too, teachers were stronger in areas such as classroom management and climate, and weakest in areas such as promoting active learning and metacognitive skills (Day et al. 2008), suggesting that the experiential teaching approach may not be a determining causal factor in these respects. Teachers in this study generally were effective in teaching in schools facing challenging circumstances, at least in their second year. However, the



Acculturation or Innovation?

37

data presented does provide some serious caveats regarding the effectiveness of this type of approach as a more general way of developing teachers. As is clear from some of the responses discussed and the recruitment strategy of Teach First, the trainees on the programme are not necessarily typical of those entering teaching more generally. Teach First deliberately focuses on recruiting very high-performing students who have excelled in their university education, and provides a range of incentives (such as connections to blue-chip employers) to attract them. Part of the success of the programme is therefore likely to be these specific characteristics of trainees who, through a history of academic success, are very self-confident and who as high-performing students at top universities have a demonstrated track record of being highly effective learners. Teach First is therefore recruiting from a relatively limited talent pool and it is hard to see how these trainee characteristics could be replicated across the education landscape. It is unlikely that the training approach used would be as successful with trainees lacking the confidence or learning approaches of the current Teach First trainees. Teach First is therefore probably better seen as a positive but limited part of the range of teacher education approaches, rather than as a replacement thereof. The case of Teach First also illustrates both the potential and limitations of learning from experience as a model of teacher development. On the one hand, there is evidence of a steep learning curve and relatively rapid assimilation of effective teaching methods, as well as evidence that effective practices as defined by the school the teacher works in are picked up and implemented well by teachers. In this respect the approach can be seen as highly effective, and many head teachers expressed their satisfaction with the outcomes achieved. In this successful assimilation of school-sanctioned practice lies also the weakness of the approach. The pressures of learning while teaching in schools facing often very challenging circumstances meant that teachers were in the main conservative in their approaches, with little innovative practice observed. In part, as well as the pressures of the situation they found themselves in, this may also be a result of the limiting of horizons that learning from experience may bring, constrained as it is by what is current practice in the schools concerned. It is this broadening of horizons and the encounter with new possibilities that is likely to require learning outside of the workplace, and the involvement of universities and external mentors, Teach First goes some way to providing this. In general, though, the case points to the continuing importance of blended approaches to the development of effective and innovative teachers.

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References Borich, G. (1996) Effective Teaching Methods. 3rd edn. New York: Macmillan. Brophy, J. and Good, T. L. (1978). Looking in Classrooms. New York: Harper and Row. Butler, D. L. and Winne, P. H. (1995). Feedback and self-regulated learning: A theoretical synthesis. Review of Educational Research 65 (3): 245–81. Darling-Hammond, L. (1994). But who will speak for the children? how Teach for America hurts urban school children. Phi Delta Kappan 76: 41–34. —(2000). How teacher education matters. Journal of Teacher Education. 51 (3): 166–73. Day, C., Sammons, P., Kington, A., Regan, E., Brown, E., Gunraj, J. and Robertson, D. (2008). Effective Classroom Practice: A mixed method study of influences and outcomes, End of Award Report submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council, August 2008. De Jager, B., Janssen, N. and Reezigt, G. (2005). The development of metacognition in primary school learning environments. School Effectiveness and School Improvement 16 (2): 179–96. De Jager, B., Reezigt, G. and Creemers, B. (2002). The effects of teacher training on new instructional behaviour in reading comprehension. Teaching and Teacher Education 18 (7): 831–42. Dignath, C., Buettner, G. and Langfeldt, H. P. (2008). How can primary school students learn self-regulated strategies most effectively? A meta-analysis on self-regulation training programmes. Educational Research Review 3: 101–29. EU Council (2002). Council Resolution of 27 June 2002 on lifelong learning. Official Journal of the European Communities, 9 July 2002. Galton, M. (1987). An ORACLE chronicle: a decade of classroom research. Teaching and Teacher Education 3 (4): 299–313. Glazerman, S., Mayer, D. and Decker, P. (2006). Alternative routes to teaching: the impact of Teach for America on student achievement and other outcomes. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 25 (1): 75–96. Harris, A., Chapman, C., Muijs, D., Reynolds, D., Campbell, C., Creemers, B., Earl, L, Kyriakides, L., Munoz, G., Stoll, L., Stringfield, S., van Velzen, B. and Weinstein, J. (2012). Getting lost in translation? An analysis of the international engagement of practitioners and policy-makers with the educational effectiveness research base. School Leadership and Management 33 (1): 3–19. Hattie, J. (2008). Visible Learning. London: Routledge. Hattie, J., Biggs, J. and Purdie, N. (1996). Effects of learning skills interventions on student learning: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research 66 (2): 99–136. Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research 77: 81–112. Katzenmeyer, M. and Moller, G. (2001). Awakening the Sleeping Giant. Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders. 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.



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Klassen, R., Chong, W. H., Huan, V. S., Wong, I., Kates, S. and Hannok, W. (2008). Motivation beliefs of secondary school teachers in Canada and Singapore: A mixed methods study. Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (7): 1919–34. Kyriakides, L. (2008). Results from the ISTOF Instrument. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 2008. Kyriakides, L., Creemers, B. P. M. and Antoniou, P. (2009). Teacher behaviour and student outcomes: Suggestions for research on teacher training and professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education 25: 12–23. Lackzo-Kerr, J. and Berliner, D. (2002). The effectiveness of Teach for America and other under-certified teachers on student achievement: a case of harmful public policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives 10: 37. Lampert, M. (1988). What can research on teacher education tell us about improving quality in mathematics education? Teaching and Teacher Education 4 (2): 157–170. Maguire, M., Wooldridge, T. and Pratt-Adams, S. (2006). The Urban Primary School. Ballmoor, Bucks: Open University Press. Miles, M. and Huberman, A. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Muijs, D. (2006). Measuring teacher effectiveness. Some methodological reflections. Educational Research and Evaluation 12 (1): 53–75. Muijs, D., Creemers, B. P. M., Kyriakides, L., Earl, L., Timperley, H. and van der Werf, G. (2011). State of the Art – Teacher Effectiveness and Professional Learning. Paper presented at the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement, Limassol, Cyprus, January 2011. Muijs, D. and Reynolds, D. (2010). Effective Teaching: Evidence and Practice. 3rd edn. London: Sage. Muijs, D. and Roe, K. (1997). Literacy in the Media Age: Results from the Third Wave of a Longitudinal Study of Children’s Media Use and Educational Achievement. Leuven: Catholic University of Leuven, Department of Communication Science. Neuendorf, K. (2001). The Content Analysis Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Raymond, M., Fletcher, S. and Luque, J. (2001). Teach for America: An Evaluation of Teacher Differences and Student Outcomes in Houston, Texas. Stanford, CA: CREDO, Hoover Institute, Stanford University. Reynolds, D., Sammons, P., De Fraine, B., Townsend, T. and Van Damme, J. (2011). Educational Effectiveness Research: A State of the Art Review. Keynote seminar presented at the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement. Limassol, Cyprus, January 2011. Rowe, K. (2006). Effective teaching practices for students with and without learning difficulties: issues and implications surrounding key findings and recommendations from the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy. Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities 11 (3): 99–115. Skaalvik, E. M. and Skaalvik, S. (2008). Teacher self-efficacy: conceptual analysis and relations with teacher burnout and perceived school context. In H. W. Marsh, R. G.

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Craven and D. M. McInerney (eds), Self-processes, Learning, and Enabling Human Potential. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Teddlie, C., Creemers, B., Kyriakides, L., Muijs, D and Yu, F. (2006). The international system for teacher observation and feedback. Educational Research and Evaluation 12 (6): 561–82. Teddlie, C. and Reynolds, D. (2000). The International Handbook of School Effectiveness Research. London: Falmer Press. Timperley, H. (2008). Teacher Professional Learning and Development. Brussels: International Academy of Education and International Bureau of Education. Veenman, M. V. J. (2006). The role of intellectual and metacognitive skills in math problem solving. In A. Desoete and M. V. J. Veenman (eds), Metacognition in Mathematics Education. Hauppauge: Nova Science Publishers, pp. 35–50. Woolfolk Hoy, A. E. and Burke-Spero, R. (2005). Changes in teacher efficacy during the early years of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education 21 (4): 343–56. Wrigley, T. (2004). ‘School effectiveness’. The problem of reductionism. British Educational Research journal 30 (2): 227–44.

Appendix A Like me

Not like me

Second year participants 09

Second year participants 08

Second year participants 09

37.3

35.0

62.7

65.0

59.7

60.8

40.3

39.2

47.7

46.7

52.3

53.3

13.4

12.6

86.6

85.8

24.3

32.4

75.8

67.6

Students from disadvantaged backgrounds need more structure in lessons

55.3

56.9

44.7

43.1

11.9

13.6

88.1

86.4

As a teacher I am mainly there to facilitate students’ group work or individual activities Students need clear structures to learn effectively

71.2

79.6

28.8

20.4

When I’m teaching, I get my students to think about previous lessons It is always better to let students find out by themselves, so they can construct their own learning It is better to start with examples before going onto general principles I usually clearly explain the objectives of lessons myself at the start of the lesson

A slower pace is essential so students can develop a proper understanding of the topic

41

Second year participants 08

Acculturation or Innovation?

When I’m teaching, I make sure I always refer to the content of previous lessons It is often necessary to explicitly instruct students so they don’t develop misconceptions and don’t waste time It is better to start with general principles and then give examples I usually get my students to discover what the objectives of the lesson may be through specific challenges and activities Students from disadvantaged backgrounds need more opportunities to express themselves in lessons As a teacher I need to actively instruct students for large parts of the lesson Clear structures are less important than individual expression for student learning A high pace is essential, otherwise students will get bored and we won’t be able to cover the curriculum



Table 2.5  Teach First participants’ views of their own pedagogical approaches (percentages)

42

Appendix B Table 2.6  ISTOF mean scores Indicator

Assessment and Evaluation

The teacher gives explicit, detailed The teacher makes explicitly clear why an answer is correct and constructive feedback or not The teacher provides his/her feedback on the answers given by the students Assessment is aligned with goals Assignments given by the teacher are clearly related to and objectives what students learned The teacher explains how assignments are aligned to the learning goals of the lesson

4.3

4.2

4.4

4.0

3.5

3.3

3.2

2.9

The teacher creates an environment in which all students are involved The teacher takes full account of student differences

3.8

3.7

4.2 3.5

4.0 3.1

3.4

3.5

Differentiation and Inclusion

Item

Students communicate frequently with one another on task-oriented issues. Students actively engage in learning The teacher makes a distinction in the scope of the assignments for different groups of students The teacher gives additional opportunities for practice to students who need them

Teach First European teachers studies mean mean Learning Teaching from Experience

Category

The teacher shows good communication skills

4.4 4.6

4.5 4.3

4.0 3.4

3.4 2.9

4.7

4.5

4.6

4.6

The teacher provides sufficient wait time and response strategies to involve all types of learners The teacher gives assignments that stimulate all students to active involvement The teacher possesses good The teacher poses questions which encourage thinking questioning skills and elicit feedback The length of the pause following questions varies according to the difficulty level of questions (e.g., a question calling for application of abstract principles requires a longer pause than a factual question) The teacher uses various teaching The teacher uses a variety of instructional strategies during methods and strategies the class period The teacher uses different strategies for different groups of students

3.7

4.0

4.1

4.0

3.5

3.6

3.9

3.6

4.0

3.7

3.2

3.3

Clear explanation of purpose Lessons are well structured

Instructional Skills

The teacher is able to engage students

Acculturation or Innovation?

The teacher regularly checks for understanding The teacher communicates in a clear and understandable manner The teacher clearly explains the purposes of the lesson The teacher asks students to identify the reasons why specific activities take place in the lesson The teacher presents the lesson with a logical flow that moves from simple to more complex concepts The teacher implements the lesson smoothly moving from one stage to another with well-managed transition points



Clarity of Instruction

43

The teacher helps pupils develop problem-solving and metacognitive strategies

The teacher connects material to students’ real-world experiences

3.6

3.5

3.3

3.5

3.1

3.0

The teacher encourages students to ask one another questions and to explain their understanding of topics to one other The teacher gives students the opportunity to correct their own work The teacher motivates the students to think about the advantages and disadvantages of certain approaches The teacher asks the students to reflect on the solutions/ answers they gave to problems or questions The teacher invites the students to give their personal opinion on certain issues The teacher systematically uses material and examples from the students’ daily life to illustrate the course content Students are invited to give their own examples

3.4

3.7

3.4

3.3

4.2

3.8

3.6

3.5

3.2

3.5

3.0

3.0

3.8

3.4

Learning Teaching from Experience

The teacher gives students opportunities to be active learners

The teacher invites students to use strategies which can help them solve different types of problems The teacher invites students to explain the different steps of the problem-solving strategy which they are using The teacher explicitly provides instruction in problemsolving strategies

44

Promoting active learning and developing metacognitive skills

All students are valued

The teacher initiates active interaction and participation

The teacher communicates high expectations

Classroom Management

Learning time is maximized

Clear rules are evident Misbehaviours and disruptions are effectively dealt with

4.5

4.6

4.7

4.7

4.6

4.3

4.7

4.5

4.4

4.4

4.6

4.5

4.4

4.6

4.4

Teacher starts lesson on time Teacher makes sure that students are involved in learning activities until the end of the lesson Actions are taken to minimize disruption There is clarity about when and how students can get help There is clarity about what options are available when the students finish their assignments The teacher corrects misbehaviour with measures that fit the seriousness of the misconduct (e.g., he/she does not overreact) The teacher deals with misbehaviour and disruptions by referring to the established rules of the classroom

5.0 4.7

4.6 4.3

4.9 4.4 3.3

4.5 4.4 3.8

4.7

4.6

4.1

3.8

45

4.4

Acculturation or Innovation?

The teacher interacts with all students

The teacher demonstrates genuine warmth and empathy toward all students in the classroom The teacher shows respect for the students in both his/her behaviour and use of language The teacher creates purposeful activities that engage every student in productive work The teacher’s instruction is interactive (lots of questions and answers) The teacher gives turns to and/or involves those students who do not voluntarily participate in classroom activities The teacher seeks to engage all students in classroom activities The teacher praises students for effort towards realizing their potential The teacher makes clear that all students know that he/she expects their best efforts in the classroom



Classroom Climate

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Learning from experience in teaching: A cultural historical critique Anne Edwards

Teacher A: ‘I don’t use Assessment for Learning in my lessons.’ Teacher B: ‘Why not?’ Teacher A: ‘Well I might if anyone ever explained to me why I should.’ (Conversation between two teachers in an English high school in 2012)

Introduction A leader article in the English newspaper The Times in June 1996, the same year that the present Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove joined the newspaper as a leader writer, had the headline ‘Teach by Example’ with the sub-heading ‘The best place to learn to teach is in school’. The article welcomed the proposal from the then Secretary of State for Education Gillian Shephard for a national curriculum in teacher training and gave the following reason: Although no one would normally expect a minister to prescribe exactly what should be taught in a degree course, teaching is an exception. All society has an interest in education being improved. The teaching profession has failed to achieve this on its own. (The Times, 13 June 1996)

The author of the leader then suggested that the Secretary of State should do more to encourage schools to train student teachers because independent (i.e. fee-paying) schools don’t require qualified teacher status of their staff and ‘As anyone with classroom experience knows, teaching by example is the best way of achieving results.’

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So the teaching profession had failed to improve education and needed a prescribed curriculum, but even better would be no curriculum and on-thejob training based on imitating the teaching of existing teachers. This muddled argument, resting as it does on an ideology of class superiority, is still with us. This collection of papers will, I hope, go some way to offering the counterargument that has for too long been lacking. Unfortunately, it is not only the Murdoch press and Conservative Party politicians who operate with confused lines of reasoning. A few years ago I wrote of the ‘conceptual muddle’ (Edwards 2009: 153) that bedevils university initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in England. The argument was that while this version of ITE is based on a participatory notion of learning, placing student teachers in schools with teacher mentors, it finds itself obliged to justify its existence in terms of the application, in school, of the knowledge acquired in the university. I went on to propose, as van Huizen et al. (2005) had already done, that a cultural historical understanding of learning offered a way of overcoming the paradox inherent in English ITE by demonstrating how the mind is formed in activities in which what is valued in a practice is quite clearly mediated. That argument raised more questions than it answered, in particular about (a) what is valued in practices in schools and how that in turn shapes both the demands made on student teachers and the learning that arises from those demands, and (b) how student teachers might interpret those demands while they inhabit school practices and the implications of those interpretations for their own learning. Recently, with Ann Childs and Jane McNicholl (Childs et al. in press), we have begun to unpack the demands in the practices which are inhabited by student teachers and have discussed how they might be enhanced to promote student teachers’ learning. In this chapter the aim is to address the second set of questions by picking up the challenge set out by Ellis that ‘how teachers’ learning is conceptualised in relation to experience in schools, does not seem to have taken place’ (Ellis 2010: 111).

A cultural historical account of learning These two sets of questions, the demands in practices and the implications of the experiential nature of current versions of ITE are brought together in cultural historical accounts of learning by Vygotsky’s concept of the social situation of development; a concept, I shall argue, which is central to meeting the challenge



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of conceptualizing both what experience is and what it might be in relation to the learning of student teachers. Vygotsky worked on the idea of the social situation of development in order to explain the developing child’s changing relationship with his or her environment over time. These changes, he suggested, are marked by new structures of ‘consciousness’ (Vygotsky 1998: 199), which in turn alter the child’s relationships with their experienced reality. It is these relationships which make up the social situation of development; therefore, as new structures of consciousness emerge, defunct relationships fade away and new ones are formed so that children become repositioned as agents within the practices they inhabit. A key point here is that Vygotsky’s learners are therefore intentional and sense-making. As they come to understand familiar things in new ways, they create changing networks of relationships with the world so that, as Vygotsky put it, ‘new connections appear between experiences when they acquire a certain sense’ (Vygotsky 1998: 291). Vygotsky used the concept of the social situation of development to describe the fundamental changes he observed in children as they learnt and developed. However, the mutually constituting dialectical link between self and society is also at the core of Vygotskian cultural historical theory more generally: we shape and are shaped by the practices we inhabit. The fine-grained Vygotskian argument is that we are connected with these practices through systems or webs of relations. These systems both inhibit and provide possibilities for our intentional action in the activities we engage in. The web of relations is not simply determined by what the opportunities for action are; we also bring our own culturally acquired capabilities and motives to these opportunities. We actively create the system or web of relations that connects us with the world and which shapes how we negotiate activities in practices and take forward our intentions. Vygotsky’s learners are therefore agentic, engaging with public meaning and attempting to make personal sense as they propel themselves forward. Vygotsky did not use the term identity to describe the formation of person but he did emphasize both agency and attunement with what is valued in specific cultures. His emphases connect with Mead’s work on self and identity (Mead and Morris 1934) in more recent cultural historical accounts of how people navigate practices (Holland et al. 1998).The notion of identity is an important addition to cultural historical approaches to learning, reminding us that learners are not simply arational beings; the affective also plays a part in the negotiations. Acknowledging the emotional aspects of learning is crucial when examining learning to teach in the public arena of school classrooms, as the emotional need

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for self-preservation can lead to the reduction of risk, the avoidance of failure and limitations on the opportunities for learning (Edwards 1998). The dialectic nature of learning in this account calls for attention to both the demands of practices and the intentions of the actors within them. Hedegaard, discussing the dialectic, has argued that we should pay more attention to the demands that practices make on learners than has been the case so far (Hedegaard 2012). In relation to teacher education we have taken up that idea and recently proposed ‘[t]hat in order to increase the demands on teachers and provoke and promote their learning, we need to attend to the demands that within school practices make on them as teachers who are also learners’ (Childs et al. in press). Our argument there was that there is a role for university departments of education in working with school-based colleagues to strengthen the conceptual demands arising in school practices. In the present chapter I turn to the second element in the learning dialectic and attempt to start to address the quite considerable challenge presented by Ellis ‘that we begin to view the experience from which beginning teachers learn in schools as the object of enquiry’ (Ellis 2010: 116). A cultural historical view of experience offers two more conceptual tools which may inform how the experience of student teachers is understood and worked with. The tools are inevitably interconnected: the role of imitation in learning and the relationship between everyday or spontaneous concepts and scientific or higher-order thinking. The Times leader writer was correct, to a point. We do learn by example, but what we learn will depend on what we are capable of recognizing in the example we are observing, and we will need help with drawing new connections from what we have observed. Vygotsky took the idea of imitation very seriously, seeing it as a vehicle for forms of collaboration through which learners were inducted into more powerful ways of thinking and acting. He was therefore not concerned with what he called ‘mechanical, automatic, thoughtless imitation’ (Vygotsky 1998: 202). Instead, when describing imitation in children’s learning he explained it as follows: [E]verything that the child cannot do independently, but which he can be taught or which he can do with direction or cooperation or with the help of leading questions, we will include in the sphere of imitation. (Vygotsky 1998: 202)

This notion of imitation has an active role for the more expert in guiding what is to be extracted from an activity. Language is central in achieving conceptual development from observation; his view of imitation, therefore, connects



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directly with his argument that content cannot precede form in learning, that is, that ‘known content may be adequately represented only with the help of known forms’ (Vygotsky 1998: 35). For that reason, he explained that instruction needs to be in advance of development (Vygotsky 1998). This use of the term ‘instruction’ is not a proposal for mindless drilling. Rather, it acknowledges the conceptual latency with which everyday unarticulated experience is saturated and sees the teacher’s role to be linking the, in some degree, inchoate ideas of learners with the powerful concepts that will enable them to regulate their actions in concrete situations. From a Vygotskian perspective learning is evidenced in changing connections between concepts, not simply the accumulation of new ideas; previous understandings do not necessarily get dismissed but may be placed in new configurations which allow for new meanings to be recognized. These meanings reflect and are referenced to the meanings that are currently valued in the learner’s social environment. The concepts that arise are then used as tools to work in and on that environment. There is therefore a cyclical process of conceptual development from the concrete to the abstract and back to the concrete. Higher-order thinking, that is, working with the abstract, is an outcome of what Vygotsky called a ‘transition of functions upwards’ (1998: 85) so that the more powerful concepts are a ‘direct continuation of ’ (1998: 85) the more elementary forms of thinking that preceded them. These higher-order concepts are then employed in practices in ways that allow the actor to self-regulate. The abstract, the labelling function of form and socially validated meanings are all essential elements in a process of learning that arises from the conceptual latency produced in the everyday and concrete experience of the learner. Recognizing how the abstract, form and reasoning are brought into the process of conceptualizing the everyday returns us to the social situation of development and the role of the educator. Vygotsky consistently argued that the function of the teacher is to organize and be part of the social environment so that learners might create relationships with the environment which are conducive to their conceptual development. The role of the teacher is then to monitor those relationships and assist the learner through their personal zones of proximal development. He was adamantly against a strong focus on the teacher as direct instructor. Instead he suggested that teachers focus on creating the right environment for learning in which they act as resources for learners; while teachers’ actions need simply to be shaped by a good understanding of the basic goals of education.

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The educational environment of Vygotsky’s classroom consequently can be seen in Dunne’s terms as ‘the rough ground’ (Dunne 1993) out of which a merging of the spontaneous or everyday with higher-order thinking may arise. Derry picks up on the nature of the rough ground described by Dunne, pointing to how its conceptual potential has all too often been overlooked. [T]here may be a domain of knowing which is nuanced and not consciously acted on, but which nevertheless rich in conceptual content, is often ignored by policy makers to the detriment of their intended aims and outcomes. (Derry 2000: 154)

But the merging of the everyday with the scientific requires delicate guidance to sustain and assist in the reconfiguring of a learner’s relationship with the environment. Derry’s answer, following Sellars (1956), McDowell (1996) and Brandom (2000) (Derry 2000, 2008), is to create a learning environment in which everyday understandings can be referenced to robust concepts in the ‘space of reasons’. She explains: [F]or Vygotsky concepts depend for their meaning on the system of judgements (inferences) within which they are disclosed. Brandom’s careful study of concept use argues that concepts by their nature are not isolated from one another; to have conceptual content is just for it [a concept] to play a role in the inferential game of making claims and giving and asking for reasons. To grasp or understand such a concept is to have practical mastery over the inferences it is involved in – to know, in the practical sense of being able to distinguish, what follows from the applicability of a concept, and what it follows from. (Brandom 1994: 48; Derry 2008: 17)

Ellis’s agenda for the study of experience in the professional preparation of teachers is far-reaching, involving student teachers, teachers and other teacher educators in jointly creating understandings and experiences as they work towards future practices. My focus is simply an attempt at gaining some clarity over the conceptual latency to be found in the rough ground of classroom teaching experiences, an area where there has been far too little work. Therefore, despite the resources of cultural historical theory, this chapter is a partial and slight ground-clearing response to Ellis’s challenge.

The purposes of ITE I would agree with the unnamed Times leader writer that all society has a stake in the quality of education and that we should aim at producing ‘well adjusted



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children with a body of knowledge and an ability to think for themselves’ (The Times, 13 June 1996); indeed, I would wish for nothing less for their teachers. Interweaving emotional well-being, engagement with relevant knowledge and the ability to make decisions to take forward intentions should be the sine qua non of any professional preparation. The French use of the term la formation des enseignants for teacher training perhaps gives a better sense of the personal identity shifts that can arise during the training period and focuses attention on how ITE can contribute to the long-term shaping of the future professional. If the focus of ITE is how student teachers become informed decisionmaking teachers who support the learning of pupils, the ITE curriculum can be construed simply as one of several tools which may ensure that the powerful concepts that are encountered by student teachers are socially relevant. The object of ITE activity, in the Engeström sense of ‘object of activity’ as the ‘problem space’ to be worked in and on (Engeström 1993: 67), is then the learning trajectory of each student teacher as they navigate school practices and on occasions are able to lift their heads above the rough ground of the everyday to connect with the higher-order thinking that one would hope is embedded in the ITE curriculum. Connecting everyday experience with situation-free higher-order concepts is, however, infrequently experienced by student teachers within the routines of classroom teaching and mentoring. My own work ten or so years ago sought to identify how student teachers learnt to teach while in school. Our analyses revealed that student teachers concentrated on the delivery of the school curriculum and avoided the unpredictability of responsively supporting pupil learning, discussion of which might have taken them out of the rough ground into a questioning of pedagogy (Edwards and Protheroe 2003). There were several reasons for prioritizing efficient curriculum delivery, each revealing the very limited pathways available to them in the activities they engaged in while in school. One reason was that the object of activity for teacher-mentors in school was coverage of the school curriculum, which positioned student teachers as temporary carriers of the curriculum baton. Student teachers, as guests in the classrooms, had to hold tight to the baton and keep up the expected pace of delivery before returning it to the teacher-mentor (Edwards and Protheroe 2004). Another reason was that student teachers wanted to present competent performances of teaching to avoid being categorized as learners in classrooms. Indeed the discursive practices of the schools did not afford the possibility of

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adults being legitimately positioned as learners in classrooms (Edwards 1997, Edwards and Collison 1996). As a result, student teachers resisted teachermentors’ attempts at helping them to learn from examples of their more expert teaching, interpreting their mentors’ efforts to work alongside them as signs that their own precarious performances were inadequate. The conceptual potential of the ‘domain of knowing’ (Derry 2000: 154) or the cognitive trails that are marked out through activities described by Cussins (1992), and which constituted the rough ground inhabited by the student teachers, were therefore limited. One outcome was that student teachers failed to learn to interpret classroom events from the perspective of more experienced teachers and instead became adept at performing the delivery of a curriculum which was provided for them by the teachers in whose classrooms they were learning to teach. Gonzalez and Carter have explained student teachers’ limited interpretations of classroom events in terms of the personal narratives of schooling that they brought into their practicums, and observed that these narratives tended to ‘shatter’ (Gonzalez and Carter 1992: 45) when novices started to teach because they were ‘incomplete’ when compared with those of their cooperating teachers. They proposed the following solution: Student teachers should have the opportunity to discuss openly their personal histories and understandings of teaching, in part to facilitate communication and in part to help them understand what drives their interpretations and decisions in classroom contexts. In addition, it [the study] indicates that co-operating teachers need to have a rich understanding of the frames that novices bring to teaching so they can address these preconceptions and avoid mis-communicating their intentions and insights. (Gonzalez and Carter 1992: 46)

Far from the notion of ‘tapping into’ the ‘professional craft knowledge’ of teachers that Ellis roundly criticizes as insufficient support for learning through experience (Ellis 2010: 108), what is described by Gonzalez and Carter is the structured opportunity for student teachers to construct the web of relations which connects the purposeful self with experienced reality. There they can begin to articulate the ‘whys’ of teaching in ways that echo Brandom’s (1994) notion of ‘making claims and giving and asking for reasons’. In these circumstances, suggest Gonzalez and Carter, the cooperating teachers can do more ‘than simply provide models or experiences or brief suggestions to fix lessons. They can also reveal the underlying narrative structure of their understandings of teaching events’ (46).



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The role of narratives in helping make connections between inchoate everyday understandings and the development of robust concepts which can inform planning and enable self-regulation is a strand in the cultural historical field of enquiry which has been particularly taken forward by Bruner. His analysis of how culture and identity are interwoven to give access to public meanings and can be supported by a version of schooling is perhaps as relevant for student teachers as it is for school pupils (see Ottesen, this volume). A system of education must help those growing up in a culture to find an identity in that culture. Without it they stumble in their effort after meaning. It is only in the narrative mode that one can construct an identity and find a place in one’s culture. Schools must cultivate it, nurture it, cease taking it for granted. (Bruner 1996: 42)

As Bruner makes clear, such narratives will not arise spontaneously; they need cultivating. The nurturing of these narratives not only happens in the discussions that are contrived to enable student teachers to reveal their present understandings, but also in the purposeful micro-interactions that shape actions in goal-directed activities (Edwards and Thompson in press) once those goals are recognized as salient by the teacher. The resulting self-narratives become useful tools, mediating actions in activities, enabling student teachers to present themselves as more or less competent as they find their way through the possibilities for effective action available to them in the activities located in specific school practices. A major question for ITE is therefore whether the kinds of self-authoring outlined here should be sustained only by the local practices of specific schools. Bruner’s advice pre-supposes a unified system of education taking forward a coherent and agreed set of public values; a degree of wishful thinking that is also reflected in a contemporary US report on teacher education, Goodlad’s (1990) Teachers for our Nation’s Schools. In England, where chains of commercially owned academies thrive, local education authorities are dying and the independent sector is held up as a model for secondary school education, one has to question whether there is a future for a notion of teaching as a profession with universal and publicly contestable values of service to society. Understanding experience in order to ensure that beginning teachers do not remain stuck in a limited and impoverished version of the rough ground, working only with locally situated understandings and with little chance of engagement with powerful pedagogic concepts, consequently seems an urgent challenge.

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Learning through experience As I have already suggested, student teachers’ selection of actions in activities is frequently mediated by a fragile sense of themselves as teachers. The notion of mediation is crucial to a cultural historical unpacking of what is meant by learning through experience because the Vygotskian learner does not experience the world directly. One’s experience is always mediated by others, present or absent, who have created the trails we might follow, and by one’s own history, intentions and expectations. Culturally appropriate pathways though activities, that is, Cussins’ locally constructed cognitive trails (Cussins 1992), afford and constrain actions in activities, while the mediating power of personal identities and the purposes they embrace give direction to how pathways are interpreted and navigated (Holland et al. 1998). We therefore cannot ignore the importance of purpose to the processes of learning. Without a sense of purpose we are like Polanyi’s blindfolded person feeling their way slowly across a terrain trying to make sense of each object they touch through the stick they are holding (Polanyi 1958). Polanyi’s explanation of the formation of personal knowledge in science, although a product of mid-twentieth century concerns with the separation of the two cultures of science and humanities, still speaks to us. Talking of commitment to ‘something that has our focal attention’, he outlined the challenges of working from the array of phenomena we experience in order to make sense of them in relation to a focal concern: The pouring out of ourselves into the particulars given by experience so as to make sense of them for some purpose or in some other coherent context, is not achieved effortlessly. (Polanyi 1958: 61)

Bruner, too, as we have already seen, similarly pointed to the effort involved in making meaning (Bruner 1996). Polanyi’s main message, echoing Vygotsky’s view that teachers’ work should be directed by the goals of education, is that a strong sense of the commitment which is part of personal knowledge makes that effort possible. That commitment includes a passion which takes the scientist beyond the limits of ‘graphs, equations and computations’ (62) to what Polanyi calls ‘connoisseurship’, which allows the actor to consider what might be as well as what is. The Vygotskian would wish at this point to nod in the direction of Wartofsky’s work on tertiary artefacts (Wartofsky 1973), which are tools for imagining and creating possible futures. This capacity to think beyond the here and now must certainly be



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part of the conceptual repertoire of those who are responsible for recognizing and nurturing the potential presented by young learners in schools. Working with and on the personal knowledge and long-term commitment of beginning teachers would seem, from a Polanyi perspective, to be worth the effort. But Polanyi’s concern was to connect the humanities to the post-war culture of scientific communities with whom he was familiar, while our concern is the nurturing of the professional identities of beginning teachers. Long-term valueladen goals, although essential, are not enough; our learning teachers also need to be able to reference their own professional identities to those of the broader profession. The conversation between two teachers with which this chapter opened took place during the first meeting of an action research group in a high school. Teacher B was explaining his project, which initially involved identifying interesting strategies used by colleagues under the broad rubric of Assessment for Learning (AfL). Teacher A became increasingly bemused until she could contain herself no longer and announced that she did not use any of the strategies being discussed and indeed did not do anything that might be called AfL in her lessons. Teacher B asked why not and Teacher A explained that no one had given her a reason for doing so. It appeared that she was therefore unable to recognize AfL as a tool that might allow her to work with the potential presented by the young people she taught. This was an interesting start to a series of meetings where the intention was to work from evidence that the teachers collected so that they might be asked for and would provide reasons for their actions as they worked on their practices. Bruner, Holland and Polanyi have all emphasized the purposeful aspects of identity development; our identities both encompass the wellspring of our agentic selves and mediate how we then engage with and in the world. The ‘why’ of any action is therefore important, and programmes of professional formation need to be referenced both to what is valued in the wider professional community and what the actor already knows. Derry picks up this concern when she discusses how Vygotsky saw everyday and scientific concepts: ‘[F]or Vygotsky scientific concepts by their very character require conscious operation’ (Derry 2000: 154). Derry is not arguing for the formal introduction of abstract ideas to the detriment of experience; she is strongly aware of the latency of experience. Referring to McDowell (1996), she observes the apparently passive aspects of those experiences he notes while, as we have already seen, acknowledging the ‘conceptual capacities’ (Derry 2000: 153) that are inherent within experience.

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Derry’s analysis leads to the suggestion that when teacher-mentors and university tutors contrive opportunities for student teachers as learners to make claims and ask for reasons, student teachers are helped to access the meaningmaking that is valued in the discourse in which they are participating and to reference and test their understandings against those meanings. A Vygotskian approach doesn’t depend simply on individuals being placed in the required environment where they discover meaning for themselves. The learning environment must be designed and cannot rely on the spontaneous response to an environment which is not constructed according to, or involves, some clearly worked out conceptual framework. For Vygotsky concepts depend for their meaning on the system of judgements (inferences) within which they are disclosed. (Derry 2008: 60–1)

Here is a definition of the zone of proximal development that makes sense for professional preparation. But the demands on individual schools and the teacher-mentors within them are huge, requiring them to offer a clearly worked out conceptual framework which represents the best conceptualizations of teaching and learning. Can a profession therefore reasonably delegate its preparation to the values and purposes of local communities such as schools? Does it then cease to be a profession and simply become a craft with interesting local dialects?

The learning dialectic This chapter, too, has raised questions. I have suggested that the conceptual potential to be found in the rough ground of experience is at different times either overlooked or overemphasized. The latent understandings that arise while student teachers are simply finding their way along the cognitive trails offered within the practices of schooling can, as Derry has indicated, be underplayed; but they are also, as Ellis has observed, sometimes overvalued in ITE (Ellis 2010). I have suggested here that they are an insufficient basis for a profession that needs to nurture future generations of young learners. The notion of a social situation of development comprising a learning dialectic in which the agentic and committed student teacher creates and re-creates webs of connection with social reality, as she or he attempts to connect with public meanings in the practices of schooling, is an important first step in strengthening the fragile selves of beginning teachers. One outcome



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could be that their engagement in, and with, activities in practices is mediated by a stronger sense of connection with the public knowledge that is valued by the broader profession. Such a move could result in what Evetts has described as occupational professionalism (Evetts 2006, 2009), responsible for judging its own efficacy against professionally agreed norms. The danger of an overemphasis on experience is that too long in the rough ground, without access to higher-order thinking and contestable public meanings, may instead produce professionals whose references are to the precepts of what Evetts describes as the more limited form of organizational professionalism, where the notion of professionalism is simply a label invoked to ensure personal compliance to unscrutinized institutional purposes. One response to this possibility lies in the learning dialectic offered by cultural historical accounts of learning and a parallel focus on the demands within the practices of schooling. Creating conceptually informed spaces of reason and commitment within schools might ensure that teachers at all stages of their careers are able to reference their actions and contribute to wider forms of public meaning-making and in turn increase the conceptual demands made on beginning teachers. That vision perhaps returns us to Ellis’s wider agenda and new experiences for all of us who have a stake in the professional preparation of teachers.

References Brandom, R. (1994). Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —(2000). Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1996). The Culture of Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Childs, A., Edwards, A. and McNicholl, J. (in press). Developing a multi-layered system of distributed expertise: what does cultural historical theory bring to understandings of workplace learning in school university partnerships? In O. McNamara et al. (eds), Teacher Learning in the Workplace: Widening Perspectives on Practice and Policy. Dordecht: Springer Cussins, A. (1992). Content, embodiment and objectivity: the theory of cognitive trails. Mind 101 (404): 651–88. Derry, J. (2000). Foundationalism and anti-foundationalism: seeking enchantment in the rough ground. In V. Oittinen (ed.), Evald Ilyenkov’s Philosophy Revisited. Helsinki: Kikimora Publications.

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—(2008). Abstract rationality in education: from Vygotsky to Brandom. Studies in the Philosophy of Education 27: 49–62. Dunne, J. (1993). Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techne’ in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle. London: University of Notre Dame Press. Edwards, A. (1997). Guests bearing gifts: the position of student teachers in primary school classrooms. British Educational Research Journal 23 (1): 27–37. —(1998). Mentoring student teachers in primary schools: assisting student teachers to become learners. European Journal of Teacher Education 21 (1): 47–62. —(2009). Becoming a teacher. In H. Daniels, J. Porter and H. Lauder (eds), Educational Theories, Cultures and Learning, Vol 1. London: Routledge, pp. 153–64. Edwards, A. and Collison, J. (1996). Mentoring and Developing Practice in Primary Schools. Buckingham: Open University Press. Edwards, A. and Protheroe, L . (2003). Learning to see in classrooms: what are student teachers learning about teaching and learning while learning to teach in schools? British Educational Research Journal 29 (2): 227–42. —(2004). Teaching by proxy: understanding how mentors are positioned in partnerships. Oxford Review of Education 30 (2): 183–97. Edwards, A. and Thompson, M. (2013). Resourceful leadership: revealing the creativity of organizational leaders. In A. Sannino and V. Ellis (eds), Learning and Collective Creativity: Activity-Theoretical and Sociocultural Studies. London: Routledge. Ellis, V. (2010). Impoverishing experience: the problem of teacher education in England. Journal of Education for Teaching 36 (1): 105–20. Engeström, Y. (1993). Developmental studies of work as a test bench of activity theory: the case of primary care medical practice. In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (eds), Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evetts, J. (2006). Introduction – Trust and Professionalism: challenges and occupational changes. Current Sociology 54 (4): 515–31. —(2009). New professionalism and new public management: changes, continuities and consequences. Comparative Sociology 8: 247–66. Gonzalez, L. and Carter, K. (1996). Correspondence in cooperating teachers’ and student teachers’ interpretations of classroom events. Teaching and Teacher Education 12 (1): 39–47. Goodlad, J. (1990). Teachers for our Nation’s Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hedegaard, M. (2012). The dynamic aspects in children’s learning and development. In M. Hedegaard, A. Edwards and M. Fleer (eds), Motives, Emotions and Values in the Development of Children and Young People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 9–27. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D. and Cain, C. (1998). Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. van Huizen, P., van Oers, B. and Wubbels, T. (2005). A Vygotskian perspective on teacher education. Journal of Curriculum Studies 37 (3): 267–90.



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McDowell, J. (1996). Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mead, G. H. and Morris, C. (eds) (1934). Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. In H. Feigl and M. Scriven (eds), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Vygotsky, L .S. (1997). The Collected Work of L. S. Vygotsky. Vol. 3, The Problem of the Theory and History of Psychology. New York: Plenum Press. —(1998). The Collected Work of L. S. Vygotsky. Vol. 5, Child Psychology. New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L. S., Cole, M., John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S. and Souberman, E. (eds) (1978). Mind In Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wartofsky, M. (1973). Models. Dordrecht: Reidel. Wertsch, J. V. (2007). Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole and J. V. Wertsch (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 178–92.

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The rhetoric of experience and ‘The Importance of Teaching’ Tom Are Trippestad

Introduction In contemporary neoliberal discourse, education is interpreted as a key variable in the competition between nations as knowledge economies, with human capital theories rendering people as assets to be managed. Discourses from economics provide the premises for the political analysis, critique and, significantly, governance of teaching. A much stronger interest in, and political control over, teaching, teachers and children follows as a result, with economic language and econometric concepts increasingly defining what and whose experiences are perceived as valuable and legitimate in the rhetoric of education. This chapter analyzes a typical educational policy text, the UK government’s White Paper The Importance of Teaching (IoT) (Department for Education 2010), produced from within the neoliberal paradigm. The text inscribes a particular economic world-view that is constructed as a premise for governing teaching and promotes, as a result, specific kinds of teaching experiences, competencies and forms of agency for teachers. It is an accessible text that shows clear and archetypical features of the persuasive elements in neoliberal policy discourse. As such, the analysis made here is transferable to the neoliberal elements of other policy texts and the analytic tools deployed in this chapter are offered to readers in that spirit. These tools are derived specifically from the ‘new-rhetorical’ (e.g. Perelmen and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, Silverstone 1993) approach to discourse analysis. In what follows I explore the concept of ‘rhetorical agency’ in relation to the versions of the experience of teaching presented in the text. I analyze the ideological function of the types of agency typically constructed in neoliberal policy texts.

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I make use also of some key ideas from Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (Barthes and Eggen 1991) as a critical resource. In particular, I pick up Barthes’ concern with the way in which social constructions and narratives become naturalized in everyday discourses, through the processes of ‘mythologization’, as meaning is reflected in the signs around us, through our use of language and images. Barthes shows how certain experiences or interests become engrained into the social fabric as though they are beyond question and are exceedingly powerful. In Mythologies he goes on to argue that modern mythologies are constructed and manifested to suit the bourgeoisie’s interest and world-views in many different life areas. Following this analysis I argue that the Importance of Teaching has distinct features of what Roland Barthes named ‘the mythological language of the bourgeoisie’, promoting certain kinds of agency for teachers as a consequence of overarching bourgeois economic ideology. IoT mythologizes teaching into simple but powerful concepts, undermining the real importance of teaching as a complex, historical, social and cultural activity.

Policy analysis from a rhetorical perspective In a rhetorical analysis policy texts should be seen as expressions of strategic and tactical choices. Policy texts can, as such, be analyzed using rhetorical categories such as the positioning of the speaker and audience, time, place, goal, content, form, disposition and use of memory. Actors should be perceived as operating strategically, not only within discourses but also with abilities to analyze and choose between discourses. Such strategies can be both open and hidden. In considering aspects of the rhetoric of professions and professional development in education, Edwards et al. (2004) focus their analysis on ‘the work of rhetoric’, understanding rhetoric not as something apart from action or practice but as hidden within them. They analyze the rhetorical work of discourses and how discourses are drawn upon. They see the job of the rhetorical analyst as one of determining how constructions of ‘the real’ are made persuasive. Their rhetorical analysis includes questions on how competence is positioned and on how authority is built, and it examines the attempt to create a sense of identity between the implied author and implied audience. Such a positioning of identity has advantages in constructing discourse, in the sense that it is sometimes problematic to know who the author is behind a policy document. The authors may be multiple; moreover, the construction of the text may be negotiated amongst participants



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with many, often conflicting, interests. A discourse can be a translation of different interests into a common cause of relevance to diverse groups and supporters which develops a collective life of its own that comes to be reflected in the resulting policy document. What would be specifically rhetorical about the kind of understanding just described? Roger Silverstone’s new definition of rhetoric and rhetorical analysis is useful here. He sees rhetoric as: … a bid or a claim for attention and action, more or less open to resistance or negotiation … which insists on an examination of the processes of communication as situated, motivated, textual, interactive, politically asymmetrical and skillful.

It follows that in analysis: The goal is to understand not just the generality of rhetorical appeal … but also the specific rhetorics of different texts, technologies and arguments as they bid for attention and action. (Silverstone 1993: 182–3)1

Rhetorical analysis, unlike analytical philosophy for example, which may share a concern with ordinary language use, attends to text within the (situated) process by which it is constructed rather than more straightforwardly as an end product. The claim that rhetoric is both ‘motivated’ and ‘skillful’ highlights the role played by key actors in its construction and performance and for which they can therefore be held responsible, hence criticized. The notion that rhetoric is open to ‘resistance’ and ‘negotiation’ allows for an analysis of power that may be subjected to normative judgments. For example, despite the ordinary language associations of the word, rhetorical analysis does not suggest that unrealistic sovereignty and power be afforded to the speaker of texts; indeed in classical rhetoric the power of the speaker was regarded a rather weak theoretical premise. Within new, critical rhetorical analysis, an audience (in this case the reader) appears as a vital part, asserting the dynamic of communication as a key premise. The connection between rhetorical analysis and public theory is vital, given the democratic context in which much rhetoric is now made manifest. In new rhetorical approaches the concept of rhetorical agency is an important one (the concept allows for the speaker having some power, while acknowledging its limitations). For example, in the traditional social architecture of education the teacher may be considered a strong subject, using teaching as an art or an acquired technique that represents, structures and delivers knowledge

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to pupils or students, while keeping order in the classroom. Rhetorical agency helps us to understand the limitations of thinking of the teacher as a sole and sovereign rhetorical subject in the particular communicative situation. M. C. Greer (2006) adds further substance to this point, identifying those with the ability or capacity to influence others as rhetorical agents. However, rhetorical agency is only possible within the communication practices of a given community of discourse. Rhetorical agents are therefore acted upon – as well as acting themselves – in multiple ways that are complex. In other words, from a rhetorical perspective, agents are both shapers and shaped. The capacity of the agent to shape within the discourse is both enhanced and limited by the rhetorical culture, social structures and technical possibilities. So, this particular view of agency in teaching recognizes the capacity of teachers to influence others while also noting limits to this ability. Moreover, it recognizes the role that cultural traditions, social structures, language, texts and actions can play in forming views of teacher agency that are impoverished and make the job hard to do. Furthermore, we may add that these limitations may be imposed in the interests of policy. Policy-makers may seek to limit teacher agency, or reduce it to a narrow and specific form for reformist, ideological purposes, while at the same time they may look to empower those teachers who forward their political goals by affording them unique possibilities for powerful communication through their professional activities. This dialectical dimension to new rhetorical analysis is compatible with a cultural-historical approach (Edwards in this volume; Ellis et al. 2010) in its focus on communicative activity.

Types of teacher agency in The Importance of Teaching Three types of teacher agency emerge from the policy concerns at work in the White Paper The Importance of Teaching (IoT). First is teaching as a form of economic agency and, second, teaching as a form of theatre with the teacher as a player on the political and educational stage. As well as teaching as economics and teaching as theatre, a third type of agency concerns the teacher as a person of passion and learning and as a promoter of passion and learning in others. In what follows I consider these types of teacher agency more fully for their ideological significance and I note the versions of the pupil which are correspondingly implicated. As we shall see, the analysis takes on a fresh significance when considered in the context of contemporary requirements for educational leaders to measure teacher performance in order to drive up standards.



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Teaching as economics Let us start by identifying some narratives and powerful concepts in the rhetoric of the White Paper. The overarching perspective set up in the foreword (signed by Prime Minister David Cameron) is primarily a human capital world-view, articulating education as the key factor in economic growth and in competition between national economies. Teacher quality (however measured) is set up as the critical and crucial factor for the success of the nation: The only way we can catch up, and have the world-class schools our children deserve, is by learning the lessons of other countries’ success. The first, and most important, lesson is that no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers. (Department for Education 2010: 3)

Teachers are perceived and defined as the nation’s most valuable ‘assets’ in the separate foreword signed by the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove: At the heart of our plan is a vision of the teacher as our society’s most valuable asset … There is no calling more noble, no profession more vital and no service more important than teaching. It is because we believe in the importance of teaching – as the means by which we liberate every child to become the adult they aspire to be … (Department for Education 2010: 7)

The two forewords in IoT perform a reduction of society into an economic phenomenon. The rhetoric reduces the complexity of economic success and competitiveness to become solely a question of education. Further, economic success is determined by teacher quality. These are cause-and-effect relationships. At the same time, teaching is presented in terms of moral categories and virtues. Teaching is made into a noble calling that will provide justice and greater possibilities for all children. From such a presentation of teaching’s noble calling, and its economic significance, it is but a step to seeing complex problems such as economic inequality and lack of social mobility as no more than the effects of ineffective schools and of the poverty of aspirations among some communities: This vast gap between rich and poor is not pre-ordained … Of course schools are not solely responsible for this problem. In far too many communities there is a deeply embedded culture of low aspiration that is strongly tied to long-term unemployment. (Department for Education 2010: 4)

Commenting on arguments such as these, Barthes (Barthes and Eggen 1991) elaborated the features of what was referred to as ‘the mythological language

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of the bourgeoisie’. An important function of the bourgeoisie’s mythological language is to reduce the complex web of reasons and explanations to relations of simple causes and effects that can be controlled; it is a mathematical morality that seeks to make all other morals appear absurd or unreasonable. To set oneself against this morality would mean appearing to rebel against reason itself. Determining this requirement for simplicity is the investor’s need for certainties. Investment (in something such as education) should have profitable and predictable outcomes. For an investor to control the investment, the investor needs accountability and visibility. Because of its complexity teaching is very hard to control in the same way as a product on an assembly line (see Weiston-Serdan and Dorn-Giarmoleo in this volume) or as a predictable investment. Yet in IoT, teaching is presented in just this way. The lack of control over investment outcomes in teaching is presented as a moral outrage in IoT. Education is presented as a currency with which to invest, an investment that should have better, more profitable and more predictable outcomes: … in a knowledge economy, education is the new currency by which nations maintain economic competitiveness and global prosperity. (Department for Education 2010: 17)

The motive of this section of IoT is to create teachers and a view of teaching that is easily visible for the investor. The agency of the teacher is controlled as if on a production line from investment to outcome. The chapters ‘Curriculum, Assessment and Qualifications’ and ‘Accountability’ are more or less shaped by such motives. In the executive summary of the ‘Accountability’ chapter, for example, the universe of the investor – of competition, visibility and accountability – is particularly clear: It is vital that schools should be accountable to parents for how well pupils do, and how taxpayers’ money is spent. Clear performance information and good comparative data are positive features of our system. But we must do better. Greater transparency in the funding system will mean that every parent will know the money which is allocated for their child’s education, the amount spent by local government, and the amount available to the school. (Department for Education 2010: 12–13)

The extent to which the investment is necessarily visible (as it makes its way through the production line of teaching) shapes the limited forms of agency available to teachers within such neoliberal economic discourse. The



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opportunities for teachers to learn from the experience of teaching are therefore similarly limited.

Teaching as theatre Roland Barthes also claims that the mythological language of the bourgeoisie dissolves or reduces the collective into individuals and the individual into moral essences. It concentrates essences into dramatic roles and puts them up on a stage to be judged and viewed as perfect miniatures, representing the problems of the whole. In IoT, we see similar mythological functions in the rhetoric. Teachers and pupils are treated as role-personas on a stage to be viewed – either to be blamed as the cause of society’s problems or praised as the solution. The myth makes it easy for politics to outsource its responsibility for the problems in society and blame teaching, teachers and pupils. The myth simplifies teaching as a concept and positions politics on the ethical high ground with freedom constantly to morally blackmail teachers, pupils and schools if problems occur. The myth promotes a blame game rather than a deliberative discourse. This sort of political rhetoric goes in tandem with a mass media genre which is also characterized by simplification, setting up easy forms of causes and effects and also likely to put different roles and moral essences up against each other as representative miniatures of society’s problems (Hernes and Eide 1987). The reason of the bourgeoisie therefore easily becomes the public discourse, making it difficult for other perspectives to have influence. The White Paper presents the teacher and pupil roles in relation to each other on two separate paths. On the one hand IoT discusses abstract ideal models over the teachers’ and pupils’ desired characters and relations. On the other hand it constructs the relation as a dystopia. The ‘no limit child’ is a powerful ideal construction of the child’s character in IoT (and also in many public statements and speeches). This construction claims that there is no limit to what a child can achieve by being inspired by the right teacher. IoT then sets up the ‘right’ teacher in relation to such a child model. The social construction reminds us of the ideal relationship between an actor and an audience, where the actor should inspire and awaken an audience with personality and enthusiasm. The inspired children then become masters of their own destiny and author of their own life story. Michael Gove writes in his foreword: Throughout history, most individuals have been the victims of forces beyond their control … But education provides a route to liberation from these imposed

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The form of teacher agency that could answer such a challenge is also highly idealized. The simplification of the complexity of teaching, of social relations and oppressive social structures into the myth of the self-authoring, transcendent individual is a powerful tool in the rhetorical work of limiting the freedom of movement of teachers to think and to act.

Teaching as passion and novelty IoT sets up demanding attributes in the teacher’s role in order to make its overarching narrative work. Teachers must be excellent, live their role to the fullest, be passionate, able to spark interest and be inventive while at the same time instilling these capacities in their pupils. In the proposed support for professional development a combination of excellence and passion is particularly desired: … we will expect Teaching Schools to draw together outstanding teachers in an area who are committed to supporting other schools … we will also designate ‘Specialist Leaders of Education’ – excellent professionals in leadership positions … It is also vital that we give teachers the opportunity to deepen their subject knowledge and renew the passion which brought them into the classroom. (Department for Education 2010: 25)

The programme Teach First is presented as an exemplar and true innovation in teacher training in IoT and in many of Cameron’s and Gove’s public performances2 Teach First is characterized by a rhetoric constantly combining excellent professionals with passion and novelty in relation to social transformation. Passion and novelty are presented as the magical solutions to school improvement. These combinations are also typical of several of Cameron’s and Gove’s presentations of the ideal teacher’s experiences in speeches and policy documents. But such ideal combinations are contrasted with dark dystopian characteristics. Both the utopias and dystopias imply political governance. As a contrast to the ideal, implicitly heroic figure of the ‘no limit child’, IoT models dystopian, ‘villainous’ pupils as causes of weak and fearful teachers. In the chapter on ‘Behaviour’, pupils’ bad behaviour is set forth as the main reason for good people quitting the noble profession of teaching. Pupils are presented as a direct and



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dangerous threat to teachers. They lack respect; they attack teachers; they make them feel unsafe; and they make false allegations against their teachers. Within this dystopian view pupils create fear in schools and disrupt the passion and novelty of teachers. These concerns for the weakened character of the teacher are intended to legitimize policies that restore the authoritarian powers of disciplining pupils. The list of remedies in the White Paper is extensive. Here are some examples: … head teachers need the ability to exclude disruptive children and to be confident that their authority in taking these difficult decisions will not be undermined … We will increase the authority of classroom teachers and support them to discipline pupils appropriately … We will strengthen powers to search pupils, issue detentions and use reasonable force where necessary … We will issue a short, clear, robust guide on teachers’ powers to use reasonable force and we will give schools greater discretion to decide on the most appropriate approach to monitoring the exercise of these powers. (Department for Education 2010: 32–3)

At key points in IoT it is suggested that the authentic, passionate and novel teacher is constrained and burdened by bureaucracy and narrow national syllabuses from governments of the past. This is a great concern – that passion disappears and the ability to unlock the ‘no limit child’s’ potential is weakened: Teachers consistently tell us that they feel constrained and burdened, limited to repetitive teaching of the same narrow syllabus to successive classes of young people, often feeling that they are in a straitjacket which gives them little scope to pursue avenues which might unlock the potential of their pupils. (Department for Education 2010: 16)

Measuring the performance of passion and novelty: The paradox of The Importance of Teaching According to Barthes (Barthes and Eggen 1991), the demand for passion and novelty has important functions in the mythological universe of the bourgeoisie. For an actor in bourgeois theatre it was important to be burning, driven and dominated by passion. The actor had to show passion to make the psychology of the character visible to the audience and almost a quantitative phenomenon. The actor needed to force the laughter or pain into simple, measurable forms to make the passion into a commercial commodity to suit a numerical exchange

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system. When an investor gave his money to the theatre, his investment would have a visible outcome in the acting. The stage demanded an actor that understood how to use his body in front of the investor’s eye. Such theatrical metaphors for teaching are particularly evident in the chapter on ‘Teaching and Leadership’. The development of a measurement system of teacher performance is suggested. The head teachers are given the role of judging performance and given new powers to fire ‘underperforming’ teachers and reward or punish performance with pay flexibilities: We will give head teachers greater freedoms to reward good performance and address poor performance … Every member of school staff has an important role to play in ensuring that pupils and students get an excellent education … The current regulations on teacher competence are complex, lengthy and fragmented … our expectations of teachers are unclear, and make it hard to assess teacher performance and steer professional development. We will review existing measures of teacher performance … to establish clear and unequivocal standards. The review will be led by excellent head teachers and teachers. (Department for Education 2010: 25)

The concept of the teacher’s passion and ability to spark visible interest and passion in pupils can be considered to be such a visible and controllable outcome of an investment. This myth impoverishes the experience of teaching, transforming it into a false ideal of becoming a series of wonderful visible pedagogical moments to be applauded (cf. Ellis 2010). It obscures the facts of teaching as complex work, as an everyday and systematic activity, done with all sorts of informal and formal relations, often with an unpredictable and uncontrollable outcome and hidden experiences involved. The myth of passion goes together with the myth of novelty and inventiveness. According to Barthes, the myth of inventiveness and the happy ending was important for actors to get the investors’ respect, a good reputation and further investments. The constant struggle to show something new, the exaggerated demonstration of novelty, shows the imagination in a sentimentalized and simplistic life-and-death struggle, writes Barthes. But this does not matter to the bourgeois audience. They are happy with viewing novelty and the actor will willingly and passionately perform novelty for them. IoT is fully packed with references to new inventions in teacher training: new programmes, new powers, new networks, new leaders, new recruitment, new accountability systems, new and open classrooms, just to mention a few. But the invention and guarantee of the style easily becomes an alibi, a means to



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avoid the play’s deeper motivations. The function of passion and novelty is to mystify the play. The style of the theatre of the bourgeoisie excuses everything, liberates responsibility and dismantles historical reflection and critique. It locks the audience in formalism. In the theatre of the bourgeoisie the style is a means to escape, according to Barthes, a means of escaping from experience. The myth presents similar dangers to teaching. IoT invites us onto a stage that is ahistorical, where teaching as a social, cultural and political phenomenon is obscured with the rhetoric of economics, performance, passion and novelty: So much of the education debate in this country is backward looking: have standards fallen? Have exams got easier? These debates will continue, but what really matters is how we’re doing compared with our international competitors. That is what will define our economic growth and our country’s future. The truth is, at the moment we are standing still while others race past. (Department of Education 2010: 3)

The demand for constant change drives forward a formalistic way of teaching that can become a means to obscure the meaning of the experience of teaching. The rhetoric of economics and the public performance of investment in passion and novelty excuse policy-makers from deeper and more problematic consideration of the experience of teaching. In this way, teaching is drawn away from any consideration of the deeper motivations of society, its real and historical dramas and the personal and political meaning of experience.

Conclusion A rhetorical analysis can point to the influence of economic discourse on what is significant in an education policy text. The rhetoric of IoT creates new power spaces to strategically define and govern teaching to suit bourgeois economic and ideological interests and script the experience of teaching with ideological purpose. The agencies constructed for actors both limit and empower teachers and pupils. They limit teachers and pupils by not valuing their experiences and by not giving them a voice first in defining the problems and then anticipating the solutions for teaching in the schools we need. By reducing the complex web of causes and effects in teaching to individual essences (such as having low aspirations), moral questions are reduced to questions of pupils’ and teachers’ characters. The mythological language of the

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bourgeoisie will in this way write them out of their universe of commitment to a large extent. In other words, in IoT, teachers and pupils are themselves to blame. The agencies for teachers constructed in IoT create two different types of teaching. The ‘no-limit child’ is given inventive, inspirational and passionate teaching to fulfil their innate potential. Resourceful children will probably benefit from such a social construction. Also, gifted teachers will understand this as an empowering agency giving attention and praise to excellent, passionate and inventive teaching. Yet it will be an extremely demanding ideal that also alienates the majority of teachers from their everyday experience of teaching as a complex, systematic and seemingly routine activity, and one with sometimes disappointing results. Then there is the other type of teaching. The figure of the villain-pupil creates a form of agency for teachers that empowers them with the right to sanction, exclude and discipline children. Yet it also limits them in a profound way. To avoid the blame game or accusations of being weak teachers, using this agency may well be hard to resist in teaching. For some populations of children (those deemed hard to reach, hard to teach or without innate ability), teaching will be constrained by this form of agency for the teacher. So resourceful children will be given passionate and novel teaching; pupils of less resource will be sanctioned, excluded and disciplined. Paradoxically then, the types of agency for teachers set up under the motive of economic change, social mobility and development will work in a conservative way rather than enabling change. The mythological language comes at great opportunity cost; the policies do not allow the necessary articulation of complex experiences needed to understand and change situations of practice. Furthermore, the mythological language preserves social class and inherited privilege and it saves expensive reforms. The higher-rate taxpayer gets to pay less tax and save money for themselves and their well-functioning children. As investors they identify the funding that supports their children’s education and rigorously control it. This unethical moral mathematics takes us back to IoT ’s core assertion that all children can author their own life stories. In this chapter, I have suggested that the rhetoric of IoT as a reform obscures the meaning of the experience of teaching and reinforces unhelpful notions of a transcendental self. Thus, The Importance of Teaching, by installing specific, ideologically-driven forms of agency for teachers, actually constrains their necessary articulation of lived experiences outside of the text and denies teachers and pupils the opportunities to make meaning.



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Notes 1 Silverstone’s work is primarily done within the field of culture and media analysis. I have found it useful also in text analysis with some modifications. 2 See these performances in media for a demonstration of Cameron’s and Gove’s self-staging as teachers, and their focus on excellence, discipline, passion and invention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PDyEkV9QkA http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8464916.stm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO1uKS3MHXg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CuKdlugFYM&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMWzsD1UGbc&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=069u--ReIjE All accessed 13 May 2013.

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Learning from experience: A teacher-identity perspective Brad Olsen

This chapter focuses on the core concept of teacher identity: a view of teachers both as sociocultural products shaped by history, formal learning and social practice; and as phenomenological agents, constructing themselves inside the daily work of teacher preparation and classroom teaching. I consider teacher identity an extension of previous research sub-fields such as teacher thinking, teacher knowledge and teachers’ lives. In this chapter I discuss teacher identity in an attempt to both centralize and nuance consideration of the role of lived experience in teacher development. Professional identity, or ‘teacher identity’ as I call it, can be a helpful lens that makes productive use of contemporary sociocultural views of teachers. Broadly defined, teacher identity marks a focus on teachers developing their professional knowledge, selves, perspectives and practices interactively and iteratively, as they construct new educational interpretations and teaching approaches out of the assemblage of past and present, personal and professional influences as well as the myriad contextual details of their daily lives. This Gestalt process of knowledge-and-identity construction – and how teachers can be supported to manage it effectively – is the subject of the chapter. There are two reasons for writing this chapter. One reason is that due to methodological advances in corresponding fields teacher identity as an analytical frame allows rich, context-sensitive examinations of, and support for, the complexity of teachers and teaching. Teacher identity as a conceptual frame bridges the intricacies of teaching with the need to codify and teach it in standardized ways to novices. It acknowledges the personal facets of effective teaching without neglecting teaching’s professional foundations. It integrates a view of teachers’ learning both from their own individualized, situated experience and

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from generalizable professional training. It centralizes attention on holism and interdependency, among many influences, and attempts to integrate rationalism (the mind, reason, what is abstract) with empiricism (the body, experience, what is situated). And, it reminds the field that teaching is dynamic, multidimensional, intellectually deep work – and should be supported as such. The other reason for this chapter is a political or methodological imperative for ecological views of teaching. In the United States over the last decade teaching and teacher education have been subject to radically changing interpretations of what is expected of teachers, their roles within schools and communities, the value of professional preparation, and teachers’ effectiveness in meeting new test-based outcome measures. Hyper-rational perceptions of teachers’ work linked to technical processes yielding measurable outcomes are nothing new, but the extent to which teachers and teacher educators are now held accountable by high-stakes tests and sanctions in the United States is new and engendering heated debate in many reform circles. Particularly germane is that university teacher education in the US currently finds itself in the crosshairs of heightened public scrutiny, increased critical and political rhetoric and economically trying circumstances. Opinions on this matter range from advocating supportive reform to calling for wholesale elimination (Olsen 2011a; Ravitch 2012; Walsh 2011). In these political debates and policy responses many of the complaints and touted educational reforms are based on simplified, mechanistic, easy-tomeasure views of teaching, learning and educational improvement. In fact, while teaching and teacher learning are dizzyingly complex, many of the contemporary education reforms in the United States view teacher development as simple, straightforward and rational. Additionally, most of the reforms are themselves simplified, mostly linear, narrowed approaches to highly complex processes. Rigorous, sensitive empirical research on teacher learning in the context of the current educational reform climate is needed. As a view of teaching that seeks to capture its persistent richness and complexity, concern with teacher identity offers a means by which to open up teacher learning and teacher education for deep, honest appraisal.

Why focus on teacher identity? Identity studies, generally speaking, have become increasingly popular in recent years in some quarters in philosophy, as well as in the social sciences, as a way to consider how persons in context are guided simultaneously by many



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things – including lived experience, formal education and their ongoing participation inside multiple social groups and contexts – as they both rely on and (re-)constitute ever-developing views of themselves in practice.1 The complex views of and for themselves that this process produces – that people build out of their continual experiences – are considered to shape (and get shaped by) their subsequent beliefs and practices. An identity perspective has been employed to investigate how race and power relations construct and re-construct both children and adults (Tatum 1999 and Appiah 2006, respectively). It has been used to interrogate ways that social practice reinforces gender roles within boys and girls, men and women (Diamond 2002; Money 1994; Sommers 2001). It has been used to study how members of Alcoholics Anonymous adopt new ways of viewing themselves (Holland et al. 1998), how college-going women understand themselves as romantic beings (Holland et al. 1998), how men who spend time outdoors define themselves as environmentalists (Myers and Russell 2003) and how consumers of comic book culture create new selves by way of online communities (Devries 2003), to name a few. It is my guess that identity studies have become popular, in part, because they split the difference between two different but intersecting perennial dichotomies in the social sciences: that of determinism versus agency, and the question of the individual versus the social. As a conceptual framing, identity – ‘teacher identity’ in the case of this chapter – views teachers, if we pick up the example, as both sociocultural products and free-acting agents. An identity perspective recognizes the various ways that social histories, cultural productions and educational institutions have a hand in creating teaching and teachers. But it also encourages attention to be paid to the various ways that teachers themselves – actively and intentionally, idiosyncratically and incrementally – influence their own practices, learning and selves in accord with their interpretations of the world. Likewise, identity, as a social practice theory, exists at the intersection of the individual and the social and therefore offers a way out of the old, dichotomous learning theory debate (Cobb and Bowers 1999). Instead, learning is both individualized and shared; people are individuals with unique circumstances and ways of moving through life, yet they are also inextricably bound up in myriad epistemological and practical ways to other people and all the social histories and structures that surround them. Over the last decade identity as a conceptual frame has been increasingly taken up by educational researchers to examine how teachers construct and rely on complex understandings of themselves as educators. These self-understandings

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that teachers develop are believed both to guide their professional practice and result from that practice, too. Identity, then, becomes a kind of circular dialectic in which prior iterations of a constructed self shape one’s social practice (in this case, teaching) – at the same time that one’s situated practices influence the developing self (in this case teacher learning). Each is influencing the other. ‘Teacher identity’ is both the name for this process (how experience shapes the situated self and how the self shapes experience) and the corresponding product (the continually changing professional self that results). Viewing teachers through a teacher-identity lens bridges the uniqueness of every individual with identifiable influences from multiple traditions, structures and processes. A teacher is not a random actor, yet neither is she a wholly determined automaton. Teacher identity, like other social practice theories, locates itself in the messy but informative middle.

How do teachers learn? A look at the modern research history on teacher learning reveals successive broadening and deepening views of teacher learning and an increasingly ecological view of the interconnectedness of all parts of a teacher’s development. Teacher identity represents a contemporary iteration of this rich research history. The research tradition began in the 1970s with the sub-field of teacher thinking, in which researchers relying on schema theory and other aspects of the newly popular cognitive science examined the mental tasks in which teachers engage and compared novices to experts in order to elucidate teacher growth. For example, cognitive processes related to checking homework, checking for student understanding and transitioning smoothly between topically related linguistic sequences were considered (Brophy and Good 1974; Leinhardt and Greeno 1986). These studies moved the field of teaching away from behaviourism toward a newfound appreciation for the cognitive dimensions of quality instruction and teacher preparation. In the 1980s teacher knowledge researchers began identifying the knowledgebase of teaching and studying its sources. For example, Shulman (1987) introduced seven distinct categories of the knowledge-base for teaching: most famous was number four, pedagogical content knowledge – ‘that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers’ (Shulman 1987: 46). Grimmett and MacKinnon (1992) pointed out that of Shulman’s



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seven categories of teacher knowledge, only pedagogical content knowledge derived from the teacher’s attention to his actual teaching situation – that is, the particular students and immediate context in which the teacher works. While the other types of teacher knowledge might be taught in books or courses, they wrote, pedagogical content knowledge cannot be ‘taught in the lecture hall’, but rather emerges from a teacher’s reflection on his actual practice (Grimmett and MacKinnon 1992: 387). They used this observation to introduce what they called ‘craft knowledge’. Craft knowledge – a teacher learning by connecting what she knows about subject, teaching and learning with what she is actually experiencing with her students in her classroom – has been redefined and transformed into the popular notion that teachers learn best by doing, and undergirds many clinical models and alternative-entry teaching programmes. However, this view is sometimes oversimplified to suggest that short-term on-the-job apprenticeships, along with some pre-established classroom-performance rules or general teaching principles as guidance, are sufficient teacher preparation. Alongside teacher knowledge is the history of teacher reflection. Formally considered first by Dewey (1933), teacher reflection came into vogue in the 1980s when scholars such as Schon (1987) and Zeichner (1992) focused on reflection as a way for educators to increase their knowledge and improve their practice. These investigations highlighted processes by which teachers can (and cannot) learn by closely considering their ongoing classroom practice. On the plus side is that reflection encourages teachers to pay conscious attention to the unique particulars of their teaching context and thus improve their craft knowledge. On the minus side is that a reflecting teacher is, by definition, imprisoned by his own mind and bound to the very patterns of thinking that got him into whatever predicament he is reflecting on in the first place. For these reasons Zeichner recommended collective and critical teacher reflection, and Tremmel (1993) advocated Zen mindfulness. Research on teachers’ lives also shone analytical light on how teachers learn. In the early 1990s scholars looked to teachers’ own lives as both an influence on teacher development and an effect of it. Goodson (1992) and Kelchtermans (1993) examined ways that teachers’ biographies shape their ways of becoming teachers. Huberman (1993) studied ways that teachers’ lives, teaching experiences and career shapes intertwine. Korthagan and Kessels (1999) argued that a teacher is guided in the classroom not only by knowledge and professional training but also by feelings, personal values, past experiences and memories and competing role conceptions.

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From an initial focus on cognition, through two decades of examining the knowledge-bases of teaching and how educators acquire them – into investigation into how teachers reflect and how their own lives influence their practice – these prior phases of the field paved the road for an holistic view of teacher development, one that acknowledges the deeply embedded, situated ways that past and present, personal and professional experience fuse together in the complex, ongoing process of any teacher’s professional development.

What is teacher identity? Beginning in the 1990s and early 2000s, several scholars pivoted their focus from ‘knowledge’ to ‘identity’, and from ‘teacher learning’ to ‘teacher identity development’ in order to better characterize the multiple, simultaneous, often interconnected influences and effects that reciprocally shape teachers’ lives, knowledge, practices and career constructions (e.g. Alsup 2005, Beauchamp and Thomas 2009, Beijaard et al. 2004, Britzman 1991, Day et al. 2006, Korthagan 2004). These researchers found that what teachers rely on to understand themselves as educators, and what guides their professional learning and teaching practice, consists of more than the mostly intellectual, linear, epistemologically narrowed features of ‘knowledge’. Also, they found that teachers are guided by the personal and the past as much as the professional and the present. Their view rejects the traditional psychological view of identity as self-directed and mostly autonomous (Freud 1961/1909). Yet their view also deviates from modern sociology’s potentially over-determining and overly broad cultural identity – which holds that individuals are mostly shaped or constructed via cultural markers and social categories such as race, class, gender, nationality and sexual orientation (Anderson 1991; Belenky et al. 1986). A sociocultural view of identity splits the difference. Drawing on anthropology, phenomenology, poststructuralism, social psychology and sociolinguistics, identity is considered to be the dynamic constellation of situated understandings an individual develops of and for himself that derive not only from macrosocial strata like race, religion and gender, for example, but also from microsocial practices such as the unique interplay of contextual variables in any particular social setting (such as a classroom or a university). Furthermore, individuals are not merely the passive sum of their parts; they are active, conscious agents who employ deliberation and improvization to move themselves from one subjectivity to the next, from one ‘negotiated presence’ (Grumet 2011) to



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another.2 Finally, individuals are always collapsing past, present and future as they interpret and act in their many overlapping daily situations. In this way, a teacher relies on her past (consciously or not) to interpret the present, and folds together various personal and professional aspects of her lived experience as she makes sense of a particular situation in which she finds herself, views it in relation to future goals and predictions, and acts in accordance. This embedded cluster of formal and informal influences, lived and learned lessons and personal and professional aspects of her world-view is simultaneously activated and mixed together into a combination of dynamic sources we might call a ‘professional identity’. That identity acts as an interpretive frame that organizes the present situation into meaning and posits several possible ways of (re-)acting within the situation (presenting her with various predictions for what will ensue given each possible response). The teacher, confronted with this multiplicity of views, scenarios, social relationships and predicted outcomes, chooses the one considered to be most useful (given whatever particular goals and reward structures her identity provides), and enacts it in practice. However, as the remainder of this chapter demonstrates, this does not happen in as linear a way as two-dimensional prose might suggest, and the process is rarely as conscious and intentional as this gloss pretends.

How do identity and experience interconnect? Over the last decade I have conducted several studies using teacher identity as the primary analytic frame in order to examine the contexts and processes of teacher learning. In each study, the holistic, dynamic, dialectical, situated nature of identity opened up new ways to investigate how (and what) teachers learn. Several findings related to teachers’ learning from experience emerged from these studies. I introduce three of them here.

The university teacher education experience influenced beginning teachers’ development but was strongly mediated by the novice teacher’s personal history In one study (Olsen 2008a), I found that beginning teachers’ personal histories were a significant influence on their professional preparation. I employed stratified random selection to choose eight student teachers from four university preparation programmes in California, and interviewed, observed and collected

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written data from them and their programmes over two years in order to answer the question ‘How and from where does a beginning teacher’s knowledge emerge?’ I found that learning to teach was not a direct, linear, intellectual process of internalizing external knowledge (as traditional learning might suggest). Instead, it was a circular, recursive process of negotiating among often competing knowledge sources and contexts. Since experience shapes one’s professional learning, and everyone has different experiences, no individual teacher’s knowledge was the same – even if they were from the same university teacher education programme. However, that is not to say that formal, abstract, university-based knowledge about teaching and learning was not taken up. It was an influence, but was heavily mediated by the embedded interpretive frames the teachers already possessed. Specifically, I found that beginning teachers’ personal histories and resulting ‘life themes’ (Kelly 1963) – deriving from influences such as family experience, experience as students, personal events and hobbies, and moral-political reasons for entering teaching – interacted to form a kind of incoming teacher identity. This acted as an interpretive frame that shaped how the new teachers made sense of, evaluated and appropriated the multiple aspects of university teacher education (including student teaching) they were experiencing. Particularly illuminating was examining which specific university teacher preparation influences were taken up (rather than ignored or rejected) and how these influences – or knowledge sources – were altered as they became integrated into the teachers’ developing professional selves.

First-year teachers experienced identity conflicts between prior expectations of teaching and current classroom realities Another study used an investigation of first-year teachers’ reasons for entering teaching as a way to examine how people’s prior experiences (both personal and professional) were shaping the kinds of teachers they were becoming (Olsen 2008b). I selected six recent graduates from one Californian university’s secondary English teacher preparation programme and interviewed and observed them twice during their first year teaching in order to answer the question, ‘What professional learning dilemmas and transitions do beginning teachers experience?’ I found that these teachers made the decision to enter teaching for reasons that corresponded to the unique choices, encounters and influences of their personal histories. Those biographical reasons for entry were themselves



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interpretive frames and orientations toward education that influenced how the new teachers viewed and adjusted themselves in relation to – in other words, learned from – their first year of teaching. A central tension in this process was reconciling conflicts between the teacher each had long-expected to be and the teacher each now realized her students and school needed her to be. This identity conflict was an experience of its own that complicated their first year in teaching, yet it also pointed to underlying tensions each was experiencing between personal and prior views of teaching on the one hand, and professional and current ones on the other. These beginning teachers entered the profession because of prior work with children in non-school settings, or because of a love for the content of their chosen academic discipline, or to be for other students what their own teachers had been for them. These reasons for entry carried particular views of teaching, learning and school success. And yet, as new teachers now in their own classrooms, they were finding that those embedded reasons were not serving them (or their students) very well. Wanting to be a non-conforming, politically charged adult with kids may work in an after-school tutor’s job with small groups of urban teenagers; but not necessarily in an academically rigorous, suburban middle school. Being the kind of teacher who delivers lectures on great books and gives fact-based tests may have been appreciated when she was a student at a well-resourced, traditional high school; but not necessarily for her now as a teacher working with English learners at an under-resourced middle school in which required pedagogical approaches overwhelmingly assumed constructivist principles. Though largely unaddressed by their own teacher education programme, the difference between the teachers they expected to be and the teachers they now realized they had to be was causing emotional distress and professional angst. The six new teachers would resolve these conflicts – and doing so would be its own learning experience – but they were left to do this by themselves, and sometimes painfully.

Teachers’ professional identities not only influenced their learning and practice, but also affected how they charted their careers once they stabilized in the classroom A colleague and I examined how 15 early and mid-career teachers were deciding whether to stay in or leave their urban teaching jobs (Olsen and Anderson 2007). Employing stratified random sampling, we chose 15 socialjustice-oriented urban elementary teachers in Los Angeles who had between

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two and six years of teaching experience. Interviewing and observing them three times during a school year, we sought to answer the question, ‘How do early and mid-career urban teachers decide whether to stay in or leave the classroom?’ We found their decision-making to be shaped by a mix of their biography, university preparation experience, professional and personal goals and interpretations of their current workplaces. Their teacher identities were being implicated in (and re-constructed out of) these career decisions of theirs. As they reflected on their work and their professional and personal needs, they engaged in career calculations that combined, for example, their goals for students, the administrative support they were receiving, changes in their personal lives, their university training and the many new professional opportunities they were being offered. As these teachers decided whether to stay in teaching, leave education altogether or shift out of their teaching roles into other educational positions such as school administrator, teacher educator or curriculum developer, they were making automatic use of past and present experiences and many personal and professional influences. Since first becoming teachers, their personal lives had changed (having children of their own, facing new financial circumstances, desiring more personal time), their professional lives had changed (desiring more authority and autonomy in their school, wanting to make broader or deeper differences in the lives of children, responding to status concerns), and their interpretations of their school had evolved, too. What these teachers were learning from experience is that a whole career in education is multifaceted, dynamic and shaped by both choice and chance. The teacher identities they had developed thus far oriented them toward the particular career decisions they were making, and at the same time those professional identities would be readjusted by the subsequent phases of their work inside or outside education.

What recommendations can teacher identity offer? As these and other teacher-identity studies reveal, learning to teach is a continuous, situated, knowledge-and-identity process in which prior experiences produce deeply embedded ways of viewing the world that go on to organize current/future educational experience into professional meaning. And yet teachers are also conscious, agential beings who employ thought and planning, reflection and professional training to enact themselves as the teachers they wish to be.



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Teachers learn and develop by continually stitching and restitching together in complex but identifiable ways their memories, moral and philosophical beliefs, personalities, goals, reasons for entering teaching and family/social experiences along with the professional knowledge, university learning, teaching contexts and colleagues and educational activities in which they are engaged. All these influences – and the ways in which they might combine – produce unique sets of understandings that guide (not determine, but guide) a particular teacher’s work: getting to know students, designing lessons, enacting pedagogies, assessing learning, conceptualizing content, relating with others. For example, how a teacher defines student success or recognizes higher-level thinking in the classroom, or the way a teacher introduces Jane Eyre or the Holocaust, or the kind of relationship she forges with that recalcitrant student or headstrong administrator – all these actions are influenced by considerably more than what derives directly from professional training or research and theory. Yes, teachers learn from their experiences, but experience comes in many shapes and sizes. Before they were teachers they underwent formative life experiences that became the interpretive frame through which they made sense of their teacher preparation. As new teachers they combine their incoming self, training and daily experiences with particular children and adults in a particular school into some kind of workable identity. As mid-career teachers they build new teacher identities out of their early-career teaching and additional professional development, on-the-job learning and personal events they have experienced. And so on. At each juncture their ever-evolving teacher identity governs how they construct educational meaning out of their experiences. Their identities are being changed by their experience even as the meaning they construct from those experiences is shaped by their identities. I recommend that teacher educators find ways to make novice teachers more acutely aware of the shift in identity process they undergo and help them to manage the process productively. This is because, left untreated, the teacher identity process will remain automatic and unconscious. Left alone, a teacher’s professional learning is at the mercy of (often) competing personal and prior influences and how they combine for use by the individual. This is how biases (Stegner 1976), naïve learner theories (Gardner 1991) and folkways (FeimanNemser and Buchmann 1985) come to dominate a teacher’s practice. Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann (1985) go on to debunk the famous axiom, ‘Experience is the best teacher.’ They write that experience is not the best teacher, because when new teachers rely on prior experience their faculties of critical

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interrogation and new knowledge construction shut down in favour of passive reliance on memories, what is familiar to them or the ‘conventional wisdom’ in education. Additionally, left on their own to understand and negotiate the various identity conflicts that often arise, this can lead to confusion and frustration, such that their professional growth is affected negatively and their desire to remain in the profession is undermined. Instead, teacher preparation programmes can support new teachers to critically interrogate and consciously assemble the multiple parts of their developing professional identities. This requires adopting broad, deep, complexity-minded frames of teacher learning and finding ways to operationalize those frames in relation to solid research on teaching and learning and collective reflection within a scaffolded space that helps novices assemble their own successful, satisfying, high-quality teacher identities. It is a kind of metacognition, but for identity construction.

What does this kind of approach look like? There are several central themes related to teacher development research and practice that derive from this focus on teacher identity. I introduce three here.

Integrating context-specific learning with abstract learning It is fair to say that all teacher knowledge is to some extent bounded by context, yet it is the degree of ‘boundedness’ that separates context-specific learning from abstract learning. Too much abstraction makes knowledge difficult to apply in the classroom, yet too much contextualization makes knowledge difficult to apply in the face of unpredictable situations of practice. There exists a complex range of ways in which professional knowledge combines with pre-existing (or ‘personal’) knowledge. Improving teacher preparation by making visible, and supporting, this kind of iterative identity process will delimit unproductive effects of narrowed views of teacher learning (and other biases) and increase a novice’s ability to manage her professional preparation productively so as to build a successful, healthy teacher identity. To this end, teacher education might formally emphasize teacher identity as a pedagogical foundation.

Acknowledging teacher identity conflicts Many novice teachers experience identity conflicts as they work to reconcile long-held teaching expectations with current workplace realities and merge



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personal self-understandings with their developing professional identities. The beginning years of teaching can be marked by demanding, emotional work, and yet many teachers are left to attend to these personal-professional identity concerns mostly by themselves. As teacher educators more formally acknowledge and address teacher identity conflicts with their students, they can better support beginning teachers to be patient, to understand that these conflicts are common but get worked out and to view teaching dilemmas not as problems to be solved but as tensions to negotiate. As teachers work through identity conflicts and teaching tensions in dialogue with instructors, peers and in relation to published scholarship, they can push through the conflicts, grow as teachers and move past some of the current discomforts.

Pursuing research and reforms sensitive to the complex diversity of teachers and teacher learning, and including teachers in educational reform In the US, research-funding priorities have recently shifted away from ethnographic and other qualitative investigations of teaching and have moved toward narrowed, fixed, often quantitative looks at discrete teacher characteristics, isolated teacher effects or various teacher education inputs. Such mechanistic research paradigms run counter to the interactional, dynamic, human nature of teaching and teacher learning. Adopting teacher identity as an analytical frame encourages sensitive, ecological research that casts its methodological net wide and deep enough to capture interactions among many variables on teacher development; which is at the same time robust enough to provide explanatory power. Moreover, within policy debates, teacher identity holds the potential to nudge education reformers away from simplistic improvement efforts that treat teaching and teacher learning as routinized, purely technical, often superficial practice. Instead, teacher identity as a reform lens encourages restructuring whole schools democratically, including teachers, in authentic reform conversations, and working with teachers and teacher educators toward reform rather than attempting to exert top-down control over them. In closing, let me write that – as with most binaries – the question of whether teachers learn best by teaching or by learning about teaching is a false debate. Both programmes of learning (both sets of experience) are always combined for use by teachers and teacher educators. The enduring struggle is how to strike the best balance. Too much abstract or theoretical learning can overshadow a new teacher’s potential to learn by practising. Yet over-relying on

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classroom apprenticeships and exposure to some pedagogical nuts-and-bolts or ‘best practices’ neglects the deep, systematic nature of professional teaching. There need to be effective frameworks that make productive use of a middle path between the two learning-to-teach paradigms, one that understands and integrates the best parts of each. I would like to believe that, used well, teacher identity provides that model.

Notes 1 There are countless ways to define and use ‘identity’ and I cannot represent them all here. One significant distinction, for example, is made between social identity theory (the focus of this chapter) and identity theory, which is a philosophical question related to the mind/body split. Another distinction is between psychological notions of identity and sociological ones; I discuss this later in the chapter. This chapter limits its use of ‘identity’ and ‘identity studies’ to sociocultural theory. 2 For a fuller description of the theoretics of identity, see Holland et al. (1998) or Olsen (2011b).

References Alsup, J. (2005). Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal And Professional Spaces. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities. Verso: London. Appiah, K. (2006). The politics of identity. Daedalus 135 (4): 15–22. Beach, K. (1999) Consequential transitions: a sociocultural expedition beyond transfer in education. In A. Iran-Nejas and D. Pearson (eds), Review of Research in Education 24. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association, pp. 101–39. Beauchamp, C. and Thomas, L. (2009). Understanding teacher identity: an overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Cambridge Journal of Education 39 (2): 175–89. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P. C. and Veloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education 20: 107–28. Belenky, M., Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N. and Tarule, J. (1986). Women’s Ways of Knowing: the Development of Self, Voice, and Mind. New York: Basic Books. Britzman, D. (1991). Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.



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Brophy, J. E. and Good, T. L. (1974). Teacher-Student Relationships: Causes and Consequences. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Cobb, P. and Bowers, J. (1999). Cognitive and situated learning perspectives in theory and practice. Educational Researcher 28 (2). Day, C., Kington, A., Stobart, G. and Sammons, P. (2006). The personal and professional selves of teachers: stable and unstable identities. British Educational Research Journal 32 (4): 601–16. Devries, K. (2003). Virtual Communities, Resistant Voices: Women’s Online Magazines as a Source of Empowerment and Change. Chapter presented at symposium ‘Gender and ICT: Where are We At?’ University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 17 January 2003. Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Chicago: D.C. Heath. Diamond, M. (2002). Sex and gender are different: sexual identity and gender identity are different. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 7 (3). Feiman-Nemser, S. and Buchmann, M. (1985). Pitfalls of experience in teacher preparation. Teachers College Record 87 (1): 53–65. Freud, S. (1961/1909). Five Lectures on Psycho-analysis. New York: Norton. Gardner, H. (1991). The Unschooled Mind. New York: Basic Books. Goodson, I. (1992). Studying Teachers’ Lives. London: Routledge. Grimmett, P. and MacKinnon, A. (1992). Craft knowledge and the education of teachers. Review of Research in Education 18. Grumet, M. (2011.). Personal conversation. October 2011. Holland, D., Lachiocotte, W., Skinner, D. and Cain, C. (1998). Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Huberman, M. (1993). The Lives of Teachers. New York: Teachers College Press. Kelchtermans, G. (1993). Getting the story, understanding the lives: from career stories to teachers’ professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education 9 (5–6): 443–56. Kelly, G. (1963). A Theory of Personality. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Korthagen, F. A. J. (2004). In search of the essence of a good teacher: towards a more holistic approach in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education 20 (1): 77–97. Korthagan, F. and Kessels, J. (1999). Linking theory and practice: changing the pedagogy of teacher education. Educational Researcher 28 (4): 4–17. LeCompte, M. and Schensul, J. (1990). Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. Leinhardt, G. and Greeno, J. (1986). The cognitive skill of teaching. Journal of Educational Psychology 78 (2): 75–95. Money, J. (1994). The concept of gender identity disorder in childhood and adolescence after 39 years. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 20: 163–77. Myers, G. and Russell, A. (2003). Human identity in relation to wild black bears: a natural social ecology of subjective creatures. In S. Clayton and S. Opotow, S. (eds),

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Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Olsen, B. (2008a). Teaching What They Learn, Learning What They Live: How Teachers’ Personal Histories Shape Their Professional Development. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. —(2008b). How reasons for entry into the profession illuminate teacher identity development. Teacher Education Quarterly 35 (3): 23–32. —(2011a). NCTQ along with U.S. News and World Report seeks to rate over 1400 teacher education programs in the U.S. In Conditions of Education in California. Policy Analysis for California Education; www.stanford.edu/group/pace/cgi-bin/ drupal/node/171 (accessed 29 April 2013). —(2011b). ‘I am large, I contain multitudes’: teacher identity as useful frame for research, practice, and diversity in education. In A. Ball and C. Tyson (eds), Studying Diversity in Teacher Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Olsen, B. and Anderson, L. (2007). Courses of action: a qualitative investigation into teacher retention and career development. Urban Education (42)1: 5–29. Ravich, D. (2012). What is NCTQ? (and Why You Should Know); http://dianeravitch. net (accessed 24 May 2012). Schon, D. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review 57 (1): 1–22. Sommers, C. H. (2001). The War against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. New York: Simon and Schuster. Stegner, W. (1976). The Spectator Bird. New York: Doubleday. Tatum, B. (1999). Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race. New York: Basic Books. Tremmel, R. (1993). Zen and the art of reflective practice in teacher education. Harvard Educational Review 63 (4): 434–58. Walsh, K. (2011). Education reforms: exploring teacher quality initiatives. Statement before the Committee on Education and the Workforce, United States House of Representatives, 27 July 2011. Zeichner, K. (1992). Conceptions of reflective teaching in contemporary United States teacher education programme reforms. In L. Valli (ed.), Reflective Teacher Education: Cases and Critiques. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

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Teachers’ storied experience: Rules or tools for action? Eli Ottesen

Introduction In the autumn of 2009 I was invited to ‘sit in’ on three workshops in a primary school. As a response to the requirements of the new national curriculum in Norway, the municipality required teachers to participate in a professional development initiative to help them gain a better understanding of how to teach learning strategies. As I listened to the recordings of the proceedings of the workshops, I was struck by the abundance of stories about classrooms or adjacent work with students. In telling stories the teachers organized the complex experiences of teaching and made it public in their community. In this way the stories emerged as prominent resources for their learning. Moreover, the teachers seemed to thoroughly enjoy sharing stories, which were often humorous, occasioning laughter and smiles. The workshops resembled recognizable and mundane ways of talking in everyday conversations, and I was puzzled as to how and why they also seemed to represent a prominent way of doing professional development. This chapter addresses storytelling as a process through which teachers transform experience into public and accessible knowledge, and thus generate opportunities for the collective examination of such knowing. The study addresses this general issue through three intertwined research questions: 1. How do teachers make experiences ‘public’ through their stories? 2. How do teachers’ stories build on and complement each other, or differ and compete for legitimacy? 3. What is the function of teachers’ stories for learning teaching and professional development?

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The first part of this chapter addresses the concepts of experience and stories/ narratives, which will lead up to the notion of ‘storied experiences’. The next section provides contextual information and methodological considerations. Three excerpts are selected and analyzed as illustrations before the discussion of storied experiences in terms of teachers’ learning is presented.

Why stories? I want to argue in what follows that the principal way in which our minds, our ‘realities’, get shaped to the pattern of daily cultural life is through the stories we tell, listen to and read – true or fictional. We ‘become’ active participants in our culture mainly through the narratives we share in order to ‘make sense’ of what is happening around us, what has happened, what may happen. We pattern our realities in these narratives and come to live in a world fashioned by them (Bruner 2006: 14).

For Bruner, narratives are tools through which we make meaning of events in the world, both individually and jointly. Through such meaning-making we construct realities and at the same time are constructed by them. According to Bruner (2006), the (or a) function of stories is to imbue our lives with sense by connecting the present, past and future. Accordingly, narratives work ‘as a mode of thinking, as a structure for organizing our knowledge, and as a vehicle in the process of education’ (Bruner 1996: 119). In a similar vein, Connelly and Clandinin (2006: 479) define story as ‘a portal through which a person enters the world, and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful’. Both Bruner and Connelly and Clandinin see narratives as both expressions of and prerequisites for being. Research on teachers’ stories, especially by applying methods of narrative enquiry (Clandinin 2007), has contributed to our understanding of teacher knowledge, reflection and identity (Clandinin et al. 1995; Olson and Craig 2005; Søreide 2007), how teachers understand teaching (Goodson 1997) and teachers’ careers (Kelchtermans and Ballet 2002; Pomson 2004). In what has recently been labelled ‘a new narrative turn’ in narrative inquiry (Bamberg 2006; Georgakopoulou 2006), researchers argue for more emphasis on the interactive production of narratives by analyzing people’s talk and what they accomplish in their talk, especially how storytelling works to build a sense of self. By telling and retelling stories, teachers make their ideas and



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understandings public and pave the way for new understandings that may change both who they are, what they can do and the environment they work in. In this chapter I deliberately use the notion of ‘story’ rather than ‘narrative’. I thereby distinguish between the approach taken here and the traditions of narrative research and narrative inquiry briefly described above, and the specific methodologies and vocabularies employed in studies of narratives and narration (Georgakopoulou 2006). My purpose is to explore storytelling as teachers’ social and cultural practices. Bruner (2010) suggests that the ‘reality’ that stories describe is made, not found; that in the telling we make use of the culture’s ‘stock of prototype narratives’ (ibid.: 48); and that the local situation gives stories immediacy and particularization. Also, as I will demonstrate in the analysis below, stories are co-constructed in the dynamic relationship between narrator, listener and the situation at hand. Stories can function as resources for learning because they externalize the narrators’ and listeners’ shared cultural pattern as well as the stories’ ‘particular deviations from the ordinary’ (Bruner 2010: 48). The substance of any story is experience. Middleton and Brown (2005) suggest that experience is constituted by networks of intermingled forms and practices, imbuing our lives with a sense of continuity and identity. In social interaction experience is ‘cut out’ and reconstructed as stories that can serve as tools for outward action or for reflection. Internalized experience finds its outward expression (i.e., is externalized) in social activities mediated by the cultural tools that are at hand. Thus, the teachers’ stories are transformed experiences, bound to the activity of which they are part. Work in discursive psychology has come a long way in demonstrating how recollection and remembering are achieved in social interaction and how stories and storied experiences work as discursive phenomena (Edwards 1997). Memory (and forgetting) is seen as an accomplishment, something that is performed in interaction. Thus, the storying of teachers’ experiences becomes a social act, a way of ‘accomplishing some activity in the present by evoking the past in an appropriate and resourceful manner’ (Middelton and Brown 2005: 85). Stories, like all talk, must be treated as ‘performative, as action-oriented, as doing something’ (Edwards 1997: 280). Thus, teachers’ stories can be analyzed in terms of what the teachers accomplish in the telling; for example, they build relationships or construct themselves and each other as accountable or knowledgeable. The interest in this chapter is different: it is about how stories function in teachers’ learning and development. Teachers’ professional knowledge is often characterized as concrete, context dependent, tacit and embodied (see, e.g. Klette and Carlsten 2012). Storied experiences constitute one means of sharing

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knowledge that is embodied and embedded; professional actions may be recognized within the community as knowledge replete without further explication. In stories, experiences are made public and may become mediating tools in constructing the present as well as the future: ‘We pattern our realities in these narratives and come to live in a world patterned by them’ (Bruner 2006: 14). The mediating tools at work, both in remembering and in making experience public, are embedded in the historical, cultural and social conditions pertaining to both the situation of the experience itself and to the situated telling of the story (Wertsch 2002). In other words, the ‘same’ experience may elicit different stories depending on the situation in which it is being told. The sociocultural embeddedness of storytelling guides the process of cutting out events or aspects of the event in the collective reconstruction of experience and informs the function, form and structure of the stories. How then can storied experiences serve as learning resources for teachers’ professional development? I have argued above that the externalization of experience in stories forms the bedrock for learning. However, urgent questions remain concerning what is learned and how through the use of stories in this context. In a study of novice teachers’ learning in the workplace, Klette and Carlsten (2012: 76) found that learning was most often based on ‘practical problem-solving and practical tips’. This suggests that storied experiences can serve the function of sharing tricks-of-the-trade because they capture what Blackler (1995: 1024) describes as embedded knowledge: ‘knowledge that resides in institutional regimes’. In activity-theoretical terms this amounts to the appropriation of professional and institutional rules, the norms, conventions and social relationships that exist within the community (Engeström 1987, Kuutti 1996). As tools, however, storied experiences can demonstrate the dynamic relationships that are at play between individuals’ ideas, affections and motivations and the current practices and thus increase the collective capacity for transforming practice. To sum up, I will proffer three points of departure for the ensuing analysis. First, it is the stories’ function within the activity that is of interest here, not their forms or plots, or how their analysis may yield insight into individual actors’ identities or intentions. Second, our understanding of this function must be assessed in light of the overall activity in which the storytelling occurs. The moment-to-moment interaction – the micro processes within the workshops – are connected to wider processes in educational policy and practice as well as institutional constraints and affordances, regulating, for example, how knowledge is legitimized, how institutional routines are enacted, the division of labour and who is included in the activity. Third, in situated interactions,



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stories are seldom lengthy and are often neither consistent nor exhaustive. It is the construction and function of ‘small stories’ (Georgakopoulou 2006) that are of interest in this study.

Context and methodology Cove Primary School is a medium-sized school located in a rural area with a staff of 22 teachers, an assistant principal with teaching duties and a principal. This chapter builds on an analysis of three professional development workshops at Cove. The workshops, led by an external facilitator, were a follow-up event from a municipal day-long course on learning strategies. Their main purpose was to allow teachers to share experiences with one another in order to become better teachers. At Cove, teachers normally work alone with their students in their classrooms but collaboration in grade-based teams is common during lesson-planning. The arrangement of the workshops in extended teams (grades 1–3, 4–6 and 7) gave the teachers the opportunity to share classroom experiences with colleagues they did not normally work with. The proceedings of the three workshops, each lasting 90 minutes, were audio-recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were scrutinized for examples of stories defined as all incidents where someone was telling the group about an event or happening (Doecke et al. 2000). This constituted the content log (Jordan and Henderson 1995). Next, the content logs were expanded to include a description of the situation: what was the topic for discussion, who participated, what were the preceding and subsequent turns? Analysis of the stories as interactive achievements made it possible to explore the teachers’ collective meaning-making processes as their storied experiences were made public, ascribed with meaning, developed and put to use in the teachers’ deliberations (cf. Jordan and Henderson 1995).

Teachers’ storied experiences In all three workshops, the facilitator told slightly different versions of the following story as an introduction: Excerpt 1 … I started working as a teacher in ’74. What puzzled me was that the students seemed so feeble in their approaches to learning. Although I took great care in

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explaining, they did not seem to follow up. Also, I did not find them efficient in the way they used books and other materials. I could not understand why. And then … eh … I attended a course. That was much later. Then I understood why, what I didn’t do, but should have. And that has to do with our topic today. In the course, by Carol Santa, they had studied in Minnesota and found out that 80 per cent of the students do not use learning strategies if they are not taught how to use them ... And Liv Engen,1 she mentioned four points that were important in the teaching of learning strategies. Do you remember? (WS 7)

The facilitator has led workshops on the same topic in other schools, and it is safe to assume that this story is not created off the cuff; it is constructed for a purpose and imbued with intention. The first part of her story is not about a particular event but rather it is a generalization of experiences. By doing this, rather than accounting for a concrete episode, she makes a bid for a shared understanding of the problem (students need to gain better learning strategies). Moreover, she builds a relationship with the teachers: she herself is a former teacher and has struggled with the same issues that they struggle with; she elicits a sense of collective experience. The second part of the story is about one particular episode, customized to the situation at hand. She does not give details about the course, for instance where it was, who was there, why she attended it and so on. She has ‘cut out’ and included in her story only information which serves her purpose; the story mediates the activity. Her storied experience is not the experience itself but rather a version that is brought about by and forged to the situation. Also, by telling this story, she is positioned in an expert role in which she calls attention to available problemsolving actions: teaching learning strategies by applying the ‘four points’ from Engen’s lecture. By referring to research she grounds her expertise in ‘facts’ about the matter. Thus, she builds legitimacy for the work at hand. Furthermore, by deciding to start off with a personal story herself, she offers a discursive mode for doing the work in the workshops. The second excerpt is a lengthy transcript where the participants talk about teaching mathematics. Prior to this the teachers had been discussing reading instruction, and Ole (who teaches mathematics) introduces the new topic to the conversation. Excerpt 2 Ole: Because it is [unclear]. We have the maths word problems. And then it is important to read, and that we also understand what are they asking for here, to understand the concepts here. [yes] So there is lots of reading in maths.



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Facilitator: Yes, it is. Ole: And it’s about reading understanding as well. Facilitator: Yes, I remember, it was for older students, but in algebra and so on, sometimes it said combine, sometimes it said add up, simplify, you were going to simplify [Yes, yes] the expression. So it was not the same every time. Ole: Well, it could mean the same … Facilitator: Yes, exactly. That was an aha-experience for me, that they didn’t understand that ‘oh is that what it means,’ right? I never thought of that, I just looked at the problem and started figuring it out. I knew, somehow what they were after. Tone: I see that with some of the students’ tasks now. We have a work-plan. And they just start doing it. It’s – they just think that’s what they should do. They don’t read the two … Ole: No. Tone: … three words, and that little sentence which indicates what to do. Anna: No. Tone: They don’t [no]. No, they just raise their hands, what must I do here. But then you need to read, I tell them [yes]. (WS 4–6)

When Ole changes the topic it is not out of the blue. It seems that the prior stories about reading and comprehension ‘spark’ memories of how this is also a problem in his maths classes, which then mediate his initiative to change the topic to maths education. He brings about this shift with a ‘shorthand’ story that seems to incorporate a great deal of classroom experience: ‘And then it is important to read, and that we also understand what are they asking for here, to understand the concepts here.’ It seems that the facilitator’s story about algebra comes up as a result of Ole’s story. In this respect the facilitator’s role in Excerpt 2 is different from Excerpt 1. Here, the facilitator’s story works to generalize Ole’s problem, and builds a sense of shared experience. In the same vein, Tone’s story about the work-plan, although more specific and bound both spatially and temporally (the adverb ‘now’ indicates that a concrete episode has come to mind), also works to generalize the issues discussed and merges into their collective experience of students not reading or not comprehending the words that are used to design the tasks. What is also evident here is the participants’ collective effort to construct

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experience as shared by inserting small words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ into the telling of their stories. In the third and final excerpt the teachers discuss how to motivate students to read books. Excerpt 3 Sue: Well, I always read what’s on the back of the book. Or stop – if there are pictures, well, then I look on the front cover. What is that, linger on that, what could it, well … [yes] Cindy: Talk about the book, really, so they just have to look at the book and look at the picture and on the back [yes]. And they have learnt a cheating strategy. Sue: But we can identify those who – that is what – is it not just normal, to start like that? Cindy: Yes, it is. It is quite common to start in this manner. (WS 1–3)

The two teachers share the experience of using both the back and front covers of books to motivate students to read. Through their stories they demonstrate a common practice, building collective experience about motivating students to read by attending to, reading and talking about book covers. However, Cindy’s final comment suggests other experiences in applying the strategy: if the book covers are read and talked about, this may give students enough information to be able to discuss the book without reading it (‘a cheating strategy’). In her next turn Sue indicates that students who try to ‘cheat’ in this way will be found out and the two teachers quickly settle the cheating issue by referring to the practice as normal/common. In the workshops stories are usually simply told and their meanings are seldom contested. In the cases where the teachers’ storied experiences diverge, differences are not contrasted or discussed; the teachers tend to revert to collective experiences rather than pursuing individual experiences, as is illustrated in Excerpt 3.

Discussion: Storied experiences as tools or rules for action? The purpose of this chapter is to explore teachers’ storytelling in in-service professional development workshops. In this section I will discuss three issues that the extracts and analysis actualize. It is evident in all three excerpts from the workshops at Cove that the stories are closely connected to the participants’ work with students in classrooms. In



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Excerpt 1 the facilitator links her interest in learning strategies with her experienced shortcomings as a teacher; in Excerpt 2 Tone and Ole’s storied experiences are about their present practices (what they do ‘now’ in their classrooms); and in Excerpt 3 both Cindy and Sue draw on their classroom experiences with motivation for reading. A further characteristic across the material is that although stories arise from unique social interactions, and thus in one sense are different, they align with each other and underscore commonalities rather than differences. Individual stories merge into collective storied experiences. The participants’ extensive use of supporting agreement throughout the interactions reinforces the construction of these stories collectively. The issue to be discussed is how the construction of collective storied experiences works to align or explore and develop practices and understandings. A second and related point, drawn from the illustrations, is that the stories are interactively produced. This is most clearly evident in Excerpt 2, where the preceding discussion of reading incites Ole’s story about reading and maths, leading up to the facilitator’s story about teaching algebra. Her story occasions Tone’s story about the work-plan. The stories seem to merely pop up more or less by accident. How can such seemingly serendipitous stories work as learning resources for the teachers? Finally, what the study clearly indicates is that when teachers story their experiences, such stories are situated within and rarely go beyond the institutional context of their workplace. A result might be that the stories’ function in the workshops is to display the ‘rules’ for practice at Cove rather than as tools that mediate new understandings and new practices. For example, Cindy’s comment about teaching ‘cheating strategies’ in Excerpt 3 suggests that there may be different opinions among the teachers about reading book covers in order to motivate students to read books. But the issue is quickly settled by Sue who sees the approach as ‘normal’ and Cindy agreeing that it is quite common to introduce books in this manner. In this way the story works to endorse a ‘rule’, and its potential for learning is not fully realized.

Constructing collective storied experiences Research on teachers and teaching within the narrative paradigm commonly aims to develop our understanding of teachers’ lives and their development of identities or careers (Clandinin et al. 1995; Craig 2011; Gudmundsdottir 1991; Kelchtermans and Ballet 2002). The stories people tell are understood to emerge from the social influence on their inner life, their environment and their

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exclusive individual history (Clandinin 2007). Hence, narrative research tends to be written up as individual teachers’ stories and the collective construction occurs between researcher and teacher. What emerges as a key issue in this study, based on analysis of teachers’ interactions, is how they collaboratively construct experience. Teachers are usually alone with their students behind closed doors and stories from practice are a primary means through which teachers can share experiences. Their talk is implicit; the words they use are recognized and endowed with meaning from within their practices. In his volume on collective remembering, Wertsch (2002) distinguishes between three forms of collective memory that may be analogues to the collective storied experiences of the teachers at Cove. The first he terms homogeneous and indicates that all members of a group possess the same memories. For example, when all the teachers at Cove had attended the same initial lecture they all shared the memory of the ‘four points’ (cf. Excerpt 1). However, the analysis indicates that memory initially is not shared by all; rather, the teachers’ storied experiences mediates the construction of collective experiences. Wertsch suggests that ‘different members of a group have different perspectives and remember different things, but these exist in a coordinated system of complementary pieces’ (Wertsch 2002: 23). For the teachers at Cove, sharing experiences may help them build a common ground for understanding and teaching learning strategies. For example, Ole’s view of the concepts in mathematics, the facilitator’s focus on the students’ understanding of cues for doing algebra and Tone’s story about the students’ neglect of reading instructions (Excerpt 2) may contribute to a collective storied experience about the importance of reading in all subjects. As far as teacher learning and professional development is concerned, a collective construction of experience may gloss over important distinctions. Wertsch (2002) proposes a third form of collective memory, contested distribution, in which different perspectives ‘exist in a system of opposition and contestation’ (24). For the teachers at Cove the learning potential in creating collective storied experiences could be enhanced by focusing more on difference and less on (initial) consensus.

The interactive production of stories There was no firm structure in the proceedings of the workshops at Cove. They were loosely designed for sharing experiences but with an explicit focus on teaching learning strategies. The facilitator’s role was not made clear; however,



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the transcripts show that she occasionally maintained the link to a theoretical approach (cf. Excerpt 1), offered her own storied experiences and generally worked to keep the participants on track. While the teachers’ stories often built on each other they also appeared to be a haphazard collection with no apparent learning motivation connecting them. It has been suggested that teachers’ talk about teaching may not be frequent enough, specific enough or deep enough to foster learning (cf. Horn and Little 2010). However, if stories are ‘the principal way in which our minds, our “realities”, get shaped to the pattern of daily cultural life’ (Bruner 2006: 14), then storytelling is learning. Clark and Rossiter (2008) suggests that we learn through stories on three interrelated levels: hearing, telling and recognition. First, in hearing stories, we make connections and thus bring other experiences to life in the present. The narrative we listen to mediates our recollection of the past. In this way, virtual experiences exist alongside each other and potentially expand the impact of what is told. This relatively stable object (the story listened to) helps us manage the fluidity of our own experiences (cf. Middleton and Brown 2005) which offers a potential for learning. Second, in telling stories, learners make connections between an idea and a remembered experience. The teachers at Cove do not ‘just’ tell stories; their storied experiences are created from within the framework of learning about learning strategies. Such creation means engagement in the thematic of the workshop which implies cognitive and interactional work on the part of the teachers. Third, learning through stories implies recognition of stories as discursively constituted examples of generic phenomena. In Excerpt 2 above, Ole, Tone and the facilitator all recognize their experiences as incidents pertaining to more or less the same issue. Although Clark’s (2008) ideas about the three integrated levels of learning in telling stories are plausible, the transcripts from the workshops at Cove do not give an indication about what the teachers might have learned. While the teachers’ stories certainly seemed to serve the purpose of community and identity-building among the teachers, if and how they worked as tools to mediate the teachers’ professional learning is less evident.

Collective storied experiences: Rules or tools? While the storied experiences of the teachers at Cove seem serendipitous, the narratives are constructed within the themes of the workshops: their content feeds into the purpose of learning to teach learning strategies. Thus, through

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their storied experiences, teachers render themselves accountable, both in terms of compliance with educational policies and in terms of professional responsibility to the students and their colleagues for the following reason. The production of storied experiences that align with external expectations could result in the establishment of new rules or norms for action; the stories demonstrate the authorized ways of ‘doing’ learning strategies (cf. David and Victor 2002). Bruner (1991) argued that ‘narrative “truth” is judged by its verisimilitude rather than its verifiability’ (13). Since experience is closely tied to the individual and situation, storied experiences cannot easily be questioned. Similarly, when stories merge in collective storied experiences, their authenticity and credibility makes opposition and contestation demanding (cf. Horn 2005). Storied experiences could also initiate deliberation and negotiation; they have a potential to serve as tools that mediate the teachers’ learning processes. In the Cove workshops the potential learning opportunities are not exploited. Horn (2005: 209) suggests that the norms of teachers’ communities of practice may ‘serve to avoid intrusion on issues of personal space’ resulting in a tendency to behave as if we agree. At Cove each teacher probably learns from listening, telling and recognizing the others’ stories. Likewise, as indicated in the analysis, the facilitator’s role also seems to be to listen and tell stories. Thus, the knowledge embedded in the teachers’ storied experiences is neither made explicit nor transformed into a collective object of inquiry.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have demonstrated how the teachers at Cove storied their experiences within the situated practice of the workshops. The stories they tell are contingent upon the purpose and organizational structure of the workshops and on the interaction between interlocutors. In the context of the workshops any story that feeds into the thematic is treated as legitimate. Rather than being explorative or contested the stories appear to build on each other almost seamlessly. By sharing stories about ‘what works’, teachers may learn how to deal with problems of practice. In this sense storied experiences give access to procedural devices and rules of action that can expand the teachers’ know-how. In a few instances, however, when two or more teachers have ‘the same’ experiences but assign different meanings to them, there is the (generally unrealized) potential for these stories to become stepping stones for critical inquiry.



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Storied experiences offer a promising approach to teachers’ professional learning by connecting learning and lived experience. However, there is a risk that storied experiences may become reduced to ‘tricks-of-the-trade’. While rules for action certainly come in handy in teaching, the potential of storied experiences in teachers’ professional learning may be overlooked if they do not also work as tools for learning.

Notes 1 Liv Engen conducted the course the teachers attended, and she has also published the written materials for the workshops.

References Bamberg, M. (2006). Stories: Big or small: why do we care? Narrative Inquiry 16: 139–47. Blackler, F. (1995). Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: an overview and interpretation.Organization Studies 16: 1021–46. Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry 18: 1–21. —(1996). The Culture of Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —(2006). Culture, mind, and narrative. In J. S. Bruner, C. F. Feldman, M. Hermansen and J. Molin (eds), Narrative Learning and Culture. Copenhagen: New Social Science Monographs, pp. 13–24. —(2010). Narrative, culture and mind. In D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina and A. Nylund (eds), Telling Stories: Language, Narrative, and Social Life. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 45–50. Clandinin, D. J. (ed.) (2007). Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Clandinin, D. J., Connelly, F. M. and Craig, C. (1995). Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Landscapes. New York: Teachers College Press. Clark, M. C. and Rossiter, M. (2008). Narrative learning in adulthood. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 119: 61–70. Connelly, F. M. and Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli and P. Elmore (eds), Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 477–87. Craig, C. J. (2011). Narrative inquiry in teaching and teacher education. Advances in Research on Teaching 13: 19–42. David, H. and Victor, T. (2002). Learning within the context of communities of

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practices: a re-conceptualization of tools, rules and roles of the activity system. Educational Media International 39: 247–55. Doecke, B., Brown, J. and Loughran, J. (2000). Teacher talk: the role of story and anecdote in constructing professional knowledge for beginning teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education 16: 335–48. Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and Cognition. London: Sage. Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit. Georgakopoulou, A. (2006). Thinking big with small stories in narrative identity analysis. Narrative Inquiry 16: 122–30. Goodson, I. F. (1997). Representing teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education 13: 111–17. Gudmundsdottir, S. (1991). Story‐maker, story‐teller: narrative structures in curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies 23 (3): 207–18. Horn, I. S. (2005). Learning on the job: a situated account of teacher learning in high school mathematics departments. Cognition and Instruction 23: 207–36. Horn, I. S. and Little, J. W. (2010). Attending to problems of practice: routines and resources for professional learning in teachers’ workplace interactions. American Educational Research Journal 47: 181–217. Jordan, B. and Henderson, A. (1995). Interaction analysis: foundation and practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences 4: 39–103. Kelchtermans, G. and Ballet, K. (2002). The micropolitics of teacher induction. A narrative-biographical study on teacher socialisation. Teaching and Teacher Education 18: 105–20. Klette, K. and Carlsten, T. C. (2012). Knowledge in teacher learning. In K. Jensen, M. Nerland and L. Lahn (eds), Professional Learning in the Knowledge Society. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 69–84. Kuutti, K. (1996). Activity theory as a potential framework for human-computer interaction research. In B. Nardi (ed.), Context and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 17–44. Middleton, D. and Brown, S. D. (2005). The Social Psychology of Experience: Studies in Remembering and Forgetting. London: Sage. Olson, M. R. and Craig, C. J. (2005). Uncovering cover stories: tensions and entailments in the development of teacher knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry 35: 161–82. Pomson, A. D. M. (2004). Loosening chronology’s collar: reframing teacher career narratives as stories of life and work without end. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 17: 647–61. Søreide, G. E. (2007). Narrative Construction of Teacher Identity. Bergen: Department of Education and Health Promotion, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen. Wertsch, J. V. (2002). Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Witherell, C. and Noddings, N. (eds) (1991). Stories Lives Tell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Already at work in the world: Fictions of experience in the education of teachers Madeleine Grumet

I have always been impatient with schools. I am told that I refused to go to preschool. I remember elementary school as both boring and frightening, and college as pretentious. My research at the university expressed these years of building disenchantment as I turned to autobiographical accounts of educational experience hoping, in a phenomenological sense, to get closer to ‘the thing, itself ’ rather than relying on institutional accounts of what it was all about. I confess that one of the pleasures of serving as dean of schools of education is that I had permission to leave the building, and much of my work was aimed at reducing the barriers that isolate schools and their teachers and students from the life that was buzzing beyond the walls of the campus. Asserting those connections became important to my later work as I tried to explore relationships between education and reproduction, not the replication of the corporate industrial complex that was portrayed as the progenitor of us all in the 1970s, but reproduction as lived by parents who have gone to school, by children whom they send to school and by those parents and children as they return to school as teachers (1988). Following Dewey, I rejected the dichotomy that split school from experience, but even his claim that school is not preparation for life, but life itself (1897), was asserted against the assumption that life was somewhere else. We know the histories that enforced the exile of life from school: literacy in the service of a pleasant afterlife; notions of cognition unburdened by emotion, sensory stimulation or pleasure and, God forbid, physical movement. We know Aries’ idea that childhood encoded nostalgia for the rural life that had been abandoned for mercantile and later, industrial cities (1962), and that schooling became a refuge from the dangers of complexity requiring innocent children and isolated

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teachers. And we know that fears of the stranger and of immigration created schools as immersion tanks for the dominant culture, hoping to draw children away from the cultures of their families and neighbourhoods. Even as we can place these moments which articulate the separation of school from the experiences of everyday life on a timeline across the centuries, we know that their legacies still frame what does and does not go on in school. Given all these exclusions, if I had to choose between schooling and experience, I would choose experience or, perhaps, lived experiences that really matter, but here I am drawn to Sartre’s scepticism. He scorned Annie’s ‘perfect moments’ in Nausea (2007). He considered our self-descriptions, so carelessly called our identities these days, ‘bad faith’, abrogations of the responsibility and anguish of deciding how to be human. In The Age of Reason (2001) he ridiculed rationales of motivation and decision-making, telling Mathieu, the character struggling over the decision of whether or not to join the Communist Party, that one day he would just find himself a dues paying member. Maybe in spite of his grand schemes of rationality, Habermas shared Sartre’s scepticism when in a critique of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, he claimed that it was only the action, taken quickly, in the moment, the mother pushing the baby carriage away as she is struck by the oncoming car, that expresses morality (1975). If all these moments, trivial or significant, after the fact, can’t add up to something to be claimed, my past, my future, my life, what does it matter? Nevertheless, I, young, and oblivious to the implications of these grim repudiations, found these denials of certitude and rectitude compelling. My parents, full of hope, but rarely daring, directed me to succeed in the post-war middleclass borough of New York where I was raised. My father, whose own father glorified himself with apocryphal tales of his bravery and dignity, had contempt for all such claims and, in fact, for most assertions. When as a small child I asked him if we go to heaven when we die, he answered, ‘I’d like to think so.’ So much for that. My mother, whose father was just as vain and dishonest as his peer, but warmer and more encouraging, was more eager to please than my father and very good at it; and that is how I became a good girl with bad thoughts. So let me start with a bad thought: after close to 40 years of teaching I am not sure what it means to learn from that experience. After close to 40 years, how is it that I spent the summer drenched in doubt, anxious about having to teach a course in children’s literature this fall? After 40 years of experience, how could I have asked those new doctoral students to do micro teaching when they were too anxious and competitive to hear any critique? I could go on with this recitation of blunders and worries but I provide these few instances of my many



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fears and failures to point out that whatever I may have learned is very often elusive, if not chimerical. And a warning: you may find this entire chapter bad thought. It is not linear; it substitutes ambiguity for assertion and is riddled with contradictions. My ambition has been to fuse form and content, performing the idiosyncrasies, regrets and contradictions of experience. In fact, the word experience, as some totalized aggregation of the plural, multiple, goings, doings and comings that fill our days and nights, is so inclusive of the stuff of life that it provoked my title, ‘already at work in the world’, coined to challenge the tacit sense that if I am a teacher, work in classrooms is experience, and that dreaming that I forgot to study for the maths final, or gratefully accepting a seat on the bus, or reading this passage of Adam Phillips (1998) that helped me to stop worrying about my mistakes, are not: As one becomes more attentive to the contingencies and determinations of one’s life, one’s future selves become definite only in the unpredictability. The future will be like the past, not in the sense of repetition, but in the sense of having been uncalculated. So one of the aims of analysis is to free people to do nothing to the future but be interested in it. (32)

Furthermore, my experience of teaching is also connected to my experience as a daughter and a mother, to my experience as a wife and to my experience of being a wife no longer; it is connected to the income of my parents, of my husband and of my children; and my experiences of empathy, or insight, of exhaustion and despair cannot be isolated from the lessons of hope and disappointment that I have learned in other places. In Ordinary Affects, Kathleen Stewart argues that ‘the notion of a totalized system, of which everything is already somehow a part, is not helpful in the effort to approach a weighted and reeling present’ (2007: 1). So much for theory, which we will speak of later. Her ‘weighted and reeling present’ places a person smack in the middle of lassitude, or moments of surprise, or delight or dread flowing in and out of each other without shaping that field to the design of deliberate intentions leading to logical results. Here again is Sartre’s scepticism; in The Words, he keeps catching himself in the act of forcing the complexity and contradictions of daily experience into appealing narratives which offer the consolations of auspicious beginnings, struggling middles and glorious ends (1981). He praises Dos Passos for texts that grasp the evolving moments of consciousness, seeking a literary impressionism as distinct and dispersed as pointillism.

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And so if we reject an understanding of experience that denies its self-evident certainty, and we refuse to lodge it in the constricted discipline of school, or position it as other than what goes on in school, how are we to understand what it means to learn from experience? Confronted by my own confusion I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary to see if I could find a meaning of these words, experience and learn, in the folds of their usage. Drawn from the root ‘laer’, learn used to mean to follow, or find the track, taken from ‘laest’, the sole of the foot (retained in our term for the shape of a shoe, as its ‘last’, OED:1592). Perhaps this history explains my reluctance to admit that I have learned from experience, for it confirms my sense that learning suggests a subordination to tradition and authority: the compliance of good girls. Following the tracks in our time of stipulated learning outcomes, scripted lessons, testing, standardized curricula and NCATE (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) standards, leads me into endless disciplinary detours that bypass intention, focus, creativity, improvization, knowledge and dignity. I also rebel against the subordination that requires experience as a qualification for work, something some folks (usually men) have and others don’t. Do you have experience? I remember that question echoing through the interviews when I applied to work as a secretary, a waitress, a dean. I had been a professor, raised three kids and now was being asked if I had experience that would qualify me to be the dean of the School of Education at Brooklyn College. Knowing New Yorkers’ fierce affection for the subway, I retorted, well you know, it’s like riding the number 2 train – it’s all in your knees. As I consider the words ‘experience’ and ‘learn’ in a less defensive, more phenomenological mood, I recognize that the remarkable complexity, simultaneity of concerns, multiple darting foci of attention, shifts of figure and ground that constitute the field of teaching make the intention of following any tracks, theirs, yours, or my own, absurd. Now you could argue that this antagonism to the word learn rests on the sense that one is following the tracks of another and that learning from experience might just as well suggest learning from one’s own tracks, otherwise known as going around in circles, or in this era of reflective teaching, doubling back. It is 30 years since Donald Schon, a leading MIT social scientist, examined five professions – engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy and town planning – to show that professionals rely less on formulae learned in graduate school than on the kind of improvisation learned in practice (1984). In the United States this was also the era of the professionalization of teaching,



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as Albert Shanker, who led the United Federation of Teachers, buckled to the criticisms of education levied in the national rebuke, A Nation at Risk, a national report from the Commission on Excellence in Education (1983), which blamed teachers and education for the failure of US companies to compete with Asian automobile manufacturers (a process which, I might add, we have seen repeated today). His support of teacher professionalization and the creation of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards made teaching fertile ground for Schon’s approach to ‘reflection-in-action’ and teacher education declared the remarkable news that teachers should think about our work. Yet, somehow, we still don’t know what to make of it. What sense can we make of the persistent attempts to grasp and categorize the thought of teachers as if we were another species whose thought remains to be discovered like that of dolphins, or chimps or dogs who have memorized the names of hundreds of toys? My feminist critique attributes interest in teacher thinking to the desire to frame and contain the thoughts of teachers; to control what we can say or do to their children, to extend a patriarchal oversight over the women who have ventured out of the kitchen and the nursery. The feminization of the teaching workforce following industrialization was justified by the sentimentalization of women who taught, ascribing innocence and purity to those entrusted to teach children once the men who had held those jobs were drawn into the more lucrative work of the factories. Is it possible that the ‘reflective practitioner’ – arriving as it did at the moment in 1984 when feminism appeared to endow women with independence, the fantasy of equal pay for equal work and the recognition that women’s intelligence, expertise, commitment and leadership were competitive with men’s long lauded claim on those traits – was received as yet another effort at control? Now, as some of you may know, it could be said that I was mixed up in the reflection racket as my early scholarship did address the use of autobiography in education (1975). Repelled by the banking metaphors and talk of terminal objectives that clogged the educational discourse of the 1970s, I was drawn to a more phenomenological inquiry, as I asked pre-service and practising teachers to write three narratives of what they considered to be really educational experiences, narratives that were based in schools, or often not. I do not want to go into extensive detail about this work but I do want to emphasize that what I was after had nothing to do with identity. This was no attempt to recover what humanistic psychology called ‘your teaching self ’, nor a process to discern the deadly dispositions that may be its contemporary incarnation. It was designed

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to grasp a few moments of subjectivity, and three narratives were requested so that the pluralism of thought, belief and remembered or imagined events would be evident. More important than writing the pieces was their reading, when as a community we could discuss the themes, issues and contradictions that we associated with the phenomenon. Another, more contemporary scepticism of a sovereign, willing subjectivity is found in the work of Lauren Berlant, although she is less concerned with literary depictions of consciousness than she is about attributions of responsibility and blame that fall upon populations suffering under capitalism: I quote from her essay, ‘Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)’ (2007): Sovereignty described as the foundation of individual autonomy … encourages a militaristic and melodramatic view of agency in the spectacular temporality of the event of the decision; and, in linking and inflating consciousness, intention, and decision or event, it has provided an alibi for normative governmentality and justified moralizing against inconvenient human activity. (755) … Without attending to the varieties of constraint and unconsciousness that condition ordinary activity we persist in an attachment to a fantasy that in the truly lived life emotions are always heightened and expressed in modes of effective agency that ought justly to be and are ultimately consequential or performatively sovereign. In this habit of representing the intentional subject, a manifest lack of self-cultivating attention can easily become recast as irresponsibility, shallowness, resistance, refusal, or incapacity; and habit itself can begin to look deeply overmeaningful, such that addiction, reaction-formation, conventional gesture clusters, or just being different can be read as heroic placeholders for resistance to something. (757)

The context of Berlant’s remarks is her study of the simultaneous spread and condemnation of obesity as a case that demonstrates behaviors chosen within a field that the subject has not created, but that the subject, nevertheless, gets blamed for. In her analysis I find comparisons to the ways that teachers have been simultaneously set up and held responsible for the achievement gaps that differentiate the test performances of children from middle-class backgrounds from those from poor backgrounds. In the United States the recognition that poor children were not doing well was immediately interpreted as the failure of those who taught them to appreciate that ‘all children can learn’. It may well be that some teachers expected less sophisticated language and interest in achievement from poor children, but that anticipation hardly discriminated them from their society’s inequalities nor from the general perception



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that poverty burdened families with stress and anxiety, preoccupations and distractions, that would be visible in their children’s presence in schools. Peter Taubman provides an insightful discussion of how teachers are positioned in the discourse of inequality in Teaching by Numbers (2009), and I suspect that often those teachers who were sceptical or dismissive of ‘those children’ felt overwhelmed and resentful when expected to remedy a situation that governments, the economy and moralizing religions had failed to influence. Perhaps experience is the bitter education of the disappointed person who imagined life to be more noble, exciting and gratifying than it has turned out to be. Then it is the curse of the virago condemning those who still hope to grim resignation. I have, it must be told, claimed to have learned from experience in just these circumstances: learning as come-uppance. Here’s what I have learned from experience: it did not matter that the new teacher education curriculum was imaginative and adaptive, combining arts and sciences and education courses; it still took three years to convince all the departments in the college to vote for it. Here’s another: lefty colleagues who exalt revolution govern like fascists when given power. And another: despite parental promises to take care of us, they die before the job is done. And its converse: despite our promise to care for our children, we can’t protect them from their lives, nor do we often know what is best for them. All of these insights garnered from experience cruelly correct our naiveté, our faith in others, our fantasies of safety, power and wisdom. What it is that I have learned from experience is that I really don’t know much at all. Now this rebuke to my narcissism is the fine irony that shapes theatre and novels, from the blindness of Oedipus to the late revelations visited upon the heroes and heroines in the novels of Henry James, or D. H. Lawrence’s aspiring young teacher in The Rainbow (1915). But surely when we encourage teachers to learn from experience we are not hoping that ironic regret is their lesson. I find this sense that experience is a rebuke, correcting idealism, fantasy, hope, confirmed by the OED’s early meaning of experience, supposedly now obsolete: to try, to put to the test (930). And as our current craze for testing saturates and surrounds teachers and students, as we evaluate schools of education by reviewing the achievement scores of children in the classes of our student teachers, it seems that the test has gobbled up its own content in a mimesis of an economy where value is disassociated from products or exchange. Experience has become the bitter retort to the optimism of teachers. In the United States, pedagogical optimism is expressed as a love for children in need, who require instruction to survive. If seventeenth-century pedagogues taught

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children to read to save them from the original sin that adults projected onto them, we teach children to read to save them from the diversity that we ascribe to them and the poverty that our economy condemns them to. In the United States hundreds of thousands of children who might have been seen as doing okay, are now, since ‘All Children Left Behind’, numbered among those who are not reading at grade level or, if they are, are not making exemplary progress. Early childhood programmes are merged with special education and early intervention initiatives. Children must be saved from their neighbourhoods, their parents, their poor nutrition, their low self-esteem, their social class, race, ethnicity and youth. Ironically, the desires of teachers to help the children are focused on their social, cultural and economic locations, aspects of their world that their teachers have hardly any capacity to change, making them the fall guys for inequality. Identity and diversity are the tags of these extended obligations, displacing engagements with the world that might be conveyed through the academic disciplines, or through inquiry generated by curiosity, onto the development of skills that tests can measure. Last year Lyn Yates and I gathered essays from around the world for a Routledge 2011 Yearbook, Curriculum in Today’s World, to ask their writers if and how they saw the curricula of the public schools in their countries responding to international economic and political events. Our hypothesis, that vulnerability would provoke efforts to narrow and control what goes on in school, was confirmed by writers from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Western Europe, as countries around the world have intensified standards and criteria to measure educational progress. We can point to international competition and the growth of the global marketplace as encouraging measurements of educational achievement that can be compared. We can point to globalized standards for technology, digital communication, as well dispersed manufacturing for providing models of finely calibrated systems that can interface with each other. We can point to the failures of the financial institutions that have inflated the value of the whole enterprise, as well as to the spectre of global terrorism and environmental degradation, for undermining confidence in the future. Michael Young (2011) portrayed the constriction of the British curriculum as it has been extended from power elites to include a larger portion of the population. Knowledge has given way to skills in this de-skilled curriculum, and his argument was reinforced by Anne-Marie Bathmaker’s essay (2011) that analyzed the themes of enterprise and employability that run through the Work Related Leaning initiatives in the UK. Writing from Brazil, Elizabeth Macedo



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(2011) noted that national curricula, designed to celebrate and strengthen citizenship, have replaced the pluralistic and fractious representation of diverse interests with skills and curriculum standards that make citizenship something to be earned that is disassociated from place, affiliation, representation or democracy. Jason Tan (2011) reported that the Thinking Schools, Learning Nation initiative in Singapore has been developed in response to a perceived need to make the nation economically competitive and attuned to the challenges of globalization at the cost of national interests in cultural traditions and national cohesion. And so, if learning from experience is to mean something other than compliance and resignation, I suggest that experience must not be collapsed into the idea of fitting into what goes on in schools. I am afraid that this is the moment when we in the university turn away from schools to theory. Amy Anderson, analyzing the resistance of schoolteachers to theory, expressed in their complaint, ‘We just don’t speak the same language’, concluded her study with the argument that both schoolteachers and university professors flee from the ideologies and clout of state policies to their respective refuge: for the professors it is theory, for the teachers, the child (2006). Our dialogue is staged as if we are speaking to each other, but is, I suspect, all addressed to political and economic processes that are simultaneously real and imagined and, endowed with phallic authority and threat, send us fleeing to our respective corners. Each position provides shelter from the political struggles that a challenge to policy would require. We professors relish the interlocking critiques of classism, sexism, racism and capitalism that provide a landscape we may paint in broad strokes but that none of us could ever enter, presenting the totality that is the infinite distraction to Stewart’s ‘reeling and weighted present’. Nevertheless, we urge our students to change the world, as if their understanding of this totalized oppression is all that is needed to fuel their agency. Schoolteachers, impatient and harassed by bureaucracy, evade it whenever possible, hoping to focus on the one-to-one relationships that they may be able to have with children, whom they feel obligated to save. Both groups feel embattled, as the indulgent excesses of their nations’ bankers deplete the public funds that pay them and as there is ever encroaching oversight and surveillance, from states and communities that can control little else. Perhaps our shared vulnerability is an opportunity to address the divide that separates us. On each side we must relinquish our cherished ideals of embattled, yet courageous, individualized human agency and spurious certainty. If the idea that we are self-determining subjectivities is undermined by Sartre’s mistaken narrator, or Freud’s actor, impelled by unconscious passions; if it is undermined

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by Lacan’s subject who confuses his dependency for self-creation, or by Berlant’s subject who struggles with circumstances over which she has ever diminishing control, how are we to understand what it means to learn from experience? Deborah Britzman recognizes this fear of not knowing in practising teachers’ denigrations of their own teacher education programmes. In their contempt she reads the complaint: ‘They didn’t prepare me for the uncertainty’ (2007: 8). And of course the linear fiction of accreditation linking mission to course practices to outcomes to student achievement only reinforces this myth of control. Despite our recognition that all the challenging decisions that teachers make during every hour of every day take place in highly complex social, ‘weighted and reeling’ situations, our preparation of future teachers fails to acknowledge this complexity. Despite general education and liberal arts requirements, universities educate future teachers as if their interests in the flourishing of the species, in democracy and equality were theirs alone. Instead of endless courses in methods and plaintive foundations, why aren’t our students taking coursework with their peers in economics, political science, public policy, urban planning and public health or in communication studies, where rhetoric and organizing advocacy processes are central to the curriculum? We know how next-to-impossible it is for individual teachers to bring about any significant change. Change can only be successfully advocated by groups of teachers who break through the myopia of their schools to make common cause with each other and with groups in their communities. What if we replaced the know-it-all ‘how to/best practice’ methods courses with uncertainty that combines modesty with inquiry? What should constitute an education for every generation in any place is not an answer but a question, rightly contested. Study of the ways that an academic discipline grasps and represents the world should not be sequestered in graduate seminars, but should constitute academic inquiry in teacher preparation programmes. What are the conditions within which people – children and adults – express themselves? What does it mean to make the passage from my home and community to the school? How do the symbol systems of the disciplines represent and organize lived experience? Are we educating our students to take part in the public debates that influence the character of schools and the work of teachers? We can do very little about what goes on in the public school, once our students are there, nor should we; it is not our place. But the schools, as well, suffer from the mythologies of the heroic teacher, of best practice and enlightened leadership. In the United States



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a few forward-looking unions in California, Chicago and New York are starting to address issues of curriculum and culture even though collective bargaining agreements have traditionally held them to self-interested ‘bread and butter’ issues. We can stop contributing algorithms and ideas to the project of ‘teacher quality’ which, along with value added teacher evaluation programmes, only further splinter teaching colleagues into frightened, defensive isolates. What if, instead of following the path that others have taken, or doubling back to find one’s own footsteps, learning meant to find a new path? Listen to Tom Brown, a tracker who traces his skill to the teaching of a Native American, Stalking Bear, and who uses his skill to track animals as well as people in the Pine Barrens, a forested area of New Jersey. He describes his work as eating mysteries: The mystery leaves itself like a trail of breadcrumbs, and by the time your mind has eaten its way to the maker of the tracks, the mystery is inside you, part of you forever. The tracks of every mystery you have ever swallowed move inside your own tracks, shading them slightly or skewing them with nuances that show how much more you have become than what you were. Man goes through the world eating his mysteries. (1979: 1)

If we bring Tom Brown’s understanding of tracking to the meaning of experience as being tested and tried, then we are tested by what is unknown rather than by what is known. Jane Adan’s beautiful book, The Children in Our Lives (1991), offered us glimpses of these mysteries as she tracked the utterances, concerns and fantasies of the children she studied. I want to suggest that for all the focus on methods, best practice, exemplary models and expertise, what we learn from our work in both public schools and the university is what we don’t know about teaching; what we don’t know about the world and the academic disciplines that try to grasp it, and what we don’t understand about our own interests and purposes of those of the children we teach and the adults we teach with. In effect, what I am advocating is the acknowledgement of not knowing, and the gift of uncertainty that invites attention, discernment and choice may be what experience has to offer us. I know that I had many golden days of teaching, but the mysteries that I have eaten and still rumble in my gut are the ones I remember. Of course we remember traumas and fears, and they blot out the good times, but they persist because they shake us to our roots. Once around 1964 I was teaching summer school to high school students who had failed English and did not want to be spending humid mornings in June and July with me. I don’t remember the topic but I do remember that it was a quiz and that I

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noticed a great big young man who was usually angry and taciturn looking at the paper of the kid next to him. I know that I walked up and swiped his paper and that he followed me up the aisle to my desk, leaning over it and shouting into my face, ‘I wasn’t cheating, damn it. I studied for this test’ and stalked out. I can’t tell you how many times this image returns to me. The fear that I felt that day has drained from the scene but not the frustration in his eyes, and with each successive year I regret taking that paper away from him a little more. This is an experience I remember. I keep working it through, following the path of this memory, of other memories and associations: the paper I glanced at on another student’s desk during a Regents exam, or maybe it was the PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test); the sadistic victimization of a colleague who hadn’t cited with accuracy for plagiarism; the pomposity of the honour code at my institution; the absurdity of indicting this kid in a world saturated with calculated dishonour and manipulation; the rage of others I have hurt or judged unfairly. And then there was my rage and my fear, three or four months pregnant, working in the hot summer school when I also did not want to be there with the kids who did not want to be there. One day I found a dead baby bird on the hood of my car. Another day someone left wilted white tulips on the seat. And there is more … I am not arguing that all ignorance is conducive to experience. So much of our ignorance serves our defences against whatever is new or challenging to our confidence and safety. So much of it is reinforced by fear, by avoidance. If our students are to learn from their experience, either in the university or in the schools, they must believe that it is safe to ask a question, to risk a wrong answer and to face the imperative for action with patient tolerance. I am hardly a tracker but I remember the cold fear that would grip me in the deaning years when there was a crisis and I could see no path through it. It took me a while to realize that I did not have to find all the solutions on my own and to rely on the slow deliberations that I would share with colleagues that would eventually lead us to a collective decision. But I wonder whether our students see us engage in these debates and exchanges. Too often we avoid them, hiding in our specialties, finding our seats in the common room or lunch room where we can be assured of exchanging opinions with those whom we know will agree with us. Peter Taubman chronicles this defensiveness in his new book, Disavowed Knowledge (2011), where he traces the brief flirtation of education and psychoanalysis from Freud’s visit to Clark University in 1909 (where G. Stanley Hall celebrated the 20th anniversary of Clark by giving honorary degrees to Freud



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and Carl Jung) to the rapid repudiation that followed it. He points out that the psychoanalytic project split in two, the emancipatory and the therapeutic, and that only the latter flourished and was at all acknowledged in education. In Freud’s view the therapeutic project was the emancipatory: any real education would have to come after education because he saw education as enforcing the punishing norms that drive our interests, wishes and impulses deep into hiding. Adam Phillips brings that argument into his book, The Beast in the Nursery (1998). He says that psychoanalytic theory is a set of stories about the art of everyday life, an art that thrives when we nourish our appetites. Phillips acknowledges the inevitability of sublimation, finding cultural forms, language, art, work, for the expression of sexual appetite, but identifies the ‘good enough’ sublimation as that in which the ‘body is only forgotten in order to be better remembered, as in any unselfconscious performance’ (32). He describes the tension between sexual curiosity and the desire for pleasure and the sublimations – our language, our culture, this little talk – as constituents of the tensions that we experience between essentialism, the pure sexual interest and pluralism, the marvelous array of cultural forms that it assumes, and urges us to cultivate both in our personalities in order to be both connected to the complexity of this beautiful world and interested. In most Western countries the education of teachers addresses the pluralism: all sails, no wind. I am reminded of the passage in John Stuart Mill’s autobiography where he describes his collapse of interest. He has been fully, extravagantly tutored by his father and his father’s friends; he is fully rigged but describes himself as a boat, becalmed, sublimations in full sail, unable to catch the wind of appetite (1990/1873). To learn from experience is to follow our interest, Phillips argues, and so often what interests us is what we do not already know, what challenges us, frightens us, what we desire. The path that we have taken from our childhoods to our classrooms is one I would track and that is why I started this essay with glimpses of my family’s stories of recognition, even though if I were to write those paragraphs again I would make more or other sense of them. What did my grandfathers desire in their boasts? What did my father desire in his denials? What have I desired in this aspiring yet cynical career? What do teachers desire? Contact with the energy and curiosity of students? To be remembered? To be part of a community? To explore new ways of coming to know, to come to form a second time as we present the world to a new generation, wresting the story of civilization from its august authors, wresting the story of ourselves from our parents and teachers to make it up on Monday, once again?

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References Adan, J. (1991). The Children in Our Lives: Knowing and Teaching Them. New York: SUNY Press. Anderson, A. L. (2006). Language Matters: A Study of Teachers’ Uses of Language for Understanding Practice. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dissertation Abstracts International 67/05. Aries, P. (1962). Centuries of Childhood. Trans. Robert Baldick. New York: Knopf. Bathmaker, A. M. (2011). Preparing students for the new world of work: critical reflections of English policy for work-related learning in the twenty-first century. In L. Yates and M. Grumet (eds), Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics. London: Routledge. Berlant, L. (2007). Slow death (sovereignty, obesity, lateral agency). Critical Inquiry 33 (Summer): 754–80. Britzman, D. (2007). Teacher education as uneven development: toward a psychology of uncertainty. International Journal of Leadership in Education 10 (1): 1–12. Brown, T. (1979). The Tracker. New York: Berkley Books. Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. School Journal 54 (January): 77–80. Grumet, M. (1988). Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. —(2010) The public expression of the citizen teacher. Journal of Teacher Education 61: 21–34. Habermas J. (1975). Moral development and ego identity. Telos 24 (Summer): 47. Hammer, E. (ed.) (1968). Use of Interpretation in Treatment: Technique and Art. New York: Grune and Stratton. Husserl, E. (1954/1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Lawrence, D. H. (1915). The Rainbow. New York: Modern Library. Macedo, E. (2011). Curriculum policies in Brazil: the citizenship discourse. In L. Yates and M. Grumet (eds), Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics. London: Routledge. Phillips, A. (1998). The Beast in the Nursery. London: Faber and Faber. Pinar, W. and Grumet, M. (1975). Toward a Poor Curriculum. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt. Sartre J.-P. (1981). The Words: The Autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre. Trans. B. Frechtman. New York: Vintage. —(2001). The Age of Reason. Trans. E. Sutton. New York: Penguin. —(2007). Nausea. Trans. L. Alexander. New York: New Directions. Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary Affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tan, J. (2011). Values education amid globalization and change: the case of national education in Singapore. In L. Yates and M. Grumet (eds), Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics. London: Routledge.



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Taubman, P. (2009). Teaching By Numbers: Deconstructing the Discourses of Standards and Accountability in Education. New York: Routledge. —(2011). Disavowed Knowledge. New York: Routledge. Yates, L. and Grumet, M. (eds). Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics. London: Routledge. Young, M. (2011). Curriculum policies for a knowledge society? In L. Yates and M. Grumet (eds), Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics. London: Routledge.

Part Two

Perspectives in International Contexts

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The authority of experience, deficit discourse and Teach for America: The risks for urban education Heidi Pitzer

This chapter considers the role of experience in Teach For America (TFA), particularly TFA teachers’ experiences of urban schools. TFA is an organization that trains recent college graduates to teach in poor or ‘high-need’ US schools during a five-week summer institute, having prepared almost 25,000 teachers in its 20-plus year history (Farr 2010). Joining the wave of neoliberal ‘deregulation and competition in initial teacher education’ (Zeichner 2010: 1545), TFA’s business-inspired preparation programme is run largely by past TFA corps members and it includes ‘corporate culture training and team-building sessions’ as well as field experience teaching summer school (Veltri 2010: 54). This brief, experience-based training maligns schools of education and the importance of pedagogical knowledge and theory, but TFA’s more significant use of experience comes after the corps: TFA’s ultimate goal is growing a ‘movement’ to end educational inequality, built on the experiences that TFA corps members have during their short, two-year tenure. Implicitly, TFA teachers are assumed not to be from poor, urban (or rural) backgrounds and not to have knowledge of urban public schooling; they must enter under-resourced schools to acquire the necessary experience. Once in their new professions TFA alumni are meant to draw on this ‘first-hand’ experience gained while in schools and use it to influence educational policy. Grounded in feminist and post-structuralist theory that complicates experience (e.g. Butler 2002; Scott 1992), this chapter considers the authority of experience and examines the discourses and dominant frames through which TFA corps members’ experience is produced and interpreted. Specifically,

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this chapter is concerned with how the deficit discourse and other oppressive discourses of ‘the Urban’ are called upon to interpret experiences in urban schools. The deficit discourse is a racialized frame that constructs poor urban students as lacking, that blames urban students and their communities for the state of their schools, that ignores students as resources and that often results in excessive attempts to discipline and control students (Biklen and Pitzer 2012; Delpit 1995, García and Guerra 2004, Valencia 2010, Weiner 2003). The TFA teachers I interviewed regularly drew upon this powerful discourse and discussed their urban students as ‘challenging’ and the schools and neighbourhoods as ‘rough’. For example, one TFAer emphasized student misbehaviour, telling a story of a student calling her a ‘bitch’. She also understood urban parents as needing a ‘push’ to take ‘responsibility or at least [have] awareness about what their child is doing’. Scholars on race (Campbell 1999; hooks 2004; Jones 1999; Narayan 1997) have pointed out the power of dominant discourses to reproduce the other as Other, despite a potentially transformational encounter or experience with the Other. While those in privileged, non-Other positions may more easily take up deficit discourse, even those most oppressed by dominant discourse can adhere to its logics: ‘People of color often buy into and even tell majoritarian stories … In the same way, misogynistic stories are often told by men but can also be told by women’ (Solórzano and Yosso 2002: 28). Drawing on TFA documents and in-depth interviews with TFA employees, this chapter explores the repeated reference to ‘real-world’ and ‘life-changing’ experiences and suggests that rather than offer something actually transformational, the ‘TFA experience’ acts as a credential, allowing TFA teachers to come in with a certain view of urban schools, and to leave with that view largely unchanged. TFA does not offer new insights into urban education. Especially without the critical theory and training in multicultural and social justice pedagogy provided by many university teacher education programmes, this chapter argues that TFA’s reliance on the authority of experience can combine with racist, dominant discourses of the Urban to reproduce only stronger, more harmful conceptions of urban schools and the poor students and students of colour who attend them. While university-based teacher education does not always provide the critical tools needed to disrupt ‘common sense’ ideas about students and their capabilities, proponents of traditional teacher preparation see ‘changing the initial assumptions or preconceptions that prospective teachers have about what teaching is and should be’ as a foundational goal (Kumashiro 2012: 48). (For a review of the research on teacher education for multicultural schools, see, for example, Sleeter (2001).)



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TFA As an undergraduate student at Princeton over 20 years ago Wendy Kopp developed the idea for TFA in her senior thesis project (Darling-Hammond 1994, Kopp 2001). Kopp wanted to improve public schools by recruiting graduating seniors from top universities across the US and placing these future leaders in under-resourced rural and urban schools for a two-year teaching commitment. This national teacher corps model has since expanded to a global scale in ‘Teach For All’, including Teach First UK, Teach For Australia, Teach For China and Teach First Deutschland, to name a few (Miner 2010). There are currently Teach For All ‘fast track schemes’ (McConney et al. 2012) in 26 countries (Teach For All n.d.). TFA and its counterpart programmes in other nations continue to attract college students who may not plan to stay in the classroom after two years, but who will advocate for education reform from whatever career path they pursue. Applicants need not have a teacher education background; the only preparation TFA recruits undergo prior to being placed in a classroom is TFA’s summer institute programme. TFA has grown in size and popularity. According to TFA’s 2010 Annual Report (Teach For America n.d.), there were 8,000 corps members working in 39 regions of the US and TFA had 46,366 applicants, accepting less than 10 per cent. Although highly publicized, TFA is not unique in its alternative teacher preparation approach. Darling-Hammond (1994) critiques TFA for, among other things, using an old ‘emergency’ route to teaching. However, Zeichner (2010) argues that recently there has been a ‘tremendous growth of alternatives to traditional college and university-based teacher education that include many new for-profit companies and universities that have gone into the business of preparing teachers’ (1545). Recently, New York State has helped allow TFA to grant master’s degrees to its members (Foderaro 2010; Zeichner 2010). TFA teachers are often hired with an alternative certification and must obtain the teaching credential necessary for their region during their two-year commitment. Some choose to pursue a master’s degree – either through a university programme that partners with TFA or through a degree-granting non-profit like TFA itself (Miner 2010; Teach For America n.d.). Although TFA’s training has changed over the years, critics – sometimes TFA alumni – continue to fault TFA teachers’ level of preparedness (Strauss 2013a, 2013b). While historically some alternative teaching programmes have been progressive and encouraged teachers to stay in poor schools, the programmes of late ‘are often closely linked with a technicist view of the role of teachers and with efforts

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to erode teachers’ autonomy and collegial authority’ (Zeichner 2010: 1545). Scholars have studied how neoliberalism reshapes ‘the good teacher’ (Connell 2009) and redefines ‘teacher quality’ (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2006) in harmful, constricting manners. The ‘audit culture’ (Apple 2005) effects of pre-packaged curricula and testing make teachers into ‘clerks’ (Giroux 2008: 3) and functions to teacher-proof schooling (Compton and Weiner 2008; Darder 2005; Saltman 2009). Under neoliberalism the ideas and practices of the market are paramount. Guiding neoliberal principles are ‘personal freedom and possessive individualism’ (Robertson 2008: 13). ‘While personal and individual freedom in the marketplace is guaranteed, each individual is held responsible and accountable for his or her own actions and well-being’ (Harvey 2005: 65), thus eliminating social programmes like education begins to make sense. If we are all free, flexible entrepreneurs in the market, we should not need any public services to ‘bind’ us. Neoliberal logic demands that schools be put into competition with each other, made efficient through privatization and made accountable through auditing practices. This results in voucher and choice schemes and more private schools, charter schools and Educational Management Organizations (EMOs) (Saltman 2007). Beyond its fondness for ‘efficient’, data-driven approaches and its focus on test scores, the extent to which TFA functions as a neoliberal technology can be seen by considering the educational projects started by some of its most touted alumni, such as the KIPP charter school network started by Mike Feinberg and David Levin where TFAers commonly teach (Miner 2010). With its ‘teaching as leadership’ mantra, TFA promotes the teacher-as-clerk or teacher-as-auditor view. Certainly leadership can be complex but TFA uses a managerial, business-like conception of leader in which teachers must only ‘inspire’ and ‘motivate’ their students to produce high test scores. Key teaching tips are ‘Execute effectively’ and ‘Continuously increase effectiveness’ (Farr 2010). Instead of traditional teacher education TFA wants corps members to utilize their leadership experiences from college and translate them to the classroom. At a university information session about TFA, a TFA representative described the kinds of applicants the organization wanted: There’s a lot of different ways to show us that you’re really taking a hold of your own college experience and you’re being a leader. And we really think these principles of being a strong leader are very transferrable into a classroom setting.

TFA wants college students who are the presidents of fraternities and the chairs of student clubs; TFA is less interested in pedagogical theory and knowledge.



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This TFA representative explained her teaching philosophy in the corporate-like terms of setting goals and investing: Similar to if you were running a student organization, or running a service project, or being a manager at a store – you set a goal for your team, you invest them in wanting to work towards it, and then you set up all of the management systems and continuously figure out how you can improve and actually get to the goal, which is exactly what I had to do in my classroom.

While TFA wants to improve student achievement it also highlights the benefits that the TFA experience delivers to teachers themselves, especially after the corps. After two years TFA members are encouraged to use the experience they gained to influence educational policy and build a movement, but also to enhance their own careers. TFA offers the chance for its teachers to ‘do good’ and ‘do well’ in ways that teacher education programmes do not (Labaree 2010). The first brochures I received at an information session were titled ‘Career Spotlight’, each describing advantages for different careers: ‘Joining Teach For America before pursuing a career in business will provide you with the management experience and leadership skills that will help you have a greater impact in the business world.’ And as one recruiter said in an interview regarding the value of TFA, ‘You’re getting the best experience you could possibly get; you’re just thrown in a classroom …’

The deficit discourse in urban education Literature on urban education suggests that the deficit discourse or ‘deficit thinking’ predominates in urban schools; it is a principal discourse through which urban schools are produced and understood. Scholarship examining unequal levels of education and achievement between white, suburban, middleclass students and poor, urban students of colour has too often attributed low levels of educational success to the poor students and students of colour themselves or to their ‘dysfunctional’ families and communities. Scholars critical of this deficit approach have pointed out the deficit discourse’s roots in eugenicist views on race and genetics, as well as in the ‘culture of poverty’ studies and research on the ‘culturally deprived child’ (Alonso et al. 2009; Shields et al. 2005; Valencia 1997, 2010; Weiner 1993). This language of ‘culture’ sounds nicer than biological pathologies, but culture still can be used to ‘talk about essential differences among racial groups without having to use the now-loaded language of biological “races”’ (Alonso et al. 2009: 53).

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Linking deficit thinking to psychological, behaviourist models, Valencia (2010) notes that deficit thinking ‘offers a description of behavior in pathological or dysfunctional ways – referring to deficits, deficiencies, limitations, or shortcomings in individuals, families, and cultures’ (14). Deficit thinking also offers an ‘explanation’ of the behaviour by locating a factor within the individual (or family or culture), like ‘limited intelligence or linguistic deficiencies’ (14), and then offers the ‘prediction’ that the behaviour will continue unless there is an intervention (14). In urban schools, low-achieving students are often labelled ‘at-risk’ (Shields et al. 2005; Valencia 1997, 2010). Theoharis (2007) notes that this at-risk behaviour or identity is explained by difference: ‘Deficit thinking is pervasive across school and communities. This view of children and families assumes that difference – meaning, not White, not middle-class or affluent, and not without disability – is deficient’ (11). The deficit discourse locates the deficiency within the student himself or herself and does not take into account the privileged norms of whiteness and middle classness to which urban students are meant to assimilate. In fact, only when urban students do well is a structural explanation pursued. For example, when ‘too many’ students of colour qualify for advanced math classes, the deficit discourse makes this difficult to believe: ‘The mere fact that Black and Latino students are doing well at something is taken to imply a lack of rigor in the something that they are doing’ (Payne 2008: 78). In this example, we can see how the deficit discourse powerfully persists to produce urban students as ‘low-achieving’ or ‘at-risk’ even when they actually achieve high. To use Fine and Ruglis’ (2009) wording, through the deficit discourse, there is a ‘tattooing … of “lack” onto most Black, Latino, immigrant, and/or poor students’ (20). The deficit discourse is complex because it is not only about race or class, but can also be about language, culture, disability and – importantly for how it functions in urban schools – space. The deficit discourse produces not only the ‘at-risk’ student who needs to be controlled, remediated, disciplined, tracked (insert intervention of choice here), but it also helps to produce powerful public conceptions of urban schools. Soon after TFA began, Popkewitz (1998) evaluated the programme and found that that the construct of the ‘urban child’ – and the ‘rural child’ – figure centrally in how TFAers see their mission; discourses of the urbanness and ruralness ‘enclose and intern the child as “different” and outside of the normal’ (11). More than geographical concepts, urbanness and ruralness are ‘discursive concepts that historically circulate in schooling to construct the qualities and capabilities of the urban and rural child’ (9). To provide a sense of how the Urban and urban students are meaning-packed, ‘already-known’



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concepts – not only for educators but for those in dominant social locations in the wider public – I quote Henke’s (2008) description of the film Dangerous Minds at length: ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ plays as the camera flashes images of graffiti, a homeless person, housing projects, and so on. A typography of the inner city as white, middle-class audiences want to see it, as it is ‘already known’ it exists, is presented before viewers much in the manner of a well-set table; all the senses are attracted to come and dine, simply because that is what is done at such a table … Viewers are driven through a contemporary ‘hell’, outside one’s self and yet within a comfortable viewing distance; of course, the viewer will stay and dine. (101)

This understanding, this ‘knowledge’ of the Urban, is no doubt carried into urban schools with teachers, and it frames the expectations of those who will seek knowledge from experienced, credentialed TFA alumni.

Deficit discourse in TFA teacher talk The data for this chapter come from a larger, multi-sited ethnographic study that traces urban teachers’ negotiations with deficit discourse in both TFA and non-TFA contexts. This project asks not only how the deficit discourse harms urban students but studies the risks of deficit discourse for urban teachers and their work. How do urban teachers experience the blame and control that characterize urban schools? How does deficit discourse shape the teacher– student relationships that are possible? TFA and non-TFA teachers in the study navigated the deficit discourse in various ways. While both kinds of teachers regularly interpreted their experiences of urban schools and students using a deficit frame, non-TFA teachers’ experiences do not serve to inform educational policy and to diagnose the problems of public education as the TFA experience is meant to do. Here I consider the talk of only TFA teachers and examine how they make meaning of their urban experiences because their experiences, ostensibly, will have wider reverberations in policy and public discourse. TFA does not endorse deficit thinking in any obvious sense. While it may not resist the ‘deficit discourse’ specifically in those terms, TFA articulates the harm of low expectations for poor children and children of colour. TFA advertises its approach as placing ‘leaders who believe deeply that all children can achieve’ in schools that serve poor students (Teach For America n.d.). However, the deficit

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discourse is extremely available; discourses of the urban are what allow for the ‘intelligibility’ of the urban student (Popkewitz 1998: 9). In Popkewitz’ (1998) early study of TFA he recognized how the ‘difficulties of teaching became the lack of student motivation, work habits, and parent involvement’ (65). He argues that TFA understood urban children themselves as in need of intervention or change – not the social systems that produced their conditions (68). Teachers saw teaching as ‘psychological management’ and ‘the classroom as a place where the weaknesses/deficiencies of children’s upbringing could be overcome’ (67). The TFA teachers I interviewed often blamed students – who they referred to as ‘these kids’ – and their families for the problems of school. They, too, assumed the home life of their students was lacking – that parents did not have a strong ‘level of investment in a kid’s performance’, or that time spent at home meant only ‘loss’ and resulted in regression of students’ skills. One TFA teacher who had worked in Los Angeles discussed working with a non-profit after-school programme geared at young men at her school, and she described her role as ‘the mom of the group’: There was me and another Teach For America teacher; both of us were good friends and then we just decided to help tutor the kids … This program is very, very male-centric, but the fact that we were, you know, still there to provide that adult support to them. Because a lot of times, their parents are so busy, singleparent homes, you know, they don’t get to have that sense of family.

The teacher saw her role as filling a presumed void in the students’ defective family structure. The deficit discourse can hide in the way TFA teachers said they care for and love their students because there is an implicit blame placed on parents who are perceived as not doing this care work. Students are constructed as in need of care, rather than in need of instruction and learning (García and Guerra 2004). TFA teachers also highlighted student misbehaviour and their potential to become ‘out of control’ in various ways. They talked about students swearing and fighting, being ‘wise beyond their years’, and being interested in gangs and other ‘negative aspects’ of their neighbourhoods. TFA teachers also sometimes employed a kind of deficit thinking against non-TFA teachers, latching onto the notion that ‘other’ teachers are the problem in public schools. Weiner (2003) points out how this binary feature of the ‘deficit paradigm’ can explain underachievement as due to ‘deficiencies’ of individual students or teachers (305).) Despite the fact that many teachers described their TFA experience as ‘life changing’ or as offering them a ‘different perspective’, much of what



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they said followed the same old logic of deficit thinking – that ‘different … is deficient’ (Theoharis 2007: 11). Their stories often reproduced the ‘alreadyknown’ construction of the Urban as pathology and ‘as white, middle-class audiences want to see it’ (Henke 2008: 101). However, some TFA teachers noticed the harmful effects of the deficit discourse on their students and were at times critical of certain school practices. One TFA teacher critiqued the strict and ‘very visual’ discipline system in place at his charter school, for example. Students had to sit in particular postures at their desks and their movements were controlled in the halls: ‘They put tape down the hallways so that the students knew what to walk on to keep the lines straight. They couldn’t talk in line.’ Another teacher commented on the assimilationist nature of the social studies curriculum at her school. She also wished her administration allowed teachers to speak Spanish with the mostly Latino students, especially because parents had ‘a really strong preference that their kids knew how to speak Spanish’: ‘I would’ve thought that would’ve been valued more in the school, but we had no Spanish program.’ TFA teachers’ good intentions and high expectations for student achievement were often weak in the face of the powerful deficit discourse; even for TFA teachers who were critical of practices that devalued and controlled urban students, the deficit discourse continued to be an accessible frame. Interestingly, deficit thinking tended to take hold in response to neoliberal testing practices – practices in line with TFA’s teacher-as-manager model. Under pressures to raise student test scores, teachers resorted to blaming students to avoid being blamed themselves. Teachers, in trying to remain loyal to neoliberal logics and accountability measures, relied on the deficit discourse. One teacher, who described herself as a ‘numbers person’, for example, critiqued testing but in a particular way. She described a student she saw as untestable: He had gotten into a fight with his mom that morning, he hadn’t had breakfast, he was angry, and he was one of my students who had a 504 plan for his behavior. He had explosive personality disorder … But really, like my job performance is tied to this kid.

This teacher did not condemn linking testing to performance, in general or with ‘normal’ students, but resented testing when tied to ‘this kid’, with his ‘disorder’ and lack of breakfast. Presumably, testing works – just not with ‘these kids’. In order for this TFA teacher to remain a ‘good teacher’ under neoliberalism and preserve her trust in numbers, she was compelled to reproduce ‘these kids’ as the problem, allowing both neoliberal and deficit discourse to remain intact.

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The authority of experience and the deficit discourse The point I would like to underscore here is that a frame for understanding violence emerges in tandem with the experience, and that the frame works both to preclude certain kinds of questions, certain kinds of historical inquiries, and to function as a moral justification for retaliation. It seems crucial to attend to this frame, since it decides, in a forceful way, what we can hear. (Butler 2002: 179)

Hall (2003) explains that discourse ‘governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about. It also influences how ideas are put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others’ (44). How does the deficit discourse shape the experiences that become so important for TFA? How does the deficit discourse determine how we talk about urban school and urban education reform? If, as one TFA recruitment booklet states, your TFA experience allows you to ‘gain an understanding of educational inequity and its solutions’, we must attend to the discursive frames that produce this experience and understanding. My interest in this tension between how experience allows for knowledge, yet in non-transparent ways, is informed by postmodernists and feminist poststructuralists. These theorists are sceptical of the stable subject or identity. They argue that the self, or the meaning of a self ’s experience, is not self-evident. They are interested in discourse, in language as active and productive as well as representational and in subjectivity as an effect of or produced by discourse (e.g., Applebaum 2010, Butler 1990, 1995, Flax 1992, Foucault 1979, Sawicki 1994, 1996). Applebaum (2010) points out, ‘Language does things’ (94): ‘language or utterances are related to large social patterns of power and the ways in which language may do things through us without our knowledge or consent … Focusing on the intentions of the speaker can actually hide how power works through discourse’ (94). As Flax (1992) puts it, ‘Language speaks us as much as we speak it’ (453). Scott (1992) argues that experience, like the subject, is discursive: ‘It is to refuse a separation between “experience” and language and to insist instead on the productive quality of discourse’ (34). Scott approaches experience critically and remains attentive to ‘the ways in which politics organize and interpret experience’ (31), precisely so experience can remain in play as a site of knowledge production. Although our experience is complicated and not self-evident, we often talk about and think about our experience as very indisputable, as a way to prove something: ‘When the evidence offered is the evidence of “experience,” the claim for referentiality is further buttressed – what



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could be truer, after all, than a subject’s own account of what he or she has lived through?’ (24). Experience conceived of in this way resists questioning; there is no room to ask about whose experience matters, whose voices are muted and who benefits from particular stories. Elsewhere (Pitzer 2010) I have described how the TFA experience is used to further anti-union sentiment and to promote neoliberal educational solutions like ‘performance’ pay for teachers and quasi-privatized charter schools. But TFA’s reliance on experience in urban schools also threatens to reproduce racist, classist perceptions of the Urban and preserve its Other status. We must pay critical attention to how the deficit discourse produces the experience of the urban, and how that experience is interpreted across borders, across unequal fields of power. Both dominant discourses about the Urban – racist discourses, deficit discourses, colonizing discourses and so on – and ‘the authority of experience’ (itself, a dominant frame) combine to create the Urban as something powerfully congealed and commonsensical. Scott (1992) describes how the authority of experience works in such a solidified, taken-for-granted way: The evidence of experience works as a foundation providing both a starting point and a conclusive kind of explanation, beyond which few questions need to or can be asked. And yet it is precisely the questions precluded – questions about discourse, difference, and subjectivity, as well as about what counts as experience and who gets to make that determination – that would enable us to historicize experience, to reflect critically on the history we write about it, rather than to premise our history upon it. (32–3)

When one – especially someone with social privilege – has a personal experience of or with the Other, and the Other is already constituted and widely ‘understood’ through dominant, oppressive frames like the deficit discourse, this experience will hold weight with and be easily understood by others. For example, Narayan (1997) describes how ‘culture is invoked’ to explain cross-cultural happenings. For a Westerner to understand something like dowry-murder in India, ‘culture’ is summoned in order to ‘explain’ it (85). Narayan further suggests that a phenomenon’s ‘other’ status is what causes it to cross borders and become a phenomenon up for ‘explanation’, in the first place (100–1). I am concerned that the racialized deficit discourse is called upon to interpret TFA teachers’ experiences in urban schools, as such tales of urban experiences as Other seem to cross borders frequently. While Narayan focuses on national borders, she notes that border crossings happen within one nation, as well. She mentions how the ‘cultural explanation’ happens to communities of colour in the US

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and not white communities, for instance (87–8). This kind of ‘explanation’ or understanding, Babbitt (2001) argues, closes off the need for any further understanding: ‘Worse than being misunderstood … is to be understood in a way that disallows recognition that there is something that still needs to be understood’ (303). In both these cases, dominant discourses – about Indian culture and the Urban – combine with the (perhaps equally) dominant discourse or technology of experiential authority to form a sensible, naturalized ‘understanding’. The deficit discourse provides TFA teachers, often white and middle class, with certain assumptions and expectations of urban schools and the children who attend them. Campbell (1999), interested specifically in how whites can become anti-racist, writes about the power of ‘settled expectations’: ‘Expectation gives a powerful ordering to experience by selecting what is and is not attended to and by structuring the relation of these perceptions to each other’ (223). While interaction – ‘face-to-face encounters and challenges’ – with people of colour may sometimes be critical for whites to become non-racist, ‘settled expectations challenge us to account for how such encounters can be effective’ (228). hooks (2004) argues that in interacting with the Other, a dominantly positioned person does not have much to lose: ‘To make one’s self vulnerable to the seduction of difference, to seek an encounter with the Other, does not require that one relinquish forever one’s mainstream positionality’ (367). Instead, ‘the culture of specific groups … can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders and sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other’ (367). The interaction does not ensure an alteration in unequal power relations and instead allows those with privilege to re-establish their position in power. While TFA participants are meant to experience and learn about the realities of urban school failure, they already ‘know’ urban school failure in a sense and this ‘knowledge’ shapes any experiences they have. As Campbell (1999) points out, ‘Those with dominant identities have considerable power to order environments through what they attend to; thus, their environments do not impinge on them or change them’ (229). Jones (1999), too, references Barthes’ points about the power of the reader to make the text. She suggests that ‘it is not so much the subaltern’s “voice” but its “heard-voice” … which becomes the key player in meaning’ (307–8). While an encounter in urban schools may be powerful, the already-known Urban is also powerful; it is not only a competing interpretation of the urban – competing with a TFA teacher’s personal experience – but it is a lens through which teachers interpret their experience of their school and their students.



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Experience is real, but so are the discourses that shape experience. As ‘accounts and discourses become available and widely shared, they become social realities to be reckoned with’ (Wetherell 2008: 16). A TFA recruitment booklet states, ‘You will carry these two years with you for the rest of your life.’ However, without critical tools provided by university-based teacher education programmes to interpret these two years through and against the deficit discourse, a ‘real experience’ in an urban school does not guarantee some new knowledge; it does not guarantee a disruption in the dominant frameworks that already help us to ‘know’ urban schools.

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Kumashiro, K. K. (2012). Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture. New York: Teachers College Press. Labaree, D. (2010). Teach For America and teacher ed: heads they win, tails we lose. Journal of Teacher Education 61 (1–2): 48–55. McConney, A., Price, A. and Woods-McConney, A. (2012). Fast Track Teacher Education: A Review of the Research Literature on Teach For All Schemes. Perth: Murdoch University, Centre for Learning, Change and Development. Miner, B. (2010). Looking past the spin: Teach For America. Rethinking Schools Online 24 (3); http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/24_03/24_03_TFA.shtml (accessed 10 August 2010). Narayan, U. (1997). Dislocating Cultures. New York: Routledge. Payne, C. (2008). So Much Reform, So Little Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Pitzer, H. (2010). ‘What’s best for kids’ vs. teacher unions: how Teach For America blames teacher unions for the problems of urban schools. Workplace 17: 61–74. Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). Struggling for the Soul: The Politics of Schooling and the Construction of the Teacher. New York: Teachers College Press. Robertson, S. (2008) ‘Remaking the world’: neoliberalism and the transformation of education and teachers’ labor. In M. Compton and L. Weiner (eds), The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11–27. Saltman, K. J. (2007). Schooling in disaster capitalism: how the political right is using disaster to privatize public schooling. Teacher Education Quarterly 34 (2): 131–56. —(2009). The rise of venture philanthropy and the ongoing neoliberal assault on public education: the case of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Workplace 16: 53–72. Sawicki, J. (1994). Foucault and feminism: a critical reappraisal. In M. Kelly (ed.), Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 347–64. —(1996). Feminism, Foucault, and ‘subjects’ of power and freedom. In S. J. Hekman (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. 159–78. Scott, J. (1992). Experience. In J. Butler and J. W. Scott (eds), Feminists Theorize the Political. New York: Routledge, pp. 22–38. Shields, C., Bishop, R. and Mazawi, A. (eds) (2005). Pathologising Practices: The Impact of Deficit Thinking on Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Sleeter, C. E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools: research and the overwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education 52 (94): 94–106. Solórzano, D. G. and Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry 8 (1): 23–44. Strauss, V. (2013a). Former TFAer: Teach For America didn’t prepare me for troubled kids. The Answer Sheet. Washington Post, 28 March; http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/28/

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former-tfaer-teach-for-america-didnt-prepare-me-for-troubled-kids/ (accessed 1 April 2013). —(2013b). Teach for America critics organizing ‘resistance’ at summit. The Answer Sheet. Washington Post, 1 April; http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answersheet/wp/2013/04/01/teach-for-america-critics-organizing-resistance-at-summit/ (accessed 1 April 2013). Teach For All (n.d.). Online, available at: http://www.teachforall.org/index.html (accessed 20 March 2013). Teach For America (n.d.). Online, available at: http://www.teachforamerica.org (accessed 15 September 2011). Theoharis, G. (2007). Navigating rough waters: a synthesis of the countervailing pressures against leading for social justice. Journal of School Leadership 17: 4–27. Valencia, R. R. (2010). Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking. New York: Routledge. —(ed.) (1997). The Evolution of Deficit Thinking: Educational Thought and Practice. London: Falmer Press. Veltri, B. T. (2010). Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach For America Teacher. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Weiner, L. (1993). Preparing Teachers for Urban Schools: Lessons from Thirty Years of School Reform. New York: Teachers College Press. —(2003). Why is classroom management so vexing to urban teachers? Theory into Practice 42 (4): 305–12. Wetherell, M. (2008). Themes in discourse research: the case of Diana. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. J. Yates (eds), Discourse Theory and Practice. London: Sage, pp. 14–28. Zeichner, K. (2010). Competition, economic rationalization, increased surveillance, and attacks on diversity: neo-liberalism and the transformation of teacher education in the U.S. Teaching and Teacher Education 26: 1544–52.

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Restoring higher education’s mission in teacher education: A global challenge from a Canadian perspective Elizabeth Sloat, Ann Sherman, Theodore Christou, Mark Hirschkorn, Paula Kristmanson, Lynn Lemisko and Alan Sears

Introduction We are members of a nationally-funded Canadian research team investigating multiple dimensions of teacher education. One line of our inquiry pertains to whether, how and to what extent emphasis is given in existing programmes to ensuring that pre-service teachers are supported in developing a clearly articulated and grounded theoretical framework of their own to guide their professional decision-making (Brouwer and Korthagen 2005). We contend that this is an underdeveloped dimension of teacher education programmes in Canada today, which have often emphasized acquiring the functional skills for ‘doing teaching’; in other words ‘applied skills mastery learning’ is valorized at the expense of developing pre-service teachers’ higher-order thinking. Arguing for a more pronounced theoretical dimension to our programmes does not mean that we advocate a return to the heavily academic and theorydriven teaching that once characterized teacher education. Rather, our interest is with pre-service teachers’ understanding of the values, beliefs and range of plausible judgements that will influence the methods and strategies they select to organize, deliver and assess their curriculum, based on coherent conceptions of learners and learning, teachers and teaching. It is these kinds of personal and fundamental understandings that we believe all teachers, most especially those learning the profession, must engage with, so they can more steadily navigate multiple and varied daily decisions.

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We contend that ‘good’ teaching is, foremost, a thoughtful enterprise and, therefore, theoretical. In this light, one key role for higher education must be to enable pre-service teachers to examine their own embedded beliefs and preconceptions (MacLellan and Soden 2004) in order to realize both tacit theoretical assumptions that they have adopted, as well as constructing new theoretical lenses through which to consider their practice as it develops. As pre-service teachers are supported in this process, they are better able to deconstruct as well as problematize their own and others’ professional choices and practices. We argue here that efforts to strengthen pre-service teachers’ theoretical understandings are being compromised in favour of emphasizing craft and practical application in programme delivery. This omission will increasingly render new teachers unable to construct a theoretical foundation upon which they can rely to guide and inform their professional decision-making. We call for higher education’s mission in teacher education to be restored and new programme models to be introduced, delivered through strong partnership arrangements between schools and academic institutions. We make our argument on the following lines. We begin by examining the pressures that have come to bear on teacher education programmes in Canada (and elsewhere; see, for example, Edwards’ and Olsen’s papers in this volume) over the past few decades, pressures that have shifted programme emphasis toward greater skills learning and classroom application. We then discuss the significance of prior learning to pre-service teachers’ implicit understanding in the contexts of teaching and teacher education programmes. In the subsequent section we examine how and why theory matters in the professional lives of pre-service teachers, hence the central argument that higher education’s mission in teacher education be restored. We conclude by proposing a more integrated learning model for pre-service teachers in which partnerships between schools and academic institutions are strengthened and renewed.

The contextual realities of Canadian teacher education institutions Many factors have led to the growing focus within teacher education programmes in Canada on instructional skill. Probably the most significant of these has been the long-standing criticism from schools, teachers and Canadian provincial Ministries of Education that teacher education programmes have given too much focus to theory and too little attention to the practical



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knowledge and skills educators need for effective classroom practice. While Canada has proceeded apace with the United States in terms of updating its teacher education programme models and curricula, we have adopted a far less centralized and test-driven approach to programme reform (e.g., along the lines of the Teach for America programme). Thus multiple programme philosophies and models, combining different university and school-based learning approaches, exist across Canada (Crocker and Dibbon 2008). This degree of variation reflects two factors that are distinctive to our context. First, Canada is a country of vast cultural, linguistic and geographic diversity, which necessitates wide programme variation since no single teacher education model can possibly meet so many contrasting needs and interests. Second, certification standards and competencies are all provincially administered, so that while there may be some incidental overlap, they are fundamentally unique to each individual jurisdiction. Teacher educator and researcher Peter Grimmett (Grimmett and D’Amico 2008) has noted a further variation between teacher education institutions. In future, given the increased emphasis on the value of practical skills over theoretically informed reflection, pre-service teachers will seek the easiest and shortest path to certification, putting pressure (through the pre-service market place) on other institutions to truncate their programmes. Elsewhere, at the same time, discussions continue about elevating teacher education programmes to either the Master of Education or Master of Teaching degree designation in recognition of the many years pre-service teachers spend in learning their professional craft. Indeed, some provincial Ministries of Education are changing teacher licensing requirements so that universities must increase the number of credit hours in their programmes to ones that are twice in length. In tension with the proliferation of localized provision has been a particularly significant programme reform introduced by the Canadian federal government in 2009. ‘Work mobility’ legislation mandates that qualified workers be given access to comparable employment opportunities anywhere in Canada (HRSDC 2010; see also StatsCan’s Teacher Education/Educator Training: Current Trends and Future Directions 2010). This legislation is likely to have increasing influence on enrolment as pre-service teachers seek out those programmes that best qualify them to teach anywhere in Canada. Yet another area of contemporary interest and influence in Canada rests with age-old debates in teacher education. These include concerns around what kind of knowledge is of most worth in teacher programme preparation; and how learning is best organized and delivered. For instance, experienced

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teachers appear to want pre-service teachers to enter their classrooms already knowing effective management strategies, lesson planning and delivery, assessment methods and other functional and operational aspects of the school environment. Many may expect beginning teachers to possess such knowledge and skill from the start, while others expect new teachers to hone these skills very quickly indeed as they practise them. Such expectations have created strong pressure on teacher education programmes to add ‘practice’ to their professional learning curriculum. Further pressure to include more practical and less theoretical elements to teacher education programmes is exerted by governmental accountability systems, particularly in the form of teachers’ standards statements that delineate a range of knowledge, skills, competencies, values and personal commitments expected of beginning teachers who have successfully completed a teacher preparation programme. In Canada every province has its own standards so that these vary from one region to another. Nevertheless, many teacher education programmes themselves have responded to this concern with competence by adopting primarily practice-based assessment criteria to evaluate pre-service teachers during practicum experiences. Danielson’s (2007) Framework for Teaching, widely adopted in North America, serves as one such example. It consists of four domains against which to assess teaching performance, each of which is exclusive to classroom practice: planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction and professional responsibilities. As a consequence, the capacity to demonstrate a cogent understanding of theoretical principles in education, or their relationship to professional practice, does not feature prominently in the evaluative criteria, and this has significant implications for how teacher education programmes preparing pre-service teachers to meet these standards are constructed. At the same time Canadian teacher education programmes continue to grapple with issues of programme length. When combined with the fiscal realities of budget cuts, economic restraint and pressures for greater efficiency, some programmes have been reduced to between six and eight months, or less, for earning a post-graduate Bachelor of Education degree. Indeed, at the height of a teacher shortage in the 1990s one Canadian school board hired teachers after giving them only a six-week programme. Currently, across the 63 education degree programmes offered in Canada, course length ranges from an eight-month after-degree programme to a four-year education degree. A 60-credit, after-degree programme seems to be the most common offering in Canada at present. At the same time practicum experiences are equally varied



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and generally range between 15 weeks and 28 weeks in total. To varying degrees, though, many institutions in Canada have reduced their programmes to ensure recruitment to their programmes remains competitive. The context of the profession has also changed over the last few years and there are currently few jobs in Canada for new teachers. Many universities and school districts are facing severe fiscal restraints, and some provinces have even reduced the number of university seats available for those applying to teacher education. A number of faculties have also seen budget cuts that have resulted in non-hiring of new faculty staff to replace retirements. The teacher education research community has also contributed to the current and growing focus on applied skills acquisition, with some academics emphasizing the need for ‘pedagogies of enactment’ and arguing that ‘teacher educators need to attend to the clinical aspects of practice and experiment with how best to help novices develop skilled practice’ (Grossman et al. 2009: 274). When all of these circumstances are taken collectively and combined with the pragmatics that supporting the development of one’s self as ‘teacher’ requires substantial time, opportunity and practice, it is not surprising that a focus on developing pre-service teachers’ theoretical frameworks has all but been lost. These types of discussions, and challenges too, impact on the landscape of Canadian teacher education programmes. In this light, several years ago one particular institution, the University of New Brunswick’s Faculty of Education, re-examined its two 60-credit-hour Bachelor of Education programmes: one which ran concurrently with a first undergraduate degree while another ran consecutively, following on from a first degree programme. A number of the considerations just described above influenced decisions to revamp the programme extensively. The university now offers one 11-month after-degree programme of 60 credits for pre-service teachers who have completed a first degree in either arts or science. Discussions in the remainder of this paper reflect the core beliefs that provided the foundation for that new teacher education programme.

Prior learning, embedded understandings and teacher education Our argument for uncovering pre-service teachers’ embedded understandings, creating theoretical lenses and from this promoting the re-experiencing of school, is situated within contemporary constructivist

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theoretical frameworks of prior learning that have evolved from influential socio-cognitive and sociocultural theorists (Dewey 1933/1998, Piaget 1985, and Vygotsky 1978). Though social constructionist theories of learning as co-created, socially situated and context-dependent are an equally significant, though more recent, influence (Lave and Wenger 1991), it was initially the cognitive and psychological literature that motivated education’s shift from behaviouristic ‘tabula rasa’ and ‘empty vessel’ conceptions of learners, to positioning knowledge as cumulative, evolutionary and actively acquired phenomena. Dewey (1933/1998), for instance, postulated early on that knowledge and learning are actively acquired through individuals’ interactions and transactions with their environment, and that many such actions and interactions can be highly repetitive. One such example is the pre-service teacher’s own role as student over many years. Such repetition of experience leads to habit, and these habits of mind become deeply embedded to function at the subconscious level. When new ideas and experiences are encountered new teachers rely on prior experiences as critical reference points for deciding whether to reject, or accept and pursue, new lines of knowledge and inquiry. These determinations are often made quickly and unconsciously and driven by an innate desire to maintain cognitive harmony and intellectual continuity (Dewey 1933/1998, Kivinen and Ristele 2003). Conceptual understandings about how learning occurs have exercised a significant bearing on teacher education. Beginning teachers have preconceived (Russell 2009), robust and highly resistant conceptions of teaching and learning that are often incomplete (Lortie 1975), largely intuitive and theoretically implicit (Breault 1991). Reconstructing those beliefs may not be easily or willingly embraced because suspending judgement and changing long-held views may prove an uninviting, even disagreeable process. Yet, this is what we ask pre-service teachers to do when we challenge pre-conceived notions and assumptions (see Bullock’s chapter in this volume). If embedded understandings and preconceptions are left unacknowledged, the risk is that teaching becomes imitative for beginning teachers rather than deliberately and consciously enacted. Theories that pre-service teachers develop from years of schooling can cause inner conflict when juxtaposed against more innovative pedagogical practices introduced in their programmes. Left unexamined, new teachers may revert to preconceived default models of teaching and learning (Lortie 1975), especially when difficult or challenging situations are encountered.



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It is now widely understood that the process of becoming a teacher does not simply begin upon entry to a teacher education degree programme. Through their own experiences as school and university students, pre-service teachers have observed thousands of hours of teaching such that they have already acquired powerful and deeply embedded beliefs and dispositions about teaching and learning (Munby and Russell 1994). Lortie (1975) named this learning process the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (62) as he described pre-service teachers’ engagement in a wide array of classroom learning experiences; these coalesce to perpetuate and reinforce historical, well-developed and comfortably familiar perceptions of knowing how to teach. Yet Lortie also cautioned that beginning teachers’ cognitive frames about teaching and learning are incomplete, since they observe only the classroom and what Clark (1988) calls the overtly public ‘performance’ aspects of teaching. Meanwhile, there is no early enculturation to, or awareness of, the many unseen influences on those framings, like policies and curricula, as well as the theoretical ideals that drive professional practice. Pre-service teachers are rarely aware of what takes place in preparation for actual teaching. The early and entrenched preconceived notions about teaching and learning that pre-service teachers bring to the profession can lead to a familiarity with, and trust in, ideas and practices that are misunderstood and therefore misleading, such that new teachers incorrectly assume they have mastered critical aspects of the educational process (Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann 1983). Even internship experiences, on which a great deal of programme emphasis and faith are placed for providing powerful learning and teaching opportunities, risk doing little more ‘than confirm to novice student teachers their own prejudices and biases’ if not carefully planned and supported (MacLellan and Soden 2004).

How and why theory matters There are two distinct, equally complex ways that having a theoretical underpinning to their practice should matter to pre-service teachers. At a micro level their emergent teacher self is concerned with personal effectiveness and the capacity to promote learning for those particular learners they encounter. Meanwhile, at a macro level the emergent teacher self is concerned with accommodating the responsibility of belonging to wider systems of governance and professional accountability within which their practice is situated.

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The emergent teacher self as reflective practitioner The first is concerned with what we conceptualize as the ‘emergent self as reflective practitioner’. Being a teacher is an emergent process of ‘becoming’ that rests on and emanates from a highly personal, individualized, historical and complex foundation, as discussed above. New teachers must acquire a capacity to think about, reflect on and evaluate decisions through an informed and guided process that consists of both identifying embedded understandings and connecting theory with practice. Reflection is widely regarded as a hallmark of effective teaching because it concerns the ability to be able to make evaluative judgements about the choices that are made in the classroom setting. Thus reflective practice (Schön 1983) is regarded as a hallmark in the professional standards identified for teachers; its value is commonly assumed by teacher preparation institutions and programme accreditation bodies. Yet reflection is a far more complex process than might first be imagined. We suggest that to be able to reflect profitably on professional practice implies that teachers have the capacity to analyze thought and action critically, and to do so from multiple perspectives (Mortari 2012). In so doing, pre-service teachers are able to examine, question and analyze the basis of their decisions and choices about teaching and learning. To engage in such meta-analytic and critical thought means, however, that they have developed theoretical frameworks of knowledge and understanding against which judgements and decisions can be made (Harford and MacRuaric 2008). Research findings demonstrate that acquiring the capacity to reflect on one’s practice is neither simple nor automatic, and that it is a learned practice that takes considerable time and guided opportunity to develop and evolve (Bengtsson 2003; Hascher, Cocard and Moser 2004; Mortari 2012). A sophisticated reflective practitioner’s thinking becomes increasingly complex and well-integrated with time, experience and exposure to theoretical ideas (Brownlee et al. 2001). Yet ironically, all too often, teacher education institutions assume ‘immediate integration’ into ways of knowing about schools and schooling simply by virtue of pre-service teachers’ enrolment in an education programme (Britzman 1986); without the time and space to reflect, the sophisticated and nuanced quality of reflection just described is unlikely to be attained by many teachers. Integrating the personal self with a professional self-identity, or undergoing a ‘perspective transformation’ (Trottman and Kerr 2001) as greater theoretical



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clarity and perspective is acquired, means providing pre-service teachers with carefully crafted opportunities toward acquiring a constant state of mindfulness and self-evaluation; this process should concern both what they are thinking and what they are doing. By this means, pre-service teachers actively and critically engage in their own learning over time so that rich professional knowledge and understanding is created, not simply assumed in an impoverished sense by observing others (Parkinson 2009). This process should support beginning teachers’ transition from seeing themselves as apprentices intent on acquiring technical competency to that of theorizers, active change agents and members of a professional teaching community (Zellermayer and Tabak 2006). It should enable new teachers to become ‘active constructors of the schooling context’, based on theoretically grounded ideas and principles rather than merely ‘implementers of pre-packaged practice’ (Parkinson 2009: 801). We summarize below the process of learning and knowledge creation through reflection that beginning teachers must undergo in the model. Pre-service teachers enter their education programme with deeply embedded understandings. These may include constructs of school and schooling based on their experiences as students and potentially some knowledge of established and authoritative theories about teaching. In this light they need to experience, both repeatedly and iteratively, a guided process that fosters reflecting on those foundational understandings, in order to construct a theoretically-informed knowledge framework of teaching and learning. They must also be given ample opportunity over time to test their revised framework of understanding in practice. Pre-service teachers require multiple opportunities to repeat the action of moving between the periphery of professional practice to its core (Lave and Wenger 1991) if their emerging sense of self as ‘teacher’ in the rich sense we have alluded to above is to evolve. They must have opportunities to question, confirm, struggle with and confront assumptions while reconstructing understandings of teaching, learning and schooling.

The emergent teacher self within systems of governance and professional accountability So far the discussion has focused on three influences on new teachers’ knowledge construction and perspective-taking that are quite particular to them as individual professionals: their personal beliefs about teaching; those

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Embedded Understandings School Experiences

Reflecon

Knowledge Construcon

Applicaon

Theorecal Lenses

Figure 9.1  Emergent self as reflective practitioner

particular academic environments where theory and theorizing are presented to them as individual new professionals, and those classroom practicum experiences where their newly acquired professional knowledge is applied and tested. However, in addition, teachers must learn to function at a macro level within much larger education systems. In the Canadian context with which we are specifically concerned here, there are school and school board/district perspectives to take into account as well as professional associations and government policies and programmes that influence teachers and their teaching. These wider social agencies, in many ways concerned with matters of administration and governance, collectively bring to light a second yet equally important aspect of the theory-practice relationship that beginning teachers must learn to navigate. These additional levels of accountability, although external to the classroom itself, nevertheless influence and to some extent determine, how teaching and learning are to be conceptualized and enacted there. Teachers and classrooms are situated within schools where administrators oversee educational operations and school functioning as a whole. Administrators, and consequently classrooms and teachers, are in turn accountable to and influenced by the policy and programme decisions of their school boards. Moreover, professional associations have a particular influence on curriculum content and delivery through their professional development programmes and, in the Canadian context, provincial governments mandate all core policies and programmes across the system, in particular curricula. Finally, higher education has a significant and pervasive presence across the spectrum given the continuous interactions with and influences of beginning teacher programmes at all levels of the system. All these structures are shaped and framed by certain value assumptions which may overlap, coincide or be in tension with values pre-service teachers hold. Such conflicts generate further



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opportunities to question and reconstruct understandings of teaching, learning and schooling into beginner teacher programmes that are qualitively different to those which we have so far considered (see also Gatti’s chapter in this volume). Depending on where teachers stand in relation to the educational system at any given point in time, they may be problematizing, assessing and addressing issues in relation to the classroom, the school as a whole, the school board or in relation to professional associations or government. Pre-service teachers face numerous challenges while learning to navigate and respond to the multiple, layered demands of these systems. Theoretical clarity has a crucial role to play in supporting professional judgement here, for if understandings embedded in the normative assumptions of those in positions of power are left untested and unexamined, teachers may end up merely perpetuating ‘status-quo’ and ‘authoritarian teaching practices’ (Britzman 1986) rather than acting agentically along the lines argued for in the previous section of this chapter. In contrast, theoretically-informed and self-aware pre-service teachers will have a fluid framework guiding their day-to-day choices and actions in the classroom. As Hascher and colleagues contend, ‘good teachers need not only practice but also advanced theoretical knowledge, for instance for reflection on the teaching process which is a necessary precondition for improving teaching and modifying epistemological beliefs’ (Hascher et al. 2004: 635). This is foundational to pre-service teachers’ capacity to navigate the multiple and complex levels of entire education systems.

An integrated learning model for pre-service teachers We began this chapter by calling for a renewed pre-service teaching model that allows equally for deeper reflection and questioning and also effectively informs and influences classroom practice and application. We argued that such a model is best achieved by combining and strengthening the relationship between schools and academic institutions. Too often in practice, however, teacher education programmes still tend to locate the practice of teaching within schools, while theory and theorizing remains the domain of teacher education institutions (Britzman 1986; Grossman et al. 2009; Labaree 2005; see also Bullock’s chapter in this volume). This means that both thought and action continue to be treated as separate entities; schools are portrayed as the experts in practice, while academic institutions are the theoretical experts. Beginning

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teachers are challenged enough while being socialized to the profession without the added burden of ‘shifting between realms’ (Sinner 2012: 602), one largely competency-based; the other emphasizing inquiry and reflection. The integrated learning model for pre-service teachers that we call for seeks to establish greater continuity between the academic context and classroom teaching. We aspire to creating a more comprehensive and cohesive environment for their learning in which pre-service teachers are guided and supported in deconstructing, reconstructing, consolidating and applying their knowledge jointly by both their academic institutions and their cooperating schools. This requires both an individual and an organizational reconceptualization of the relationship between schools and universities so that programmes move towards creating seamless and reciprocal relationships between practice and theory and therefore a more holistic community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998) and praxis for learning. A more integrated learning model must also involve a more deliberate engagement of all partners in the educational process: academic instructors, practicum supervisors and teachers. We earlier established the extent to which pre-service teachers require time and opportunity to undertake the complex processes of self-reflection, if they are to develop the theoretical understandings necessary for continuously analyzing and assessing professional thought and action. If such reflection is to be learned and integrated continuously and effectively into practice, then the process must start early, from the beginning of the teacher education programme experience, be adequately resourced with sufficient time and space in teacher education programmes and be regarded as an ongoing, necessary dimension of teachers’ development. This is especially important given the reduction in overall programme length for many teacher education institutions. It must particularly engage beginning teachers themselves more actively and deliberately in their own learning so that habits of reflection become part of their professional identity. Within this proposed model the role of academic institutions and beginning teacher educators becomes one of ensuring teaching and learning are grounded in and balanced between both theory and application. Ample opportunity should be created within the academic environment for new teachers to acquire theoretical perspectives, while also understanding how theory informs, guides and translates into classroom practice. Achieving such theoretical understanding naturally requires teacher educators to guide and support pre-service teachers in identifying, analyzing, questioning and ultimately evaluating their embedded understandings and beliefs. Academic classrooms are the ideal



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location for crafting in pre-service teachers the disposition for inquiry, selfreflection and questioning that will service them well as they transition to and become immersed in their own classroom and teaching environments. A revised learning model also necessitates strengthening, integrating and better balancing the relationship between pre-service teachers, cooperating teachers and practicum supervisors. In many ways this relationship has traditionally perpetuated an inequitable view of pre-service teachers in their role as novices and learners rather than as professional colleagues at the early stages of their career development (Koerner, O’Connell Rust and Baumgartner 2002). Instead, pre-service teachers need to become more active and self-determined agents in their process of becoming teachers. Beginning teachers need not only to sit on the precarious and often undefined edge between observer and participant in the classroom learning process (Koerner, O’Connell Rust and Baumgartner 2002) but instead must be well-informed, integral and active participants in school and classroom activities and decision-making. Positioning pre-service teachers in this more integrated and active role allows them to realize their self-defined practicum expectations more fully. It also fosters a strengthened community of practice in which pre-service teachers, cooperating teachers and practicum supervisors work closely as a team to establish learning goals and targets and equally share responsibility for pre-service teachers’ learning. As a team, all these participants collaborate to create meaningful learning opportunities that facilitate evidence-informed practice, self-evaluation and reflection and provide opportunities to question personal theories and beliefs and consider alternatives. Research demonstrates, for example, that recording and critically evaluating teaching practice can foster a deeper capacity to be reflective and to translate enhanced understanding into classroom practice (Harford and MacRuaric 2008). Pre-service teachers benefit from examining not only their own lesson delivery but those of their cooperating teachers as well. It is equally beneficial for practicum advisors to model and demonstrate aspects of classroom practice advocated for in the academic learning context. Creating space and opportunity for practicum advisors to teach along with pre-service and cooperating teachers creates an even more enhanced community of practice for learning. So do other strategies like engaging pre-service teachers in action research projects for fostering greater reflection and professional learning (Zwozdiak-Myers 2012). Of particular importance in all initiatives undertaken is the need to balance practicum learning outcomes and the evaluative process between theoretical understanding and classroom application,

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rather than focusing almost exclusively on classroom practice, application and skill mastery. Ultimately, schools and institutions must have a shared framework of teaching, learning and understanding, so that thoughtful questioning is persistently and consistently reinforced and this shared curriculum of integrated reflection, questioning and practice is enacted by all educators in schools and academic institutions. In doing so there is the opportunity to work collectively to create a broadly defined, holistic and seamless community of professional practice in which to enculturate pre-service teachers to a way of being and the ‘cultural frame’ (Geertz 1983) that situates thought and action as integrated, integral and continuously reflected upon.

Concluding thoughts We contend that, as teacher educators, a central part of our role is to create intentionally the cognitive dissonance, intellectual conflict and points of confusion that help pre-service teachers uncover their embedded understandings of educational practice so that these can become explicit, identifiable and understood. Only then can preconceptions and long-held assumptions be deliberately challenged toward cognitively integrating, clarifying and modifying prior knowledge about teaching and learning (Hollingsworth 1989). A framework of self-awareness and understanding will inform well-thoughtthrough practice. Teacher educators should therefore engage with their pre-service teachers to teach them in ways that enable them to develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions of effective teaching. Schools and classroom teachers share an equal responsibility in fostering deeper understandings of beginning teachers’ preconceptions and decision-making. Ultimately, the habit of mind we collectively seek to support in pre-service teachers is one that is open to questioning, reflection and revision and to recognizing that conceptual and practical ideas of teaching are neither static nor universal in their application.

References Bengtsson, J. (2003). Possibilities and limits of self-reflection in the teaching profession. Studies in Philosophy and Education 22: 295–316. Breault, R. (1991). Educational Reform since 1945 and its Implications for Teacher



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Experience as a contextual basis to connect professional concernsand conditions of practice: A case study of teachers implementing a curricular reform in Italy Paolo Sorzio

In this chapter teachers’ learning from experience is analyzed by combining the ‘situativity’ theory that considers human cognition as an interplay between an individual and the structure of an activity, and the ‘microethnography’ approach that highlights the role of talk in interaction in supporting interpretative processes by professionals. Learning from experience is interpreted as an interactional process by which teachers reflect on the nature of their experiences and develop a new ‘perspectival understanding’ to recontextualize them into the evolving conditions of practice. Through reference to a case study, the problematic relationships between teachers’ learning from experience and the conditions of practice are discussed.

The context of the problem As in other countries, in the last 15 years the Italian educational system has undergone conflicting reforms and alternative visions about its institutional mandate: MM

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Schools were accorded a greater degree of autonomy in their organizational structure and in curriculum design (DPR 275/1999), although they still face a policy of staff reduction and financial cuts; The National Recommendation Papers (2007, revised in 2012) introduced

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a General Framework for the Curriculum as a substitute for the National Programme of Instruction, with reference to the 2006 European Commission Recommendation for the curriculum of competences. The documents emphasize transferability of skills, knowledge and attitudes as the main characteristics of ‘competences’ and require the schools to reconstruct their learning environments (DM 68/2007; CM 31/2012); Teachers are expected to assess students through a variety of techniques. Three main procedures operate in parallel: a ten-point interval scale to assess students’ performance on school tasks; a three-level ordinal scale to certificate competencies (DM 9/2010); the National Test System (INVALSI), based on multiple choice tests, and mandatory at the end of each KS. The stake effect attributed to the INVALSI tests on teachers’ professionalism and students’ career is still unclear. The managers of the Department of Education maintain that it is simply a diagnostic tool for the self-improvement of schools; however, the teachers interpret it as a procedure to make public judgments on their professionalism.

The sociocultural approach offers a multidimensional view to analyze the impact of changes on the institutional conditions of teachers’ practice. According to this perspective a policy reform is a normative discourse intended to achieve some consequences in institutional practices; however, its illocutionary force cannot be predetermined at the outset since it depends on the interpretations people develop in their situated cultures and the conditions and the resources they find available. Therefore, there is not a single process of implementation of an educational policy but a system of different forms of recontextualization (Hamann and Rosen 2011; Levinson et al. 2009). According to this view, reforms create areas of concern; teachers try to make sense of the institutional changes by interpreting the potential transferability of their experience. Eventually they develop a new understanding to realign experience and the evolving conditions of practice. As a consequence, a reform mandate acquires specific characteristics when it is recontextualized in different systems of practice.

Theoretical framework Lave and Wenger set forth a perspective on learning that departs from the mainstream psychological conceptualization. Learning is characterized as an evolving nexus of relations between the agent and the system of practice in



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which he/she is engaged. This innovative approach maintains ‘that understanding and experience are in constant interaction – indeed, are mutually constitutive’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 51–2). This emerging approach is defined as ‘situativity theory’ (Greeno and Moore 1993) in order to distinguish it from the common use of ‘situated cognition’, which could imply the idea that some cognitive activities are decontextualized. According to the theory the sociocultural dimensions are not considered as external factors that can either facilitate or hinder the learning process, but as the manifold conditions that structure the evolving relationship of a person with the social setting in which he or she participates. In this perspective, professional settings are constituted by artefacts, norms of mutual engagement, shared goals and a constant negotiation of meanings. By interpreting human experience as always contextualized in a material as well as a symbolic environment, learning is conceptualized as the dynamic attunement of the participants to the conditions of their institutional practice. ‘Conditions’ are qualities of the social setting that shape affordances as well as constraints to individual action and participation. ‘Affordances’ are enabling resources of the environment; constraints are regularities that do not depend on an individual’s intentions; however, they can make predictable some consequences of human action in the environment. Teachers recognize a problematic situation whenever they perceive that some crucial events produce a misalignment between their experience and the environmental conditions, with some potential consequences on their future activity (McDermott and Varenne 2006). By highlighting the complex relationships between professionals and the systems of practice in which they are engaged, the ‘situativity theory’ focuses on the socially negotiated process of learning from experience. Teachers actively interpret the official documents, identify the relevant conditions of their practice, the existing constraints and the resources available and coordinate their activities according to models they develop in practice. Learning from experience can be considered as the development of a ‘perspectival understanding’, which consists of the cognitive organization of multiple elements of experience according to a specific point of view, in order to achieve a more advanced attunement to the conditions of practice (Greeno and van de Sande 2007). According to ‘situativity theory’, institutional discourse is an essential part of professional learning from experience. On the one hand, discourse is an environment that creates the conditions for joint reflection on the problematic situations of the ongoing practice and the role of experience in recontextualizing

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a policy reform. In this sense, teachers’ contribution to the development of an institutional practice unfolds in connection with the actual conditions of talk (the specific lexicon of the community, the established patterns of turn taking, the accepted frames of interpretation). On the other hand, discourse is a means to achieve social goals since it enables participants to work out a new understanding both of the changing conditions of their practice and of the role that professional experience can play in achieving the intended goals. Therefore, ‘discourse’ is conceptualized as ‘talk in interaction’ to highlight the culturally situated and constantly negotiated nature of professional discourse (Goodwin 1994). Talk in interaction establishes a ‘space of reasons’ (Derry 2008), that is, a symbolic setting in which teachers are engaged in a process of making intelligible the potential relevance of their experiences to their evolving practice. In this perspective, learning from experience does not simply consist of the re-enactment of past events into the new conditions of activity. On the contrary, it is an inferential and rational process since participants ask and give reasons for the attribution of relevance to some aspects of their experience and for their recontextualization into their evolving practice. Recontextualization refers to the process of reconfiguration of the relevant elements of experience from one context of occurrence to another one, characterized by a different set of conditions. By sharing experiences and connecting them through a space of reasons, teachers ‘align one’s thought and actions with those of others in order to interpret problems of practice and to respond to those interpretations’ (Edwards 2005: 169). Therefore the concept of ‘space of reasons’ emphasizes the inferential and negotiated characters of learning from experience. It unfolds through extended talk in interaction, emerging as a new perspectival understanding that offers innovative connections between past experiences and the different conditions of actual practice. Talk in interaction creates a situated culture of practice, in the sense that the teachers’ perspectival understanding develops according to the reasons that are considered relevant by participants in a discussion. In turn, the space of reasons evolves through talk, as new perspectives on experience emerge, presuppositions are questioned and alternatives are proposed and considered. The situated nature of learning requires careful empirical analysis of the institutional, interactional and cultural conditions that affect the teachers’ reflection on their experience and its recontextualization into their evolving practice.



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Table 10.1  A model of teachers’ learning from experience TEACHERS’ LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE consists of: the development of perspectival understanding of their past experiences is supported by: talk in interaction that creates space of reasons, as the basis for teachers’ reflection leads to: the recontextualization of experience into the evolving conditions of practice is affected by: institutional conditions, such as: different situated cultures in schools; reform requirements; managerial accountability; local authority/school district support; and networks of schools

Connecting experiences to innovate the curriculum: Elements from a case study In order to understand the mechanisms of teachers’ learning from experience to deal with the structural changes that are introduced by the curriculum reforms, I present a case study about an in-service teacher programme for the development of curricular activities to promote children’s competences, according to the 2007 reform. Twelve pre-primary and primary school teachers in a small town in north-east Italy participated on a voluntary basis in regular meetings every three weeks over a period of two years. A central tenet of the programme is the idea that competences cannot be acquired as isolated dimensions of learning but as aspects of the students’ contribution to an inquiry-based activity (Boaler 1999; Engle 2006).

Research questions The collaborative activities the teachers developed during the workshops are analyzed in order to highlight: MM

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the discursive mechanisms that focus on past experience as an object of joint inquiry and that support the emergence of a new perspectival understanding; the conditions that affect the recontextualization of the experience into an evolving professional practice.

Methodology Micro-ethnography (Erickson 1992, Varenne 2007) emphasizes the situated, cooperative organization of talk-in-interaction and its role in achieving

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educational outcomes, such as the construction of educational activities to promote children’s competences. The analysis of talk in interaction highlights the institutional conditions that the participants consider relevant in the development of their perspectival understanding. All the workshops were audio recorded and transcribed; field notes were taken and interviews were conducted with the participants and the school principal. The transcription was based on repeated and careful listening to the audio recordings, to select the most dense excerpts according to the paper objectives. The diacritical signs are introduced to stay close to the actual talk and to capture the performativity of talk.1 Analyzing talk in interaction offers an opportunity to understand how participants in an institutional activity interpret their experience as a resource to support deliberation over the evolving conditions of their practice. By combining content and performative aspects of analysis the construction of new perspectival understanding emerges as a collaborative process, both in terms of introducing individual experiences into discourse and as the constant reference to a space of reasons that supports the interpretation of each contribution. Two main discursive mechanisms for the recontextualization of experience are highlighted: the ‘meta-conceptual perspective’ is the teachers’ focus on the epistemological and educational presuppositions of their experience (the meaning attributed to the experience, the recognition of the relevant conceptual frame to understand the experience); the ‘meta-pragmatic perspective’ consists of a reflection on the relationship between experience and its context of occurrence (identification of the circumstances of its application, the outcomes it produces).

Data analysis and results Some dimensions are identified in the relationships between conditions of practice and the development of new perspectival understanding that leads towards teachers learning from experience.

Teachers connect their past experiences and work out an innovative curricular unit In the first excerpt, four mathematics teachers develop a new perspective on their experiences and work out an inquiry-based activity that promotes children’s understanding of rational numbers.



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The teachers recognized the concept of ‘rational numbers’ as a suitable topic to promote children’s competences, since it integrates manifold components (fractions, decimals, ratios, rates) with wide applications in everyday situations. Excerpt 1 21 January 2010 During the following excerpt, they discuss Carla’s proposal to start from a scenario she experienced when working on histograms the year before, as an example of children’s learning of rational numbers. Participants: Carla (fourth grade mathematics teacher), Elena (fifth grade mathematics teacher), Alice (pre-primary teacher), Giovanna (third grade Italian teacher), Paolo (researcher). 24’36” 001 Carla: Let me show you a couple of tasks, as an example of what I consider an open problem. You know this is an activity on a histogram because= 002 Paolo: =uh uhm 003 Carla: I asked the children to do these in the last school year ((in third grade)). 004 Carla: I wonder if these activities would be suitable for younger children, because (…) for older, because they are more mature and they are (..), you know. In an open task they are more able to make estimations and you know it is more difficult with youngsters and therefore I tried with this task. It is an easy task on a given histogram. 005 Carla: I related to th- it isn’t a science activity, but Patrizia and I thought about a Science lesson (…) also would have liked children to work out a histogram and, you know, a histogram on a scientific topic (…) we would have liked to follow this approach. Anyway, I asked them only to read a given histogram.

During the discussion the teachers modify the task Carla proposed the year before; the same object, the histogram, is recontextualized into an inquirybased activity. In 071, 073 and 074, a new perspectival understanding of the experience is emerging, since teachers appreciate the idea of working out open problems that promote children’s hypothesis-making and argumentation, rather than the simple application of a well-formed procedure. Excerpt 2 21 January 2010 45’50’’

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064 Elena: I proposed a similar activity to my students in third and fourth grades. 065 Carla: Is it this? ((drawings from the tasks are on the table)). 066 Elena: He ((Paolo, two months before)) gave me a curricular material about sharing pizzas, equal sharing. 067 Elena: I sketched three or four pizzas. How many pieces for each? There are 16 children. 068 Carla: To reason= 069 Elena: = make some thoughts (…) they forgot them for sure. 070 Carla: I see. 071 Elena: But you know this is an open problem they (…) at the outset the children feel puzzled. 072 Carla: Because they are not familiar= 073 Elena: =not familiar, then a child proposed an idea, then another and another again and very interesting ideas emerged. 074 Carla: If we fuel their reasoning, then a lot of interesting ideas are put forward. 075 Carla: In this case we can give each child half of each block of chocolate (…) but one could say, we break here and there, we may not distribute all of- but we cannot expect that children understand a fair share of the whole. Somebody can think to share only some chocolate and put some apart. 076 Elena: They need to understand that splitting means in equivalent parts and therefore they cannot think that sharing means077 Alice: therefore making fractions means ‘sharing equivalent parts’ (…) you know (…) ‘breaking’ do- however in the everyday talk, splitting can mean in unequal parts. 1:06:19 124 Elena ((pointing at the drawings on the table)): In fact many notice that this ((the symbol ‘-’)) is also the symbol of division and I say it as soon as I can in third grade: the line of fraction is also the relation of division= 125 Carla: =the relation of division uhm uhm uhm 126 Elena: I always say it, I remark it= 127 Carla: =yes, yes, I too do what you just said and then, soon or late, it will be (…) it will be useful (7.0). 128 Carla: And now you can put them, you can comp-- order them, I mean from the smallest to the greatest. And this is also a visual representation you can reconstruct through visual perception with younger children because= 129 Alice: =I know seriation is one of those good things=



Experience as a Contextual Basis to Connect Professional Concerns 130 131 132 133

Carla: Alice: Carla: Alice:

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=exactly they immediately learn to express= =and then to reconstruct the whole too as she told They put all them together [visualize] visualize [the whole].

At the outset (001–5) Carla introduces an activity she developed the year before, about the use of histograms to represent symbolically a distribution of data. Her experience becomes a shared object of reflection through talk; the teachers recognize that a histogram can be recontextualized into an innovative educational activity to promote children’s competence on rational numbers. In 067–73 Elena recalls her recent experience with open tasks and focuses on its effects on children’s participation in the activity. In 076–7 the discussion is at the meta-conceptual level; the teachers reflect on the meaning of ‘splitting’ in the mathematical term and its interpretation by children, according to the ordinary discourse. The sequence of meta-pragmatic discourse in 124–7 is focused on their common experience about children’s difficulties in interpreting the meaning of the fractional notation and connecting it to the operation of division. In 128 Carla focuses on the interplay between fractions as objects and new operations on them. She connects histograms and fractional notations of the same ratios in order to introduce operations of ordering and comparison. Eventually Alice lexicalizes the whole procedure into a single object (‘seriation’) at the meta-conceptual level (129). In this discussion the teachers focus on an activity one of them did the year before: learning to read given histograms. They integrate different aspects of their past teaching experiences and try to recontextualize them into an inquirybased activity. Therefore they reflect on the experience at the meta-pragmatic level: the relationship between activity and its potential outcomes (the development of children’s competences of rational numbers). At the meta-conceptual level they reflect on some structural properties of the rational numbers, namely the integration of representations on histogram and the corresponding fractional notations; the dual nature of fractions, as indications of division and as objects in themselves; and the comparison and ordering of fractions. They recognize the children’s problematic understanding of mathematical meanings (such as ‘sharing’, which always means ‘equal sharing’). They maintain a space of reasons where their past experiences are the joint focus of discourse and they connect their manifold, but often fragmented, teaching strategies into a new perspective. In the subsequent workshops, they devise an authentic activity in which the children are asked to conduct all the stages of an inquiry: pupils are

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encouraged to gather data on the breakfast routines of their relatives, distribute them into categories, make sound inferences and then present their findings to peers. Analysis of the discussion transcript reveals pauses and faster sequences of talk that are characterized by latching and overlapping between teachers’ turns of speech (indicated by the diacritical signs of ‘=’ and ‘[’, respectively). It seems that the focus of discourse is shared and a new element of a common knowledge is under construction, that is, the contextualization of the operations on rational numbers into an inquiry-based activity.

Experiences converging towards unquestioned presuppositions In another workshop with eight teachers the focus of concern is the construction of classroom activities to support the children’s production of narrative texts. Teachers share the presupposition, based on their practice, that talking about a lived experience is the guiding motive for the development of children’s communicative competence in different symbolic domains. However, they complain that some children do not participate in the activities that require them to express their own feelings towards meaningful experiences. Excerpt 3 8 April 2010 Participants: Alice (pre-primary teacher), Carla (fourth grade mathematics teacher), Ada (fourth grade Italian teacher), Cristina (first and second grade Italian teacher), Giovanna (third grade Italian teacher), Ilaria (third grade Italian teacher), Antonella (fifth grade Italian teacher), Teresa (fifth grade Italian teacher), Paolo (researcher). 07’53” 031 Cristina: I think that writing is a competence not a skill. I see it as an integration, I mean, you support the children to master the spelling (…) the other is the narra-[the communication] 032 Alice: [its communicative function] rather than= 033 Cristina: =the use of an enriched language, a more adequate lexicon, but basically it is their motivation 034 Alice: the desire to narrate and to be listened to this is THE STARTING POINT= 035 Cristina: =for sure. 036 Alice: This is the source, if it lacks 037 Giovanna: yes, as it is in mathematics, you can use knowledge to solve problems, but the most fundamental point is having the will of=



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038 Alice: 039 Ada: 040 Cristina: 041 Ada:

=telling about themselves [to narrate] [difficult] It is the most difficult thing. You are right: don’t reduce the lesson to a simple exercitation, but042 Cristina: This is the goal we are reasoning about (…) that is, we want to establish THE GROUND, because I mean (…) I can ask- I cannot be satisfied as soon as a child is able to write down the correct caption under a figure= 043 Ada: =too much simple 044 Cristina: If I go in depth and I encourage children to talk about their emotional affective world 045 Alice: Yes, the emotional. 046 Cristina: I should propose a motivating pedagogy ((she refers to her established educational strategy of introducing classroom activities such as visiting a museum or playing a drama)). The children know they talk about an emotion and there are people who listen to them, read their- ((she refers to the instructional strategy the teachers share in this group to ask each child to narrate orally a meaningful event to the classmates and then they write down individually some thought about what it was said)) 047 Cristina: We come back to the importance of the library, of listening to others, of narrating. There is a lot- a whole pedagogical approach, but it is the most= 048 Ada: 049 Cristina:

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051 052 053 054

=difficult= =very difficult. There are children that stay in their own shells, you can do all these activities but you soon be aware that some children are rusty they are not able Paolo: If we understand why some children are peripheral in their participation (…), I mean, I don’t want to speculate on their communicative competence (…) I mean, if we understand what- the aspects that make them peripheral, we also understand what- how we should change the classroom activities to promote their participation. In your opinion, what kind of constraints do these children experience? Ada: They are not able to produce= Elena: =yes low self-esteem too Ada: This leads to low self-esteem= Cristina: =in my experience, as I see it in first grade, if a child cannot

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use the linguistic code ((she means oral communication)), then is not able to understand abstract ideas. 055 Cristina: It happens in my class, I say ‘Now we are writers, we tell stories.’ There is always a child who looks at the others or, I mean, when you ask the children ‘What you can say about?’ This morning, I asked the children to express a thought for each month on the calendar and there were some that preferred to repeat another child’s sentence= 056 Ada: =because they felt protected. 057 Cristina: Some children didn’t like what the others proposed and wrote down their own thoughts, but the others just copied.

The teachers present an integrated model of literacy competence. As indicated by the fast sequence of interaction, at the meta-conceptual level, they share the idea that writing consists of the connection of emotional and cognitive aspects (32–8) and requires the children’s capacity to express themselves rather than simply to solve procedural tasks (42–3). At the meta-pragmatic level Cristina (46–7) exposes her ‘motivating pedagogy’. The teachers also identify problematic aspects in the development of literacy competence. Talking at the meta-conceptual level, they agree that the children who do not participate are considered ‘rusty’ (49), ‘lacking self-esteem’ (52), ‘protected behind the others’ words’ (56). At the meta-pragmatic level Cristina (in 54–5) refers to her experiences as evidence for the shared model that lack of competence at the literacy stage is connected to underdeveloped symbolic competence at the oral and iconic stages. The teachers do not disentangle their experience from the interpretative models they share. As a consequence they limit their focus of concern to the nature of children’s symbolic representation and their motivation to narrate. Therefore, they do not work out a different perspective on some elements of their pedagogical approach into a more encompassing view. They do not consider that some children are able to express something that seems to have a personal aspect, whether sincere or not, but others have not yet learned the game. Experience is simply recalled as supporting evidence to accepted models.

Different situated cultures in the school Sometimes the teachers make explicit their concern that their middle school colleagues do not share the same approach on curricular innovation that they



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pursue at the primary stage. The lack of progression among different education stages is considered a relevant institutional constraint in developing inquirybased learning as the most suitable educational activity to promote competences in children: Ilaria: ‘[S]ome teachers take more control of classroom communication to guarantee [that pupils learn what is expected], when the children arrive in Middle schools you cannot be sure of anything.’

Given the perceived constraints, the teachers plan and develop the curricular units tentatively to enable primary school children to learn some relevant aspects of competence, but they do not structure their educational activities as initial steps towards a curricular progression that can be linked to similar efforts in the following educational stages. The teachers participating in the workshop do not expect the middle school colleagues to be engaged in a similar approach, even if in Italy the comprehensive system extends from the pre-primary to the end of middle school (3–14 years of age), and the National Guidelines explicitly recommend consistency in the curricular progression across stages.

Teachers recognize institutional conditions During the workshop that immediately follows the National Assessment Programme examination the teachers recognize the high-stakes standardized tests as an institutional constraint to building far-reaching curricular units. They try to identify the skills implied in solving the items, according to their experience in similar tasks, and perceive a tension between the ideal model of inquiry learning and the required teaching strategies to prepare students for a good performance in standardized tests: Carla: ‘[T]he Middle School teacher told me that parents ask for single-word answer problems and I replied that I engage children into inquiry learning and therefore I don’t give them straightforward tasks … and now, the children are required to perform standardized tests.’ Elena: ‘Maybe they say: “You are a weak teacher” well and then, what should I do?’

The teachers are puzzled because there are many interacting variables that can affect the children’s performance and it is unclear how they can manipulate the variables that are in their control in order to promote children’s achievements.

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Concluding remarks Teachers’ learning from experience is situated in a system of different conditions. The perspectival understanding that aligns professional knowledge and the evolving conditions of practice can emerge through extended talk in interaction. Teachers focus on their experience and interpret it in the light of an evolving space of reasons and plan and develop a new educational activity. However, the development of the perspectival understanding is contingent upon institutional conditions. When teachers do not recognize reasons to question and reconsider shared presuppositions, experiences tend to be framed rather than transformed. Differences between conceptions about learning and the curriculum among teachers in different grades constrain the development of an integrated perspectival understanding. As a consequence, primary teachers limit the scope of the recontextualization of their experience. Teachers perceive a tension between the reform rhetoric about their creative role in promoting competences and the requirements of external accountability through standardized measures. The teachers do not understand the extent to which their experience can be recontextualized in a managerial culture in which their professionalism is evaluated by standardized tests that emphasize content over reasoning strategies. Teachers do not find support in the Local Education Authorities for the development of innovative educational activities to promote children’s competences. Networks of collaboration among schools and universities are useful to create the conditions for ‘design experiments’ (Cobb et al. 2003), as a viable strategy to value teachers’ experience as an opportunity to enhance practice and achieve advanced educational goals. Teachers and researchers can become co-investigators of everyday school practice and co-designers of innovative curricular units that can be exchanged, integrated and improved in order to develop a system of constantly evolving curricular activities.

Notes 1 In representing the teachers’ contribution to talk, I tried to balance the readability of the excerpts with a representation of the situational and interactional characters of learning from experience. Therefore, I made a compromise between the use of diacritical signs as indicated by Goodwin (1994) and the grammatical punctuation.



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I subdivided a single speech turn into lines, in order to indicate units of discourse. Brackets ‘[ ]’ mark an overlapping segment of talk; ‘=’ means latching, indicating the absence of interval between the end of one speech turn and that immediately following; capital letters indicate talk spoken with emphasis; a dash mark ‘-’ marks the cut-off of the current sound; ‘:’ indicates stretched sounds. Points in parentheses (…) indicate pauses. Transcriber’s comments are presented in double parentheses ‘(())’; problematic hearings are noted in ‘()’.

Official documents CM 31, 18 aprile 2012: Revisione delle Indicazioni nazionali per la scuola dell’infanzia e per il primo ciclo di istruzione, Bozza [Revision of the National Recommendation for the curriculum in the pre-primary and primary school, Draft paper]. DM 3 agosto 2007, n. 68: Indicazioni nazionali per il curricolo per la scuola dell’infanzia e per il primo ciclo di istruzione [National Recommendation for the curriculum in the pre-primary and primary school]. DM 9/2010: Modello di certificazione dei saperi e delle competenze acquisite nell’assolvimento dell’obbligo di istruzione [Certification model of knowledge and competences acquired by the students during the Mandatory Education Cycle]. DM 27 gennaio 2010, n. 9: Modello di certificazione dei saperi e delle competenze acquisite nell’assolvimento dell’obbligo di istruzione [Certification model of knowledge and competences acquired by the students during the Mandatory Education Cycle]. DM 68/2007: Indicazioni nazionali per il curricolo per la scuola dell’infanzia e per il primo ciclo di istruzione [National Recommendation for the curriculum in the pre-primary and primary school]. DPR 275/1999: Regolamento recante norme in materia di autonomia delle istituzioni scolastiche, ai sensi dell’art. 21 della L. 59/1997 [Directive formulating the norms for the autonomy of the scholastic institutions, according to L 59/1997]. Recommendation 2006/962/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006: On key competences for lifelong learning, Official Journal L 394 of 30.12.2006.

References Boaler, J. (1999). Participation, knowledge and beliefs: a community perspective on mathematics learning. Educational Studies in Mathematics 40 (3): 259–81. Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Leher, R. and Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiments in educational research. Educational Researcher 32 (1): 9–13.

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Derry, J. (2008). Abstract rationality in education: from Vygotsky to Brandom. Studies in Philosophy and Education 27 (1): 49–62. Edwards, A. (2005). Relational agency: learning to be a resourceful practitioner. International Journal of Educational Research 43 (3): 168–82. Engle, R. A. (2006). Framing interactions to foster generative learning: a situative explanation of transfer in a Community of Learners classroom. Journal of the Learning Sciences 15 (4): 451–98. Erickson, F. (1992). Ethnographic microanalysis of interaction. In M. D. LeCompte, J. Preissle Goetz and W. Millroy (eds), The Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education. New York: Academic Press, pp. 283–306. Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96 (3): 606–33. Greeno, J. G. and Moore, J. L. (1993). Situativity and symbols: response to Vera and Simon. Cognitive Science 17 (1): 49–59. Greeno, J. and van de Sande, C. (2007). Perspectival understanding of conceptions and conceptual growth in interaction. Educational Psychologist 42 (1): 9–23. Hamann, E. T. and Rosen, L. (2011). What makes the anthropology of educational policy implementation ‘anthropological’? In B. A. U. Levinson and M. Pollock (eds), A Companion to the Anthropology of Education. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 461–77. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, B. A. U., Sutton, M. and Winstead, T. (2009). Education policy as a practice of power: theoretical tools, ethnographic methods, democratic options. Educational Policy 23 (6): 767–95. McDermott, R. and Varenne, H. (2006). Reconstructing culture in educational research. In G. Spindler and L. Hammond (eds), Innovations in Educational Ethnography. Theory, Methods, and Results. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 3–31. Varenne, H. (2007). Difficult collective deliberations: anthropological notes toward a theory of education. Teachers College Record 109 (7): 1559–88.

11

Learning from experience as a continual process of design: A Norwegian case study Anne Line Wittek

Introduction This chapter conceptualizes teachers’ learning from experience as a lifelong and continuous process rooted in practice. Taking part in various classroom-based activities, the teacher (or student teacher) engages with a wide range of tools, which may include material objects, such as computers, books or maps, known as ‘artefacts’. They may also engage with psychological tools or ‘representations’ of these artefacts, by which I mean the way in which they might either use the material objects in their classroom practice or talk about them. It is important to note that those ways in which teachers use such tools constitutes one kind of representation, while ways of talking about them and theorizing about them constitute others. Therefore, teachers’ learning from experience is dynamic. It involves an ongoing unpacking of the potential meaning of tools used in the profession of teaching and transforming them into resources that are meaningful at the level of personal reasoning. On this basis I argue that forms of teaching and assessment used in teacher education should make students reflect and develop their own senses of meaning not only of their experiences but the resources involved in them. Activities that enhance students’ actions in relating, exploring, contrasting and reflecting in particular have a specific potential for enhancing learning from experience. Such a process never ends but continues as an important dimension throughout the professional career of teachers. Empirically, I draw upon a case study from a Norwegian university where portfolio writing is used as a core tool for learning in a one-year initial teacher

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programme. This particular portfolio practice is designed specifically for the purposes of enhancing continuous reflection and to help students compare experiences during internship, learning activities at university campus and their future role as a teacher. Thirteen students were followed throughout one academic year, and the context of the case study is a course in mother-tongue didactics. All of the students have finished their bachelor’s or master’s degrees in linguistics or Scandinavian language studies in advance. Most of the teaching takes place in weekly gatherings at the university campus. The Teacher Education Programme (PPU) has two major components. The first component is on educational and didactic theory and is taught at the university campus. The other main component is internship: six weeks practising as Norwegian teachers during the spring term and four weeks during the autumn term. Internship normally takes place at one of the department’s partner schools. University colleges and universities in Norway offer different types of initial teacher education programmes. Four-year programmes qualify for teaching in primary and lower secondary education (UNESCO-IBE 2010: 11). Teachers of general or academic subjects in upper secondary schools have completed three to five years of university or university college studies, normally covering two or three different subjects. The case study involves students from the latter type of programme. They are graduates from three- to five-year degrees (not including the pedagogical component) at university. According to the rules, they have to enrol in a one-year educational theory and practice programme if they want to be qualified for teaching from grade five onwards, in upper secondary and adult education. Assessment of student achievement is changing and one reason for this change might be that today’s students face a world that seems to demand new types of knowledge and abilities: in particular, it is often pointed out that students need to become lifelong learners in a world that will demand competencies and skills not yet defined (Chetcuti et. al. 2006). New modes of appraisal are being trialled at all levels of the education sector, and portfolio evaluation is one assessment practice that is becoming increasingly popular in higher education (Dysthe and Engelsen 2004). Portfolios, when used as pedagogical tools, can be defined this way: … a purposeful collection of student work that tells the story of the student’s efforts, progress or achievement in (a) given area(s). This collection must include student participation in selection of portfolio content; the guidelines for



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selection; the criteria for judging merit; and evidence of student self-reflection. (Arter and Spandel 1992: 36)

It must be noted that the practices and purposes of portfolio assessment vary greatly from one educational context to another and from one didactic tradition to another. In Norway at least, how to design the portfolio is normally up to the responsible teachers in each course. One of the reasons why the purposes of portfolio assessment can diverge is that portfolios can be seen as rooted in two very different traditions (Dysthe and Engelsen 2004). The first tradition is the ‘competency movement’ which stresses the documentation of competency in different subjects or areas. The other root can be traced back to humanism and constructivism, especially within the realm of process-oriented writing. It stresses personal development through reflection, often in collaboration with student peers and teachers. In 2001 there was a proliferation of portfolio assessment in Norway which was closely connected to the major reform in Norwegian higher education known as the ‘Quality Reform’. Portfolio-based assessment and learning were established as a core part of the practice in higher education. This reform was a direct consequence of the Bologna Process, but it had a much wider scope than the Bologna follow-up in other European countries and also included distinctive pedagogical changes. Former analyses have shown that many institutions introduced portfolios in various ways as a more or less immediate answer to the claims of the Quality Reform (Dysthe and Engelsen 2011; Dysthe et al. 2006). In the case study presented here, portfolios were used primarily as a tool for learning. Students worked on the nine different assignments throughout the year. The portfolio had to be submitted at the end of the year to pass, but it did not count in the final grade.

The theoretical framework The concept of mediation is central in sociocultural literature (Leontiev 1974, Vygotsky 1978, Wertsch 2007; see Edwards’ chapter in this volume for an overview of a sociocultural perspective on learning teaching from experience). According to Vygotsky (1978), a hallmark of human consciousness is that it is associated with the use of tools, especially ‘psychological tools’ or ‘signs’. People do not act in a direct unmediated way in the social and physical

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world. Rather, our contact with the world is indirect or mediated by various tools or mediators. The concept of artefacts includes physical tools, as well as psychological tools including symbols and language; these are resources that, in both senses, teachers apply in their professional practice. Language has been described as the most important of all human artefacts (Linell 2009; Leontiev 1974) but, according to Barton (1994: 66), it is not so much the language in itself that mediates, but people using language. Language mediates our thinking and learning, and writing can do so in a powerful way (Barton 1994). Artefacts serve as concrete tools but they also mediate through different representations of the physical tool (Habib and Wittek 2007). These representations can be ways of talking about the artefact or acting upon it. Unexpected and creative forms of representations can shape new practices. Learning is not something that happens solely inside a person’s head; it also takes place between people and through the use of a particular set of tools in productive ways and for contextualized purposes. Wartofsky (1973) has suggested that the concept of an artefact offers a useful point of contact between the historicity of humanity and its present context. When individuals enter a particular context they participate in the group’s conventions and adopt the specific tools that are involved in the group’s interactional activities (Edwards 2011). They thereby learn how to use those tools in a way that is ‘proper’ within that context. Learning and thinking are activities that take place both at an intrapersonal and at an interpersonal level. These two levels are closely connected and they cannot be understood independently of each other. Learning and development concern how individuals, organizations and societies at large retain information, knowledge and skills and make them available to new generations through artefacts (Säljö 1999). Artefacts are particularly interesting when considering processes of learning from experience when they function as ‘boundary objects’. This notion is borrowed from Star and Griesemer (1989: 393) who refer to these artefacts as acting either as anchors or bridges between different activities and those tools involved in them. Boundary objects are both robust and flexible: they can be adapted to different local needs but they maintain a common identity across time and space (Star and Griesemer 1989). The increasing sophistication of tools that takes place over time is an important dimension in sociocultural development (Ivarson et al. 2002). Powerful intellectual distinctions and resources are built into tools, which are used for a wide range of purposes when performing activities such as calculating,



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communicating or reading: ‘There is no such thing as pure cognition that can be assessed per se’ (Ivarson et al. 2002: 85). The analytical model ‘Situations, Collective Activities and Instruments’ (SACI) suggested in Béguin and Rabardel (2000) and further elaborated in Rabardel and Waern (2003) and Pargman (2003) will be applied in this paper for the purpose of addressing processes of ‘instrumental genesis’, referring to how particular users elaborate artefacts into their own instruments. Instruments are understood as ‘the results of a developmental process in which the user accommodates and assimilates his/her activities – personal schemes of use – to the properties of the artefact while using and attributing new functions to them’ (Pargman 2003: 740). An instrument is seen as ‘a composite made up of “the artifact”, in its structural and formal aspects’ (Pargman 2003: 710) on the one hand; and ‘the subject’s social and private schemes’ (Pargman 2003: 710) on the other. In other words, the transformation processes from artefact to instrument have both instrumental and psychological elements and they transpire at both collective and individual levels. When student teachers are introduced to certain tools for learning and assessment during teacher training, these will (in a Norwegian context) normally be selected and designed by the responsible teachers. However, such tools are far from finished when the guidelines are completed and the instructions passed on to the students (Béguin and Rabardel 2000; Pargman 2003; Rabardel and Waern 2003). It is up to the student to turn the artefacts they supply into instruments. Special emphasis is therefore placed on the idea that an artefact cannot be confounded with an instrument. An artefact only becomes an instrument through the association between personal schemes and the properties of the artefact. The distinction between artefact and instrument is crucial to the understanding of the aspects involved in the integration of any new artefact into human practices. However, it becomes an instrument only when the subjects are able to elaborate it and appropriate it for themselves, that is, when they are able to subordinate the artefact as a means to accomplish their ends (Pargman 2003: 741). Four types of instrumental mediation are identified within the instrumental genesis approach (Béguin and Rabardel 2000, Pargman 2003). Epistemic mediation is oriented toward an awareness of the object in play – for example, a scientific concept. This type of mediation refers to the process by which the student develops a higher level of conscious awareness regarding scientific concepts, distinctions and the nuances embedded in them. Pragmatic mediation is oriented toward action on the object: when instructions, guidelines and

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norms are transformed into action. This kind of mediation is typically involved when students unpack textual norms and criteria regarding the portfolio assignments, and actually produce the assignments required. Interpersonal mediation addresses the relational aspects between different persons and is activated when students participate in discussions in class or any type of collaboration. The last form, reflexive mediation, addresses how the students regulate their own writing, plan their own texts and relate and contrast different experiences and artefacts to each other. The different types of mediation will be intertwined in processes of learning but the distinction is useful for analytical purposes.

The empirical study The research project I draw on is a national study investigating textual cultures and the role of writing at different levels in the Norwegian education system. Data was collected during the 2009–10 academic year. Here I draw solely on the material from the already mentioned course in mother-tongue didactics. In this chapter I focus on portfolio writing but the programme also includes several other elements (see Askeland and Wittek 2013 for a holistic presentation of the analysis ). The data material includes video observations; interviews with the instructor and student groups, six submitted portfolios; written material from students in a writing course; and the information available in the learning management system. Observations were conducted in class by two researchers over a total of 26 hours during the academic year. Both of the researchers were equipped with hand-held cameras; one filmed the instructor while the other focused on student activity. The analysis was made by identifying writing events, a concept introduced in theories developed by Barton (2007) and Wells (1999). A writing event is seen as a purposeful activity, ‘embedded in people’s broader life goals and practices’ (Barton 2007: 52). The aim of the analysis presented here is to unpack the possible roles portfolio assessment can form in student learning by carefully analyzing how transformation processes from artefacts to instruments transpire in the identified writing events. During the year, students produced individual portfolios comprising nine different assignments, all of them articulated by the teacher: 1. A reflection log on expectations. 2. A report from an observed language lesson.



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3. An interview with a student. 4. An interview with a Norwegian teacher colleague. 5. A plan for a Norwegian lecture (to be used in pre-supervision). 6. A reflection log on a Norwegian lesson. 7. A critical comment about a syllabus book. 8. Practical tips for teaching. 9. A reflection log on the course as a whole. The teacher gave a written response to most of these assignments; students also presented outlines in class and gave feedback to each other. At the end of the year the individual portfolio as a whole had to be submitted; however, the final mark was based on a traditional academic essay and an oral examination.

Analysis According to the university teacher, the design of this particular portfolio practice is to enhance students’ reflection. He also uses the short written assignments as a point of departure for discussions with the class. In an interview he states, ‘I have been working a lot with reflection logs myself, and I think that this kind of reflection and clarification of thoughts gives an opportunity to participate with confidence in plenary discussions.’ When it comes to the submission at the end of the year, he gives the students freedom to form the portfolios ‘their own way’. But in spite of this liberty the six submitted portfolios are strikingly similar in structure, appearance and length. This could indicate that collaboratively-developed interpretations act as a strong mediator in this context. In an interview the university instructor states that he wants to organize his teaching in an ‘exemplary way’. He does not usually say this explicitly to his students but believes that ‘by experiencing the different types of writing themselves, students will apply some of the ideas later on as practising teachers’. He also emphasizes the importance of future teachers experiencing different kinds of writing themselves, so that they can appreciate their pupils’ experience. Ina, one of his students, confirms in an interview that this has been the case for her: When we are asked to write reflection logs, I notice how difficult it is to sit there and think about how to organize myself. Even if I could have said a lot about it verbally, it is a difficult process to write about it, and that experience is important for me as a Norwegian teacher. It is important to know something about how difficult it is to get your thinking down on a sheet of paper.

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The other students present in this group interview nod their heads as Ina speaks. Kari adds: And then there is something about being able to help students that struggle with the writing of logs. I mean, really giving help, not just ‘sit down and write’ … And I also believe that it is important for the student to let them know that we as teachers also write a lot, and that it is difficult for us sometimes as well.

Portfolio writing in this context becomes a part of the learning activities and is viewed as an integral part of the students’ meaning-making. Methods and findings are constituted mutually and give extensive attention to the writer’s voice. The act of writing becomes a central part of the process of inquiry, with the student taking up the complex roles of author and inquirer. The students also draw lines between different practices like planning, action and the subsequent reflections and between practical experiences and imagined situations in their future profession. Through such meaning-making we construct realities and at the same time are constructed by them (Ottesen 2006). This way of conceptualizing writing corresponds with what Graue (2006) labels writing as praxis (contrasted against three other metaphors of writing: as reporting, as interpreting and as constituting). Writing as praxis is a way of regarding writing that takes the literacy of today’s society into account (Graue 2006: 516). Writing is a matter of understanding through the articulation of situated social narratives. Students need to engage in cultural meaning-making. The practice related to the production of student portfolios functions as writing as praxis. The following example can serve as an illustration.

‘Stories about the left suitcase’ This illustration is from assignment six: a reflection log on a Norwegian lecture. During a period of practical training in a comprehensive school, one of the students, Turid, describes a writing activity: the introduction of ‘empathic writing’ to her students. The plan is borrowed from the syllabus book used by the class (Blichfelt et al. 2006). Turid arranges a tableau in the classroom, involving an old suitcase and, next to it, an old overcoat with the Star of David on it. She tells her students about the scene she wants them to picture: they are in a railway station in the year 1943. The instruction she gives her students is to make a sketch for a story about the owner of the suitcase. Why is this suitcase left on the platform? What are its contents? What has happened to the owner? Turid explains in her text that ‘the students had some knowledge about discrimination



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and persecution of Jews under the Second World War beforehand’. For the last three weeks they had read and worked on The Diary of Anne Frank. In her assignment Turid describes how her class started writing: ‘I had never seen the class this quiet and concentrated before. I walked around and talked to the writers. My impression was that they really concentrated on this task.’ After a while she invited the students to read their texts aloud. One girl acquiesced to read her text after further invitations and a boy hesitantly agreed to Turid reading his text. Turid comments that this was definitely not a good example of the activity that she had planned for. The boy’s text pictured the tableau as the scene of a dramatic murder case. The next phase of Turid’s teaching plan was to let the students work in small groups for the giving and receiving of feedback on their short texts. Finally, she asked the groups to act out role-plays of the sketches. ‘They did well on this part,’ Turid writes. Toward the end of the lesson she found it challenging to keep the attention of the students: ‘I guess they started to get eager for having a break,’ she writes, ‘and I might not have enough authority.’ She ends her assignment with the following reflection: If I should give this lesson once again, I would have made some basic changes. I would not use the written sketches as a starting point for verbal plenary discussions like I did, but rather as raw material for writing processes that students could continue at home. I would have let the students share their sketches in groups and not in plenary. I suppose that the pupils could experience [the] process of creating their own stories with more enjoyment then.

When Turid writes about her own Norwegian lesson she describes the specific task of empathic writing. She evaluates both the successful and less successful parts of her teaching experience. She puts a whole range of different tools into play in her lesson: the physical elements in the tableau (the coat and the suitcase), but also ideas from The Diary of Anne Frank and concepts like persecution. In her writing about the experience and the different tools involved in it she elaborates on the complexity in the situation. She closes her assignment by mentioning a few things she wants to change for ‘the next time’: something that the university teachers want the student teachers to do, according to an interview. This can be conceptualized as a process of transforming the portfolio (the way the university teachers have designed it) into a personal instrument. Turid writes and rewrites assignments according to her own intentions and experiences. This process is intertwined with the process of unpacking the institutional task.

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Another student, Kari, explicitly states that writing for the portfolio is something she enjoys: ‘In these texts I can write and play with words and sentences; I’m not so bound.’ All the students taking part in the study make similar statements about the portfolio writing. However, while they enjoy it and find it useful they do not put the same energy into these assignments as in others because the portfolio does not count toward the final mark. There are different reasons why the students enjoy the portfolio tasks, but the most frequently mentioned is the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and link them to one another in order to create their own sense of meaning. They also emphasize that they appreciate how the university instructor takes an interest in them ‘as people’ in his responses. The goal of this writing, according to the university instructor, is to illuminate and engage in the themes and objects the author finds necessary and relevant. The portfolio design in this programme draws on historical lines from different educational traditions like process-oriented writing and problembased learning. Insights from these traditions come into play as the artefact is implemented into the educational practice. The student teachers gradually unpack the institutional tasks they are facing while successively interpreting the portfolio design as they write and rewrite their assignments. They also discuss with their teacher and fellow students how and what to write, evaluating and cultivating their own outlines. In these processes a whole range of artefacts are put into play and interpreted by the students. They are challenged to compare and contrast these different artefacts, relate them to one another and reflect upon how and why they want to use them as future teachers when writing their nine portfolio assignments. The instructor believes strongly in a dialogical approach to teaching and always invites his students into discussion in class, often asking them to share elements from their portfolios. All of these different activities have the potential to enhance and shape the process of transformation from artefacts into instruments for personal and collective use. Such activities can therefore be significant in the processes of preserving and transmitting modes of action and beliefs within a culture. The portfolio writing acts as a boundary object in this matter, and serves an additional function: providing a platform for discussions in plenary session with the university instructor as a discussion partner. Professional teachers are required to vary their repertoire of teaching practices, thus student teachers need to transform the artefacts they are introduced to as students into instruments for use in practical situations. This means the students must consider



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different ideas, values and practices in relation to one another. In so doing they adopt ways of thinking, acting and writing for different purposes. From the analysis as a whole we found that the activity of portfolio writing at university seems to be crucial in students’ processes of learning from experience (Askeland and Wittek 2013). Based on research evidence regarding the steering effect of assessment, and indicating the power of assessment as a tool for learning (Segers et al. 2003), there is reason to believe that the learning outcomes would have been even more positive if the portfolio had counted for the final mark. Through portfolio writing different types of mediatory means are put into play in ways that form networks of artefacts. The ways these networks are elaborated and constituted align with more stable institutional or professional networks, thus they are an important aspect of professional learning. Different actors such as internship mentors, peers and the university teacher are crucial as mediators in student learning. Other important mediators are physical and symbolic tools, and third parties such as ideas of ‘how teaching Norwegian should be done’, advocated by internship mentors. The analysis as a whole shows that most of the internship mentors are typically focusing on how to cope with ‘the burden of giving written feedback’, while the university instructors continuously underline the whole range of writing functions and the roles of the teachers in the process of writing. Säljö (1999) argues that tools and artefacts are often described as either physical or intellectual, but it is more constructive to understand artefacts used by people in concrete activities to be simultaneously intellectual and physical. The writing episode on the empty suitcase certainly illustrates the tight connections between physical aspects (the exhibition with the suitcase and the coat, the pencils and papers) and intellectual aspects (the words they write on the paper, the emotions and knowledge connected to the language use). Concepts, definitions and procedures are intimately linked to practical knowledge. This position challenges the common view that theory and practice are two distinct and conflicting entities in professional learning. It is more useful to see different experiences and the artefacts involved in them as different practices with theoretical and practical dimensions. Learning is enhanced when students elaborate on the relationship between these different experiences (Vygotsky 1978).

Portfolio as a mediatory tool Scientific concepts are tools of particular importance in educational contexts. Scientific concepts are built up as hierarchical and systematically organized

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knowledge developed throughout history. As students appropriate scientific concepts the knowledge that lies within the concept will gradually become part of their personal systems of ideas. The kind of mediation that is involved here has earlier been conceptualized as epistemic. This kind of mediation is not particularly visible in the portfolio practice at stake here. On the other hand interpersonal mediation addresses the relational aspects between different persons and voices. When the student teachers interview different actors in school (for assignments three and four), they engage in activities that typically enhance interpersonal mediation. The voices of experienced teachers are particularly visible in all nine portfolios. The voices and values articulated by internship mentors seem to be of much importance to the student teachers when they elaborate on their own role as future teachers. Reflexive mediation is about regulating one’s own writing, planning one’s own texts and relating and contrasting different experiences. Turid describes examples of experiences from her period of internship. The portfolio structure makes her write about these kinds of experiences and reflect on them. In addition to a reflection log on their own teaching the portfolio structure makes students interview experienced students and experienced teachers; there are several sections in all the portfolios where the student teachers refer to statements on challenges related to being a Norwegian teacher. They often acknowledge these challenges by discussing how they will deal with them in their future profession. In the process of producing their portfolio student teachers elaborate on different voices, tools, experiences and concepts. They compare, contrast and reflect on how these different experiences can prepare them for the role as a teacher. Pragmatic mediation is oriented toward action on the object, including procedures and regulations. This type of mediation is active when students formalize their assignments into a proper format. In this particular context the students seem to draw heavily on the collaboratively-developed interpretation. In earlier research it is well documented that the portfolio as a tool for learning and assessment has a strong potential to enhance various aspects of student learning (e.g. Wittek 2007; Dysthe et al. 2006; Tierney et al. 1991). The study presented here supports these findings. In the final reflection log six students write that the course was very relevant for their future job as Norwegian teachers. Some students write explicitly that they have learned a lot from portfolio writing. Nora is one of them:



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Portfolio made us reflect upon our own teaching [during practical training], to make decisions about our own points of views, listening to students and experienced teachers. Unfortunately I believe that higher education students of today don’t do any more than they have to. That is why this portfolio is so important.

In reference to the specific theoretical framework used in this chapter, this particular portfolio design appears to mediate students’ learning in a way that corresponds well to the teachers’ intentions. Reflexive mediation seems to be strongly enhanced by this artefact, as the student teachers draw lines between different experiences, voices and tools and also between previous, present and imagined situations. The analysis also indicates that this portfolio structure enhances interpersonal mediation. All of the nine portfolios frequently discuss statements from the experienced teachers they met during practical training, and reflect upon their own future as Norwegian teachers in light of these statements.

Conclusions The portfolio design involved in this specific programme has the potential to make student teachers explore the dynamics and tensions between different experiences. It acts as a boundary object and as a strong mediator in complex processes of learning from and between different experiences. I have suggested an approach for investigating the phenomenon of ‘learning from experience’, namely as continual processes of design. The design of the portfolio as an artefact continues in new practices. It becomes an instrument to the students only when they are able to elaborate and appropriate it for themselves. When they are able to subordinate it as a means to accomplish their ends, the artefact has been transformed into an instrument. I have argued that portfolio writing, as it is organized in this specific course, has great potential for mediating student learning across different experiences. Portfolio writing can thus be an effective tool for learning from experience, not only during teacher training, but also during teachers’ professional careers. Portfolio writing becomes a part of the student`s meaning-making: acts of writing are part of the process of inquiry. The portfolio assignments are designed by the teacher for the purpose of helping the students to draw lines between different practices and to unpack the potential meaning of different resources. Realities are constructed by the students and at the same time these constructions are transformed into

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structures in students’ thinking and learning. The student teachers gradually unpack the institutional task they are facing as they successively interpret the portfolio design through their portfolio writing. These writing activities appear to be significant in processes of preserving and transmitting modes of action and beliefs within the professional culture of teaching. Moreover, using portfolios in the manner just outlined can contribute positively to the continuing professional development of more established teachers. Teachers engage in a range of different teaching practices throughout a career in teaching. To transform artefacts into instruments for personal and collective use they need to continue to explore and investigate the networks of artefacts that the practical situations include. Turning them into instruments for personal usage and meaning-making must be regarded as a lifelong and constantly evolving process. The particular portfolio design I have argued for here offers a tool for relating, exploring, contrasting and reflecting on the different experiences that teachers have during the academic year. This design has a particularly interesting function as a boundary object, with the potential to build bridges between different experiences. The design of tools never ends. For the purposes of learning from experience we need designs for learning that make us relate different practices to one another, structures that enhance continual processes of design in all their complexities.

References Arter, J. A. and Spandel, V. (1992). Using portfolios of student work in instruction and assessment. Educational Measurement 11 (1): 36–44. Askeland, N. and Wittek, L. (2013). Selvstendighet eller buktaling? Om framtidige læreres opplevelse av identitet og stemme i norskfaget [On future teachers’ experiences of their own voice and identity in Norwegian as a subject in school]. In N. Askeland and B. Aamotsbakken, Syn for Skriving. Om Læringsressurser og Skriving i Skolens Tekstkulturer [Visions for writing. On learning resources and writing in textual cultures of education]. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk. In press. Barton, D. (1994/2007): Literacy. An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Béguin, P. and Rabardel, P. (2000). Designing for instrument-mediated activity. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 12: 173–90. Blichfelt, K., Heggem, T. G. and Larsen E. (2006). Kontekst. Basisbok, 1.utgave, 8. opplag. Oslo: Gyldendal NorskForlag, pp. 8–10.



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Chetcuti, D., Murphy, P. and Grima, G. (2006). The formative and summative uses of a professional development portfolio: a Maltese case study. Assessment in Education 13 (1): 97–112. Dysthe, O. and Engelsen, K. S. (2004). Portfolios and assessment in teacher education in Norway: a theory-based discussion of different models in two sites. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 29 (2): 239–58. —(2011). Portfolio practices in higher education in Norway in an international perspective: macro-, meso- and micro-level influences. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 36 (1): 63–79. Dysthe, O., Raaheim, A., Lima, I. and Bygstad, A. (2006). Undervisnings- og vurderingsformer: Pedagogiske konsekvenser av Kvalitetsreformen. Evaluering av Kvalitetsreformen. Delrapport 7 [Forms of teaching and assessment. Pedagogical consequences from the Quality Reform]. Oslo: NIFU STEP/University of Bergen. Edwards, A. (2013). Learning from experience in teaching: a cultural historical critique. This volume. Graue, B (2006). Writing in education research. In Clifton F. Conrad and Ronald C. Serlin (eds), The SAGE Handbook for Research in Education: Engaging Ideas and Enriching Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication Inc., pp. 515–28. Habib, L. and Wittek, L. (2007). The portfolio as artifact and actor. Mind Culture and Activity 14 (4): 266–82. Ivarson, J., Schoultz, J. and Säljö, R. (2002). Map reading versus mind reading: Revisiting children’s understanding of the shape of the earth. In M. Limón and L. Mason (eds), Reconsidering Conceptual Change: Issues in Theory and Practice. Amsterdam: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 77–99. Leontiev, A. (1974). The problem of activity in psychology. Soviet Psychology 27 (1): 22–39. Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Ottesen, E. (2006). Talk in practice. Analysing student teachers’ and mentors’ discourse in internship. Thesis submitted for Dr. Polit., University of Oslo —(2013). Teachers’ storied experience: rules or tools for action? This volume. Pargman, T. C. (2003). Collaborating with writing tools: an instrumental perspective on the problem of computer-supported collaborative activities. Interacting with Computers 15: 737–57. Rabardell, P. and Waern, Y. (2003) From artifact to instrument. Interacting with Computers 15: 641–45. Säljö, R. (1999). Learning as the use of tools. A sociocultural perspective on the human technology link. In K. Littleton and P. Light, Learning with Computers: Analysing Productive Interaction. London: Routeledge, pp. 144–61. Segers M., Dochy, F. and Cascallar, E. (2003). The era of assessment engineering: changing perspectives on teaching and learning and the role of new modes of

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assessment. In M. Segers, F. Dochy and E. Cascallar (eds), Optimising New Modes of Assessment: In Search of Qualities and Standards. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Star, S. L. and Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, ‘translations’, and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science 19: 387–420. Tierney, R. J., Carter, M. A. and Desai, L. E. (1991). Portfolio Assessment in Reading– Writing Classroom. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers. UNESCO-IBE (2010). World Data on Education. 7th edition; http://www.ibe.unesco. org/ (accessed 27 March 2013). Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wartofsky, M. W. (1973). Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Wells, C. G. (1999). Dialogic Inquiry: Towards a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as Action. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. —(2007). Mediation. In H. Daniels, M. Cole and J. V. Wertsch (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittek, L. (2007). Mappe som Redskap for Læring i Høyere Utdanning – Strukturer, Kulturell Praksis og Deltakelsesbaner [Portfolio as a tool for learning in higher education – Structures, cultural experiences and trajectories of participation]. Doctoral thesis, University of Oslo, Faculty of Education.

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Vertical integration as a mode of professional production: Teachers’ resistance to the business of teaching Torie L. Weiston-Serdan and Sheri Dorn-Giarmoleo

Introduction ‘Vertical integration’ is a term used to describe a style of management control often deployed in the steel and automotive industries. In this chapter it is applied to controlling the labour force in schools, with significant implications for teachers and for how and what they learn from experience. We write this chapter from the perspective of being immersed in the experience of vertical integration, as teachers working in two high schools in California affected by the introduction of vertical integration into state-funded schooling. We articulate our concerns with this process and suggest measures that might be adopted in order to address the problems we identify.

Vertical integration In a vertically integrated company a common owner develops or acquires central elements needed for production or final output, a supply chain (Ricketts 2002). Each member of that supply chain produces a different product or service, which in combination serves to satisfy a specific need (Coase 1937; Frank 1925; Williamson 1967 and 1971). It may be contrasted with a horizontal integration form of business ownership and control, whereby a firm seeks to sell a particular type of product across a number of different markets. Horizontal integration occurs when a firm is being taken over by or merged with another firm in the same industry and at the same stage of production as

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the original firm. Horizontal integration has also had an impact on educational provision, as education has become increasingly privatized, but this wider phenomenon is not considered in this chapter. Rather, our concern is with the impact vertical integration has had on the profession of teaching and the development of teachers as its influence spreads into the markets for educational services that have expanded across the industrialized world. Our reflections on the implications of this shift are based on our direct experience of change as teachers and, specifically, as activist teachers, understood here to mean teachers who advocate that teachers’ voices should influence and inform the decisions made by education stakeholders and policy-makers (Sachs 2003). One of the characteristics of vertical integration is that it brings large portions of those separate companies which make up the supply chain under common ownership. Moreover, each company or firm becomes part of one much larger corporation, as in the 1920s in the USA when the Ford River Rouge Complex began making much of its own steel rather than buying it from suppliers (Keith 2009). This means that each smaller firm is managed centrally with repercussions for the capacity of the firm to make decisions autonomously. Ultimately, vertical integration allows the firm control of the manufacturing process and, most importantly, control over the output. Vertical integration is utilized as a business model for two major reasons: cost and control. Businesses want to control every aspect of the manufacturing process for their product in order to ensure quality and outcome. Meanwhile, businesses benefit from various economies of scale when they own most areas of the manufacturing process concerning one product or service. Hence, business giant Henry Ford appropriated vertical integration as a business model for the manufacturing of automobiles, given that at that time the quality and availability for key components were minimal (Keith 2009), to ensure he optimized quality as well as his chances of having the necessary parts available. Vertical integration has become more popular in recent times through the influence on the market of companies like Apple, who seek ownership of the supply chain, manufacture and service provision with regard to resources in new technology (Bajarin 2011).

Vertical integration and the supply of teachers and teaching In the past, university-based teacher education programmes would have sought to equip teachers with the tools needed to operate in classroom environments in relation to a wide-ranging and rigorous engagement with research and



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theory. These would have allowed time for teachers to process this information alongside interrogating their experience. However, a global conversation around teacher and teacher learning and a deregulated market in its provision have placed pressure on universities and teacher education programmes to alter or replace key components of their programme in an effort to compete with other routes for certification (Cochran-Smith et al. 2010; Paine and Zeichner 2012; Zeichner 2010). These alternative certification routes have been introduced and supported by governments with the intention of providing healthy competition. Competition will at one and the same time, it is assumed, increase teacher quality and reduce the levels of funding needed, if teachers are manufactured efficiently and systematically. The impact of the ‘commodification of the work of preparing teachers and making teacher preparation subject to market forces’ (Zeichner 2010: 1544) has been to shift the focus of teacher education programmes to ‘output’ or end results (of a certain kind) rather than the development process itself, and made a qualitative change to the nature of the ‘input’. With regard to teacher education the impact of vertical integration on the supply of teachers would be as follows: beginning with a branded university teacher education programme of a particular kind, teachers would be prepared for particular brands of school, whose product (perhaps even design of building, curriculum, mode of reporting to parents) would all be consistent with a particular ‘house style’. They would be conceived of, metaphorically, as undergoing a mechanization process. This shift towards a branded, uniform ‘product’ (teacher) would impact, inevitably, on the purpose, therefore the content and style, of those teacher education programmes. Pearson, for example, is one of the leading higher education textbook publishers, boasting that ‘about three million US college students are currently pursuing their studies online using “Pearson Higher Education Products”’ (Pearson 2013). Additionally, Pearson’s partnership with Stanford to redevelop the Teacher Performance Assessment makes it a brand that teachers must contend with before leaving their teacher education programme. In 2012 the Stanford Pearson TPA was being ‘tested by 200 universities in more than two dozen states’ (Winerip 2012: 1). In addition to Pearson’s involvement in higher education, particularly teacher education, the company is the ‘leading pre K-12 curriculum, testing, and software company in the U.S.’ with 50 per cent of US schools using ‘at least one Pearson student curriculum’ (Pearson 2013), while their subsidiary company, Prentice Hall, is the leading developer of K-12 textbooks.

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Teachers in the future may come from universities that utilize the Pearson brand, submit their teacher performance assessments via Pearson’s ePortfolio software and then teach utilizing Pearson textbooks and curricula for Pearson-made tests. As evidenced by Pearson’s involvement in education at every level, textbooks, technological tools and ongoing professional development training are often all products of the same educational brand names, used to educate the teacher in the first place. According to Stickney (2012), … professional development sessions expose educators to current initiatives, but, with little opportunity to investigate evidentiary bases or experiment … Rather, they have to know how to perform the rhetoric superficially to each other’s satisfaction, signalling allegiance to authorized mandates and reacting [as though] intent to implement the reform instead of displaying depth of comprehension or open resistance. (11)

Played out in our experience of a teacher’s daily life, teaching has become colonized by corporate structures and increasingly controlled by the particular expectations established by a brand. The effect of this initiation process, it would seem to us, is that teachers become company workers, ‘stamped’ with the particular mark of a particular educational brand name, for example ‘Pearson’. Centrally controlled definitions of what is to be learned (standards) as well as how the learning is to be assessed (standardized tests) appear to be both manufactured by private companies and then packaged for teacher education programmes and K-12 public schools. Pursuing this analogy further still, teacher education becomes a primary element in what is, effectively, a vertical integration production chain. Once teachers have completed their teacher education, or the manufacturing process, they are assembled in districts and distributed to schools where the same prescribed curricula utilized in their teacher training is imposed in their daily classroom practice. The students whom they teach are educated likewise. Greaver has suggested that the ultimate objective of many commercialized educational curricula is to cultivate a high-performing test taker, beginning at age seven (Greaver 1999). We question, with him, the value of seeing the aim of education as just such a product, the value both to the individual herself and to the wider society. Take the capacity to develop skills of critical thinking in learners, for example; what place might there be for critical thinking in a (prescribed) curriculum of this kind? How valuable to society would the product of such a process be,



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who neither knew how, nor was expected to be able, to exercise their critical consciousness or their human agency? While the concept of vertical integration is an overview of an entire system, we intend to look specifically at the teacher education or manufacturing component in more depth as the key component of the system and of particular relevance to the theme of this volume, learning teaching from experience. Teachers emerge from their teacher education programmes prepared to teach by the (company) book, preparing their students for the tests, which the company has created, using curricular materials, which the company has created. In essence, the teacher, too, becomes a product of the company, with every aspect of their initial and continuing professional development moulded by the vertically integrated corporation of which they are a part and which controls every element of the teacher supply chain. This mechanization ultimately displaces teacher education and teacher experience. The Obama administration has helped to bring teacher education under intense scrutiny. The administration’s 2011 report, Our Future, Our Teachers, highlights what the administration considers to be the ‘mediocre job’ teacher education is currently doing, emphasizing the idea that 62 per cent of teachers leaving teacher education programmes felt underprepared for work (Duncan 2009, 2011 and 2012, Levine 2006: 32, US Department of Education 2011). Subsequently, the language used in the report, as well as in many of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s speeches, is full of allusions to vertical integration. Statements like ‘focused on program inputs as opposed to outcomes’, ‘propelled by inputs, instead of by outcomes’, ‘supply and demand’, ‘focuses on inputs, not on primary outcomes’ echo the concepts of vertical integration discussed earlier in this chapter (Duncan 2009, 2011, 2012; US Department of Education 2011). Education reform rhetoric tends to highlight teachers as the reason for educational woes, placing teachers and teaching at the centre of their proposals for reform (Oancea and Orchard 2012). In President Obama’s 2012 budget request, a teacher education ‘overhaul’ is proposed, with the suggestion that teacher education programmes ‘combine meaningful input with meaningful output [data]’, and that teacher education programmes be held responsible for the ‘achievement of students taught by their graduates’ (Sawchuck 2011a: 1). In addition to the mandates proposed, the budget also proposes a ‘competitive grant program’ meant to provide states with funds to support ‘top-tier’ teacher education programmes in giving their ‘top-tier’ teacher education students scholarships to teach in areas considered ‘high need’ (Sawchuck 2011b: 1).

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Between the overwhelming rhetoric surrounding education reform and pressure mounting to link teacher training with test scores, teacher education programmes fall easily into the arms of corporate structures to help support them in these more ‘standardized’ endeavours. However, in this process, established notions of valuable teacher experience are supplanted by an alternative account based on manufacturing discourses provided by the vertically integrated companies like Pearson, Scholastic or OpenCourt in the business of providing ‘teacher-proof ’ or ‘scripted’ curricula. The notion of ‘teacher-proofing’ as the policy-makers’ strategy of choice is well established in the teacher education literature (e.g. Darling-Hammond 1986), with teachers regarded as semiskilled, low-paid workers in the mass production of education who must be directed to change their established, seemingly ineffectual behaviour patterns. In response to policy concerns of this kind, Stanford University and Pearson teamed up to create a new and national Teacher Performance Assessment in March 2011 (Gaber 2011). While Stanford researchers developed the elements for the assessment, Pearson provided the web-based platform needed for national use of the exam. Stanford, by its own admission, chose Pearson because they were willing to put up the seed money needed to redevelop the TPA (Gaber 2011). The TPA, according to Cochran-Smith, Piaza and Power, ‘is sponsored by a private research university with support from a for-profit testing company. In this way, the TPA crisscrosses state, local and national policy levels as well as public and private sponsorship’ (Cochran-Smith et al. 2013: 76). This trend of private intervention in the public realm of education has also been heavily documented over time (Apple 2006, Picciano and Spring 2013, Saltman 2012, Paine and Zeichner 2012) and its practical impact on the control of teacher production is very real. As a result, an assessment typically handled by a teacher educator, actively involved in the training of the student teacher, is now an assessment submitted to an online depository and graded via the internet, by professionals adhering to a rubric and digital marking system. In addition to the tuition the student teacher must pay for their education and training, and they must also pay Pearson an additional fee for the administration and grading of the Teacher Performance Assessment. The Pearson Teacher Performance Assessment uses a limited and linear approach to determine teacher quality. Pearson’s corporate approach, when examined through a critical lens, is questionable. It removes assessment by specialist and established teacher educators, typically working in long-standing partnership arrangements with schools and groups of teachers, from gatekeeping roles, and replaces these with a distant, digitized, rubric-based and



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impersonal mode of evaluation (Madeloni and Berlack 2013). Corporatized education does not require an examination of human connection, growth, critical thinking or nuance. Rather, it relies on a systematic, mechanized approach to processing information that is optimally efficient; focused on ‘input’ and ‘output’ (Picciano and Spring 2013; Spring 1972; US Department of Education 2011) . Moreover, a mechanized assessment process works hand-in-hand with a mechanized teaching process. Such a process not only removes human interaction but the rigour, reflection and philosophical aspects which characterize more traditional modes of teacher education at their best (see Sloat et al. in this volume). The teacher educator is reframed as a worker, albeit a skilled technician, on a production line; the student teacher a product of the process which must conform to standardized requirements. Such a conception of teacher education undermines what and how teachers learn from experience. Indeed, questioning what teachers might learn from experience, treating it as a contested matter, runs counter to the idea of a streamlined mechanization process because it is so potentially disruptive to the system.

Why opposition is necessary Education is ‘in [the] process of being redefined, from a promise to make education accessible to all, to an investment opportunity for venture capital’ (Wolin 2008: 136). A corporate structure is poised to take over public schools, to privatize them and create, en masse, a population who lacks critical thinking skills, the capacity for innovation and, most importantly, the ability to resist (Giroux and McLaren 1986; Kovacks 2011; Spring 1972; Picciano and Spring 2013). A significantly less equitable educational system has been developed (Apple 2006; Piccianno and Spring 2013; Saltman 2012), raising concerns that this will continue if standardized and hierarchical corporate practices expand as a normal and necessary response to perceptions of poor quality (see also Trippestad in this volume). However, if the United States public education system is in crisis, its problems apparently so intractable, what motivates any successful multinational company to become involved in the provision of schooling? The answer must be concerned with profit or companies could not justify their actions to their shareholders; the very large financial gains indeed available in the education marketplace can be illustrated with reference to the following example. The

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federal ‘Race to the Top’ programme, drawing on approximately $5 billion of public money, made adoption of the Common Core standards a prerequisite for application (US Department of Education 2009). Pearson, along with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), won $23 million in contracts to begin creating Common Core test questions (Gewertz 2012). As we have argued (see above), vertical integration is a successful business model for two major reasons concerned with cost and control. To optimize their profits, the businesses must control every aspect of the manufacturing process to ensure quality and outcome; and they must standardize that process if they are to benefit from economies of scale. So the Common Core tests provided must be of a certain type to justify involvement in the sector to shareholders, and this comes at a cost to educational quality assessed by other measures. If too great a premium is placed on pupils’ success in Common Core testing, it reduces the job of the teacher to one of achieving a test score and nothing more. Evaluating the effectiveness of teachers as educators on the basis of the test scores of their students in standardized tests of this type, rather than on teacher assessment of pupils’ capacity to question or think independently, for example, seems ethically questionable. It skews the notion of success in education to the capacity to conform very reliably indeed to the demands of standardized tests at the expense of other kinds of educational achievement, including the capacity to be imaginative, creative or critical. While teachers remain in the system educated according to more traditional means and motivated by a broader set of educational aims, there is a critical need for some form of social reconstruction. While a wider understanding of pedagogy and appreciation of the role that reflection on experience plays in the development of critical consciousness is retained across the teaching force, more radical forms of educational reform than that concerned with improving performance on a standardized test may be conceived. The education that teachers receive from traditionally constructed teacher education programmes, coupled with their daily classroom experience, fosters this. A transformative teacher education programme of this kind frames teaching and learning in ways that focus on critical pedagogies (Giroux and McLaren 1986). It offers an experience with creative opportunities for student teachers’ individual, cultural and economic differences to be exposed and explored so that they may be enhanced and expanded (Zhao 2012). Our experience suggests that teacher education is needed which raises ‘activist teachers engaged in challenging and transforming inequitable structures and policies in schools and policies in schools and societies’ (Vrasidas at al. 2008).



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However, as vertical integration takes hold in education, future new teachers will experience teacher education programmes in a different mould. The choices student teachers and teacher educators currently enjoy, the relative freedom with which they are able to learn from experience, are being replaced by new programmes based on manufacturing paradigms which dictate what must be learned and how it must be taught. As Apple and Teitelbaum (1986) forewarned over 30 years ago, the pre-packaged curriculum ‘represents a new form of control over teachers and students’ (180); in this light, professional autonomy may soon become a thing of the past.

Voice and resistance The language of business may be well suited to manufacturing, mining, franchising and so forth. Yet, as Boyles observes, it focuses myopically on profit at the expense of other possible valuable dimensions of human life. Applied to schooling, he goes on to argue, such a language ‘minimizes human interaction among and between students and teachers’ so that they become ‘subsumed under the logic of profit (read: high test scores)’ (Boyles 2011: i). The corporatization process exercises a dehumanizing effect on teaching and learning which teachers and teacher educators have a responsibility to resist. However, the impact of the demands of education as manufacturing process takes its toll and is apparent in the everday observations we have heard voiced by fellow teachers. ‘I have no time to get involved in politics, I have papers to grade and tests to get my “kids” ready for’; ‘What will happen if I don’t prepare my students for the tests, it’s not like we can get rid of testing’; ‘I haven’t the time to think about politics, I am in my classroom working hard’. Similar kinds of statements may be articulated more forcefully still by those teachers, encouraged by others to become part of any act of resistance, who regard resistance as something that is both distant from their professional experience and extreme. They might disagree with the corporatization process in principle but regard the political practice of resistance as futile. But surely resist we must, if as teachers we are to reclaim ownership of our profession and of the process of education? Take, for example, the resistance of student teachers and teacher educators at the University of Massachusetts (UMASS), who decided that the Pearson TPA was not what they wanted their teacher education process to look like and resisted its introduction. En masse, the student teachers in the programme refused to use the Pearson version of

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the TPA, spoke out against it and began a small movement (Carmichael 2012; Hayes and Sokolower 2013; Winerip 2012). Some 67 of 68 students refused to participate in the Pearson TPA, declining to submit the two 10-minute videos and 40-page take-home test required (Winerip 2012). The teacher educator working with this group of students, Dr Barbara Madeloni, supported them and protested her own loss of voice and power as the teacher educator who had worked with the students and would have typically graded the TPA. Their resistance was documented in the New York Times and other media outlets and has helped to fuel the debate around corporate interest in US education. In Maldoni’s own words: [T]his is eerily similar to what is happening in K-12 education, where teachers’ voices are silenced, and teaching is subject to technocratic high surveillance accountability measures that destroy the potential of the classroom to be a place of inquiry, creativity, and liberation … It is my responsibility as a teacher educator to not only help students see and understand what is happening in and to schools, but to support the development of the strength, wisdom, and courage to determine how to intersect with that system in order to change it. (2012)

Such teachers are not alone in their desire to resist; and may seek to collaborate with others in teaching and beyond, to include for example parents and carers similarly motivated to fight the standardization of curriculum and assessment for their own and other people’s children. We have in mind here web-based activism of the kind being led by unitedoptout.com, cantbeneutral.org and timeoutfortesting.org. ‘Can’t Be Neutral’ (http://www.cantbeneutral.org/) is an organization which was formed to support Dr Barbara Madeloni when, as a result of her activism, she was given a letter of non-renewal from UMASS. Each of the aforementioned organizations, uniting student, teacher and parent groups, have rallied against a ‘corporatization of education’ or ‘high stakes testing’ and each clearly states this opposition in their mission statements. Teachers have a special right to consideration of their views on this matter because of the direct impact of standardization and corporatization on their working lives as well as their professional development. If the potential of the classroom to be a place of inquiry, creativity and liberation is to be realized, we propose teacher education programmes develop what Ayers and Ayers term a ‘pedagogy of insurgency’ (2011) that is ‘filled with hopes and dreams … sometimes defiant and rude, sometimes subversive, always revolutionary’ (Ayers and Ayers 2011: 125). Such an approach would teach specific critical pedagogies that enable teachers to challenge and resist



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apparently unwelcome and damaging policy interventions, in this case the influence of mechanization and standardization in learning and teaching. It would value teacher experience too, by encouraging classroom teachers to play an active and independent role in the teacher education process. Such teachers would defy the imposition of ‘teacher proof ’, ‘scripted’ curricula in place of ones that are teacher-led. They would refuse to comply with structures which favour teaching to the test, over learning to be critical. They would resist the struggle to teach more children with fewer instructional hours, fewer instructional days, fewer resources and for lower rates of remuneration. They would refuse to manufacture and be manufactured; refuse teacher education which mechanizes classroom routines and displaces learning with teaching by rote. They would challenge the factory managers that now serve as our principals and seek to replace the chief executive officers who currently serve as superintendants with communities of teachers, students and parents. Thus, teacher resistance would influence all aspects of school life: community liason, school and district leadership, textbook and curriculum development and professional development. Experience teaches us of the ultimate value to individuals and society as a whole, when freedom of thought, creativity and criticality are cultivated in classrooms as a priority over performance in standardized testing. For this to happen teacher experience and reflection must remain at the centre of teacher education and teacher practice through political involvement, practical involvement, university-based teaching and learning and academic publication.

References Apple, M. (2006). Educating the ‘Right’ Way: Market, Standards, God, and Inequality. New York: Routledge. Apple, M., and Teitelbaum, K. (1986). Are teachers losing control of their skills and curriculum? Journal of Curriculum Studies 18: 177–84. Ayers, R. and W. Ayers (2011). Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Bajarin, B. (2011). Why competing with Apple is so difficult. Time, 1 July. Berlack, A. (2010a). Teacher Performance Assessment: A Response to Manufactured Schooling and Societal Crisis. Paper presented at the Understanding Complex Ecologies in a Changing World, Denver, CO, aera.net —(2010b). Coming soon to your favorite credential program: National Exit Exams. Rethinking Schools.

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Boyles, D. (2011). Foreword. In P. E. Kovacs (ed.), The Gates Foundation and the Future of US ‘Public’ Schools. New York: Routledge. Can’t be Neutral. http://www.cantbeneutral.org/ (accessed 15 June 2013). Carmichael, M. (2012). UMass lecturer says school is punishing her. Boston Globe, 21 September. Coase, R. (1937). The nature of the firm. Economica 4: 386–405. Cochran-Smith, M., Piazza, P. and Power, C. (2013). The politics of accountability: assessing teacher education in the United States. The Educational Forum 77 (1): 6–27. Darling-Hammond, L. (1986). Valuing teachers: the making of a profession. Teachers College Record 86: 209–18. Dell, M., Magretta, J. and Rollins, K. (1998). The power of virtual integration: an interview with Dell Computer’s Michael Dell. Harvard Business Review 63. Duncan, A. (2009). A new approach to teacher education reform and improvement. Remarks at the Education Sector Forum, 30 September 2011; http://www.ed.gov/ news/speeches/new-approach-teacher-education-reform-and-improvement (accessed 7 May 2012). —(2011). World class teachers and school leaders. Opening remarks at the International Summit on the Teaching Profession, 14 March 2012; http://www. ed.gov/news/speeches/world-class-teachers-and-school-leaders; http://www.ed.gov/ news/speeches/world-class-teachers-and-school-leaders (accessed 7 May 2012). —(2012). Teacher preparation: reforming the uncertain profession. Remarks at Teachers College, Columbia University, 22 October 2009; http://www.ed.gov/news/ speeches/teacher-preparation-reforming-uncertain-profession (accessed 7 May 2012). Frank, L. K. (1925). The significance of industrial integration. Journal of Political Economy, 33 (2): 179–95. Gaber, A. (2011). Stanford University and Pearson collaborate to deliver the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA): Pearson Press Release. Gewertz, C. (2012). Questions dog common-test development. Education Week, 31 July; http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/07/31/37act.h31.html?tkn=VLRF2glE cLcrMFhnnueFRoBVKJ3v6e6dmkjv (accessed 1 September 2012). Giroux, H. A. and McLaren, P. (1986). Teacher education and the politics of engagement: the case for democratic schooling. Harvard Educational Review 56 (3): 213–38. Greaver, M. (1999). Strategic Outsourcing: A Structured Approach to Outsourcing Decisions and Initiatives. New York: Amacom. Harrigan, K. R. (2003). Vertical Integration, Outsourcing and Corporate Strategy. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Hayes, N., and Sokolower, J. (2013). Stanford/Pearson test for new teachers draws fire. Rethinking Schools 27 (Winter). Keith, R. (2009). Does a vertically integrated partner make sense. Supply Chain Management Review July/August: 42–9.



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Klein, B., Crawford, R. and Alchian, A. (1978). Vertical integration, appropriable rents, and the competitive contracting process. Journal of Law and Economics 21 (2): 297–326. Kluegel, J. and Smith, E. (1986). Beliefs about Inequality: Americans’ Views of What Is and What Ought To Be. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Kovacs, P. E. (ed.) (2011). The Gates Foundation and the Future of U.S. ‘Public’ Schools. New York: Routledge. Levine, A. (2006). Educating School Teachers. Washington, DC: The Education Schools Project. Madeloni, B. and Berlak, A. (2013). From PACT to Pearson: The Teacher Performance Assessment and the Corporatization of Teacher Education Objectives. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Oancea, A. and Orchard, J. (2012) The future of teacher education. Journal of Philosophy of Education 46: 574–88. Paine, L. and Zeichner, K. (2012). The local and the global in reforming teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education Review 56 (4): 569–83. Pearson (2013). North American Education; http://www.pearson.com/about-us/ education/north-america.html (accessed 2 June 2013). Picciano, A. G. and Spring, J. (2013). The Great American Education-Industrial Complex. New York: Routledge. Ricketts, M. (2002). The Economics of Business Enterprise: An Introduction to Economic Organization and the Theory of the Firm. 3rd edn. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Sachs, J. (2003). The Activist Teaching Profession. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Saltman, K. (2012). The Failure of Corporate School Reform: Towards a New Common School Movement. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Sawchuck, S. (2011a). Administration pushes teacher-prep accountability. Education Week; http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/09/23hea_ep.h30.html (accessed 1 September 2012). —(2011b). Momentum builds for teacher education overhaul. Education Week, 30 September; http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/30/06teach.h31.html?tkn=Y RRF1mC3SC3mVBkXEL/4TCwzS0JJ2PagGvvH (accessed 1 September 2012). Spring, J. H. (1972). Education and the Rise of the Corporate State. Boston: Beacon Press. Stickney, J. A. (2012). Judging teachers: Foucault, governance and agency during education reforms. Educational Philosophy and Theory 44 (6): 649–62. Stuckey, J., and White, D. (1993). When and when not to vertically integrate. McKinsey Quarterly 3. Time out from excessive and high stakes testing. http://timeoutfromtesting.org/ (accessed 15 June 2013). United Opt Out National. unitedoptout.com (accessed 15 June 2013).

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US Department of Education (2009). Race to the Top Program. Washington, DC. —(2011). Our Future, Our Teachers: The Obama Administration’s Plan for Teacher Education Reform and Improvement. Washington, DC. Vrasidas, C., Koushiappi, M., and Zembylas, M. (2008). Quest for cohesion: social policies and inclusive education. Social Watch; http://www.socialwatch.org (accessed 15 June 2013). Williamson, O. (1967). Hierarchical control and optimum firm size. J.P.E. 75: 123–38. —(1971). The vertical integration of production: market failure considerations. A.E.R. Papers and Proc. 61: 112–23. Winerip, M. (2012). Move to outsource teacher licensure process drives protest, New York Times, 6 May. Wolin, S. S. (2008). Democracy Incorporated. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zeichner, K. (2010). Competition, economic rationalization, increased surveillance, and attacks on diversity: neo-liberalism and the transformation of teacher education in the U.S. Teaching and Teacher Education 26: 1544–52. Zhao, Y. (2012). World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, a Joint Publication with the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

Part Three

The Experience of Learning to Teach English, Maths and Science

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Negotiating conflicting frames of experience: Learning to teach in an urban teacher residency Lauren Gatti

Orion Academy is perched on the far west side of a large American city. Start from the city’s commercial centre. Head west. Keep driving. You will watch neighbourhoods become less white and more black, see more people waiting at bus stops, despite the sub-zero temperatures, despite the heat. Boutiques and coffee shops with hip, one-word names like ‘Grind’ and ‘Sip’ and ‘Sew’ give way to stretches of empty lots, storefront churches with boarded-up windows and Pay Day Loan buildings. Streets grow pocked. Closed-down buildings multiply. Corner stores accept food stamps, sell meat and advertise dollarcleaning supplies. The sore thumb of a newly constructed condominium, odd as a spaceship, boasts a sign demanding, ‘Stop killing people’. Sugar Ray’s bar is closed. Little Miracle Child Care is windowless. But as you approach Orion, you will see a mural on the building’s side, its images and words easy to miss if you do not look up: the word ‘urban’; a black man holding a baby; the words ‘balance’ and ‘housing’; a beautiful city garden. Inside tells another story, with its harsh fluorescent lighting, metal detectors looming between you and the hallways, and security guards screaming for students to ‘Get to class!’ Like many American schools serving poor and minority students in large, urban areas, Orion was designated ‘failing’ under the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act (NCLB) of 2001. Initially the school was turned into a group of smaller schools under the city’s ‘Small Schools Initiative’, funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The underfunding and eventual failure of the Small Schools Initiative at Orion illustrates what Pauline Lipman (2011) argues is the danger of venture philanthropies in education (like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the United States): when the funder(s) decides that a

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particular initiative is no longer working, they pull out. In Orion’s situation, the one reform, Small Schools, was traded in for a different reform that would better ensure ‘dramatic gains’ in student achievement (as measured by test scores). In 2008 the cluster of small schools was taken over by an Urban Teacher Residency called Leaders for Equity in Education (LEE).1 Despite the turnaround in its governance, statistically the school remains one of the district’s lowest performing. According to the city’s 2010–11 ‘report card’, Orion had 1,238 students, 85 per cent of whom were designated low income. Demographically, 83.7 per cent of the student body was black, 11.8 per cent was Hispanic, 3.9 per cent was multiracial and 0.6 per cent was white. In 2011, 0 per cent of Orion students were ‘college ready’ as determined by meeting the benchmark scores on three of the four content area sections on the ACT, the national college admissions exam in the United States. The graduation rate in 2011 was 69.2 per cent. This chapter explores how one novice English teacher, Genesis, learned to teach English in this complex urban context. I begin by describing the Urban Teacher Residency, a new and increasingly popular model of teacher preparation in the United States, before describing the particular residency in which Genesis was enrolled, Leaders for Equity in Education (LEE). This chapter interrogates the way in which competing experiential frames – the way Genesis and others enacted their own understandings of how to teach urban students – shaped the process by which Genesis learned to teach. I show the experiential frames that Genesis brought to bear upon learning teaching – as an African American, a Pentecostal Christian, a woman from Orion’s neighbourhood – and distinguish them from other possible frames found within her setting, including that of her white mentor teacher’s ‘compassion’; and the rhetorical framing of ‘no excuses’ expressed in the residency programme’s curricular and evaluative centrepiece for classroom management, Doug Lemov’s text Teach Like a Champion (2010). I demonstrate how these frames inevitably convey normative assumptions about who urban students are and what they need emotionally, disciplinarily and academically from schooling, which collide in important ways with the experiential frame of ‘each one teach one’ that Genesis employs, which is predicated on cultural competence, high expectations and academic rigour. The distinction between Genesis’s frame of ‘each one teach one’ and the frames of her setting illuminates the value of critical thinking when it lies at the heart of intellectual work in urban classrooms and challenges the desirability of frameworks of ‘compassion’ or learning-as-compliance where such rigour is inherently lacking.



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Within this chapter I approach the available experiential frames within Genesis’s setting as distinct in order to understand how Genesis’s frames co-existed with others; however, I understand that experiential frames are not discrete and isolated from one another. In fact, I would argue that learning to teach is an unavoidable struggle between countless permutations of available experiential frames: for example, one could enact the frame of ‘compassion’ and advocate for a ‘no excuses’ classroom and attempt to leverage students’ funds of knowledge. To complicate this, any number of experiential frames potentially circulate within a given classroom, contingent as they are upon what students and teachers bring to the classroom setting. However, what interests me analytically is how the dominant experiential frames of Genesis’s setting index larger ideological realities, reminding us that she does not labour in isolation but is an agent within a complicated policy context where her own frame of ‘each one teach one’ contends with the larger, recognizable frames of ‘no excuses’ and ‘compassion’. This chapter illustrates how the circulation, interaction and eventual privileging of particular experiential frames constitute one important set of tensions – intellectual, interpersonal and ideological – within the messy endeavour of learning teaching in a high-needs urban classroom.

The urban teacher residency The residency model of urban teacher preparation is fast becoming the ‘next big thing’ in teacher education, in part because its approach to experience is both innovative and promising. Based on the apprenticeship model of the medical residency whereby novice teachers (‘residents’) work closely with excellent practitioners within real classrooms, urban teacher residencies centralize the integration of theory and practice. They pair ‘residents’ – many of whom are teachers of colour and/or career changers, and all of whom go through a highly competitive selection process – with mentor teachers in the residency’s district schools. These mentors are not only trained to mentor the residents placed in their classrooms, but are also provided support by the residency to do this work through course releases, additional compensation and coaching support. Paid a salary for their participation, residents complete five weeks of intensive summer coursework through the LEE residency; partnering university and are then paired with a mentor teacher for a year-long apprenticeship in a high-needs urban school. Residents take master’s-level courses throughout their school year and by the end of their residency have earned a master’s in teaching.

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In turn, they commit to teaching for at least three years in a high-needs school and are guaranteed induction supported by the residency’s mentor coaches. The way in which teaching residencies focus on extended clinical experience, intense teacher induction support, connection to community and school needs and the integration of theory and practice represent some of the most salient features of good teacher education. This ‘third way’ (Berry et al. 2008) of teacher preparation aims to mitigate the challenges posed by having teachers enter the field either with too little relevant experience in the field or too much time in the university classroom (i.e. online programmes, many university programmes). Moreover, it tackles the issue of too much responsibility in the field and not enough time in the classroom that has been identified in other ‘fast-track’ teacher education programmes, including Teach for America or Teach First (see Daniel Muijs’ work in this volume). Research indicates that the residency programmes are already having a powerful impact on teacher attrition: 85 per cent of residency graduates stay teaching in urban schools beyond the required three years (http://www.utrunited.org/). Residency programmes in the United States are by and large partnerships between school districts, individual schools and universities. However, the residency in which Genesis was enrolled, Leaders for Equity in Education (LEE), was started in 2001 by a venture philanthropist2 and is a partnership with the large, city school district and a local university. LEE’s mission is twofold: to turn around a portion of the city’s failing schools and to prepare urban teachers – through its paid residency programme – to teach in its network of turn­arounds. LEE’s presence in the city is controversial. When schools are labelled failing, closed and targeted for turnaround (a process entailing almost complete restaffing of the faculty), they are taken over by one of two organizations: the district’s School Improvement Office or LEE. LEE currently manages almost 25 turnaround elementary and high schools, six of which were recently (and controversially) acquired in the winter of 2012. LEE is a competitive programme, accepting only 10 per cent of its applicants. Those who are accepted are paid an $18,000 salary plus a $12,000 stipend for their residency year. Importantly, they commit to teaching in an LEE turnaround school for four years after their residency year. If the resident does not finish her residency year or if she does not teach the full four years she must repay a pro-rated percentage of her $12,000 stipend. Like other residencies, LEE residents undertake five weeks of intensive summer coursework taught by professors from LEE’s partnering university. Unlike other residency programmes, LEE residents are interviewed by principals in



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LEE’s network of turnaround schools for employment in one of those schools, and LEE residents must take a course focused exclusively on techniques (‘teacher moves’) taken from the classroom management text Teach Like a Champion (Lemov 2010).

The experience of ‘Compassion’ Precisely the kind of ‘career changer’ LEE aims to attract, Genesis came into her residency with a rich academic and professional history, having worked as a substitute teacher, a site director for a college programme and a college/career coach in a large urban high school. Beyond her college degree, she completed two graduate degrees: a Master’s of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing and Black Literature and an MEd in Educational Studies/Instructional Leadership. In college she converted to Pentecostal Christianity, a religious orientation, she reported, that permeated her learning to teach process. ‘God just never lets me down,’ Genesis shared. ‘Even with the LEE program when I was praying on it, and I’m like what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to be in a ministry? Am I supposed to teach? … And I was praying one morning and the spirit spoke and said, “Teaching and ministry is one in the same”’ (Interview, 8 October 2010). Genesis was placed with one other resident, Jackie, in Emily Cane’s classroom at Orion where they were required to teach British Literature and Advanced Placement (AP). While there were numerous classroom practices they found problematic – teaching decontextualized excerpts of difficult, canonical texts, for example, in the name of ‘college readiness’ – they were particularly stymied by Emily’s approach to students’ (mis)behaviour. Jackie explained, ‘Emily is just a really compassionate teacher and she likes to give kids a lot of chances and they take advantage of that’ (Interview, 19 January 2011). A student ‘cussed out’ Emily, Genesis recounted, and was allowed to remain in class. Genesis speculated, ‘I don’t know if it’s me as a black woman teaching black kids that I’m like, “Oh no, you would not get away with that if I was teaching.” … And it may seem harsh but there are certain things I’m not falling for. You will not treat me that way’ (Interview, 1 December 2010). Emily, who had grown up in one of the city’s wealthier suburbs, spoke openly about the ways that race and class shaped her relationships with students, and candidly shared the struggles she initially encountered as a young, white teacher teaching almost an entirely poor, African American student body.

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My first year was just horrible. Kids were hitting on me left and right. Girls were threatening to beat me up. Kids were cursing me out and I was trying to teach them how to write a paper. So I learned in my first three or four months that what I was doing wasn’t going to work … [So] I just stopped and I just talked to my kids for weeks and learned about who they were … [It was] the best thing I could have done. And we got really, really close. (Interview, 15 December 2010)

In many ways Emily’s approach is laudable: she recognizes interpersonal tension and addresses it openly. She understands that relationships are central to the work of teaching and she allocates time to cultivate them with her students. As a white woman who grew up in the suburbs of the city she is aware that she must take this time to develop relationships if she is to teach the students in front of her. However, this relational work is not done within the realm of intellectual work; it is the work of ‘compassion’ and giving and understanding. And, as Jackie and Genesis both note, it inadvertently translates to students believing that they can get away with acting disrespectfully, whether that is ‘cussing out’ Emily as Genesis describes, or walking out of class without permission and to be met with no consequences. Genesis’ approach to learning to teach, especially regarding classroom management, is similarly framed by her own experience, but as a black woman from the same neighbourhood as her students. Genesis explained: I think [race] plays a part when students are trying to get away with stuff that I know that that’s what they’re doing … I think at some point you need to set an example because some kids will flat out [say] ‘I don’t want to be here today. I don’t want to do this.’ [And I think] ‘You don’t get a pass. Get on task. That’s what you need to do right now.’ … [So] I’m starting to decide what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. I do less coddling because I learned really quickly that there’s one student who just wants my attention, and I don’t have a problem with that but I’m going to give it to you on my terms. You will not monopolize my time when I have to teach an entire class, so I’m not going to keep coming around telling you to pick your head up. And so part of me wanting to make the lessons more engaging is so I don’t have to deal with stuff like that. (Interview, 1 December 2010)

Like Emily, Genesis contended with student disengagement and ‘push-back’, but her response to these behaviours was antithetical to Emily’s, in part because she understood by virtue of her own experience where her students were coming from. But more than this, Genesis understands that her curricular and intellectual choices – ‘wanting to make the lessons more engaging’ – have the



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potential to catalyze engagement and reduce conflict in the classroom. Genesis sees an approach of ‘coddling’, or compassion, as an ineffective and undesirable way to respond to students’ misbehaviour because it ultimately detracts from her larger purpose, which is to educate the entire class. Genesis explained: I think deep down they’re good kids. They’ve been lied to a lot [by] people close to them. Their trust level is really low. Apathetic … I often think they’re trying to get [one] over on [us]. And I told one little boy, ‘I’m old-school west side. You’re not going to get over on me.’ And he knew exactly what I meant. You can’t pull on me what I invented. ‘Excuses, excuses are the tools of incompetence that build monuments and nothingness and don’t achieve anything.’ That’s what I say when I get excuses. I’m just like you can do it. You will do it or you’re out. And I don’t give them the option to go. (Interview, 16 December 2010)

Genesis capitalizes on her insider knowledge of the community – ‘I’m old-school west side’ – to communicate that she recognizes her students’ excuses and is simultaneously unwilling to accept them.

Teaching like a champion: The experience of compliance and ‘No Excuses’ Emily’s experiential frame of compassion was not the only thing that Genesis was wrestling with as she made sense of the work of learning teaching. As an employee of LEE,3 she also contended with the requirement to enact ‘teacher moves’ from Doug Lemov’s text, Teach Like a Champion, the classroom management regime that constituted LEE’s evaluative and pedagogical centre of gravity. In the United States, Lemov is becoming a more and more influential figure within the education reform movement, in large part because his approaches to classroom management are distilled into easily observable and replicable practices. The managing director of Uncommon Schools, Lemov trains school leaders and teachers across the country and acts as the overseer of Uncommon Schools’ True North network of charter schools in the United States. Lemov’s background is not in education studies but business studies: he holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Teach Like a Champion is a collection of 49 techniques gleaned from observations of teachers (primarily in charter and Knowledge Is Power Programme (KIPP) schools) who have raised the test scores of underserved children in urban schools. The text’s primary goal is to offer techniques that are ‘specific, concrete, and actionable’ (3) and

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to provide a ‘tool box for closing the achievement gap’ (3). The art of teaching, Lemov explains, is in ‘the discretionary application of the techniques’ (13). Because Lemov’s techniques are observable, concrete and named (e.g., ‘Cold Call’, ‘No Excuses’, ‘Do It Again’, etc.) they provide a common social language for the residents, their mentors, coaches and professors. One professor from LEE’s partnering university synthesized Lemov’s place in the curriculum, pointing to the book as he explained, not uncritically, ‘This is our Bible.’ I quickly learned that this was not hyperbolic: every person from LEE referred to this text frequently. When I asked Emily what percentage of her strategies came from Lemov, she responded succinctly, ‘Everything is Lemov.’ For Lemov, individual students’ compliance and acquisition of particular skills are essential to closing the achievement gap. To this end, teachers must be taught to attend, in considerable detail, to micro-practices in the classroom. For example, Lemov outlines the virtues of timing students as they pass in papers – again and again, until they do this as fast as they can – as a way to routinize the classroom and afford the teacher more time to teach content. Students must be trained to operate as schoolteachers in ways that are efficient, compliant, organized and orderly because, Lemov argues, when you add up the seconds that inefficiency costs, over the course of the year there are hours, if not weeks, that are lost to the bureaucratic minutiae, time that can and should be spent teaching content. He refers to this as ‘sweating the small stuff ’.4 In many ways, Lemov’s approach is historically recognizable as part of the social efficiency tradition in teacher education, an approach that ‘emphasizes the acquisition of specific and observable skills that are assumed to be related to pupil learning’ (Liston and Zeichner 1991: 16). In particular, Lemov’s techniques are reminiscent of Stanford University’s ‘microteaching’ in the 1960s and 1970s (Liston and Zeichner 1991). While Lemov’s approach to teaching and learning has recognizable historical antecedents in teacher education, his position is within a larger educational reform movement that often values experience over theoretically informed pedagogy and indexes current anti-university sentiment. Lemov explains: Unfortunately, this dizzying efficient technique [quickly passing in papers] – so efficient it is all but a moral imperative for teachers to use it – remains beneath the notice of avatars of educational theory. There isn’t a school of education in the country that would stoop to teach its aspiring teachers how to train their students to pass out papers, even though it is one of the most valuable things they could possibly do. (8)



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Disdain for schools of education is unmistakable, conveyed rhetorically in Lemov’s characterization of them refusing to ‘stoop’ to the level of practice. Positioning himself in opposition to ‘avatars of educational theory’, Lemov is an ‘in-the-trenches’, pragmatic, no-nonsense reformer whose approaches are rooted in the ‘real’ experience of ‘real’ teachers. Schools of education, on the other hand, are ‘above it all’, unconcerned with the unromantic, ‘real’ concerns of practice, like passing out papers. Interestingly, certain techniques that Lemov advances align closely with educational research on teaching. His technique of ‘Wait Time’, for example, is a teacher’s purposeful delay after asking a student a question; it is employed to help foster more classroom discussion by interrupting the most common pattern of classroom discourse wherein the teacher Initiates, the student Responds and teacher Evaluates that response (Mehan 1979, Cazden 1988). Yet, despite the undeniable alignment of particular techniques, Lemov does not cite a single educational researcher, a gap that conveys a fairly strong message about how research emerging from universities is or is not valued within the education reform movement. The techniques that Lemov advances – whether these are the ones taken from his time as a student in Harvard’s Business School, or those practised by outstanding teachers he observed in charter and KIPP schools – are neither inherently bad nor inherently good. As with all tools, Lemov’s techniques are taken up differentially within each setting and by each teacher. In many ways Lemov is indeed filling a vacuum left by educational researchers: teachers in schools (and in university teacher education programmes) are desperate for a set of classroom management approaches that are replicable and effective. This is a crucial reality to note and retreating to a position of binaries – Lemov is bad – is not helpful. At the same time it is paramount to acknowledge that employing a social language like Lemov within any programme conveys particular (and problematic) ideologies, frames learning in ways that are primarily behaviourist, and risks positioning teachers as deployers of classroom management skills, and it is this reality – Lemov as social language – that is problematic. Lemov’s work continues to grow increasingly influential. Teach Like a Champion has, to all intents and purposes, gone viral, netting Lemov and his publisher John Wiley & Sons a good deal of money. In the 2011 fiscal year, the publisher ‘reported a 3% increase in revenue, to $1.74 billion, with net income rising 20% to $171.9 million … Sales in the professional education market grew 3% to $7 million, mainly due to Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion’ (http://

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www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/ article/47637-wiley-posts-gains-in-sales-and-earnings-in-fiscal-2011.html). Like the other LEE residents Genesis was required to enact the signature strategies of Lemov as her classroom-management system. Genesis saw the logic in a handful of the strategies she was asked to use. She cited ‘Do it again’ and ‘Do not engage’ as being effective for her and I saw her use ‘Narrate’ effectively; but as she gained experience throughout her residency year and developed a rapport with and respect from her students, she often framed her comments to students in ways that conveyed her belief that Lemov was infantalizing. ‘I’m so happy to see all these hands raised, [so] I don’t have to Cold Call.’5 Genesis explained: I think the whole control piece with Lemov is definitely more for middle school. I don’t think it works with high schoolers because you’re trying to develop them into creative beings, not robots … You want [kids to have an opinion] because you want the kids to be creative … I think you also have to develop a rapport with students and that’s where the no-nonsense nurturer comes in. I’m going to reprimand you until you get this is about your future. When you decide to be serious about it then maybe we won’t have these problems … I may have had to put you out [of the classroom] … [but] I’m not going to apologize for [it]. When you’re ready to get serious about your future then we won’t have these encounters. Until then, we’re going to have this problem. Do you get that? (Interview, 10 May 2011)

This approach reflects Genesis’ larger educational philosophy that school be ‘a source of enlightenment. Kids should be able to come in with their experiences [but] sometimes we throw pity parties for kids, like “oh this is this person’s circumstance”. Like, I get that, but how do we teach them past that? How do we get them to the point that this is my circumstance but you know what? [It’s] not my tomorrow’ (Interview, 22 March 2011). For Genesis ‘classroom management’ is not about control or compliance, as Lemov would have it. Nor is classroom management simply a process of enacting compassionate understanding when students act out. For Genesis it is about the articulated goal of creating an environment where students can ‘get serious about their future’. There is a crucial difference between the approach of ‘no excuses’ that Lemov advances and the ‘no-nonsense nurturer’ that Genesis aims for. Lemov’s unapologetic foregrounding of teachers’ attention to consistency and skill development backgrounds aspects of learning that are central to engagement: the content and coherence of the curriculum, the centrality of rapport and relationship-building



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between teachers and students, a purpose for study that is more compelling than testing and skills and an incentive to engage that transcends rule-following. Genesis seeks enlightenment and critical thinking for her students, not skill acquisition or compliance and not coddling.

‘Each One Teach One’ Genesis’ commitment to shifting the classroom culture of compassion and to helping her students be ‘creative beings, not robots’ was inextricably bound to the frames she used to make sense of her lived experience as a black woman, a Christian and a mother. These experiential frames deeply informed her interpretation, organization and enactment of the problematic British Literature curriculum she was required to teach. Genesis’ commitment to centralizing participatory opportunities for her British Literature students emerged from her larger disciplinary aims of ‘teach[ing] English and get[ting] the kids to think critically, and teach a skill, and teach a life moment’ (Interview, 22 March 2011). Genesis synthesized this philosophy as ‘each one teach one’: I really believe in ‘each one, teach one.’ Like if I find out something I want to share with you, not because I want you to think I’m smart, but because it’s information that can make life better. And life is all about making really good decisions and thinking critically about what’s going on … My goal is to make you think critically about the decisions you’re making in your life, about what’s going on in your life because you have to learn from other people’s lives. If all the African slaves that were brought here on ships had killed themselves, like they endured slavery, if they had killed themselves, where would you be? You wouldn’t be here. Sometimes I get tired. I’m like Harriet Tubman,6 you know? She might have got a ride from here to there and she walked. And what if she had cramps? I think about stuff like that. You won’t throw pity on me. (Interview, 16 December 2010)

Genesis’ references to African slaves and Harriet Tubman situate her teaching philosophy within a larger black historical context, grounding her belief that throwing pity on people for the difficult circumstances they endure cannot coexist with personal, cultural and historical evolution. Thus, she explicitly connects her teaching philosophy to the powerful African and African American historical actors who refused to give up, a legacy of resilience and determination that both she and her students are a part of.

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Genesis encapsulates these beliefs about teaching in the phrase ‘each one teach one’, a phrase that has its historical roots in the work of the Evangelical Christian missionary and mystic, Frank Laubach (1884–1970), who worked with the Maranao people of the Philippines, ultimately helping them devise a written language. When Laubach’s funding was cut, the chief of the Maranao people (who had been taught to read and write) stated that it was now the responsibility of those who could read and write to teach those who could not. Through this process, each one teaching another, literacy would be achieved for the Maranao people. This ‘each one teach one’ philosophy, a viewpoint that also reflects her deep Christian faith and her belief that teaching is an act of ministry (Interview, 8 October 2010), animates Genesis’ learning to teach process. Genesis’ capacity to connect with her students in culturally relevant ways (Ladson-Billings 1995) and her deep commitment to ‘each one teach one’ were powerful tools which enabled her to alchemize a fragmented and anaemic British Literature curriculum. For example, when it came time for Genesis to teach her first two-week unit she not only resisted the pattern that had been laid out for her by Emily (teaching excerpts of canonical texts) but also resisted the pedagogical patterns that Emily had modelled: reading during class, stopping periodically to discuss, and then reflecting for homework. ‘It’s boring,’ Genesis explained. ‘I wouldn’t want to be taught like that and I always try to put myself in the kids’ shoes. So I was like there has to be a better way to do [this]’ (Interview, 1 December 2010). The ‘better way to do this’ for Genesis was an impressive two-week British Literature unit organized around the essential question, ‘How are the voices and identities of children born?’ Genesis started the unit by having students read an article called ‘Britain’s Child Slaves’, explaining, ‘It had to be British Lit. So I used colonization for my own good this time’ (Interview, 1 December 2010). This unit was radically different from the excerpted and decontextualized texts that Emily had been teaching. It included poems by William Blake, short fiction by Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid and music by the black pop trio Destiny’s Child. It centralized discussion, responding to authors, engaging in dialogue with and offering advice to characters, and drawing on personal experiences around identity, family, agency and choice. Amazingly, Genesis also engaged students in discussion around their own educational experience at Orion. Genesis explained: ‘The first thing I am going to ask them for is to make a T-chart of the positives and negatives of school turnaround, which is like colonization. You’ve got new people coming in telling you how to do things,



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what’s right, what’s wrong … So I’m relating that to colonization’ (Interview, 1 December 2010). Genesis’ goal, ‘to get the kids to think critically about the decisions they make’ (Interview, 16 December 2010), not only informs but drives her British Literature unit. It is not just that Genesis knows her students, where they come from and what they likely contend with; it is that Genesis combines this community and cultural knowledge with a muscular Christianity. This experiential frame, in combination with the programmatic resources gleaned in her methods course, ultimately enables her to recognize and approach students as empowered agents in their lives and to cohere a fragmented and irrelevant curriculum into something more meaningful and engaging.

Conclusion In the United States, scholarship and mainstream media alike have illustrated how the experiential frames of ‘compassion’ and ‘no excuses’ are historically recognizable in urban education. Popular American films like Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds illuminate the interlocking motifs of white (female) saviour, the power of compassion and the tough love of ‘no excuses’. In 2007 the American comedy sketch group MADtv satirized these pervasive narratives in a skit entitled ‘Nice White Lady’ (2007). This clip, which has received almost two million hits on YouTube, features Amy Little, a self-described nice white lady (replete with sweater vest and kitten folder) teaching in a city-centre school. It is only by the combined force of her immense heart, unrelenting belief in her students and her unwillingness to take any excuses that she is able to encourage her students to choose – literally – between the gun in their right hand and the pen in their left. Pens win. This is sketch comedy but it provides an incisive distillation of the myths that dominate urban education. These frames are inherently problematic and implicitly racist. A ‘no excuses’ frame, one that is instantiated in but not relegated to Lemov, is predicated on the notion that if urban students (i.e. poor students and students of colour) comply, they will be successful. It obscures a centrally important fact, one that Genesis’ ‘each one teach one’ philosophy embodies: that students are agentive, creative beings capable of critical thinking, decision-making and self-discipline. Moreover, a ‘no excuses’ approach like Lemov effaces important contextual realities, that scaled down learning, ‘college readiness’ and skillsdriven instruction eviscerate learning opportunities and paralyze interpersonal

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dynamics, driving many students to boredom and disengagement. In turn, and ironically, those expressions of boredom and disengagement almost justify and lead to the enactment of the very ‘no excuses’ discipline that contributed to the disengagement in the first place. The dominance of experiential frames like ‘compassion’ and ‘no excuses’ index broader notions of who ‘urban’ high school students are and of their interpersonal, disciplinary and intellectual needs. These frames emerge in part from the interconnected realities of the achievement gap, teacher attrition in hard-to-staff urban schools and the persistence of the ‘demographic divide’, wherein a growing population of bilingual, poor and minority students are being taught by white teachers who do not share their students’ linguistic, class or ethnic/racial identities. While there will always be a multitude of experiential frames circulating and colliding within any teaching setting, understanding that these frames position urban students in particular ways – and interrogating those positionings – is crucial if we are to continue working for more humane, intellectually rigorous and equitable schools.

Notes 1 All names in this chapter are pseudonyms. Participants chose their own pseudonyms and I created the pseudonym LEE for the urban teacher residency in the study. 2 Within the larger educational reform movement in the United States, venture philanthropy plays an important role in the push to privatize schooling (see Saltman 2010, Kovacs 2011). Wolch (1990) refers to venture philanthropy as the ‘shadow state’ in that it performs government functions but at the same time has no public accountability (cited in Lipman 2011: 101). More than this, venture philanthropy infuses urban policy with corporate discourses while promoting market reforms. Finally, venture philanthropists’ infusion of money into particular projects and schools produces a ‘hyper resourced’ model of education that makes it impossible for disinvested neighbourhood public schools to compete (Lipman 2011). In this sense, LEE is part of a much larger neoliberal movement where ‘serial entrepreneurs’ come together in increasingly well-funded and incestuous networks to reform education (i.e., the NewSchools Venture Fund, the de facto educational reform hub in the United States). 3 I deliberately choose the word ‘employ’ to describe the relationship between LEE and the residents. Throughout the year, all of the residents with whom I worked emphasized (with varying degrees of anxiety attached to it) that their contract with



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LEE was an employee one. For example, Genesis’ co-resident, Jackie, consistently spoke about her fear of being ‘fired’ from the programme if she was not performing well enough, a performance that was measured largely by her enactment of LEE’s classroom management strategies – taken from Lemov – and her related ability to ‘control the classroom.’ There was similar anxiety surrounding the hiring process that took place at the end of the year, a central tenet of LEE’s residency wherein principals of LEE’s turnaround schools would observe, at random, the residents in their teaching placements in order to select which residents they preferred to interview at their turnaround school. 4 Another LEE resident, Rachael, provided an illuminating description of how she felt when enacting required Lemov’s techniques: ‘[Using Lemov] makes me feel like [a] remote control teacher sometimes’ (Interview, 26 January 2011). 5 ‘Cold Call’ is a technique within the chapter entitled ‘Engaging Students in Your Lessons’. Lemov explains: ‘In order to make engaged participation the expectation, call on students regardless of whether they have raised their hands’ (Lemov 2010: 112). 6 Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) was an African American abolitionist who was born into slavery in the American South and escaped in 1849. She is most famous for starting the ‘Underground Railroad’, a network of safe houses that African Americans escaping slavery could access while making their way to the free states in the north of the United States.

References Berry, B., Montgomery, D. and Snyder, J. (2008). Urban Teacher Residency Models and Institutes of Higher Education: Implications for Teacher Preparation. Carrboro, NC: Center for Teaching Quality. Cazden, C. (1988/2001). Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. 2nd edn. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Kovacs, P. (ed) (2011). The Gates Foundation and the Future of U.S. Public Schools. New York: Routledge. Ladson-Bilings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Education Research Journal 32 (3): 465–91. Lemov, D. (2010). Teach Like a Champion. New York: Jossey-Bass. Lipman, P. (2011). The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City. New York: Routledge. Liston, D. and Zeichner, K. M. (1991). Teacher Education and the Social Conditions of Schooling. New York: Routledge. Mehan, H. (1979). ‘What time is it, Denise?’ Asking known information questions in classroom discourse. Theory into Practice 18 (4): 285–94.

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‘Nice White Lady’ (2007). Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVF-nirSq5s (accessed 5 April 2013). Saltman, K. (2010). The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sleeter, C. E. (2008). Preparing white teachers for diverse students. In M. CochranSmith, S. Feiman-Nemser and D. J. McIntyre (eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Questions and Changing Contexts. New York: Routledge, pp. 559–82. Urban Teacher Residency United (2013). Available at http://www.utrunited.org/ Villegas, A. M. (2008). Diversity and teacher education. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser and D. J. McIntyre (eds), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Enduring Questions and Changing Contexts. New York: Routledge, pp. 551–8. Wolch, J. (1990) The Shadow State: Government and Voluntary Sector in Transition. New York: The Foundation Center.

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Developing knowledge for teaching from experience: Mathematics teaching and professional development in the United States of America Erik Jacobson

In this chapter I draw on data from a larger project (Izsák et al. 2010; Orrill and Brown 2012) that investigated mathematics teacher learning in the context of a professional development (PD) course, focused on content knowledge for teaching. After reviewing literature on teachers’ professional knowledge and learning I present contrasting cases of two teachers with similar backgrounds and teaching experience who attended the course. These teachers both had high knowledge scores on the PD course post-test, but observational data collected after the course revealed unexpected limitations when they taught lessons that they had designed and that applied what they had learned in the PD course. The resulting opportunities for student learning were quite divergent. These findings suggest two questions that I explore in the next sections of the chapter. First, how could teachers with such similar PD course post-test scores – ostensibly a measure of their learning – have such different enacted knowledge? To address this question I analyze these teachers’ responses to individual items on the knowledge test and argue that their similar overall scores in fact masked fine-grained differences in their actual PD learning outcomes that had consequences for the observed instruction. These results illustrate how conclusions about teacher learning in professional development experiences that are based on single-score assessments may mislead. The second question is this. How could two teachers with such similar teaching experience and backgrounds learn such different things from the same PD course? Both teachers in this study followed the same route to licensure;

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they both were in their second year of teaching; and they both taught middle grades mathematics in single-subject classes using curriculum materials from the same publisher. To address the second question I present a narrative analysis of the teachers’ own stories of learning to teach and argue that the PD course was a learning experience that these teachers saw differently because they had different goals for professional improvement, goals shaped in part by their professional relationships in the different schools and districts where they worked. Thus, the same amount of prior teaching experience was qualitatively different in ways that influenced these teachers’ learning in the PD course. In the final section I discuss implications of these results for in-service teacher education and for assessing teacher learning.

Teachers’ professional knowledge and the PD course content Until the last decade large-scale empirical support for the claim that teachers use professional knowledge that goes beyond knowledge of the discipline they teach had been scarce, despite strong arguments (e.g. Fennema and Franke 1992) and compelling case studies (e.g. Ball 1990). Researchers have tried for almost a century to link mathematics teacher knowledge with student learning (see Hill et al. 2007, for a review). The most promising recent work to establish such links has built on Shulman’s (1986) notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), defined as an amalgam of content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge that includes, for example, pedagogically useful representations of disciplinary concepts. In mathematics education researchers have identified examples of content knowledge that is rarely used except by teachers, such as the mathematical analysis of non-standard student work. The concept carries over to teaching other school subjects; for example, English language teachers must engage in literary analysis of their students’ compositions, although by different means and to different ends than those of the professional critic or academic scholar. The term content knowledge for teaching describes both content knowledge and PCK used in all aspects of teachers’ work (Ball et al. 2008). Success in identifying and measuring PCK and the broader domain of content knowledge for teaching has enabled researchers to establish empirical relationships between teachers’ knowledge and student achievement (e.g. Baumert et al. 2010, Hill et al. 2005). In the wake of this progress measures of content knowledge for teaching are being developed by the Educational Testing



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Service and may soon be piloted on teacher licensure tests in the United States (Phelps and Gitomer 2012). However, little is known about how teachers learn content knowledge for teaching. What it means to learn and how learning occurs both depend on the nature of the knowledge that is learned. As Petrou and Goulding (2011) observe, the Ball et al. (2008) framework of teachers’ knowledge and related measurement development work (e.g., Hill et al. 2004) is primarily concerned with teachers’ individual cognition, although it is also clearly meant as a description of applied knowledge grounded in the practice of teaching rather than a description primarily in terms of mental schema. To understand how content knowledge for teaching might be learned from experience, it is useful to extend explanations of individual minds to include teachers’ broader social and cultural contexts. One important aspect of content knowledge for teaching is knowledge of common student conceptions and misconceptions about mathematics. This kind of knowledge could be captured in propositional statements (gleaned from case studies or survey research, perhaps), yet it is more likely to be learned through teachers’ (social) interactions with students around the tasks and activity of school mathematics. This learning is also likely to be mediated by interactions with other, more experienced teachers. A novice teacher might share a student comment or error he or she finds peculiar with a more experienced colleague, who would reinterpret the experience for the novice as a case of something expected, something that teachers know about students. In this sense, learning to teach is tied up with acquiring the professional identity of teacher in a community of practice (Stein et al. 1998; see also Olsen in this volume). Another kind of content knowledge for teaching supports teachers in choosing and deploying appropriate representations and tasks. Propositional accounts of this knowledge are unfeasible because of the sheer number of tasks and representations, especially in the US, where decisions about curricular resources are made at the local level and multiple publishers vie for market share. Moreover, given the diverse communities served by US public education, the story or situation described in a task may be appropriate for some students but inaccessible for others, and knowledgeable teachers in specific schools may have rephrased the tasks for their students in unique ways. It may be useful to consider this knowledge at the school level rather than the teacher level, as situated, and belonging to a collective practice as well as located within individuals. Teacher learning of this knowledge can then be understood by means of participation in a community that includes (via the history of

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cultural artefacts – the tasks and representations) members widespread in time and space (Ellis 2009, Lave and Wenger 1991). The PD course on which this chapter is based was focused on helping teachers develop content knowledge for teaching mathematics, and in particular focused on drawn representations of rational numbers (Izsák et al. 2010, 2012; Lee et al. 2011; Orrill and Brown 2012). One example of content knowledge for teaching with special relevance for this chapter is knowledge of the ‘referent unit’ for fractions; that is, the whole to which each fraction refers. Explicit attention to referent unit is critical for working with and representing fractions and percentages. However, the referent unit is often implicit in the performance of expert users of mathematics, and appropriate attention to referent units can be a challenge for teachers (e.g., Izsák et al. 2010; Lee et al. 2011). The PD course emphasized explicit attention to the referent unit and the diversity of student thinking on the topic.

The participants and the observed lessons On the face of it, teaching experience seems a plausible opportunity for learning content knowledge for teaching. This is especially true for alternatively certified teachers who often have little preparation before beginning to teach and who must learn to teach on-the-job. Thus these teachers offer a particularly promising population for understanding how teaching experience can support the learning of content knowledge for teaching. In the present study both participants were alternative-route middle grades teachers. They were similar to each other in many characteristics that policy research uses to classify teachers. Diane had majored in psychology as an undergraduate and had worked for seven years in marketing; Brian had majored in economics and had been recruited by Teach for America (TFA) immediately after graduating. (Pseudonyms are used for both participants.) Neither teacher had had opportunities for supervised professional practice before beginning to work full time as a classroom teacher. Both worked in the same state, teaching mathematics in the middle grades, and both engaged in frequent collegial activity with other teachers in their school and district. Both were finishing coursework in master’s degree programmes and teaching with provisional certification. After the PD course both had scores on a test of content knowledge for teaching that were about one standard deviation above the mean score of a convenience sample of 201 in-service middle



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grades teachers from 13 districts in four US states (see Izsák et al. 2010 for details). In one assignment participants were asked to design a lesson that implemented ideas from the course. The analysis in this section focuses on how Brian and Diane taught the lessons they designed. The data sources for this analysis included video records of the lessons, paired with post-lesson interviews. In this section I summarize the use of representations, the obstacles faced and resultant student learning opportunities in Brian’s and Diane’s lessons. In particular I found that the teachers differed in their enacted knowledge of the referent unit for fractions and percentages and in their knowledge related to student thinking.

Brian’s lesson In the observed lesson Brian introduced a representational tool for proportions that was used extensively during the PD course: the double number line (two parallel number lines with a common origin). In the PD course the double number line representation was used over several weeks for problems involving ratios of fractions and decimals, but not percentages. Brian adapted the double number line representation for use with percentages and modelled for his students how to use the representation to solve problems involving percentages. Brian explicitly called attention to referent units at many points during the observed lesson. For example, he emphasized that a question was asking what ¼ mile was as a percentage of a 2-mile race (¼ is 12.5 per cent of 2), rather than as a percentage of a single mile (¼ is 25 per cent of 1). This emphasis helped sensitize the students to the importance of identifying the referent unit in problem situations. Brian did have some difficulty making the double number line representation accessible to all of his students. After introducing the representation and assigning problems for students to work on in pairs, Brian helped a student who had incorrectly labelled one of the number lines (Figure 14.1). Brian tried several conceptually based remediation strategies, such as relating intervals on the number line to dollars and quarters, fractional amounts with which the student would have had direct experience. The remediation, however, did not address the 1/n pattern apparent in the student’s work, evidence that the student was viewing denominators as whole numbers – a common error. There was no evidence in the data that Brian made any effort to understand how the student made sense of the situation or to use the student’s thinking as a starting point.

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Figure 14.1  One student’s incorrect labelling of fractions on a number line in Brian’s class Note the sequence 0, 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , … on the upper line. 2  3  4  5  6  7 

Diane’s lesson In the observed lesson Diane presented an invented representation of equivalent fractions that she said was inspired by her participation in the PD course (see Figure 14.2). This representation was not used in the PD course, but features of Diane’s interaction with the model (such as partitioning drawn regions into equal parts) were common strategies for interacting with the area representation for fractions and fraction arithmetic that the PD course had highlighted. Diane’s invented representation was mathematically valid but pedagogically problematic. A misleading correspondence between the diagram and label made it difficult to identify the referent unit. The second column in Figure 14.2 shows the student referent unit error frequently observed with this representation: interpreting the denominator as the number of pieces in just the lower circle rather than the number of pieces in both circles. Diane further obscured the referent unit by asking the students to partition the regions in the

Figure 14.2  A reproduction of Diane’s representation of equivalent fractions



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representation without linking explicitly the resulting pieces of the region to the original referent unit. This omission meant that the students frequently lost track of critical mathematical information while using the representation. Diane was attuned to student errors and on several occasions she made a clear effort to understand what the students were thinking by asking questions about their work. On balance, however, Diane’s instruction using her representation limited the students’ opportunities to learn the content. In two observed episodes of remediation Diane instructed the students to verify their work by counting, whereas multiplying would have been more useful for understanding the mathematical relationship between equivalent fractions. Crucially, her choice of language (‘halves’ – see Figure 14.3) with one student obscured the fact that the pieces under discussion were halves of ninths and thus eighteenths of the referent unit rather than halves of the referent unit. A student would have had to sort out these implicit meanings in Diane’s speech – a difficult task – in order to take advantage of this remediation. There were large differences between these teachers’ knowledge around selecting and using drawn representations across the observed lessons. The teachers’ use of representations also revealed differences in their enacted knowledge of the referent units of percentages and fractions. Brian’s instruction highlighted the referent unit whereas Diane’s obscured it. Conversely (and in spite of students frequently sharing ideas in both classes), Brian did not engage with non-standard student thinking during his lesson whereas Diane often did. Diane claimed that the advantage of her representation of equivalent fractions was that students ‘are seeing the transition from one fraction to the next without actually having to think about it’. In the section on teaching experience I argue

Figure 14.3  Diane remediating the student’s error: ‘How many halves do we have here? [Counting] one, two, three …’

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that this statement characterized Diane’s general goals for instruction, and I describe how Diane’s goals for instruction and professional improvement differed from Brian’s.

Understanding differences in learning by considering knowledge at a finer grain size In the last section I presented analysis that uncovered differences in the knowledge held and used by Brian and Diane during the observed lessons they taught after completing the PD course. These differences were surprising because both teachers did relatively well on the PD post-test of content knowledge for teaching, and because the PD course, the test and the lessons were all focused on drawn representations and dealt explicitly with referent units and non-standard student thinking. In this section I present an analysis of participants’ written responses to individual test items and of data from item response interviews to explain the differences between these teachers’ instruction. I found that although the teachers had very similar overall test scores, data at the item level provide strong evidence of fine-grained differences in what the teachers had learned by the end of the PD course. These differences were consequential for instruction. Diane (29 correct) and Brian (26 correct) had similar, relatively high knowledge scores on the PD post-test as compared with the sample of 201 in-service middle grade teachers. The similar scores were based on different items; Brian answered four items correctly that Diane had not, and Diane answered seven items correctly that Brian had not. The study used mixture Rasch methods to analyze the scores and identify two latent (unobserved) subgroups of teachers who differed in their item responses patterns. A qualitative analysis of teachers attending the PD – and a similar control group – revealed that the latent subgroups differed in their ability to attend appropriately to the referent unit of fractions and percentages (Izsák et al. 2010). Brian was classified in the subgroup associated with greater referent unit proficiency, and Diane was classified in the subgroup associated with less referent unit proficiency. This classification is congruent with the obstacles and limitations faced by Diane as she enacted her lesson. The classification of Brian and Diane into different latent subgroups helps explain observed differences in their instruction and suggests that similar differences in instruction (explicit and accurate identification of referent unit) might well extend to other teachers in the latent subgroups who participated in the PD course.



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Differences in Brian’s and Diane’s knowledge – and thus differences in what they had learned by the end of the PD course – can also be inferred from clinical interviews during which the participants explained their responses to individual items on the PD course post-test. Brian’s responses suggested that he had strong content knowledge for teaching proportions and number lines. For example, he reasoned proportionally to answer one item correctly that many other interviewed teachers answered incorrectly. Another item required an interpretation of a number line representation, and Brian demonstrated a sophisticated knowledge of recursive partitioning that many of the other interviewees (including Diane) did not demonstrate. Izsák et al. (2008) showed that recursive partitioning is important for supporting students’ understanding of operations with fractions that are represented on number lines. By contrast, Brian incorrectly evaluated student-invented solutions and strategies – he argued that some mathematically valid student work was invalid. This assertion suggests that perhaps Brian had not developed models of students’ mathematical thinking that were distinct from his own ways of thinking, a key milestone in the development of content knowledge for teaching (Silverman and Thompson 2008). Diane did very well on items involving student thinking, which is congruent with the observations of her instruction suggesting that she was able to follow students’ mathematical work and use it during instruction. Diane answered referent unit items on the PD course post-test correctly whenever those items included student thinking or involved percentages, but she did poorly on referent unit problems that involved area representations of fraction multiplication or division. These results may explain why Diane did not deal appropriately with issues of referent unit in the observed lesson: the representation she used was a variation of the area representation that she had had trouble with on the PD post-test.

Understanding teaching experience by considering professional context The analysis presented in the last section explained the limitations of the post-test knowledge score: by examining responses on individual items I demonstrated that these teachers – who had similar overall scores – actually had large differences in what they had evidently learned from the PD course. It remains to explain how teachers with similar backgrounds and teaching

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experience could have had these large differences in content knowledge for teaching after the PD course. At first I conjectured that these differences were simply due to the fact that the participants in this study attended different sections of the PD course taught by different instructors. Ultimately, however, this explanation was unsatisfactory. Although there were some differences between the two sections (Orrill and Brown (2012) and Izsák et al. (2012) each describe a different section), the tasks and structure of the two sections were the same. In both sections more than half of the 14-week PD course focused on teachers’ knowledge of referent units and on their facility with using and producing mathematically valid representations for fractions and proportions. In this section I work towards a more plausible explanation of the teachers’ different learning outcomes by presenting a narrative analysis (Chase 2007) of the teachers’ own stories of learning to teach. I drew on retrospective interviews and used process coding and the constant comparative method (Charmaz 2006) to identify key features in each teacher’s experience. I found that Brian’s and Diane’s different professional networks supported different goals for professional improvement. I find it likely that these goals led Brian and Diane to attend to (and subsequently learn and enact during instruction) different aspects of the PD course. Brian’s story of learning to teach had a clear trajectory of improvement and progress: he could point to specific, deliberate changes in his teaching practice between his first and second year. The changes he described suggest how he was learning about content, students and teaching from his experience working as a teacher. For example, Brian discovered that some of his teaching strategies were ineffective and was motivated to redouble his efforts and use new strategies. Experiencing that frustration of [students] not understanding really helped me … some things they’re just not going to understand by using pencil and paper. They need to see it; they need to touch it. I knew it was going to be more of a struggle to teach … [I needed] to have more manipulatives and more strategies and more ways to teach it than just one simple way.

Referring to his the first year of teaching, he said, ‘I literally was just on the board, writing numbers … I would pull the manipulatives out if it was an emergency.’ By his second year, Brian said that he would ‘introduce a lot of things with manipulatives so [the students] were able to see it from the start’. Diane reported similar challenges in her first year. She said, ‘[I] did a lot of backtracking in my first year. There was introducing an idea, going through it and then realizing [the students] really didn’t get it and having to go back.’



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Unlike Brian, Diane seemed to have experienced little payoff from her efforts at improvement. She commented: The first year when I did [decimal notation], there was these misconceptions. So the second year I changed what I said, and then there were new misconceptions. So it was kind of – it created new problems from trying to reteach it.

Unlike Brian, who aimed to develop an arsenal of multifaceted and adaptive teaching strategies, Diane described an orientation toward professional improvement that valorized simplicity and efficiency. Describing how her teaching practice changed between her first and second year, Diane said, ‘I don’t think it’s been that drastic of a difference. I just think it’s me being more effective with my time management.’ Later in the interview, she explained, ‘I’ve learned a lot of things that have made [teaching] easier and more effective.’ Diane was the only fifth-grade mathematics teacher at her school but she regularly worked with other teachers in the district. About once a month she met with the fourth-grade and sixth-grade teachers in her school to pass on the mathematics information from the school board. ‘I do communicate with them and tell them what’s new, what’s expected, what we have to put in our math folders … and stuff like that.’ She was also part of a professional learning community organized by the district that was focused on improving teachers’ assessment practices. For example, she had learned about rubrics in this group and found their use appealing because ‘it is just really easy to go, “yes, yes, no,” and then tally the points’. Brian’s professional learning was supported by his work with colleagues. During his first year a scheduling conflict prevented Brian from attending weekly meetings with the other sixth-grade mathematics teachers at his school. He described the isolation he felt during that year, saying, ‘I had nobody else to meet with; it was really just me.’ At the end of his first year, the schedule changed and Brian was able to meet weekly with the rest of the sixth-grade mathematics teachers at his school. They discussed their weekly lessons and gave each other feedback. If one teacher’s students had not learned a particular concept, the other teachers offered strategies they had found successful in the past. Brian said that these common planning times were ‘a lot of the reason that I had so much change from first year to second year’. Across the cases it is evident that Brian described a clear trajectory of professional growth in terms of knowledge and practice, but Diane characterized her identity as a teacher in more static terms. Brian was motivated by his students’ lack of understanding and had a clear goal of increasing his students’

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appreciation and understanding of mathematics. By contrast, Diane wanted to make mathematics easy and simple for her students, much as she was motivated to make her teaching more streamlined and efficient. This difference might be characterized as a difference in productive disposition for teaching: mathematics teachers’ orientation toward – and their related beliefs and attitudes about – the subject of mathematics, teaching and learning it, and their own professional growth (Kilpatrick et al. 2001). It is perhaps no coincidence that Brian met weekly with other sixth-grade teachers to discuss lesson plans and student learning; his goals to improve student understanding were likely shaped and certainly supported by this professional community. Diane may have had inadequate resources to identify what needed to change and what promising strategies to try next. Colleagues with experience teaching the same content might have helped her troubleshoot her instruction of decimals, and might have helped her notice what was problematic about her representation of equivalent fractions used in the observed lesson. Diane valued her invented representation because it was easy – students could use it ‘without having to think’. Brian’s goal of student understanding led him to value the double number line representation as a tool that might help some students understand when other tools failed. The PD course activities likely presented divergent opportunities for Brian’s and Diane’s professional learning because of the differences in their productive disposition for teaching and in their professional contexts.

Implications for teacher education The public discourse in the United States around education, and mathematics education in particular, has focused more and more in recent years on the role of teachers and the importance of teachers’ knowledge; teachers are increasingly seen as key levers for improving educational quality in recent legislation and related policy initiatives in the United States. For example, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 stipulated ‘highly qualified’ teachers in Title-I schools, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 encouraged improved teacher effectiveness through the Race to the Top funding competition. Professional development courses are widely seen as an important means to support teacher learning. Hill (2011) used data from a national sample of middle grade teachers and tests like the one used in this study to examine teacher learning related to professional development, and she reported small gains in teacher knowledge.



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The cases presented in this chapter demonstrate how single-score tests used to evaluate what teachers learn during professional development (even those measures that target a narrow content domain such as multiplicative reasoning in middle grades school mathematics) mask the complexity of what teachers have actually learned and how teachers might use what they have learned in practice. Other psychometric possibilities for assessing teacher learning exist, including the mixture Rasch analysis described above and diagnostic classification, which reports teacher ‘mastery’ with respect to discrete knowledge categories (e.g. Rost 1990; Rupp et al. 2010). These options may be more useful for teacher education than single-score assessments. The problem that this study uncovers is not simply that of how to accurately assess teachers’ learning in professional development courses. In addition to finding that similar test scores did not reflect similar learning, I found that similar professional development experiences for teachers with similar backgrounds and teaching experience afforded different opportunities for learning. Brian and Diane are largely indistinguishable on the variables that large-scale surveys frequently use to characterize teachers. Yet, there is evidence that sociocultural factors played a significant role in these teachers’ learning outcomes after two years of teaching, including those associated with the PD course. This chapter provides evidence that learning from experience is contingent on teachers’ goals for professional improvement. The cases presented in this chapter demonstrate the importance of teachers’ professional context for teacher education policy. Just as in Hodgen’s (2011) account of the constraints experienced by a master teacher in an interview setting – and surprisingly with content for which she had been involved in curriculum design and preparing teachers – this study suggests that knowledge for teaching is ‘stretched over’ (Lave 1988) practitioners and their social and cultural resources. That is, aspects of knowledge for teaching may not be located within individuals but between them. If this is the case, then attempts to understand how this knowledge is learned that focus only on inferred changes taking place within a teacher’s mind may be insufficient. The results presented in this chapter call into question the wisdom of relying on single-score measures of individual teachers’ knowledge to assess teachers’ learning when teaching itself is a social practice. The results of this study also challenge teacher educators and policy-makers to identify the conditions – in addition to promising content and delivery – that influence whether teachers learn in professional development courses. It may be more helpful for teacher educators to understand how learning in professional development interacts

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with teachers’ prior professional experience and with teachers’ own goals for professional learning than it is to try to determine whether a particular professional development course is effective in and of itself. A theoretical model for learning content knowledge for teaching that incorporates both individual and sociocultural perspectives on cognition is needed to pursue these promising avenues for future research and practice.

References Ball, D. L. (1990). Prospective elementary and secondary teachers’ understanding of division. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 21: 132–44. Ball, D., Thames, M. and Phelps, G. (2008). Content knowledge for teaching: what makes it special? Journal of Teacher Education 59: 389–407. Baumert, J., Kunter, M., Blum, W., Brunner, M., Voss, T., Jordan, A., Klusmann, U., Krauss, S., Neubrand, M. and Tsai, Y.-M. (2010). Teachers’ mathematical knowledge, cognitive activation in the classroom, and student progress. American Educational Research Journal 47: 133–80. Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage. Chase, S. E. (2007). Narrative inquiry: multiple lenses, approaches, voices. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. 3rd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ellis, V. (2009). Subject Knowledge and Teacher Education: The Development of Beginning Teachers’ Thinking. New York: Continuum. Fennema, E. F. and Franke, M. L. (1992). Teachers’ knowledge and its impact. In D. Grouws (ed.), Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning. New York: Macmillan, pp. 147–67. Hill, H. (2011). The nature and effects of middle school mathematics teacher learning experiences. Teachers College Record 113: 205–34. Hill, H., Rowan, B. and Ball, D. L. (2005). Effects of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal 42: 371–406. Hill, H., Schilling, S. G. and Ball, D. L. (2004). Developing measures of teachers’ mathematics knowledge for teaching. Elementary School Journal 105: 11–30. Hill, H., Sleep, L., Lewis, J. and Ball, D. (2007). Assessing teachers’ mathematical knowledge: what knowledge matters and what evidence counts? In F. K. Lester Jr (ed.), Second Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning (pp. 111–155). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Hodgen, J. (2011). Knowing and identity: a situated theory of mathematics knowledge in teaching. In T. Rowland and K. Ruthven (eds), Mathematical Knowledge in Teaching. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 27–42.



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Izsák, A. (2008). Mathematical knowledge for teaching fraction multiplication. Cognition and Instruction 26: 95–143. Izsák, A., Jacobson, E., de Araujo, Z. and Orrill, C. H. (2012). Measuring growth in mathematical knowledge for teaching fractions with drawn quantities. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 43: 391–426. Izsák, A., Orrill, C. H., Cohen, A. S. and Brown, R. E. (2010). Measuring middle grades teachers’ understanding of rational numbers with the mixture Rasch model. Elementary School Journal 110 (3): 279–300. Izsák, A., Tillema, E. and Tunç-Pekkan, Z. (2008). Teaching and learning fraction addition on number lines. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 39 (1): 33–62. Kilpatrick, J., Swafford, J. and Findell, B. (eds) (2001). Adding it Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, S. J., Brown, R. E. and Orrill, C. H. (2011). Mathematics teachers’ reasoning about fractions and decimals using drawn representations. Mathematical Thinking and Learning 13 (3): 198–220. Lerman, S. (2000). The social turn in mathematics education research. In J. Boaler (ed.), Multiple Perspectives on Mathematics Teaching and Learning. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing, pp. 19–44. Orrill, C. H. and Brown, R. E. (2012). Making sense of double number lines in professional development: exploring teachers’ understandings of proportional relationships. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 15: 381–403. Petrou, M. and Goulding, M. (2011). Conceptualising teachers’ mathematical knowledge in teaching. In T. Rowland and K. Ruthven (eds), Mathematical Knowledge in Teaching. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 9–26. Phelps, G. C. and Gitomer, D. H. (2012, April). Teacher Knowledge Working Group. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, Canada. Rost, J. (1990). Rasch models in latent classes: an integration of two approaches to item analysis. Applied Psychological Measurement 14: 271–82. Rupp, A. A., Templin, J. and Henson, R. (2010). Diagnostic Measurement: Theory, Methods, and Applications. New York: Guilford. Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher 15 (2): 4–14. Silverman, J. and Thompson, P. W. (2008). Towards a framework for the development of mathematical knowledge for teaching. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 11: 499–511. Stein, M. K., Silver, E. A. and Smith, M. S. (1998). Mathematics reform and teacher development: a community of practice perspective. In J. G. Greeno and S. V.

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Goldman (eds), Thinking Practices in Mathematics and Science Learning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Acknowledgement The work reported here was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation under grant number DRL-0633975. The results are my views and do not necessarily represent the views of the funding agency. I wish to thank the members of the ‘Does it It Work’ research team for their effort in collecting and analyzing some of the data reported here and for commenting on previous drafts; all errors that remain are my own.

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Creating a shared pedagogical language: Interpreting how teacher candidates learn from experiences in a science methods course Shawn Michael Bullock

A number of authors have suggested that teacher candidates go through their teacher education programmes relatively unaffected by experiences in coursework (Bush 1987, Zeichner and Tabachnick 1981), and have highlighted the popular conception that ‘teachers need to know subject matter knowledge, which they gain exclusively outside of schools of education’ and thus ‘everything else can be picked up on the job’ (Cochran-Smith 2000: 21). The practicum field experience placement is often thought to be the most important source of experience for teacher candidates. The field experience tends to be seen as both practical and useful, the on-campus course experience tends to be seen as esoteric and of dubious utility. Hascher, Cocard and Moser (2004) summarized the dilemma well when they said: ‘This differentiation between theory (considered as useless knowledge) on one side and experience and learning on the other side might lead a student to the following reductive opinion: “Forget about theory, practice is all”’( 635). The dim view of coursework taken by many graduates of teacher education programmes (Cochran-Smith and Zeichner 2005) seems to underscore this assertion. Thus the slogan ‘learning from experience’ might well be taken to mean ‘learning from practical experiences in the “real world” of schools’. This chapter, however, presents findings that indicate teacher candidates can and do learn from experiences in their science methods courses in the university setting. This chapter begins by presenting and reinterpreting a selection of data from a larger study (Bullock 2011) that attended closely to the professional learning experiences of a group of teacher candidates and their teacher educator in a science education methods course at a Canadian university. This fresh analysis

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lays a foundation from which to consider a new set of data, collected as a part of a study into the development of the author’s pedagogy of teacher education. Both studies are based on the premise that helping teacher candidates to identify and act on the influence of their ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie 1975: 62) is a fundamental challenge of teacher education. Given that almost everyone can readily access memories of how teachers behaved when they provided instruction and that people enter into informal teaching arrangements in both their work and personal lives, it is hardly surprising that ‘teaching knowledge will not be considered special and that people will ambivalent about its value’ (Buchmann 1987: 152). Teaching is a pervasive part of our culture; we might teach a friend how to fix a bike or to perform a work-related task. Buchmann named the ‘folkways of teaching’ as one category of teaching knowledge, a kind of knowledge that is grounded in ‘opinion, guesswork, and mere tradition, being acquired by habit, false inference, and simple internalisation’ (153). If one views culturally-acquired folkway knowledge as a primary source of knowledge of teaching, then the role that teacher education programmes play in the preparation of teachers is dubious, at best. The problem of how to educate future teachers has been a consistent source of debate in the education research literature. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, most teacher education programmes in North America are designed with the idea that teachers learn theory at the academy and then go out and test their theoretical understanding in the practical environment of a field experience placement. Teacher education, traditionally, positions the experience from which teachers learn as that which occurs under the supervision of an experienced host professional during field placement. This tradition continues despite Schön’s (1983) introduction of a new epistemology of professional knowledge: one that challenged the primacy of technical rationality and framed professional knowledge as ‘knowing-in-action’, which results from ‘reflection-in-action’ (49). Although considerable research has been done using Schön’s ideas and the concept of reflective practice, the general assumption in the literature (and by student teachers) seems to be that experiences that ‘count’ in a teacher education programme are those that occur during practicum field placements. It then falls to teacher educators – those who teach teachers at a university – to find ways to help student teachers unpack their field experiences. While this is certainly one important goal for teacher education coursework, it positions experience as something that only happens out there in the world of schools.



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Shared language and the culture of science methods courses Literal language is obviously well suited for discussing the objective world. It is clear, however, that people use figurative language such as metaphor as a way of making sense of their experiences and emotions. As Gibbs (1994) noted, ‘The fact that figurative language pervades everyday speech simply reflects its usefulness in conveying ideas and knowledge that are really structured in our conceptual system in literal, propositional terms’ (121). Gibbs (1994) offered three hypotheses for using metaphors. First, metaphors are used for expression, particularly when literal language is insufficient for communicating. Thus ‘metaphor is not simply used as a linguistic ornament but serves an indispensible communicative function’ (Gibbs 1994: 126). Second, metaphors are compact in that they convey a great deal of information in a short phrase. The compactness hypothesis provides a convincing argument for the role of metaphor in thinking, since ‘language can only partition the continuity of our conscious experience into discrete units’ (Gibbs 1994: 125). The compactness hypothesis is also particularly relevant to education because it captures the challenge inherent for educators trying to develop a metaphor with explanatory power for a particular topic. The balance of being succinct and informative is difficult. Third, metaphors are vivid because they can capture and help to articulate the complexity of personal experience. Buchmann and Floden (1992) introduced the concept of metaphorical coherence in their discussion of programme coherence in teacher education. The key to metaphorical coherence is introducing metaphors that overlap slightly but still make a unique contribution to the expression of a concept. They use the following example: ‘Since “journey” and “container” metaphors for argument both use increasing amount to represent progress, people can readily mix them: “We got a long way toward the conclusion by filling logical gaps”’ (Buchmann and Floden: 8). The conceptual understanding of a topic is advanced when the metaphors act in a coherent way; that is, when they overlap somewhat. In the example, the journey and container metaphors both indicate change in slightly different ways: a journey implies movement toward a destination (i.e., directional growth), and a container implies a stationary vessel with a storage capacity being filled (i.e., growth in potential). Each metaphor provides a related, yet distinct, clarification on concept being expressed. Many researchers have studied metaphor as a way of understanding how professional knowledge is constructed from experience. Clandinin and Connelly

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(1995) articulated the metaphor of a professional knowledge landscape in their analysis of how teachers learn from experience, a metaphor that has driven a rich line of narrative inquiry research in teacher education. As Burnett (2006) argued: The metaphor is helpful in conceiving professional knowledge as not just a route-map of strategies and approaches that can be used to achieve predetermined aims, but as a rich mixture of values, attitudes and orientations that teachers explore as they move through their professional life. The notion of a professional knowledge landscape (in which teachers make different meanings from their experiences and are active in forging these meanings) is helpful in considering how initial teacher education could be constructed differently to recognize a more narrative orientation towards knowledge. (327–8)

The metaphor of the professional knowledge landscape stands in sharp contrast to many of the dominant metaphors about teachers’ professional knowledge and the nature of schooling: ‘Input–output metaphors carry with them images of factories and production lines and suggest a linear view of the relationship of teaching and learning for both K-12 students and for teacher candidates’ (Cochran-Smith 2001: 540). The political discourse on teacher education in both the USA (Olsen 2013) and the UK (Trippestad 2013) seems to underscore the emphasis that policy makers place on such mechanistic views. Olsen (2013) criticizes the narrowness of current reform efforts in the USA that seem to reduce teaching to a technical action with easily defined and controlled inputs and outputs before introducing the concept of teacher identity as a more productive frame for thinking about the complex work of teachers. Trippestad (2013) makes a convincing argument that we should pay more attention to the rhetoric used by politicians in the way they portray the roles of teachers and students. He uses some of Prime Minister David Cameron’s remarks about the TeachFirst programme in England to illustrate the dangers of reducing the work of teachers to the same kind of mechanistic thinking that Cochran-Smith warns about. Concerns about framing teachers as technicians are particularly salient given current popular rhetoric about the contribution teachers, and thus teacher education, must make to the knowledge economy (e.g., producing skilled future employees). Taking their cue from Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Munby and Russell (1990) asserted that since ‘the human conceptual system is defined and structured metaphorically, and human thought processes are largely metaphorical … We construct our world or “see” it metaphorically’ (117). They described two case



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studies of teachers that were analyzed and interpreted using the heuristic of metaphor. The first case, ‘Linda’, revealed a discrepancy between the metaphors Linda used to describe her approach to teaching and the researchers’ first-hand observation of her classroom practice. The second case, ‘Jack’, was particularly interesting because he realized that the process of participating in two years of interviews forced him to ‘verbalize one’s thinking, to put it into words so that one can “look” at it’ (Munby and Russell: 121). The researchers thus played a crucial role in how Jack came to understand his practice differently, a process that Schön (1983) named ‘reframing’. For the purposes of this chapter I take both Gibbs’ (1994) assertion that metaphor is ‘a primary mode of thought’ (122) and Munby and Russell’s (1990) suggestion that ‘it may be productive for all teachers to become students of metaphor, at least of their own metaphors’ (116). In this chapter I draw from ethnographic methodology in order to become attuned to the metaphors that science teacher candidates used in my own methods course and a methods course taught by another professor. The issue of metaphorical coherence becomes particularly important and enables me to make claims about how science teacher candidates learn from experience.

Methodology and research questions The conceptual framework for this chapter is largely drawn from ethnographic traditions that attend closely to the role of ‘culturally constituted understandings of the social world’ (Holland and Quinn 1987: 3). The studies reported on in this chapter were ethnographic because they were founded on the premise that the multiple relationships and interactions between teacher candidates, their teacher educator and the participant-observer for a science methods course constitute a unique culture with its own discourse. Data from the two studies presented in this chapter were gathered from science methods courses at two universities in the province of Ontario, Canada. Both programmes were approximately the same length, lasting one academic year and alternating between on-campus coursework and blocks of practicum experience in host schools. Participants in both studies sought certification as secondary school physics teachers. A Bachelor of Education degree was conferred upon successful completion of both teacher education programmes; teacher candidates who participated in the studies had previously obtained baccalaureate degrees in science, mathematics or engineering.

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In the first study I was participant-observer in a science methods course taught by an experienced teacher educator. Data were collected through focus groups and semi-structured individual interviews. The results of this study were published as Bullock (2011); here I reinterpret some of the earlier findings with a particular view to the role of metaphor in how science teachers learn from experience. In the second study I was the teacher educator for a science methods course at a different university, embarking on my career as an academic. I wanted to find a way to tune in to how teacher candidates were learning about teaching science; to that end, I required each teacher candidate to keep a private blog, shared only with me, as an assignment for the course. In this chapter I focus on the discourse between one teacher candidate and me via his blog, with a particular view to examining the role of metaphor in how he learned about teaching science and in how I learned about teaching about teaching science. The role of metaphors in learning from experience plays a critical role in the data. I examine both the metaphors that teacher candidates used to describe their own learning in a methods course I observed and, in the second study, the metaphors that I use to communicate with another teacher candidate. Drawing on the idea of metaphorical coherence, I will make a case that metaphors are a highly productive way to think about how teacher candidates learn from experience, both from an individual perspective (as in Study 2) and from a group perspective (as in Study 1).

Changing metaphors in a science methods course There were two results from Bullock (2011) that might be considered novel within the teacher education research literature. First, the teacher candidates who participated in the study were able to link new understandings about teaching and learning explicitly to experiences they had with their physics teacher educator during the curriculum methods course. Second, the understandings developed by the participants can be interpreted as a shared language for talking about their experiences in the physics methods course. Although each participant took unique messages away from the physics course, the metaphors developed by the group, described in subsequent paragraphs, and the way these metaphors evolved over the course of the year, provided valuable insight into the epistemological underpinnings of how candidates constructed professional knowledge.



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During the first round of interviews teacher candidates equated teaching with transmitting information, a metaphor implicit in the importance participants ascribed to telling students correct information. The powerful cultural assumption, that teachers teach by talking and students learn by listening, was clearly evident in the focus group interviews. The first round of interviews demonstrated the impact of participants’ prior experiences with school (‘the apprenticeship of observation’) and how their prior assumptions were challenged and how they learned from the teacher educator. The student teachers acknowledged that, in the past, they learned physics successfully from traditional, transmission-oriented approaches to teaching and learning and expected to learn the most efficient way to transmit information. One participant said: ‘I thought coming into this program that there was really only one way to teach: You get up and you talk to your students’ (Bullock 2011: 41). Another participant expected BEd coursework to focus on ‘polishing that [traditional] teaching ability’ (Bullock 2011: 42). In other words, participants fully expected to be explicitly told how to teach particular concepts. When candidates were taught in ways that were not ‘traditional’ in the physics methods course, they were taken somewhat aback. Another student teacher said that he ‘came to teachers’ college [sic] with the expectation that [he] would be taught traditionally … [it took] 2 or 3 weeks to really believe they were going to do it differently’ (Bullock 2011: 42). By the second round of interviews the group developed a shared metaphor that revealed their understanding of a relational approach to teaching in phrases such as ‘relationships are a specific part of the teaching’. Many of the comments from participants centred on the effort that the teacher educator put into developing relationships with the class. For the first time in the data, teacher candidates began to make connections between teaching strategies (such as the developing trusting relationship between teacher educator and student teacher) and the effects those strategies had on their learning: Right away, [the teacher educator] got to know everyone. So I don’t want to show up late for the class because he knows me and he knows that I don’t have any reason to not show up on time … In some other courses where you go and you don’t even know the instructors’ names; you don’t really have that drive. (Bullock 2011: 68)

It is important to note that this was the first time in the study that participants characterized relationship building as a specific pedagogical approach with effects on the quality of their learning, rather than simply an issue of ‘personality’ or getting along with an instructor.

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By the end of the programme, the group’s metaphor changed to frame their shared experiences as an active-learning approach to teaching, characterized by the emphasis on student-centred pedagogies that candidates experienced in the physics course. The student teachers felt that active-learning approaches to education were more desirable than traditional, transmission-oriented instruction. The participants in the study felt that the teacher educator was able to engage them in active-learning approaches because of the effort he put into building a productive relationship with the class: [The teacher educator] is a great role model. He cares a lot for his students, just by showing how much he values our opinion and how the course is run and how the program here is run and that’s a thing I have learned, or I value very much as a teacher, caring for students. He shows that it’s definitely effective. He stresses POEs [Predict–Observe–Explain] a lot and active learning. I’ve tried to incorporate that in my classroom as much as I could. (Bullock 2011: 98)

The phrase ‘trust the learner’ was also used by several participants as a way of naming a key feature of their teacher educator’s pedagogical approach. Teacher candidates appreciated the trusting atmosphere of the physics class and the focus on learning by experiencing active-learning pedagogies, such as Predict– Observe–Explain (Baird and Northfield 1992). Each of these pedagogies, on the surface, seems to be grounded in science education. Yet it is also important to note that each one requires a strong relationship based on trust between members of a particular class. Although participants took a while to make these connections, by the third focus group interview the candidates spent a good deal of time discussing how the active-learning strategies used in the physics course depended on the relationship-building effort that occurred at the beginning of the course. Participants came to the unanimous conclusion that the methods used for teaching were the content of the methods course. Thus the metaphor of trust the learner developed into how we teach is the message. One of the participants summed up the metaphor with the statement: ‘What I mostly learned from physics class was just the way [he] taught’ (Bullock 2011: 129).

Using blogs to explore metaphor in teacher education I have experimented on a number of occasions with the potential power of blogs to develop a relationship with teacher candidates who have to deal with the alternating on-campus/off-campus nature of the teacher education



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programmes on which I have taught. One appealing feature of blogs is that they create a shared safe space in which I can have an asynchronous conversation with teacher candidates without either of us having to remember where to find emails. I also believe that future science teachers benefit from additional practice in writing before entering the profession, and so I have made blogging a feature of most of my education courses over the last number of years. I learn many things about teacher candidates through their blogs that I might not learn otherwise during class discussion, and I believe that developing an ongoing, written conversation with each of my students facilitates lasting pedagogical relationships. One extraordinary example of the potential utility of blogging for developing a professional relationship is outlined in Brown and Russell (2012). In this research a teacher candidate (Brown) blogged about his first two years teaching abroad, while his former science methods professor (Russell) provided comments. According to Brown, ‘I used the blog to articulate my thoughts, clarify my thinking and track my progress … it is clear that [Russell] was effective in helping keep my own professional goals in mind as I battled through the day-to-day challenges of teaching’ (Brown and Russell 2012: 27). I typically require five posts of approximately 400 words each from each teacher candidate as a part of the blogging assignment. I provide some openended prompts for writing that are relevant for the stage in the programme they are in when they come to complete a particular post. I use the ‘comments’ feature of a blog to comment on each candidate’s post in a timely fashion. For the purposes of this chapter I will focus on some of the interactions I had with ‘Mark’ via his blog. Although most teacher candidates tend to exceed the writing requirements for the blog assignment, Mark was exceptional in that our blog ran to approximately 13,000 words by the end of the semester. At the beginning of the year Mark expressed a view of teaching that was similar to the one expressed by participants in the previous study: I imagined myself basically lecturing in front of students (it was going to be damn good lecturing!), and somehow making the material relatable to everyone … using common experiences we’ve all had whether you’re a physics superstar or not … I would have hoped to get to know them personally, and treat them with mutual respect. This is what worked when I tutored and seemed to be okay when I TAed [was a teaching assistant for undergraduate students during a previous degree]. (Mark)

I replied to Mark’s post with both an affirmation and a challenge:

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You’ve really highlighted a number of issues that are relevant to beginning a journey in the B.Ed. program. I appreciate your candour about your past experiences. To an extent, aren’t we all here because we were good at assembly-line learning? (Shawn)

I wanted to encourage Mark to continue to speak openly about his prior experiences and assumptions. As a result of classroom discussions I had an early sense that Mark was willing to think critically about different approaches to education. My metaphor of ‘assembly-line learning’ was deliberately provocative, designed to build on a conversation we had in class the previous day about Lortie’s (1975) assertion that many people end up becoming teachers due to their prior success in school, a situation that tends to replicate existing school cultures (hence the factory metaphor). Mark was clearly using the same teaching-as-telling metaphor, although he does show comparatively early signs of a relational approach to teaching metaphor. The importance that Mark placed on relational approaches to teaching was heightened by an unpleasant first day experience on his practicum placement, in which his associate teacher behaved rudely toward students. Mark wrote in an extra blog post that students seemed to gravitate toward him immediately, at least in part because they were afraid of being humiliated in class. Although the unpleasantness of the first day of teaching seemed to be an isolated incident, Mark did note that his host teacher fostered a competitive atmosphere in the classroom (based on fake monetary incentives) that was, in Mark’s view, damaging to the relationships between students. One of the most important exchanges between Mark and me came after one-third of the way through our course. I introduced Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as an open-ended way to approach science teaching by asking the teacher candidates to complete a loosely structured PBL activity that required them to evaluate the concept of ‘carbon credits’ as a way of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. That evening, Mark wrote the following post: The PBL was definitely an interesting way to approach science. Open-ended question! None of this m=3kg, V=2L, what’s the density. Get to the heart of the issue, hypothesize, get more info, conclude. Scientific method, hello! … One thing apart from the content of the course I enjoyed, was how Shawn often steps back and lets the friction happen between students’ ideas and perspectives. My view of teaching has shifted so much … now I often see teachers as facilitators of a particular environment. An environment that fosters discussion and opposing ideas … and hopefully synthesis and critical analysis. It’s not about getting the



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right answer at all. It’s about getting to a defensible answer. My question today is, how far down the rabbit hole is my shifting perspective of what a teacher is, going to go? My naive answer is … extremely far down. (Mark)

I responded in the following way: Your last statement immediately reminded me of the scene from the first Matrix movie. How many of us are willing to focus on ‘controlling’ the class and not actually engaging in debate? You’ve mentioned enjoying friction in class discussions, and I appreciate your willingness to contribute. I really enjoy letting different opinions ‘sit’ out in the open, but it really makes some people uncomfortable. I sometimes worry that I go ‘too far’ with the amount I push, but I hope that the relationships I’ve been working to build with people will help them feel comfortable enough to tell me if they feel too uncomfortable in the course. (Shawn)

The metaphor of a rabbit hole that Mark introduced is an intriguing one for thinking about learning to teach. I assumed that Mark was referring to the first chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in which Alice follows the White Rabbit down his rabbit hole and encounters a room full of doors of different sizes. The rabbit hole metaphor is a common way of referring to beginning an adventure, particularly one that is likely to have unexpected results. Mark referred to his new perspective of teacher-as-facilitator in a way that seemed to indicate his openness to additional ‘non-traditional’ perspectives on teaching. I added to the rabbit hole metaphor by referring to the first Matrix movie, in which the protagonist is invited to make a choice between accepting and participating in the status quo, or taking a ‘red pill’ and seeing reality in a different way. I hoped to add coherence to his metaphor by acknowledging that learning to teach is an adventure with unknown results, and adding that active-approaches to teaching and learning (such as letting conflicting ideas sit out in the open) requires a certain willingness to challenge the status quo. In this way I hoped both to acknowledge, affirm and extend Mark’s willingness to think about the role that ‘right answers’ play in the classroom and how integral relational approaches to teaching are to the discussion we had during class.

Conclusion and discussion A simplistic view of learning to teach from experience might read: ‘Everyone has been to school, thus everyone has learned how to teach from experiences as

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students – all that remains is to learn the required subject-matter knowledge.’ It is true that we have what Buchmann (1987) referred to as ‘folkways of teaching’ that consist of tacit, instinctual knowledge of how to teach students. Of course, teacher educators strive to provide learning experiences that disrupt the status quo and that provide future teachers with a platform to think about how they might teach in different ways from how they were taught. Sarason (1996) noted that teacher candidates are unlikely to teach in novel ways unless they have novel learning experiences. This chapter began with the premise that metaphors play a vital role in how we communicate, both in our professional and in our personal lives. Gibbs (1994) argued that metaphors help us express ourselves because they are both compact and vivid. Both new and experienced teachers are required to exist in what Schön (1983) called the ‘swampy lowland where situations are confusing “messes” incapable of technical solution’ (42). Schön’s comment is both an evocative metaphor and a reminder that professional personal experience is complex and difficult to capture in literal language. Polanyi’s (1967) conceptualization of tacit knowledge lends further credence to the nature of teachers’ professional knowledge: teachers tend to know more than they are able to articulate. Work done by Munby and Russell (1990), Nilsson and Loughran (2012) and Brown and Russell (2012) provides evidence that attending to the metaphors that new and experienced teachers use to talk about their practice can yield insight into the process for learning to teach. A key challenge for teacher educators is thus to find ways to tune into the messages that teacher candidates are taking from their coursework. Teacher education is not something that happens solely in the field experience; indeed, teacher educators are in a far better position to work with teacher candidates to process experiences that are co-constructed within their own classrooms. This chapter has highlighted data from two studies demonstrating that attending to metaphors used by teacher candidates provides evidence for what teacher candidates are learning from experiences in their methods course. The metaphors move from the simplistic (‘telling’) to the complex (‘how we teach in the message’), which indicates that candidates underestimate the complexity of teaching and the challenges of learning from experience. In Bullock (2011), a group of five teacher candidates met regularly and developed a shared language for talking about their common experiences. Over the year they collectively moved from framing teaching as transmitting information to relational approaches to teaching before settling on activelearning approaches to teaching and trust the learner as the dominant group



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metaphors. Data reported from a blog shared between a teacher candidate and me underscored that the teaching-as-telling/teaching-as-transmitting metaphor is a common starting point for future science teachers, due in part to the success that candidates have had with this model in the past. The candidate in this study also moved to a relational approach to teaching metaphor as a result of experiences in the teacher education programme. One might argue that both the five teacher candidates who participated in Bullock (2011) and the one candidate whose blog I highlighted for the second part of this chapter are exceptional cases. That may well be true. These conclusions are offered not as a suggestion that focus groups, individual interviews and blogs are the only ways to attend to the metaphors that teacher candidates use to describe their teaching and learning experience. To make such a claim would be to fall prey to the technical rationality that Schön (1983) so passionately argued against. Rather, these conclusions are offered as possibilities for finding ways to tune into the diverse experiences of candidates in teacher education courses. For some, blogs might form a valuable space for conversation with their teacher educator. Other candidates might prefer whole-class discussions or group work as spaces to share their metaphors about learning to teach. The larger point to be made is that metaphors about teaching are often tacit; teacher educators have a responsibility to find ways to help candidates examine their assumptions. The degree of coherence between results reported in this chapter and from other studies discussed earlier lends additional credence to Munby and Russell’s (1990) assertion that teacher educators should pay close attention to metaphor in their courses. New teacher candidates do seem to initially have a transmission model of teaching, which can be challenged in productive ways in a teacher education classroom. Teacher candidates may naturally view methods courses as the place where they are told how to teach in effective ways. This chapter has demonstrated the potential value in developing ways to focus on the practical teaching and learning experiences shared by all members in the class: experiences that occur in the methods course. Rather than focusing on what is happening during field placements, it might be in teacher educators’ best interests to develop a shared language for talking about teaching and learning and to find ways to tune into the figurative language that candidates use for talking about teaching. In Bullock (2011), teacher candidates found meaning in active-learning pedagogies such as POEs and their relationship with the teacher educator. The blogging assignment in my course provided both a way for me to tune in to how a candidate developed

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a teacher-as-facilitator metaphor and an opportunity for me to highlight the importance of relationships in engaging in classroom discourse. If we accept the premises that teacher candidates come into pre-service programmes grounded in the cultural tradition of teaching as telling, and that field experiences tend to be conservative forces, then the methods course may be one of the few places where a teacher educator can help teacher candidates disrupt and challenge their prior assumptions about teaching and learning and to articulate what they have learned from experience.

References Baird, J. R. and Northfield, J. R. (1992). Learning from the PEEL Experience. Melbourne: Monash University Printery. Brown, C. L. and Russell, T. (2012). A collaborative self-study of a physics teacher’s first two years of teaching, In S. M. Bullock and T. Russell (eds), Self-Studies of Science Teacher Education Practices. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 9–29. Buchmann, M. (1987). Teaching knowledge: the lights that teachers live by. Oxford Review of Education 13 (2): 151–64. Buchmann, M. and Floden, R. E. (1992). Coherence, the rebel angel. Educational Researcher 21 (9): 6–9. Bullock, S. M. (2011). Inside Teacher Education: Challenging Prior Views of Teaching and Learning. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Burnett, C. (2006). Constructions of professional knowledge among students and practising primary teachers: paradigmatic and narrative orientations. Research Papers in Education 21 (3): 315–33. Bush, R. N. (1987). Teacher education reform: lessons from the past half century. Journal of Teacher Education 38 (3): 13–19. Clandinin, D. J. and Connelly, F. M. (eds) (1995). Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Landscapes. New York: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M. (2000). The future of teacher education: framing the questions that matter. Teaching Education 11 (1): 13–24. —(2001). The outcomes question in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education 17 (5): 527–46. Cochran-Smith, M. and Zeichner, K. M. (2005). Studying Teacher Education: The Report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful Teacher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hascher, T., Cocard, Y. and Moser, P. (2004). Forget about theory – practice is all?



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Student teachers’ learning in practicum. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 10 (6): 623–37. Holland, D. and Quinn, N. (eds) (1987). Cultural Models in Language and Thought. London: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Loughran, J. and Russell, T. (2007). Beginning to understand teaching as a discipline. Studying Teacher Education 3: 217–27. Munby, H. and Russell, T. (1990). Metaphor in the study of teachers’ professional knowledge. Theory into Practice 29 (2): 116–21. Nilsson, P. and Loughran, J. (2012). Developing and assessing professional knowledge as a science teacher educator: learning about teaching from student teachers. In S. M. Bullock and T. Russell (eds), Self-Studies of Science Teacher Education Practices. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 121–38. Olsen, B. (2013). Learning from experience: a teacher-identity perspective. This volume. Polanyi, M. (1967). The Tacit Dimension. New York: Anchor Books. Sarason, S. B. (1996). Revisiting The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. New York: Teachers College Press. Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Trippestad (2013). The rhetoric of experience and ‘the importance of teaching’. This volume. Zeichner, K. M. and Tabachnick, B. R. (1981). Are the effects of university teacher education ‘washed out’ by school experience? Journal of Teacher Education 32 (3): 7–11.

Part Four

Afterword

16

The politics of learning to teach from experience Ken Zeichner

Throughout the world, in various ways and to varying degrees, there has been an explosion of effort to move more of the preparation of teachers to schools. In the US, for example, the federal government (Duncan 2009), both major teacher unions (AFT 2012; NEA 2011), the organization of chief state education officers (CSSO 2012) and the major organization that nationally accredits teacher education programmes (NCATE 2010) have all called for a more school-based, ‘experiential’ approach to preparing teachers. Additionally, private foundations as well as the federal government have heavily funded the development and spread of several kinds of school-based reforms (Suggs and deMarrais 2011, Zeichner, in press). This same ‘turn toward practice’ in teacher education is evident in many other parts of the world as well (e.g. Bird et al. 2013; Ellis 2010; Mattsson et al. 2011; Reid 2011). At one level, advocates of more school-based approaches to preparing teachers have implied that these reforms leading to more ‘clinically rich programmes’ are ideologically neutral and disconnected from political debates about teaching and teacher education in the national media and professional literature. Learning from experience in school-based teacher education is portrayed as a self-evident approach that everyone should understand and support. Experience is evacuated of meaning in these arguments, outside of culture, politics and history (see the chapter by Pitzer in this volume). In reality, efforts to make teacher education more school-based are closely connected to the various ideological and political agendas for reform that exist in different countries. For many years (e.g. Liston and Zeichner 1991; Zeichner 1993) I have been studying the connections between broader cultural, economic and political developments in the US and particular agendas for

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teacher education reform. It is my belief that the current push toward more school-based teacher education varies greatly in the goals that are sought and in the assumptions that are made about the purposes of public education and the nature of teaching, learning and the process of learning to teach. These assumptions and beliefs are reflected both in the school and community settings in which teacher education is increasingly located (Cornbleth 2010; Ronfeldt 2012) and in the broader historical, cultural, political and economic contexts in which these institutional settings are embedded (Ellis 2010). In this brief afterword I will use the US as a case example to illustrate this claim.

Three pathways into teaching in the US Currently, there are three major pathways into teaching in the US and there are efforts to make clinical education the centrepiece of teacher preparation in each of these pathways. For the last 40 years colleges and universities have dominated the preparation of public school teachers in the US (Fraser 2007). For the most part these ‘college recommending’ programmes (both undergraduate and postgraduate) and all additional requirements for state certification to teach are completed by teacher candidates before they become teachers of record fully responsible for classrooms. Beginning in the 1980s, for a variety of reasons (Zeichner and Hutchinson 2008) ‘early entry’ programmes began to appear where individuals assumed full legal responsibility for classrooms with very little preparation to teach. These programmes, like college recommending programmes, vary in length, rigour, content and quality, but regardless of the differences, most of whatever preparation for teaching they include takes place on the job after teachers have assumed full responsibility for classrooms (Grossman and Loeb 2008). A third hybrid form of teacher education has been created in the last decade that combines elements of both early entry and college recommending programmes. In these programmes (e.g. urban teacher residencies) teacher candidates spend more time in clinical work than in traditional college and university programmes, but they do not assume responsibility for a classroom until after they complete their programmes (Berry et al. 2008). Both early entry and hybrid programmes by definition have shifted teacher education more toward learning from experience or ‘on the job’, as it is sometimes called. Additionally, many if not most college recommending programmes that prepare most teachers in the US (National Research Council 2010) have



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increased the amount of time teacher candidates spend in clinical experiences, and, in some cases, university teacher educators have moved coursework into schools and communities (Noel 2013, Zeichner 2010). Rather than seeing this activity as part of a single reform strand with a common agenda, we need to see the multiple agendas for teaching, teacher education and public schooling that have been lumped under the umbrella of a single broad reform approach. Specifically I will argue that the shift toward more school-based forms of teacher education and the increased emphasis on learning to teach from first-hand experience in schools have been used to support a variety of different goals for public schooling and very different visions of teaching, learning and the teacher’s role.

Different visions of teaching and teacher education At a very general level two different conceptions of teaching and teacher education are being advocated in current debates in the US. On the one hand, some have proposed building and maintaining a professional teaching force and a system of teacher education that prepares career teachers for professional roles that involve the development of teacher agency, adaptive expertise and the use of teacher judgement within and beyond the classroom (Darling-Hammond and Bransford 2005). Others have advocated increased reliance on the preparation of technically competent teachers who are able to raise standardized test scores by faithfully using a set of teaching and/or classroom management techniques that allegedly are linked with increases in test scores (Kronholz 2012; Schorr 2012). In reality, the empirical warrant for these ‘core practices’ varies greatly (Pianta 2011). Initial teacher preparation in this view (usually referred to as ‘teacher training’) should be very brief and take place largely on the job. There is little expectation that these teachers will have teaching careers and the system is designed to make it possible for these temporary teachers to be replaced in a few years by other narrowly trained teachers who will leave the classroom after a few years (Zeichner, in press). Of course, these two conceptions of teachers as reflective citizen-professionals who ask questions and challenge the status quo in schools (see Grumet’s chapter in this volume) and as technically competent and obedient civil servants who passively accept what they are directed to do are not always mutually exclusive. Professional, educated teachers should be technically competent as well as thoughtful and analytic, and technically

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trained teachers should ideally be capable of adapting the practices they learn to meet the constantly changing needs of their students. Teachers who learn from experience need to be able to work within the existing system and simultaneously challenge it in order to make it better. As Grumet points out in this volume, ‘experience must not be collapsed into the idea of fitting into what goes on in schools’. Anderson and Stillman (2013) offer another more fine-grained framework for understanding different perspectives on what teaching is and involves. They identify three perspectives: teaching as management teaching as performance (of particular pedagogies and strategies), and teaching as the facilitation of student learning. In teaching as management the focus is on creating an orderly and efficient classroom using classroom management strategies such as those popularized by charter school educator Doug Lemov (Lemov 2010). In teaching as performance the focus is on helping teacher candidates learn to master a set of ‘core teaching practices’ that are thought to be associated with desired learning outcomes defined by the improvement of students’ standardized test scores (Ball and Forzani 2009). As I have pointed out in an analysis of this movement to focus on core teaching practices as the substance of teacher education, this focus on core practices is often disconnected from the varied contexts in which teachers work and from the relational and emotional aspects of the teacher’s work (Zeichner 2012; see also Gatti’s chapter in this book). Underlying the view of teaching as the facilitation of student learning are sharp differences in what is defined as success in promoting student learning. Increasingly in the US, student performance on standardized tests scores that are alleged to assess low-level cognitive skills in a few subjects has become the ‘gold standard’ for assessing the effectiveness of teachers and even teacher education programmes (e.g. Duncan 2011). There is clear evidence that this focus on standardized test scores in local, state and national school and teacher accountability systems has resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum mostly in schools serving students living in poverty to focus on what is tested and in the reduction and even removal from the curriculum of content that is not tested (Berliner 2011). It has also been argued that because of consistent social class and racial differences in standardized tests that the reduction of student learning to performance of standardized test scores has resulted in widening the gap in public schools between who gets to interact with knowledge in authentic ways and whose education is limited to a skill-based and routinized education. The impact, it is argued, is a decrease in overall



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educational opportunity (Tienken and Zhao 2013). For example, Mike Rose (2013) has argued: You can prep kids for a standardized test, get a bump in test scores, yet not be providing a very good education. The end result is the replication of a troubling pattern in American schooling: poor kids get an education of skills and routine, a lower-tier education while students in more affluent districts get a robust course of study. (13)

Most teachers in the US who are ‘trained’ in a narrow technical way only to do what is needed to raise standardized test scores, but not to utilize adaptive expertise and to exercise their judgement in the classroom, and in school reform are found teaching in schools serving students living in poverty in both urban and rural areas (Peske and Haycock 2006). This inequitable distribution of fully prepared professional and experienced teachers is one of the most severe inequities in US public education (Adamson and Darling-Hammond 2012). An alternative definition of facilitating student learning is based on the goal of giving all students access to a broad and well-balanced curriculum that develops such things as students’ critical thinking skills, the characteristics and skills needed for active civic participation and their aesthetic sensitivities and capabilities, in addition to the cognitive skills that are assessed in standardized tests. Here the goal is to develop teachers who are able to enact a more ambitious form of professionalism (e.g. Sachs 2003) than the more limited form of organizational professionalism discussed by Evetts (2009) (see Edwards’ chapter in this volume) where teachers are socialized to comply with unscruitinized institutional purposes. Although some teachers who have been prepared in programmes based on an ambitious view of teacher professionalism are found teaching in the urban and rural schools most affected by poverty, increasingly these schools are being staffed in the US by teachers who have been prepared in programmes that have been framed around narrow and technical forms of professionalism. Currently in the US there is a struggle going on over the control of teaching and teacher education in terms of the different views of teaching, learning and the teacher’s role that I have just outlined. On the one hand, many college and university teacher educators (often referred to by their critics as ‘the defenders’) have argued for an investment of public funds in the public system of teacher education to strengthen it so that ‘everyone’s children’ can have access to fully prepared and effective teachers under a broad and ambitious definition of student learning.

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Over the last decade, however, there has been an abandonment of investment in the public system of teacher education by the federal government and private foundations (Zeichner, 2014) and a redirection of funds to support greater competition and markets and a whole new set of programmes developed by educational entrepreneurs from outside of the university sector (Zeichner and Pena 2013). These reformers have argued that the college and university system has failed and needs to be replaced. Finally, there are many current efforts by those inside the college and university sector to transform (rather than defend or replace) the current system of university teacher education to be more relevant and connected to problems of practice in public schools and to more successfully draw on the expertise that is located in universities, schools and local communities under a new more democratic form of teacher education governance (e.g. Zeichner and Payne 2013, Ellis 2013; see also Sloat et al. in this volume). All three of these stances toward the current system are found in the new teacher education model favoured by the federal government, the urban teacher residency.

The many faces of urban teacher residency programmes The urban teacher residency model, one of the new hybrid forms of teacher education in the US, nicely illustrates the underlying diversity in what appears on the surface to be a uniform approach to a more school-based form of teacher education. In 2004 Tom Payzant, who was then superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, presented an invited plenary address at the annual meeting of the major teacher education association in the US (the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education). The title of his talk was Should Teacher Education Take Place at Colleges and Universities? In this talk Payzant complained about the quality of teachers that his school district was receiving from the many colleges and universities in the Boston area and warned that if these institutions did not improve that he would start his own programme within the Boston Public Schools. Soon after, the Boston Teacher Residency programme (BTR) was launched as one of the first urban teacher residency programmes in the US (Berry et al. 2008). Currently the urban teacher residency (UTR) is the favoured model of the Obama administration. In 2009–10, the US Department of Education awarded $143 million to support the start-up of 40 new UTRs. For the Department, as well as for a number of those who seek to replace the current system of college



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and university-based teacher education (e.g. Chubb 2012; in addition to their investment in the spread of ‘early entry’ programmes), the UTR has become an important means to ‘disrupt’ the current college and university dominated system of teacher education in the US and to bring new providers into the field. Here we have seen the rapid growth of UTRs, such as the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) in Chicago and the BTR in Boston, programmes that are largely controlled by non-university staff and dominated by narrow and technical forms of teaching and management. We can see an example of such a programme in Gatti’s chapter in this volume. Some of these programmes, like AUSL in Chicago and the MATCH Teacher Residency in Boston, are based solely in either charter schools or in public schools that have been ‘reconstituted’ under the federal education law and whose management has been turned over to a non-public, for-profit or non-profit company. These UTRs are linked to broad efforts to privatize US public education, to de-professionalize teaching and to lessen the power of teacher unions (Ravitch 2013). In addition to these ‘reform’ residencies that are aimed at the disruption of the teacher education market, there are many UTRs that are built on a more solid foundation of professional preparation for teachers and that involve genuine forms of shared responsibility for teacher education among university, school and, in a few cases, local communities (Zeichner and Payne 2013). These residencies are aimed at strengthening and transforming traditional disconnected university models of teacher education and although they are more connected to the complexities of schools in particular school districts, they often still maintain a strong social and cultural foundations component (e.g. Bowman and Gottesman 2013). The San Francisco, Seattle, Teachers College/ New York City and Montclair/Newark Teacher Residencies are examples of these programmes. Finally, consistent with many previous reforms in teacher education where there has been a repackaging of the same practices under new labels, there are some teacher residencies that illustrate Sarason’s (1982) idea of ‘change but no change’. These have failed to fundamentally alter substantive aspects of the traditional university model. Here we have the label of UTR layered over programmes that may be more school-based than before, but that have not otherwise altered their instructional and curricular practices in ways that reflect the more situated and democratic nature of the idea of a UTR. These programmes sometimes mix the residents into classes with teacher candidates who are enrolled in their other programmes, reflecting the lack of differentiation in the substance of teacher preparation across pathways.

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Concluding comments The UTR, like school-based reforms in teacher education generally, cannot be understood as an approach to teacher education reform without unpacking and analyzing the underlying commitments to particular purposes of public schooling and the meaning of teaching, learning, the teacher’s role and the process of learning to teach. We need to be very cautious about taking a position on any call to adopt a more school or practice-based approach until we understand these underlying commitments that are associated with learning to teach from experience in particular situations. There is a long history throughout the world of enduring problems that have been associated with clinical experiences in teacher education (e.g. Zeichner and Bier 2013), and although shifting the location of teacher education more to schools and communities offers potential to strengthen the educative value of the preparation, it can also, under some circumstances where learning from experience is uncritically glorified or overly specified, undermine the capabilities of teachers to have the vision and exercise the agency needed to offer a genuine education to students. Although the literature on clinical teacher education offers some guidance in designing high-quality clinical teacher education (e.g. Grossman 2010), ultimately it is necessary to grapple with, understand and take a stand on the complex political and philosophical issues that underlie what on the surface appears simple and straightforward. The chapters in this book have taken us some way forward in understanding what ‘learning teaching from experience’ can mean. Any attempt to transform teacher education for twenty-first-century schools will require much greater effort to understand the meaning of experience in learning to teach than we have yet seen from either defenders or reformers.

References Admamson, F. and Darling-Hammond, L. (2012). Funding disparities and the inequitable distribution of teachers: evaluating sources and solutions. Education Policy Analysis Archives 20 (37); http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs (accessed 25 July 2013). American Federation of Teachers (AFT) (2012). Raising the Bar: Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession. Washington, DC: Author. Anderson, L. and Stillman, J. (2013). Student teaching’s contribution to preservice teacher development: a review of research focused on the preparation for teachers for urban and high-needs contexts. Review of Educational Research 83 (1): 3–69.



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Ball, D. and Forzani, F. (2009). The work of teaching and the challenge for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education 60: 497–510. Berliner, D. (2011). Rational responses to high-stakes testing: the case of curriculum narrowing and the harm that follows. Cambridge Journal of Education 41 (3): 287–302. Berry, B., Montgomery, D. et al. (2008). Creating and Sustaining Urban Teacher Residencies: A New Way to Recruit, Prepare and Retain Effective Teachers in High Needs Districts. Queenstown, MD: Center for Teacher Quality. The Aspen Institute. Bird, L., Moon, B. and Storey, A. (2013). The context for teacher education in developing countries. In R. Moon (ed.), Teacher Education and the Challenge of Development: A Global Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 19–31. Bowman, M. and Gottesman (2013). Why practice-centered teacher education programs need social foundations. Teachers College Record, 22 March 2013; http:// www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 17066 (accessed 9 May 2013). Chubb, J. (2012). The Best Teachers in the World: Why We Don’t Have Them and How We Could. Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institute Press. Cornbleth, C. (2010). Institutional habitus as the de facto diversity curriculum of teacher education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 41(3): 280–97. Council of Chief State School Officers (CSSO) (2012). Our Responsibility, Our Promise: Transforming Educator Preparation and Entry into the Profession. Washington, DC: Author. Darling-Hammond, L. and Bransford, J. (eds) (2005). Preparing Teachers for a Changing World. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Duncan, A. (2009). Teacher Preparation: Reforming an Uncertain Profession. Address given by the US Secretary of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. —(2011). Our Future, Our Teachers: The Obama Administration’s Plan for Teacher Education Reform and Improvement. Washington, DC: US Department of Education. Ellis, V. (2010). Impoverishing experience: the problem of teacher education in the U.K. Journal of Education for Teaching 36 (1): 105–20. —(2013). Teacher education in the public university: the challenge of democratising knowledge production. In G. Wells and A. Edwards (eds). Pedagogy in Higher Education: A Cultural-Historical Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 198–214. Evetts, J. (2009), New professionalism and new public management: changes, continuities and consequences. Comparative Sociology 8: 247–66. Fraser, J. (2007). Preparing America’s Teachers: A History. New York : Teachers College Press. Grossman, P. (May 2010). Learning to Practice: The Design of Clinical Experience in Teacher Preparation. Policy Brief of the Partnership for Teacher Quality. Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

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Grossman, P. and Loeb, S. (eds) (2008). Alternative Routes to Teaching: Mapping the New Landscape of Teacher Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Kronholz, J. (2012). A new type of ed school: linking candidate success to student success. Education Next; http://educationnext.org/a-new-type-of-ed-school/ (accessed 26 August 2012). Lemov, D. (2010). Teach like a Champion. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Liston, D. and Zeichner, K. (1991). Teacher Education and the Social Conditions of Schooling. New York: Routledge. Mattsson, M., Eilertsen, T. V. and Rorrison, D. (eds) (2011). A Practicum Turn in Teacher Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. National Council of Accreditation for Teacher Education (NCATE) (2010). Transforming Teacher Education through Clinical Practice: A National Strategy to Prepare Effective Teachers. Washington, DC: Author. National Education Association (NEA) (2011). Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning. Washington, DC: Author. National Research Council (NRC) (2010). Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Noel, J. (ed.) (2013). Moving Teacher Education into Urban Schools and Communities. New York: Routledge. Peske, H. and Haycock, K. (2006). Teaching Inequality: How Poor Minority Students are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality. Washington DC: Education Trust. Pianta, R. C. (2011). Teaching Children Well: New Evidence-based Approaches to Teacher Professional Development and Training. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatisation Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. New York: Knopf. Reid, J. (2011). A practice-turn for teacher education? South Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 39 (4): 293–310. Ronfeldt, M. (2012). Where should student teachers learn to teach? Effects of placement school characteristics on teacher retention and effectiveness. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis 34: 3–26. Rose, M. (2013). The mismeasure of teaching and learning: how contemporary school reform fails the test. In M. Katz and M. Rose (eds), Public Education Under Siege. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 9–20. Sachs, J. (2003). The Activist Teaching Profession. Berkshire: Open University Press. Sarason, S. (1982). The Culture of School and the Problem of Change. 2nd edn. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Schorr, J. (2012). A revolution begins in teacher prep. Stanford Social Innovation Review 11 (1); http://www.ssireview.org/ (accessed 12 December 2012). Suggs, C. and deMarrais, K. (July 2011). Critical Contributions: Philanthropic Investment in Teachers and Teaching. Atlanta: Kronley & Associates.



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Tienken, C. H. and Zhao, Y. (2013). How common standards and standardized testing widen the opportunity gap. In P. Carter and K. Weiner (eds), Closing the Opportunity Gap. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 111–22. Zeichner, K. (1993). Traditions of practice in North American teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education 9 (1): 1–13. —(2010) Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education 89 (11): 89–99. —(2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education 63 (5): 376–82. —(2014). Two visions of teaching and teacher education for the 21st century. In X. Zhu and K. Zeichner (eds), Preparing Teachers for the 21st century. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. Zeichner, K. and Bier, M. (2013). The turn toward practice and clinical experiences in US teacher education. Beiträge zur Lehrerbildung [Swiss Journal of Teacher Education; published in English] 30 (2): 153–70. Zeichner, K. and Hutchinson, E. (2008). The development of alternative certification policies and programs in the United States. In P. Grossman and S. Loeb (eds), Alternative Routes to Teaching: Mapping the New Landscape of Teacher Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, pp. 15–29. Zeichner, K. and Payne, K. (2013). Democratizing knowledge in urban teacher education. In J. Noel (ed.), Moving Teacher Education into Urban Schools and Communities. New York: Routledge, pp. 3–19. Zeichner, K. and Pena, C. S. (April 2013). Venture Philanthropy and Teacher Education Policy in the U.S. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.

Index abstract learning 90 academic instruction 23 academy schools 57 accountability 10–11, 68, 146 acculturation 36 action research 9, 155 active learning 246 Adan, Jane 119 agency see teacher agency alternative teaching programmes 129–30 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) 234 Anderson, A. 117 Anderson, L. 260 Apple, M. 199 Applebaum, B. 136 Aries, P. 109 Aristotle 3–4 ‘artefact’ concept 178–9, 184–5, 188 Arter, J. A. 176–7 ‘at-risk’ students 132 automy professional 199 for schools 159 Ayers, R. 200 Ayers, W. 200 Babbitt, S. E. 138 Ball, D. 224, 225 Barthes, Roland 64–5, 69–71, 72–3, 138 Barton, D. 178 Bathmaker, Anne-Marie 116 behaviour management 24, 32, 35 Berkeley, George 4–5 Berlant, Lauren 114 Blackler, F. 98 Blake, William 218 blogs, use of 244–52 Bologna Process 177 Boston Teacher Residency (BTR) Programme 262–3 ‘boundary objects’ 178, 184, 187–8

Boyles, D. 199 branding of teacher education programmes 193–4 Brandom, R. 52, 54 Britzman, Deborah 7–8, 117–18, 153 Brown, C. L. 247 Brown, S. D. 97 Brown, Tom 119 Bruner, J. 55–7, 94–6 Buchmann, M. 91, 240–1, 250 Burnett, C. 242 Butler, D. L. 25 Cameron, David 67, 70, 242 Campbell, C. 138 Canada 143–7, 152, 239, 243 Cane, Emily 211–14, 218 career decisions of teachers 88 Carlsten, T. C. 98 Carter, K. 54 certification of teachers 193 Childs, Ann 48, 50 Clandinin, D. J. 96, 241–2 Clark, C. 149 Clark, M. C. 105 classroom management and classroom environments 24, 215–17, 260 Cocard, Y. 239 Cochran-Smith, M. 196, 239, 242 co-construction process 250 cognitive dimensions of teaching quality 82 collective memory 104 commodification of teacher preparation 193 communities of practice 106, 154–6, 225 conceptual development in the process of learning 51 Connelly, F. M. 96, 241–2 content knowledge for teaching 224, 226 context-specific learning 90 contextualization of human experience 161–4, 172

270 Index continual processes of design 187 continuing professional development 188, 195 ‘conventional wisdom’ in education 89–90 core teaching practices 260 corporatization of education 197–200 coursework of trainee teachers 239, 250, 259 Cove Primary School 99 craft knowledge of teaching 83 cultural-historical accounts of learning 48–9 curriculum delivery 53–4 Cussins, A. 54, 56 Dangerous Minds (film) 133 Danielson, C. 146 Darling-Hammond, L. 129 deficit discourse 128, 131–9 and the authority of experience 136–9 in TFA teacher talk 133–5 Derry, J. 52, 57–58, 162 Descartes, René 5 Destiny’s Child 218 Dewey, John 6, 83, 109, 148 dialectic nature of learning 50, 58–9 dialogical approach to teaching 184 differentiation in classroom teaching 28–9 Dignath, C. 25 discipline in schools 71, 74 discourse and discourse analysis 63, 162 discursive psychology 97 Donaldson, G. 10 Dos Passos, J. 111 Duncan, Arne 195 Dunne, J. 52 ‘each one teach one’ philosophy 218–19 ‘early entry’ programmes for beginning teachers 258, 262–3 economics, teaching seen as 67–9 educational reform 2, 9, 160–2, 197, 198, 242, 257–9, 262–3 role of teachers in 91 Edwards, A. 162 Edwards, D. 97 Edwards, R. 64 effectiveness, educational, research on 22–6

Ellis, V. 52–4, 58–9 embedded knowledge and embedded understandings 98, 147–51, 156 emotional aspects of learning 49–50 emotional experience 7–8 empiricism 4–6, 22–3 enculturation 156 Engeström, Y. 53 epistemic mediation 179, 186 ethnographic studies 243 Evetts, J. 59, 261 expectations of teachers 86–7 experience, valuing of 2 see also learning from experience experiential frames 208–9, 217–20 ‘experimental empiricism’ (Dewey) 6 facilitation of student learning 260 ‘failing’ schools 207 ‘fast-track’ teacher education 210 Feiman-Nemser, S. 89 Feinberg, Mike 130 feminism 113 feminization of the teaching workforce 113 field experience for teachers 239–40 limitations of 250 figurative language 241, 251 see also metaphors Fine, M. 132 Flax, J. 136 Floden, R. E. 241 ‘folkways of teaching’ (Buchmann) 240, 250 Ford, Henry 192 Ford River Rouge Complex 192 Freud, Sigmund 117, 120–1 Gates Foundation 207 Gibbs, R.W. 241, 243, 250 Gonzalez, L. 54 Goodlad, J. 55 Goodson, I. 83 Goulding, M. 229 Gove, Michael 10, 49, 67, 69–70 Graue, B. 182 Greaver, M. 194 Greeno, J. G. 6 Greer, M. C. 66

Index Griesemer, J. R. 178 Grimmett, P. 82–3, 145 Grossman, P. 147 Grumet, M. 84

Ivarson, J. 179

Habermas, Jürgen 110 Hall, G. Stanley 120 Hall, S. 136 Harvey, D. 130 Hascher, T. 153, 239 Hattie, J. 25 head teachers 72 Hedegaard, M. 50 Hegel, G. W. F. 4 Henke, S. 133, 135 ‘high-leverage’ practices 9 higher-order thinking 51–3, 59, 143 Hill, H. 234 Hodgen, J. 235 Holland, D. 57, 243 hooks, b. 138 horizontal integration as a business model 191–2 Horn, I. S. 106 Huberman, M. 83 van Huizen, P. 48 human capital theory 63 Hume, David 4–5

Kant, Immanuel 5 Kelchtermans, G. 83 Kessels, J. 83 Kincaid, Jamaica 218 Klette, K. 98 knowledge-base for teaching 82–4 Kohlberg, L. 110 Kopp, Wendy 129 Korthagan, F. 83 Kyriakides, L. 36

identity 57 interconnection with experience 85–8 identity conflicts 86–7, 90–1 identity construction, psychological view of 84 identity studies 80–1 see also teacher identity imitation in learning 50 Importance of Teaching, The (White Paper, 2010) (IoT) 63–74 independent schools 55 innovative teaching methods 32–7 instruments as distinct from artefacts 179, 187–8 International Systematic Teacher Observation Framework (ISTOF) 27, 34–5 internship programmes 149, 176 interpersonal mediation 180, 186–7 Italy 159–60, 163

271

James, Henry 115 Jones, A. 138

Lacan, Jacques 117–18 language as a mediator of thinking and learning 178 Laubach, Frank 218 Lave, J. 160–1 Lawrence, D. H. 115 Leaders for Equity in Education (LEE) 208–13 learning environments 52, 58 learning from experience 1–11, 36–7, 54–8, 68–9, 89–92, 112, 115, 117, 159–63, 172, 175, 185, 187, 197, 199, 239–40, 249–50 history of 3–11 politics of 257–64 Leibniz, G. 5 Lemov, Doug 208, 213–16, 219, 260 Levin, David 130 lifelong learners 176 Lipman, Pauline 207 Liston, D. 214 local education authorities 55, 172 Locke, John 4–5 Lortie, D. 149, 248 McDowell, J. 57 Macedo, Elizabeth 116–17 MacKinnon, A. 82–3 McNicholl, Jane 48 MAD comedy sketch group 219 Madeloni, Barbara 200 mathematics: student conceptions about 225

272 Index teaching of 223–4 Mead, G. H. 49 mechanization of teaching and assessment processes 197, 201 mediation, sociocultural concept of 177–80, 186–7 mentoring of teachers 31, 54, 58, 209–10 metacognition 25–7, 34 metaphors, use of 241–6, 250–2 microethnography 159, 163–4 ‘microteaching’ 214 Middleton, D. 97 Mill, John Stuart 121 moral understanding 3–4 Moser, P. 239 motivation for entering teaching 86–7 Muijs, D. 25 Munby, H. 242–3, 251 mytholigization 64, 67–74 Narayan, U. 137–8 narrative and narrative analysis 55, 96–7, 232 Nation at Risk, A (report, 1983) 113 National Challenge initiative 33 national curriculum for teacher training 47–8 neoliberalism 6, 68, 130 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2001) 205, 232 ‘no limit child’ 69–1, 74 Norway 2, 95, 175–88, 186 Obama, Barack 195 Olsen, B. 242 on-the-job training for teachers 258–9 Orion Academy 207–8 Our Future, Our Teachers (report, 2011) 195 Pargman, T. C. 179 Parkinson, P. 151 participant observation 243–4 passion and novelty in teaching 70–4 Payzant, Tom 262 Pearson (company) 193–200 pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) 224 perezhivanie concept (Vygotsky) 8

personal histories of beginning teachers 86 Petrou, M. 225 Phillips, Adam 111, 121 Piaza, P. 196 Plato 3 Polanyi, M. 56–7, 250 policy documents 64–5, 70, 73 Popkewitz, T. S. 132, 134 portfolio writing and assessment 176–7, 180–1, 185–8 Power, C. 196 pragmatic mediation 179–80, 186 preconceptions of beginning teachers 148–9, 156 pre-service teachers 148–50 beliefs of 148–53 integrated learning model for 154–5 prior experience and assumptions of student teachers 245, 252 privatization of education 197 Probyn, Elspeth 7 professional development (PD) courses 223, 226, 231–6 see also continuing professional development professional growth 233–4 professional identity 85 see also teacher identity professionalism and professionalization in teaching 8–9, 59, 112–13, 261 psychoanalytic theory 121 Quinn, N. 243 ‘Race to the Top’ programme 197–8 rationalism 5–6 recontextualization of experience see contextualization reflection and reflective practice 9, 83, 113, 150–2, 240 see also self-reflection reflexive mediation 180, 186–7 ‘reframing’ 243 relational approach to teaching 245, 248, 251 research funding priorities 91 rhetoric used by politicians 242 rhetorical analysis and rhetorical agency 63–6, 73

Index Rose, Mike 261 Rossiter, M. 105 Ruglis, J. 132 Russell, T. 242–3, 247, 251 SACI model 179 Säljö, R. 185 Sarason, S. B. 250, 263 Sartre, Jean-Paul 110–11, 117 Sawchuck, S. 195 Schön, Donald 83, 112–13, 240, 243, 250–1 School Direct programme 2 school experiences separated from those of everyday life 109–10 science methods courses 239, 244 science teachers 247, 251 scientific concepts 185–6 Scotland 10 Scott, J. 136–7 self-reflection 154–5 self-regulated learning (SRL) 24–6, 35–6 Shanker, Albert 113 Shephard, Gillian 47 Shulman, L. 82–3, 224 Silverstone, Roger 65 Singapore 117 situative/pragmatic socio-historic approach to learning and development 6–8 situativity theory 159, 161 social constructionism 33–4, 64, 69, 74, 148 social efficiency tradition in teacher education 214 ‘social situation of development’ (Vygotsky) 48–9, 51, 58 socialization of teachers 261 Solórzano, D. G. 128 Spandel, V. 176–7 ‘specialist leaders of education’ 70 Star, S. L. 178 Stewart, Kathleen 111, 117 Stickney, J. A. 194 Stillman, J. 260 storytelling by teachers 95–107 as collective construction of experience 104 as a learning opportunity 105–7 student achievement: assessment of 176

273

linked to teacher behaviours 23 supply chains 191, 195 tacit knowledge 250–1 talk in interaction 162–4 Tan, Jason 117 Taubman, Peter 115, 120–1 Teach First programme 21–2, 25–37, 72, 210, 242 Teach for America (TFA) programme 127, 133–5, 139, 145, 210, 226 teacher agency 66–71, 74, 153, 264 teacher education availability of places in 147 diversity of experiences in 250–1 practical elements in 146 purposes of 52–5 role of teachers in 201 school-based 2, 10, 21–2, 36, 257–9, 262–4 separation of theorizing from the practice of teaching 153–4 teachers’ denigration of 118 transformation of 262 university-based 48, 85–6, 176 teacher identity 79–85, 88–91, 242 definition of 84–5 recommendations on 88–90 teacher knowledge 82–4 teacher learning 82–91 ‘teacher proofing’ 196, 201 teacher quality 67, 72, 82, 119, 262 teacher recruitment 21, 37 Teaching Schools 70 Teitelbaum, K. 199 test scores for students 260–1 theatrical metaphors for teaching 69–73 Theoharis, G. 132, 135 theoretical learning and understanding 91–2, 143–55, 160, 239 Timperley, H. 25 Tremmel, R. 83 trust-based relationships 246 Tubman, Harriet 217 University of Massachusetts 199–201 University of New Brunswick 147 urban teacher residencies (UTRs) 208–11, 258, 262–4

274 Index Valencia, R. R. 132 vertical integration 191–9 and supply of teachers 192–7 Vrasidas, C. 198 Vygotsky, Lev 6, 8, 50–4, 56, 58, 177 Wartofsky, M. 56–7, 178 Weiner, L. 134 Wenger, E. 160–1 Wertsch, J. V. 104 whole-class interactive teaching 23–5, 35 Wiley & Sons (publishers) 215–16

Winne, P. H. 25 Wolin, S. S. 197 writing as praxis 182 ‘writing events’ 180 Yates, Lyn 116 Yosso, T. J. 128 Young, Michael 116 Zeichner, K. 83, 127, 129–30, 193, 214 ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky) 58