Learning About Other People’s Families

While the call for teacher education students to learn about their students’ family and community lives remains urgent and compelling, educating teachers about the Other is tricky business. In this article I discuss the use of two performed ethnographies, Harriet’s House and Ana’s Shadow, to provide opportunities for teachers to learn about Other people’s families in ways that work against presenting a singular, dominant narrative of the Other’s experiences and positioning Other students as experts. Although the outcomes from educating teachers about Other people’s families are unpredictable and do not always disrupt the prior, potentially harmful, knowledges teachers bring with them to teaching, I argue, along with Kevin Kumashiro, that ongoing labour to stop the repetition of harmful knowledges is important anti-oppressive educational work.     

培养文化敏感型教师:多元文化教师教育的议题与挑战——美国哥伦比亚大学师范学院A.Lin.Goodwin教授访谈

学校中儿童的日益多样化,使得教师教育必须帮助新教师理解如何与各种文化背景的学生打交道。教师不能想当然地假设每一个孩子都有相似的经历和体验,而要对学生的差异性保持清醒的意识和文化的敏感。多元文化教育更大的使命,是要确保教育实践的公平性,履行教育助推社会公正的使命。因此,为社会公正培养"文化敏感型教师",成为多元文化教育的核心议题。文化敏感型教师尽最大努力确保所有学生学业成功,帮助学生发展批判和质疑精神,培养学生改变社会的意识和能力。文化敏感型教师的概念使我们超越了对多元文化教师教育的肤浅定义,将多元文化教师教育指向这样的方向:教育是具有政治意义的活动,是每一个孩子都应该获得的权利。多元文化教师教育并非是让学生了解某个或某些少数民族那么简单,而是要培养师范生对个体差异性进行持续探究的能力。     

Examining the Use of Curriculum to Support Early Literacy Instruction: A Multiple Case Study of Head Start Teachers

Research Findings: This qualitative study examined how Head Start teachers thought about children’s early literacy and how they enacted their thinking in a year-long curriculum reform effort. Data collected included interviews, observations, questionnaires, concept maps, and teachers’ reflections on implementation. The results indicated that as teachers implemented the new curriculum, a number of factors influenced their instructional practice. Four cross-case themes emerged: Volunteering to Change, Teachers’ Perspectives About Early Literacy, The Relationships Within Teaching Teams, and The Head Start Context. Practice or Policy: Findings are discussed as they relate to improving early literacy instruction through the use of curriculum. Implications for practitioners and teacher educators are outlined, including the importance of addressing gaps in teacher knowledge, facilitating skill development, and influencing teachers’ motivation to engage in change. Equally important to consider are factors that may influence a teacher’s readiness to change his or her practice and emphasizing the need for supportive environments as teachers work to enhance children’s early literacy development.     

Elaborating pedagogical content knowledge: what it means to know students and think about teaching

The purpose of this study was to examine how a teacher understood her students and then thought and made decisions about content, curriculum and pedagogy. Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and Deweyan philosophies of experience and education provided the theoretical frameworks. Data were collected through observations (N?=?38) and interviews (N?=?38) over four months and analysed using constant comparison. Findings indicated that this teacher possessed a broad repertoire of knowledge about students that she used to think and make decisions about content, curriculum and pedagogy. The connections between knowing students and thinking about teaching were more sophisticated and interconnected than is typically recognized or articulated in teacher knowledge literature. Three themes are used to explain how this teacher understood her students’ emotional and social lives in and out of her classroom, and ways it influenced her thinking and teaching. The discussion centers on the need for more comprehensive analyses of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge.     

‘Tugging at our sleeves’: understanding experiences of obligation in teaching

Classrooms are complex spaces. These complexities magnify the teacher’s sense of obligation to children and the subsequent experiences of being overwhelmed, which can influence the teacher’s decision to leave the profession. Yet, we believe that a teacher’s obligation to children is inherent to morally defensible teaching. Drawn from a larger research project, we explore one teacher’s experience of obligation as a promissory relation between the teacher and the child, and consider the effect this has on the teacher’s relationships with other professionals and her disengagement from the profession. In doing so, we will illustrate the teacher’s experiences of obligation; the ways these are complicated within the matrix of relationships with professional colleagues; and the possibilities for professional disengagement to be considered an act of moral resistance.     

Torey Hayden’s teacher lore: classroom behavior management of children with emotional and behavioral disorders

Torey Hayden’s portrayal of classroom behavior management in her teacher lore, autobiographical writings about teaching children with emotional and behavioral disorders, is examined. Five of her books were sampled: One child, Somebody else’s kids, Just another kid, Ghost girl and Beautiful child. Each of these books unfolds within the space of an elementary age, self‐contained classroom for children with emotional and behavioral disorders. Each technique Hayden used to respond to her students’ problem behaviors in the five books was categorized according to Fritz Redl’s theory on managing behavior problems. Redl identified five strategies educators can use to handle their students’ behavior problems: changing, managing, tolerating, preventing and accommodating. The methodology used to categorize Hayden’s techniques was analogous to constant comparative analysis of documents. Hayden is portrayed through Redl’s strategies as a teacher who relies on managing without consequences and changing techniques. Narrative passages illustrating these techniques are presented. The roles of altruism and student empowerment in Hayden’s storied model of classroom management are presented. Implications for Hayden as a role model for teachers of children with emotional and behavioral disorders are discussed.     

The Complexity of Becoming a Dialogic Teacher in an English Language Arts Classroom

Recent research in English education has emphasised dialogically organised instruction to promote learning talk; yet little is known about teachers’ perceptions of their efforts to teach dialogically. This study draws on video-cued interviews to examine how secondary preservice English teacher Emma experiences trying to teach dialogically and the conflicting demands it elicits for her. Findings indicate that she must navigate competing discourses including the curriculum, the ideas of her mentor teacher, her beliefs about dialogic teaching and her university schooling. Emma’s accounts revealed that satisfying these at once was not achievable, and that her endeavour to become a dialogic teacher was rife with conflict.     

Negotiating contradictions in developing teacher identity during the EAL practicum in Australia

This paper reports on how Maria (pseudonym), a non-native English speaker (NNES) and preservice teacher (PST) of English as an additional language (EAL), developed her professional identity during the practicum in an Australian secondary school. Drawing on activity theory, the study identified contradictions in Maria’s practicum activity and examined how Maria’s professional identity developed through her negotiation of the contradictions. Data included interviews with Maria before, during and after the practicum, her reflections, an interview with her school mentor (Ms Davies, pseudonym), and relevant documents. The findings reveal that Maria experienced contradictions between her multiple identities of NNES, student, becoming teacher, and classroom teacher, between her mentor’s teaching approach and that of her own, and between her practice and rules. The findings provide implications for researching teacher identity and supporting preservice EAL teachers in developing productive teacher identities during the practicum.     

论《汤姆大伯的小屋》中的女性主体意识

本文从女性写作和女性阅读的角度对美国女作家斯托夫人的《汤姆大伯的小屋》进行重新阐释，通过细读文本和联系时代背景，从宗教、家庭和母爱三方面说明斯托夫人独特的女性意识和政治目的，试图为更好地理解斯托夫人，更准确地解读其文本提供一个新的视角。     

ALIGNING PRESCHOOL AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CURRICULA THROUGH A COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MODEL

This article investigates how a Midwestern early childhood teacher’s practice and her views of her practice are culturally constrained. The research is framed by a cultural psychology and draws on an ethnographic and interpretive biographic study of Mary, an experienced first-grade teacher. We explore Mary’s practice through four central themes: (a) raising independent decision makers, (b) developing self-motivated lifelong learners, (c) providing a basis for a successful life, and (d) building community. We explore how each theme is informed by a folk psychology that reflects Mary’s cultural beliefs and values. We conclude with implications for early childhood practice and research     

Multicultural education as an emotional situation: practice encountering the unexpected in teacher education

Juxtaposing the concepts of screen memory, counter-transference and the holding environment within psychoanalytic theory, this essay explores the author’s emotional experience, who begins the exploration by asking several questions. What happens to a teacher’s emotional world and her consciousness in the process of trying to shift students’ consciousness in multicultural education? What is the psychical consequence for teachers of colour who must listen to racist discourse as a precondition to convincing those to do otherwise? How does a teacher’s emotional world influence student learning and development of critical consciousness? In working through her emotional response aroused by the students’ questions in her multicultural education classes, the author discusses the importance of a conversation between psychoanalysis and critical multicultural pedagogies and why the conversation matters.     

An arts project failed,censored or … ? A critical incident approach to artist–school partnerships

When a successful primary school engaged a writer to work with children on an arts project, the teachers and the writer thought that the result would be a lively, publishable product. When the writer worked with the children, he thought that he should use the children's experiences and ideas as a basis for meaningful and engaged composition. However, the result was a text which the head‐teacher and her staff felt was inappropriate. They were concerned that it could bring disapproval from parents and possible adverse publicity. The head refused to publish but continues to worry about this decision. The writer describes the project as censored. In this paper, we suggest that this critical incident raises important questions about the nature of ‘partnership’ between artists and schools and the role of the flagship Creative Partnerships policy and programme. We suggest some possibilities for dealing with such situations in future and argue that Creative Partnerships must do more to promote dialogue about the critical role of the arts and artists in society.     

Why did Socrates Deny that he was a Teacher? Locating Socrates among the new educators and the traditional education in Plato’s Apology of Socrates

Plato’s Apology of Socrates contains a spirited account of Socrates’ relationship with the city of Athens and its citizens. As Socrates stands on trial for corrupting the youth, surprisingly, he does not defend the substance and the methods of his teaching. Instead, he simply denies that he is a teacher. Many scholars have contended that, in having Socrates deny he is a teacher, Plato is primarily interested in distinguishing him from the sophists. In this article, I argue that, given the historic educational transformation in Socrates’ and Plato’s lifetimes, Socrates’ denial is far more complex and far reaching than the Socrates-versus-the-sophists distinction indicates. Socrates suggests that Athenians have failed to recognize that there were various types among the new educators of fifth century Athens: orators, sophists, natural philosophers and, perhaps, a philosopher like Socrates. Further, the traditional education, which the Athenians believed was threatened by the new educators, was itself fractured. Ultimately, rather than offering a straightforward distinction between philosophizing and teaching, Socrates and the sophists, Plato treats the question of teaching aporectically in Apology; that is, after pointing to various alternatives for understanding the nature of teaching, Plato concludes the work without offering a clear resolution to that question.     

Finding ‘my kind of teaching’: How a drama project became a teacher’s expressive teaching moment

This case study examines how a teacher defined ‘my kind of teaching’. We focus on a dramatic production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and frame the teacher’s discussion with Dewey’s significant moments of experience. Findings indicate the teacher shifted her role to a facilitator position, learned alongside her students, and connected her past experiences with acting. Implications point to expressive teaching moments as experiences in which teachers might extend state‐mandated curricula, connect with their personal lives, and find delight in teaching.     

CSE and the 16+: Teachers' Views

During the interview ‘Mary’ – who had last year been a school pupil and this year is a first‐year undergraduate on the new degree in Education (with Teaching Certificate) – talked at some length, and with considerable feeling, about how her main frustration as a female pupil had been what she saw as her systematic disenfranchisement from influence over the content and process of the schools' curricula which she had pursued over the previous thirteen years. Although she felt that all pupils suffered this lack of influence she was convinced that girls suffered disproportionately. [Some time later in the interview], when talking about the ‘teaching practice’ she had recently completed, ‘Mary’ described how her ‘music and movement’ work had met with ‘loud and disruptive’ reaction from some of the boys in the mixed class of 7–8 year‐olds, even though the majority of the children had clearly enjoyed and been engaged by the scheme she had designed. Faced with this rejection, and experiencing some anxiety about how the teachers and her tutor would assess her potential as a future teacher if she was not seen to be exercising what they would count as ‘good control’ of the class, ‘Mary’ resolved her ‘problem’ by designing an alternative scheme which the few boys would not (and did not) reject. Although the girls had ‘subsequently shown less interest’, their quiet acquiescence to what she offered them reduced her anxiety about her assessment as a teacher. When she related her pupil experience to her teaching practice experience ‘Mary’ was dismayed to realise that she had ‘reproduced for others precisely that frustration which [she herself] had experienced as a pupil’.

Extract from author's notes when evaluating a new pre‐service degree course, June 1983.     

Beyond the ‘good teacher’: guiding pre-service teacher reflections on culturally diverse students

This article explores how reflective practice may be facilitated among pre-service teachers preparing to teach in culturally diverse classrooms. The significance of the mentor teacher’s ability to reveal her/himself as a reflective practitioner in order to promote student reflection is well documented. The article specifically addresses one teacher educator’s approach to offering mentor support with a focus on reflective practices related to cultural diversity. She explores how her ethnographic doctoral study on the classroom participation of adult South Sudanese students in different Australian learning environments has informed her own practice as a teacher, and ways in which her teaching philosophy and values were influenced by the sustained reflection needed to complete the study. By making explicit an aspect of her reflective practice, she aims to add to the growing body of literature on how to engage pre-service teachers meaningfully in reflection on their own classroom practice, especially in relation to teaching to diversity.     

论教师专业生活的勇气

教师专业生活的勇气是教师在专业生活中以自己身体实践活动为依据发生和显现出来的敢于迎战恐惧、勇于承担焦虑的对专业发展具有内在动力性的气魄。具体表现在教师在其专业生活中常怀敬畏之心、自觉的责任担当、在自我否定中实现自我肯定、多种方式应对恐惧等方面。教师专业生活勇气的意义在于三个方面:有助于教师克服自身专业发展中的困难;成为教师专业发展得以可能的一个前提;从根本上为教师专业发展提供动力。     

Homo pontem: teachers as bridges to a multicultural Italy

Abstract

This article explores the appearance of new teacher roles within the Italian education discourse, in particular focusing on official and scholarly texts from 1990 to 2015. During the second half of this period, the conceptual borders of two distinct roles, the intercultural teacher and the cultural mediator, begin to blur so that all teachers are called to engage in mediation. The role of mediator is made up of practices and dispositions intended to create a bridge between non-Italian students and Italian schools. The collapse of the teacher and mediator roles creates a new discursive context in which the Italian teacher is positioned to reconstitute her/himself through the adoption of these new practices and dispositions, thus constituting a new subjectivity. The new subjectivity, homo pontem, is in part an effect of political reasoning and the theorising of intercultural and citizenship education that has produced state-sponsored policies meant to manage immigrants in Italian schools. The Italian Ministry of Education first referred to intercultural education in 1990, marking a starting-off point for this study. Through a discourse analysis of ministerial documents and Italian scholarship, the overlapping of the roles of cultural mediator and intercultural teacher is tracked. The effect of this overlapping suggests the availability of new techniques of the self, with the Italian teacher called upon to engage in practices that facilitate non-Italian students’ integration, foster dialogue between cultures, and protect a new Italian way of being in today’s multicultural Italian nation-state.