Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

Using critical policy analysis to examine competing discourses in zero tolerance legislation: do we really want to leave no child behind?

The increasing use of zero tolerance discipline policies in the USA has led to a ‘discipline gap,’ in which minoritized students receive harsher and more frequent suspensions and expulsions than their peers from dominant cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Though disciplinary decisions are made by educators at the school level, mandates regarding the disciplinary infractions that must result in exclusionary discipline are made at the federal and state levels. Using a theoretical framework that distinguishes the discourse of safety from the discourse of equity, this critical policy analysis examines how state-level zero tolerance legislation portrays educators, students, and school discipline and reflects neoliberal influence. Findings show that these policies narrowly define schools’ roles as developing academic, but not behavioral, skills. Students are portrayed as rational actors who deserve the punishment meted out by educators when students choose to behave disruptively; and educators have absolute power and their decisions regarding student discipline are reflected as being consistent and objective. Nevertheless, legislation in some states also acknowledges students’ needs for a more holistic approach to their education and mandate continued education and support services to help them after they are removed from school. An example from one California district illustrates findings and demonstrates how both discourses are inadequate in challenging neoracism.     

Adult learning: ‘A Key for the Twenty‐first Century’: Reflections on the UNESCO fifth international conference 1997

Experiential learning is part of the canon of the theory and practice of adult learning. However, most of the writing on this subject tends to be normative, i.e. arguing whether or not experiential learning is a ‘good’ thing, or mechanical, i.e. how it occurs and how it can be facilitated. Less has been said about why or how this ‘progressive’ educational idea has become important in educational/training discourse in a period of ‘new right’ government. Drawing on the debates surrounding the notion of postmodernism and, more specifically, the sociology of postmodernism, I suggest that experiential learning offers a space in which the conflicting assumptions and values of the ‘new right’ and ‘new middle class’ (the burgeoning cultural producers and intermediaries) compete for ascendancy, as part of the construction of a ‘common sense’. In general, support from the government for practices that recognize and develop experiential learning have been met with positively by adult educators/trainers, as giving recognition and status to our work. It is suggested that the support for these measures has more to do with the government's desire to restore (self‐)discipline within the social formation. It is argued that experiential learning is integral to postmodernism and, therefore, as adult educators/trainers, in order to understand our own practices better, we need to understand and engage in debates about postmodernism.     

What we feel and what we do: emotional capital in early childhood work

The ancient Greeks articulated three types of knowledge, episteme, techne and phronesis. Education has emphasised two of these – ‘pure’ knowledge and technical skills – while neglecting the latter. Within early childhood a key aspect of phronesis – practical wisdom – is emotion work, and its impact on the well-being of educators. Taking a sociological approach to emotions within early childhood reveals how these are shaped by issues of gender, social class and other dimensions of inequality, rather than being universal. Drawing on interviews with childcare educators in Australian services, I analyse how emotion work practices become embodied over time, and the role that this emotional capital plays in moderating workforce issues such as burnout or low morale. Making the practical wisdom of early childhood educators a more conscious part of pre-service and in-service education challenges existing educational approaches, and enables a more critical, reflexive and resilient workforce.     

Valuing and Desiring Purposes of Education to Transcend Miseducative Measurement Practices

Abstract

The separating and isolating tendencies of measuring practices can lead educators to lose sight of the aims and purposes of education. These end purposes can be used to guide and ensure that the activities of educators are educational, and therefore, Biesta recommends there is a need for educators to reconnect with them. This article. explores this notion of a ‘reconnection’ and argues that if educators are to challenge any potentially miseducative measuring practices, then this reconnection must require educators to value and desire particular end purposes. Desires are recognised to be existential in character and are identified as being necessary for initiating actions. It is argued here that this aspect of desires is important for understanding the significance of a ‘reconnection’ because without it the purposes of education may remain only as abstract philosophical ideals. To make a difference and to challenge the isolating and miseducative tendencies of some measuring practices, educators must come to value particular purposes of education, and in addition, they must exercise the courage to enact them. This can be made possible because educators strongly care for and desire the actualisation of the purposes to which they are connected.     

Engaging in vocabulary learning in science: the promise of multimodal instruction

To a science ‘outsider’, science language often appears unnecessarily technical and dense. However, scientific language is typically used with the goal of being concise and precise, which allows those who regularly participate in scientific discourse communities to learn from each other and build upon existing scientific knowledge. One essential component of science language is the academic vocabulary that characterises it. This mixed-methods study investigates middle school students’ (N?=?59) growth in academic vocabulary as it relates to their teacher’s instructional practices that supported academic language development. Students made significant gains in their production of general academic words, t(57)?=?2.32, p?=?.024 and of discipline-specific science words, t(57)?=?3.01, p?=?.004 in science writing. Results from the qualitative strand of this inquiry contextualised the students’ learning of academic vocabulary as it relates to their teacher’s instructional practices and intentions as well as the students’ perceptions of their learning environment. These qualitative findings reveal that both the students and their teacher articulated that the teacher’s intentional use of resources supported students’ academic vocabulary growth. Implications for research and instruction with science language are shared.     

The problems with a ‘fact’-focused approach in environmental communication: the case of environmental risk information about tidal flat developments in Japan

One of the main approaches used in communicating environmental issues to citizens is conveying ‘factual’ information about a particular environment. However, despite previous research and recommendations made by critical environmental educators, there still seems to be a belief that the more ‘factual’ information one can convey, the more citizens will become aware of the issue, and this will prompt them to change their behaviours. In this article, I will argue that continuing with a ‘fact’-focused practice in Japan and elsewhere could be problematic for three key reasons: (1) it ignores diversity in the ‘facts’ provided to people; (2) it reinforces the ‘hierarchy of knowledge’; and (3) it ignores the ‘myth of nature’ among information receivers and senders. Key recommendations for incorporating a critical environmental education approach include utilising locally available environmental information on contentious environmental issues; investigating particular terminology used and missing information (including tacit knowledge); and encouraging critical learning about statistics and pictorial representations.     

Postmodern Feminisms: Problematic Paradigms

In 1995 Frances Borzello claimed that feminist art criticism had ‘just touched the national curriculum with its fingertips.’ [1] Over the last five years constant challenges to curriculum provision have all but resulted in a loss of contact as educators pull back into ‘safe’ places and away from the edges where feminist art practices were just starting to take hold. Clinging to ‘safe’ practices has meant the affirmation of formalist modernist orthodoxies which have fostered a restricted canonical patriarchal approach to the subject. The recent publication of the ‘Manifesto for Art’ 1999 which calls for a postmodern view of art with an emphasis on ‘difference, plurality and independence of mind’ can, all too easily, be read as a panacea ‘a post modern solution to a postmodern situation.’ [2] However, embracing postmodern pluralism creates as many problems as it solves. Postmodernism often renders any feminist intervention superfluous in spite of new feminist art criticisms’ insistence that the politics of feminism remains a vital element of both artistic practice and critical discourse. While agreeing that art education urgently needs to review its complicity with high Modernist values, we suggest that there are dangers in uncritically accepting a postmodern view of education. Surely postmodernism renders any blueprint for change problematic. This paper does not provide answers, rather it raises questions in order to encourage teachers to reflect upon existing practices with a view to identifying what is still missing and why. It sets out to interrogate implications for pedagogy, educational policy and social transformation of the contemporary academic preoccupation with postmodernism.     

Child‐Rearing: On government intervention and the discourse of experts

For Kant, education was understood as the ‘means’ to become human—and that is to say, rational. For Rousseau by contrast, and the many child‐centred educators that followed him, the adult world, far from representing reason, is essentially corrupt and given over to the superficialities of worldly vanity. On this view, the child, as a product of nature, is essentially good and will learn all she needs to know from experience. Both positions have their own problems, but beyond this ‘internal debate’, the change in the content of education (i.e. child‐rearing and schooling) is now furthermore due to a radical pluralism that has swept the world. Moreover, there may be differences in value between individual parents and between values held within the family and those held in society at large. Among other reasons this has put more generally children's (and parents’) ‘rights’ on the agenda, which differs from thinking of education in terms of a ‘practice’. The paper develops this latter concept and the criticisms to which it has been subject and argues that there is no necessary incompatibility between initiation into an existing practice and transforming that practice in some way, if it is emphasized how practices are learned and enacted. It then turns to the tendency in education and child‐rearing, as in other spheres of human interaction, for more laws and codes of conduct and to call upon experts for all kind of matters. It argues that performativity rules on the level of the practitioner, of the experts, and even on the level of educational research. It argues that many governments have adopted in matters of schooling the language of output and school effectiveness and that something similar is now bound to happen in the sphere of child‐rearing (with talk of parenting skills and courses). This is made credible due to a particular model of educational research, i.e. an empiricist quasi‐causal model of explaining human behaviour. The paper then discusses the problems with this stance and argues that we should part company from the entrepreneurial manipulative educator to open up a sphere of responsiveness for the child and that for these reasons, the concept of the ‘practice of child‐rearing’ should be revisited. Insisting on the complexities that have to be taken into account and thus surpassing a discourse of effectiveness and output as well as of codes of conduct and rulings of courts of law, may help us to focus on what is really at stake: to lead a meaningful life, to be initiated into what is ‘real for us’ and what we value. It concludes that thus restoring a place for child‐rearing as a practice will do justice to the responsiveness to which each child is entitled.     

Reculturing schools in England: how ‘cult’ values in education policy discourse influence the construction of practitioner identities and work orientations

The imperative of continuous improvement has now become normative in education policy discourse, typically framed as setting ‘aspirational’ targets for pupil performance as a prerequisite for gaining competitive advantage in the global economy. In this context, teachers, leaders, teacher assistants and other practitioners working in schools across England have been under increasing pressure to raise standards. This article focuses on how values are deployed in reculturing and regulating practitioners to develop identities and work orientations which are congruent with the policymakers’ agendas. G.H. Mead’s concept of ‘cult’ values illuminates the process of fostering homogeneity with the dominant policy discourse through an inclusion/exclusion dynamic. Interview data collected in two primary schools revealed a significant convergence of practitioner discourse with policy objectives. Delivering improvement affects how practitioners talk about their work and see themselves as educators. The ‘cult’ of continuous improvement appears to inhibit a critical approach to the implementation of education policies by school practitioners in their everyday work.     

A ‘rhetoric of disruption’ by way of attaining the not yet in the future: re‐membering the past by way of challenging our present educational practices

Our central argument is that if we are to understand who we are as educators in the present as well as who we hope to become in the future, then we must examine and critique how we have collectively represented who we have been. To present our conviction that understanding our history as adult educators is central to understanding our current educational practice, we develop three theses. First, we argue that the purpose of history is to help us understand how we have created our current educational practices from our historical experiences. Second, we draw upon Williams’ notion of a ‘selective tradition’ to show how our current practices are selectively, and often hegemonically, constructed from past practices. Finally, in hopes of moving us toward illuminating our future, we argue that the purpose of history is to help us analyze those selective cultural traditions that inform our current educational practices in order to expose prejudices and illusions. We thus propose the ‘doing’ of history as a counterhegemonic strategy of ‘remembering’ the past in order to critique the present so that as educators we can reveal our historically‐copntinuing limitations and open us to expanding possibilities of Hberatory practice.     

The emerging professional: an investigation into teacher education students’ developing conceptions of the relationship between theory and classroom practice before,during and after a postgraduate teaching programme

This article brings together two studies which contribute to the examination of the nature of professionalism in education by focusing on the perspectives of two under-researched groups namely ‘teaching assistants’ and teacher educators working ‘either side’ of the school teacher. The projects were conducted in, and framed by, the UK policy context of public sector modernization and cuts, and raise issues of relevance to international debates on notions of professionalism in education in a context of neo-liberal policy and austerity. The studies drew upon different approaches including autoethnography, life history and discourse analysis. The authors examine the formation and representation of professional identity in education through the discourses of ‘professionalism’ of teaching assistants and teacher educators. Professionalism is articulated through three themes in the accounts; ‘non-standard’ professional transformations, role ambiguity, and the role of classroom experience and higher education in the development of professional identities. Through these themes the perspectives of teaching assistants and teacher educators locate the notion of ‘teacher professionalism’ within a broader concept of professionalism in education providing alternatives to the discourse of imposed policy, and the authors reflect upon the ways in which these voices contribute to the wider international debate on professionalism in education.     

The paradox of un/making science people: practicing ethico-political hesitations in science education

Over the years neoliberal ideology and discourse have become intricately connected to making science people. Science educators work within a complicated paradox where they are obligated to meet neoliberal demands that reinscribe dominant, hegemonic assumptions for producing a scientific workforce. Whether it is the discourse of school science, processes of being a scientist, or definitions of science particular subjects are made intelligible as others are made unintelligible. This paper resides within the messy entanglements of feminist poststructural and new materialist perspectives to provoke spaces where science educators might enact ethicopolitical hesitations. By turning to and living in theory, the un/making of certain kinds of science people reveals material effects and affects. Practicing ethicopolitical hesitations prompt science educators to consider beginning their work from ontological assumptions that begin with abundance rather than lack.     

Educators confront the ‘science’ of racism, 1898–1925

The literature depicting educators’ role in scientific racism and eugenics during the early 20th century has tended to approach the topic in dichotomous terms, as an ideology that one was either for or against. In this historical study, the author adds some nuance to this literature by tracing leading educators’ inconsistent and evolving thoughts on eugenics and the ‘science’ of race. By approaching the educational discourse on race as thinking rather than thought, the author explores how scholars such as G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey, Franz Boas, William Bagley, David Snedden, Edward Thorndike and Charles Ellwood struggled to make sense of a rapidly changing ideological landscape, but nevertheless supported the ideology of white supremacy.     

A scientific approach in the assessment of the school-based part of the teacher education programme in Sweden

This article aims to highlight how a scientific and critical approach is used in assessment dialogues during the last period of a practical, school-based teacher education programme. The result is based on 13 assessment dialogues conducted in a course at a Swedish university, where one of the course objectives is to, ‘in a scientific way, analyse teaching situations based on learning theories’. The assessment dialogues were analysed drawing from Bernstein’s concepts of ‘classification’, ‘framing’, ‘horizontal knowledge’ and ‘vertical knowledge’. The result shows that only in a minority of the assessment dialogues are students expected to use theory as an analytical tool and to critically examine their teaching practice. The theory is used in a more instrumental way to legitimize what is considered the ‘right way’ to teach. One conclusion is that the critical tradition of academia is seldom observed despite being clearly stated in the learning goals. The link between general academic knowledge and more school-based contextual knowledge is often missing or not made visible by the students or the teacher educators, and normative content is still clearly prominent.     

Mathematical images in advertising: constructing difference and shaping identity, in global consumer culture

Mathematics educators have long emphasised the importance of attitudes, beliefs, and feelings towards mathematics, as crucial in motivating (or not) its learning and use, and as influenced in turn by its social images. This paper is about images of mathematics. Our search for advertisements containing such images in UK daily newspapers, during 2006–2008, found that 4.7 % of editions included a “mathematical” advert, compared with 1.7 % in pilot work for 1994–2003. The incidence varied across type of newspaper, being correlated with class and gender profiles of the readership. Three quarters of advertisements were classified as containing only very simple mathematics. ‘Semiotic discursive’ analysis of selected advertisements suggests that they draw on mathematics not to inform, but to connote qualities like precision, certainty, and authority. We discuss the discourse on mathematics in advertising as ‘quasi-pedagogic’ discourse, and argue that its oversimplified forms, being empty of mathematical content, become powerful means for regulating and ‘pedagogising’ today's global consumers.     

Digital storytelling and the nature of knowledge

While storytelling pedagogy presents novel perspectives and affordances to educators, a fundamental question that bears attention is the match between storytelling pedagogy and the nature of knowledge. Quite simply, the problem may be posed thus: is storytelling the optimum means for teaching all forms of knowledge? While rather obvious matches occur for knowledge in the social science, humanities, languages and literacy education, would storytelling pedagogy ‘work’ for the natural sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics classrooms? If so, what may be optimum means to integrate storytelling instruction in these latter kinds of classrooms? In this study, we report on the results of an implementation of digital storytelling in a grade five science classroom. Using what we termed the ‘edu-tainment’ approach, we asked students to design a digital story that communicated a scientific concept embedded within the narrative structure—characters within the narrative would experience the effects of the concept, the quality of the story being proxy indicators of students’ understanding of the scientific concept. We propose that this pedagogical strategy presents a strong challenge to discern students’ understanding, and we also discuss the effect of knowledge forms on the success of this pedagogy.     

Theory and Practice in Mathematics Teaching Development: Critical Inquiry as a Mode of Learning in Teaching

In this paper I address the challenge of developing theory in relation to the practices of mathematics teaching and its development. I do this by exploring a notion of ‘teaching as learning in practice’ through overt use of ‘inquiry’ in mathematics learning, mathematics teaching and the development of practices of teaching in communities involving teachers and educators. The roles and goals of mathematics teachers and educators in such communities are both distinct and deeply intertwined. I see an aim of inquiry in teaching to be the ‘critical alignment’ (Wenger, 1998) of teaching within the communities in which teaching takes place. Inquiry ‘as a tool’ and inquiry ‘as a way of being’ are important concepts in reflexive developmental processes in which inquiry practice leads to better understandings and development of theory.     

‘Bringing Out the Best in People’: teacher training and the ‘real’ teacher

This paper explores the ways in which student teachers position themselves as teachers in primary classrooms. It focuses upon one discourse in primary teaching, which we have called the ‘real teacher’ discourse, and argues that it is mainly in terms of this that students come to understand ‘being a teacher’.