Splintered Subjectivities: Assumptions, the Teacher, and Our Professional Work (original) (raw)
Related papers
Do What I Say, Not What I Do: An Instructor Rethinks Her Own Teaching and Research
Curriculum Inquiry, 1997
This article focuses on the role of self-reflexivity in challenging traditional academic assumptions about learning, teaching, and "appropriate" ways for students and teachers to interact. In attempting to implement a critical pedagogy in two undergraduate reading classes for preservice teachers, I ended up reinforcing much of what I had attempted to disrupt. Multiple sources of data inform this descriptive study: students' written assignments, exit cards, two sets of focused class writes, my journal, and my recollections. This article explores the way in which my unacknowledged biases/expectations sabotaged my conscious attempts to change the traditional power structures created in college classrooms. I also aim to further the discussion of unsettling traditional methods of analyses by sharing how I moved through the actual process and fought my own biases about what was "valid." Similarly, I seek to show how the process of implementing a critical (liberating?) pedagogy can be as much of an internal struggle for the teacher as one of teacher against "the system" and/or the students.
… on Self-Study of …, 2006
The word self in common use refers to something bounded by skin and a skull. By contrast, the self-study of the inherently relational practices of teacher education is often social in orientation. So the theme of Collaboration and Community: Pushing Boundaries through Self-Study was one readily agreed upon as appropriate for a celebration of a decade of coming together for collaborative conversations in lively community at the Castle Conferences. These proceedings would not be possible without many kinds of collaboration. The summaries of the papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices include many in which the authors collaborated in research and in writing, a few of which represent multiple pairs or groups of collaborators. Many of the single authors describe partnerships or focus closely on the community built by professors working together with preservice or inservice teachers. Every step, from the call for proposals to distribution of the proceedings at the Castle, has benefited from collaboration.
Turning the Researcher Gaze Inward: Where Does My Pedagogy Come from?
1998
A college English professor explores her pedagogical development as she recognizes her process-oriented teacher-centered pedagogy and considers a new philosophy incorporating a more student-centered teaching style introduced to her during graduate studies. Using teaching experience to reflect on the construction of teaching practice, she studies how basic writing teachers construct their pedagogy. Graduate research led her to believe that in order for teachers to be successful they need to figure out ways to adapt intellectually appealing writing theories and practices to their own deeply felt beliefs about teaching, learning, and writing. Focusing on the role she plays in the classroom, she set up a process of investigation. Her entertaining style of teaching, she began to realize, would prevent students from learning on their own. Finding the tools to change is easier than changing her teaching style. By accepting her own personality qualities, she was able to adapt the lessons learned from experience to the theories and ideas she learned from training and scholarship. Reflecting on her activity-obsessed personality, she realized that not everyone needs what she needs to be happy and feel successful; this might actually inhibit students' growth process and development. (SC)
Marginal Commentary: Are Students and Instructors on the Same Page?
2019
Redefining the Role of the Teacher as Feedback Giver The writing assigned in first-year composition classes is rather personal-ideally students are expected to express their own opinions-which requires that writing be taught in an environment where students' confidence and trust is nurtured. For teachers to provide effective commentary and for students to be receptive, teachers must be aware of students' reactions to and preferences for feedback (Goldstein 47; Straub 43). This approach to feedback as social interaction has its origin in the work of Lev Vygotsky who observed that we use speech and writing as cultural tools to mediate our interactions. It implies that feedback shapes-for better or worse-students' learning and self-confidence, which may be boosted or potentially damaged by the tone or wording of the commentary (Johnson-Shull and Rysdam; Sommers; Treglia; Young). So given that teachers want their students to do well emotionally and intellectually, they cannot overlook their students' beliefs and reactions to feedback. Teachers who comment without such insight, and claim that students don't know what works best, are walking away from the possibility of building a productive relationship with their students. Studies in writing classes have long indicated that the effectiveness of feedback highly correlates with students' perceptions of their teachers as respectful individuals as well as experts in the field (Poulos and Mahony 152). In an early study Alan Purves distinguishes eight major roles of the teacher as reader: the common reader, the copy editor, the proofreader, the reviewer, the gatekeeper, the critic, the linguist, and the diagnostician (261). A conscientious teacher will adopt each of these roles depending on the writing assignment, the needs of the writer, and the stage of the writing process. Purves suggests that teachers discuss with their students the roles of the reader and make their students aware that not only will different readers interpret their writing differently, but also that the same reader may interpret their writing differently in different situations (265). Chris Anson further elaborates on teacher belief systems informing the type of commentary on student essays. In a study examining 91 essays by inner city students preparing for first-year college work and the commentary written by eight basic writing teachers, he discovered a pattern: Dualistic responders (about 75% of the teachers who participated in the study) are often guided by a clear-cut concept of right and wrong, focus mostly on surface features, and assume the tone of critical judges or evaluators. Relativistic responders provide feedback almost exclusively on the ideas expressed in the writing, often ignoring significant linguistic and rhetorical aspects. And reflective responders attend to both ideas and stylistic devices while attempting to offer options for revision without being controlling. Anson concludes that responding well to student texts is not a matter of gaining expertise in the 'mechanics' of teaching writing, but it's a matter of social-and collaborativeinteraction between student and teacher (354).
(Mis)Reading the Classroom: A Two-Act "Play" on the Conflicting Roles in Student Teaching.pdf
This case study examined concentric and reciprocal notions of reading—that of high school students, a pre-service teacher, and a teacher educator. An intern charged with teaching students to read, interact with, and compose texts in an English/language arts classroom constructed her role in the classroom based on her reading the "text" of her internship experiences, relationships, and responsibilities. Using interviews and observations, a teacher educator read and interpreted the classroom "text" the pre-service teacher ―composed‖ during her internship and then constructed a two-act "play" which details the conflict in the intern‘s enacting the dual role of student-teacher and her subsequent reading of the classroom "text" from her stance as student teacher. Concepts of classroom literacy for teachers and teacher educators are considered.
Navigating The Shores: Troubling Notions of the Teacher as Researcher
The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 2019
This article examines how graduate students in a semester-long research course, a capstone experience in a master's program in teaching and learning, came to redefine what counts as educational research. The students were challenged to conduct a research project, while also exploring how their ideas about teaching and research delimited their work. This inquiry revealed a central paradox in education research-that by calling for more teacher voice in research we may liberate teachers and students to do their work differently, while also perpetuating narrow colonial conceptions of what it means to be a teacher and conduct teacher research. The author argues that in order to decolonize teaching and research, students need opportunities to develop a political analysis that will help expose the contradictions that abound in schools, universities, and society.
Revealing the Teacher-as-Reader: A Framework for Discussion and Learning. Occasional Paper No. 40
1995
A study examined an eleventh grade literature teacher's written responses to her students' writing. Copies of the students' graded papers were collected, and the instructor and eight students were interviewed. These sources became central to building a framework detailing five key ways that this teacher oriented herself to student writing: (1) interpretive; (2) social; (3) cognitive/emotive; (4) evaluative; and (5) pedagogical. In the interpretative orientation, the instructor was relating the student texts to her own personal experience and to her knowledge of the student and his or her work. In the evaluative orientation, the instructor invoked disparate roles she has with the students, i.e., "peer," "literary scholar," "teacher," and "aesthetic reader." In the cognitive/emotive orientation, the teacher reflected on her analytical reasoning and her feelings as well. In her evaluative orientation, she assessed whether the student's writing was working for her. And in the pedagogical orientation, she viewed the student writing as vehicles for her own teaching and learning. (Contains one figure showing the five ways of orientation for the teacher-as-reader. (TB)