Navigating Through a Maze of Contraindications:

A Conversation on Self-Study and Teacher Education Reform

The Arizona Group:

Karen Guilfoyle, University of Idaho, Moscow Idaho

Mary Lynn Hamilton, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas

Stefinee Pinnegar, Brigham Young University, Provo Utah

Peggy Placier, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri

 

  Paper presented at the International Conference,

Self-Study in Teacher Education: Empowering our Future,

Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, England August 5-8, 1996

 

Navigating Through a Maze of Contraindications:

A Conversation on Self-Study and Teacher Education Reform

Purpose

For seven years we have studied our development as new teacher educators and school of education faculty members. Using a network of letters and technology, we have nurtured individual and shared perspectives on our development and have begun to redefine our understandings of teacher knowledge from a self-study perspective. When we present our work at conferences, we find that it opens up rich discussions with colleagues from other institutions. Our Castle presentation is designed to engage participants in a conversation about the relationships among teaching, self-study, the social contexts of academic institutions, and teacher education reform.

 

Framework

Our early work focused on our attempts to understand the social contexts of our teacher education practices. We documented our struggles to cope with new roles and new institutions, and traced our confusing courses through the tenure process. Based on our experiences, we were committed to teacher education reform from the start, if that reform could be constructed in ways consistent with our values. Now the opportunity has come to test that commitment. In our latest work we have begun to analyze our participation in teacher education reform at our institutions. No longer entirely beginners or outsiders, we face an obligation to change the system we have often found so alienating. We term this new direction "navigating through a maze of contradictions," because we find ourselves confronting multiple ideological and structural contradictions as we attempt to collaborate with colleagues to rethink and restructure the context in which we work.

 

Data sources and methods

All of us are qualitative researchers, although we place our work in different theoretical frameworks. We use evidence from personal journals, letters and e-mail notes, student interviews, field notes, and formal and informal documents from our institutions to document our growth processes. At times we share our findings through ongoing internet dialogues. Our modes of analysis are based on our different perspectives: Stefinee Pinnegar, narrative analysis; Karen Guilfoyle, whole language/critical literacy; Peggy Placier, politics of education; and Mary Lynn Hamilton, cultural models and beliefs. While we have different approaches, a strength of our work is a comparative perspective. Comparison across individuals and institutional contexts adds to our growing theoretical framework for the improvement of teacher education through the reflective practice and self-study of teacher educators.

 

Community and Narrative

Stefinee Pinnegar: Throughout our collaboration, I have paid special attention to the narratives we shared in our messages to each other. A strong influence on my work is Polkinghorne’s (1988) conception of three levels of narrative: living, telling and interpreting the experience. I found multiple levels of meaning in stories of my experiences as a beginning teacher educator that connected to other stories from my life inside and outside of classrooms. I also found themes that run through all four of our sets of stories about becoming teacher educators, the shared meanings that maintain our group as a community, and I noted the different meanings that mark us as individuals with different histories and perspectives. I noted the power of our stories in the context of usually unemotional conference presentations.

 

As I consider the relevance of what I have learned for teacher education reform, I have been exploring how a deeper understanding of experience and narrative might allow us to reconceptualize teacher education. When students enter teacher education programs, we often treat them either as blank slates or as slates covered with misinformation that must be erased. We usually do not utilize the experiences they bring with them -- in teaching peers or siblings, in performing in front of audiences as actors or musicians, in grading papers for teachers, in teaching in religious settings, in managing rowdy teenage boys at a video arcade -- a myriad of possibilities that could inform their development as teachers. Bullough, Knowles and Crowe (1991) document the importance of personal history and the complexity of students’ conceptions of teaching for their success as beginning teachers. As a result of such work, many teacher education programs now use personal history assignments at some point. But I often wonder if we attend to the dynamic quality of past experience when it is embraced as part of the learning to teach process. Without this attention, the evidence from studies by Diane Holt-Reynolds shows that we are unlikely to make a strong impact on our students.

 

The irony of our inattention to the past experience of our students is our denial of what we know about raw experience as data for narrative. As Polkinghorne suggests, the first level of narrative is living the story. As Holt-Reynolds demonstrates, when teacher educators attend to experience (countering it, problematizing it, or expanding it with new experience), it can be drawn into coursework to be reinterpreted and reframed. I am not advocating mere telling of stories about experience, which usually reifies the teller’s current interpretation, but grappling with the story, reordering the sequence, juxtaposing it against other stories, comparing it to theories we are exploring, and reframing it.

 

Borrowed experiences are also available to us, in the form of cases, stories, novels, or films. We forget sometimes or do not take seriously the capacity of our students as formal operational thinkers, who can think imagistically about both their own past experiences and the experiences of others they read about. I remember the first time I read Sherwood Anderson’s story "Hands." The story tells how a teacher for whom touching students was a central way of communicating is accused of abusing his students. Because I feel a strong need to touch my students as I teach them, it has always been a guide for me concerning physically touching students. The development of a rich, complex, ambiguous and aesthetically pleasing store of this kind of memory holds great promise for helping students develop as teachers. Currently, the images of teaching most interesting and accessible to them are Hollywood interpretations, which may not be our allies unless we facilitate students’ grappling with and reconstructing them.

 

The construction of narratives from field experiences is another concern. Students tell us again and again that the most powerful experiences they have are when we are most likely to be absent, during field experiences and student teaching. Ben-Peretz (1995) reminds us that wisdom in teaching practice is built from experience. Munby and Russell (1994) assert that the greatest power of the authority of experience is that we had the experience. Experience cannot be taught, it must be had. Students’ field experiences are the most powerful tools for connecting theory to practice, but those experiences occur when we are not there. Or even if we are there on site, we do not have the same experience. We do not control their ability to "see" something and learn from it. Most importantly, we do not control what is out there: teachers, students, management systems, or much else.

 

If living the experience is Polkinghorne’s first level, telling it is the second. Stories of field experiences, e.g., reflective journal entries, are tools available for our students to capture their lived experience in the field and enlist it in their development as teachers. They also talk about their experiences; they tell me that their roommates, spouses, family and friends tell them to quit talking so much about their teaching. We are usually not there for the telling and retelling of these stories. As Frank (1995) suggests, their problem is to learn to listen to their own stories. As teacher educators, we can bring their experience to the center in their journey in becoming teachers. We can mark their new knowledge as valued and valuable. We can encourage them to revel in it and take control of their own development. When I think back on it, that is exactly what the four of us have done for ourselves and for each other as beginning teacher educators.

 

Teacher as researcher

Karen Guilfoyle: The dilemma I have explored in our self-study research is the tension between teaching and research in the teacher educator’s role. I have tried to resolve that dilemma with the help of our group and through collaboration with colleagues at my institution. In the process I have come to see both teaching and research as ways to learn and transform, to promote "literacy and justice for all" (Edelsky, 1991). I now view teaching AS research (Duckworth, 1986), as a form of praxis in which theory and practice are intertwined. I have incorporated the critical pedagogy of Freire, McLaren and Giroux with the whole language philosophy I brought with me into academe. My quest for understanding led me to explore alternative qualitative forms of research such as participatory and feminist research (Lather, 1991;Maguire, 1987). It became important to recognize how and why WOMEN teachers like me are committed to liberatory practices.

 

My feelings about the necessity for change in teacher education, however, came before I adopted my current theoretical position. They were grounded in my experiences in classrooms, staff development and Indian education. I entered teacher education having "lived" the need for change, was committed to transforming schooling, and thought the education system was ready to restructure. I had no understanding of how problematic this stance would be for me or the students. I have struggled to understand why it is so difficult to affect change in academia. I have found out more than I wanted to know.

Teacher education reform began with me, in my own classroom. I focused on one of my undergraduate courses, Alternatives to Basals, in which I had experienced a great deal of student resistance. In this course, undergraduates are introduced to new ways of knowing, thinking and acting in a context structured around whole language, critical pedagogy, and Vygotskian social constructivism. Two of these frames were new to me as a beginning professor. Both the students and I experienced a great deal of disequilibrium. Initially, I saw the problem as my lack of experience at the college level. I dedicated long hours to thinking about how to become a "better teacher." I thought, "If I can just figure this out, the problems will be solved." I eventually learned that the problem was more complex than I had realized. Even when I arrived at the point where I felt my practice closely matched my philosophical position, the resistance did not go away.

 

My inquiry shifted to exploring my actions as a change agent and my view of the classroom as a place of transformation. Reviewing the work of critical theorists, I realized that they paid little attention to the process of implementing critical pedagogy, the impact of this way of teaching on social relations among the participants. They assumed that people should be transformed, and they determined the criteria for transformation based on their view of the world. Their ideas rang of authority and power -- the transmission model. I had not understood that seeing myself as a change agent, capable of changing others, was a "holdover" from a transmission view of learning. I had tried to change people through an authoritative voice. But I could not change anyone. That is a personal choice. My role is to support others’ learning through demonstrations and dialogue.

 

This was when I turned to feminist theory, and began to collaborate with my colleague Georgia Johnson. Combining a feminist perspective with critical pedagogy in our teaching and research, I began reflecting on my "talk" as well as my "walk," learning the real difference between "tell vs. share," "should vs. could," and "talk to vs. talk with." I could not take away my authority as teacher but I could take authority out of my voice to be part of the conversation. Feminist pedagogy had an impact on my thinking about student resistance and teacher power/authority. There is a movement "from their resistance to mine," from the assumption that "their problem" is not buying into "our" version of reality (Lather, 1991, p. 142). My self-analysis revealed that some of my actions were not congruent with either a whole language philosophy or a social constructivist view of learning/teaching. I had substituted my reification for the dominant one. Feminist pedagogy helped me open up "dialogues of difference" between myself and my students. However, it added even more complexity to my journey as a teacher-researcher.

 

What are the implications for teacher education reform? While seeming contradictory, even if I do not want power and authority to stand between the students and myself, I need to CLAIM it in academia where the right of women to speak or hold power has often been denied. Our self-study group has focused on our roles in academic institutions "whose practices and intentions are historically designed to keep [women] outside" (Lewis, 1991, p. 472). In our classrooms, we have power to make change; in academia, as women, that power is minimal and our struggle, pain and isolation is great.

 

As beginning professors of education, we were also caught in shifting expectations, with research becoming a primary responsibility and criterion for tenure. Even if enough time were available to conduct research in addition to doing good teaching and service, the kind of research we consider most relevant to improving teacher education practices is not always valued. But we have had to figure out ways to gain secure places in the institution in order to change it. As Maguire (1987) points out, asking women to give up tenure, to give up recognition as researchers, is to allow the system to remain male-dominated, to keep women from gaining positions in which we can change the system. We have had to learn how to survive in order to transform.

 

The politics of social context

Peggy Placier: My contribution to our self-study work has been to place our experiences as beginning teacher educators in a political frame. From the start, we felt ambivalent about the politics of our work, negative about the "system" but positive about our roles in classrooms and schools. We felt demoralized and powerless in relation to the tenure process, in which activities we valued were devalued in comparison with certain modes of research and publication. We had trouble deciphering the rules of the game and locating the hidden personal and political landmines in our colleges and departments. We did not feel at home except in the classroom -- and even there, our relationships with students sometimes broke down or institutional rules constrained our decisions. Like the teacher educators in Weber’s (1990) study, we were "often uncertain as to how to act upon [our beliefs], feeling constrained by many of the institutional aspects of university and school life" (p. 153).

 

It seemed that our position as teacher educators was analogous to the position of school teachers; that like teachers we neither fully understood nor exercised power over the conditions of our work (Popkewitz, 1985). Our disempowerment contradicted our attempts to "empower" our students as future teachers (Zeichner, 1995). I saw parallels with Britzman’s (1991) study of student teachers’ ambivalence about competing conceptions of teaching. Student teachers saw this ambivalence as a personal weakness, an inability to choose, rather than a "structurally induced dilemma" (p. 225). I felt that we would in time need to overcome our ambivalence about the politics of our work, to confront the structurally-induced dilemmas inhibiting us as teacher educators, if we were to make a difference.

 

Well, here we are. Two of us are tenured and two of us probably will be. As more seasoned professors, although still not feeling completely like "insiders," we have accepted serious responsibility for reform of teacher education. Our voices sound stronger to me, but not necessarily less frustrated about the difficulty of change. In a political frame, teacher education reform is not only a maze of contradictions, but also a field of conflict at all levels, from federal and state policy to colleges of education to teacher education classrooms. While a consensual community would be wonderful, decisions often result from power struggles among different factions.

 

The most obvious struggle I have observed is between "what is" and "what could be." Teacher education has been a relatively conservative realm (Zeichner, 1995). The existing culture of my college has deep historical roots, yet two years ago a new dean arrived, talking about "blowing things up." The obvious meaning of "reform" is that the way we have been doing things is mistaken. As a relative newcomer, I have little attachment to the current program and have complained of its flaws, but reform talk can be received as a personal affront to senior faculty. Are their efforts to be cast aside without respect? Moreover, as I leap onto the reform bandwagon, am I so sure that any new program we collectively devise will be music I want to play? Other reform struggles are over philosophy, disciplinary turf, and resources. In our college, math, science and technology have priority over all other content areas. And faculty who are most productive in research confine themselves to graduate education.

 

From the start, our self-studies have contributed immensely to my understanding of teacher education and my role in its reform. Stefinee, Mary Lynn and Karen have never guided me in the direction of doing the easy thing, but always the right thing, even if it is more difficult. Recently asked if I wanted to stay involved in undergraduate teacher education, I answered that I could not imagine disconnecting myself from it and from the work that we have done together.

 

Cultural models of experience

Mary Lynn Hamilton: My perspective in our self-study research has been that teacher educators live in socially constituted, cultural worlds. My work has involved both trying to understand the culture of teacher education and academe at my institution and how it shapes my experience, and devising ways to resist its power. Cultural analysis, in fact, is a mode of resistance, because it allows me to uncover patterns beneath the surface of the teacher education status quo and imagine new patterns that might take their place.

 

Cognitive anthropologists define culture as what people must know in order to act as they do and make sense of their experience (Quinn & Holland, 1987). My studies of culture, within a cognitive framework, show that it is variously viewed as: beliefs, theories, propositions, or knowledge; scripts, standardized sequences of events that tell us how to act appropriately; patterns of language or symbols that reveal how the mind structures experience and knowledge into hierarchies of rules; or a socially constructed screen through which experience is perceived, processed and understood. Culture is all of this and probably more. Often I do not represent my cultural understandings of teacher education as propositions, rules or scripts but as symbols, images or metaphors that seem to vividly capture my observations of people and places and my subjective experiences.

 

As a newly-tenured professor it was at first an attractive idea to have a voice in the reform of our teacher education program by acting as coordinator of a process to renew national accreditation for our college of education. It has been disappointing to find that many of my colleagues do not view this as a "reform opportunity," but as a chore to be completed by putting the best interpretation on what we already do. Nevertheless, the process has allowed me to rethink my own cultural model of teacher education, by attending to the language used in our accrediting document and how it represents the faculty’s cultural model. For example, should there be set "standards"? If so, who should set them? What are their motives? Yes, I support standards that sustain a critical inquiry into teaching and the teacher education program. No, I do not support a standardized program that takes bureaucratic whimsy to its illogical absurdity. How do I know the difference? I am not sure. Our report uses the term "liberal education" liberally. What is a liberal education? Why is it so important as an identity for our program? I think the point of using the term is to indicate that content-area studies in the higher-status arts and sciences are held in high regard. We use the term "reflection" repeatedly, but what does it mean? (Students tell me, "If I reflect one more time, I’ll gag." Something tells me we are failing to convey the deeper meanings of reflection to them.) These are cultural questions that, if we took sufficient time, could be the basis for discussions and perhaps even a rethinking of our cultural model of teacher education.

 

When I ask my students what THEY think is important, the word "experience" comes up repeatedly. They think they have learned enough theory, and want to test it out in real classrooms. Faculty think students do not know enough theory and seem uninterested in it. My conclusion, from comparing what I know about our students with what we say we are doing, is that we need to develop a "web of experience," to develop connections between what students do in the field and what they learn in our courses, without privileging our "theoretical" knowledge above their "subjective" knowledge. We need to respect practical knowledge and practice at a much higher level. In effect, we need to apply what we have learned through self-study research to the reform of teacher education.

 

References

Ben-Peretz, M. (1995). Learning from experience: Memory and the teacher’s account of teaching. New York: SUNY Press.

Britzman, D.P. (1991). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany: SUNY Press.

Bullough, R.V., Knowles, G. & Crowe, N.A. (1991). Emerging as a teacher. London: Falmer.

Duckworth, E. (1986). Teaching as research. Harvard Education Review, 56(4), 481-195.

Edelsky, C. (1991). With literacy and justice for all: Rethinking the social in language and education. New York: Falmer.

Frank, A.W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness and ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy within the postmodern. New York: Routledge.

Lewis, M. (1991). Interrupting patriarchy: Politics, resistance and transformation in the feminist classroom. Harvard Education Review, 60(4), 467-488.

Maguire, P. (1987). Doing participatory research: A feminist approach. Amherst MA: Center for International Education.

Munby, H. & Russell, T. (1994). The authority of experience in learning to teach: Messages from a physics methods class. Journal of Teacher Education, 45(2), 86-95.

Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing in the human sciences. Albany: SUNY Press.

Popkewitz, T.S. (1985). A comparative perspective on American teacher education: Being a stranger in one’s own native land. Journal of Teacher Education, 36(5), 2-10.

Quinn, N. & Holland, D. (1987). Cultural models in language and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weber, S. (1990). The teacher educator’s experience: Cultural generativity and duality of commitment. Curriculum Inquiry, , 141-159.

Zeichner, K. (1995). Reflections of a teacher educator working for social change. In T. Russell & F. Korthagen (Eds.), Teachers who teach teachers: Reflections on teacher education (pp. 11-24). London: Falmer Press.