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Editor

Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College

Associate Editors

Curt Dudley-Marling, Boston CollegeAudrey A. Friedman, Boston CollegeJanice E. Jackson, Boston CollegeDavid Scanlon, Boston CollegeDennis L. Shirley, Boston College

Book Review Editor

Gerald Pine, Boston College

Managing Assistant

Stephanie Whelan

Administrative Assistant

Moira Raftery

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Journal of Teacher Education, Campion Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467

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Committee on Publications and the Journal of Teacher Education

Donna Wiseman, Chair; Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL (2004)G. Thomas Bellamy, University of Colorado, Denver, CO (2002)Christine Bennett, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (2003)Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA (2002)Edward E. Paradis, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY (2004)A. Lin Goodwin, Columbia University, New York, NY (2003)JoAnn Haysbert, Hampton University, Hampton, VA (2002)

Committee members represent the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Termsexpire February 28 of year shown.

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Journal of Teacher EducationVolume 52, Number 5, November/December 2001

347 Editorial: Desperately Seeking SolutionsMarilyn Cochran-Smith

350 Student Cohorts: Communities of Critique or Dysfunctional Families?Mara Sapon-Shevin and Kelly Chandler-Olcott

365 Playing It Safe as a Novice Teacher: Implications for Programs for New TeachersSharon M. Chubbuck, Renee T. Clift, Joanne Allard, and Jane Quinlan

377 Teacher Stories and Transactional Inquiry: Hearing the Voices of Mentor TeachersCatherine Zeek, Martha Foote, and Carole Walker

386 Multiple Annies: Feminist Poststructural Theory and the Making of a TeacherAlecia Youngblood Jackson

398 Examining the Mismatch Between Learner-Centered Teaching andTeacher-Centered SupervisionCynthia Paris and Suzanne Gespass

Book Review

413 A Cautionary Tale: Review of Left Back: A Century of Failed School ReformsPatrick Shannon

419 Index

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 5, November/December 2001Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 5, November/December 2001

EDITORIAL

DESPERATELY SEEKING SOLUTIONS

Marilyn Cochran-SmithEditor

One of the most persistent themes in the historyof teacher education has been sharp public criti-cism coupled with ardent demands for im-provement and change. Despite many reforminitiatives over the years, however, it has beenwidely perceived that teacher education hasbeen almost “impervious” to genuine reform(Fullan, 1998; Goodlad, 1990), failing to keeppace with the conditions of a changing societyeven when they threatened its very existence(Imig & Switzer, 1996). Perhaps it is the combi-nation of a perceived historical failure to changecoupled with the unprecedented intensity ofcurrent public attention that have prompted somany recent initiatives by prestigious nationalorganizations and foundations that are relatedto teaching and teacher education, teachers’qualifications, and teacher quality. Althoughwhat follows is not a comprehensive list, the re-mainder of this editorial provides a brief de-scription of some of the most visible current ini-tiatives and reports that are directly related toteacher education; those recently completed arelisted first, followed by those currently underway.

Center for the Study of Teaching and PolicyResearch Report on Teacher Preparation. SuzanneWilson, Robert Floden, and Joan Ferrini-Mundy(MSU) authored CTP’s recent report, “TeacherPreparation Research: Current Knowledge,Gaps, and Recommendations,” for the U.S.Department of Education/OERI. The authorsexamined more than 300 peer-reviewedresearch reports about subject matter prepara-tion, pedagogical preparation, clinical training,policies for improving teacher education, andalternative certification. Drawing on the 57

studies that met rigorous criteria, the reportconcludes that the empirical research base forteacher education is thin. It recommends a newgeneration of research that looks across institu-tions, examines specific parts of teachers’ prepa-ration, and has stronger research designs. Exec-utive summary and full report are available at:http://www.ctpweb.org.

Committee on Assessment and Teacher QualityReport. The National Research Council’s Com-mittee on Assessment and Teacher Qualityrecently issued “Testing Teacher Candidates:The Role of Licensure Tests in ImprovingTeacher Quality,” edited by Karen Mitchell,David Robinson, Barbara Plake, and KaleKnolls. Chaired by David Robinson, the 19-member committee was impaneled by theNational Academy of Sciences at the request ofthe U.S. DOE to examine the appropriatenessand technical quality of teacher licensure testsand the merits of such tests for holding statesand higher education institutions accountablefor the quality of teacher education. The reportconcludes that initial teacher licensure tests fallshort of the intended policy goals for their use asaccountability tools and as levers for improvingteacher preparation and licensing programs.Complete report is available at http://www.nap.edu.

Educational Testing Service’s Studies of TeacherQuality and Teacher Education. ETS’ work onteacher quality and teacher education is not asingle initiative but an emphasis in several oftheir centers. Along these lines, HaroldWenglinsky’s study linking students’ achieve-ment in math and science with teacher qualifica-

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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 5, November/December 2001 347-349© 2001 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

tions, professional development and classroompractices, concludes that classroom practicesmatter most. His study on teaching teachersexplores the links among the characteristics ofteacher education institutions, their programs,and teacher effectiveness as measured by scoreson licensure exams. Drew Gitomer, AndrewLatham and Robert Ziomek’s study on the aca-demic quality of prospective teachers concludesthat prospective teachers’ academic ability var-ies widely by type of licensure sought. For infor-mation on these and other ETS studies, consult:http://www.ets.org. research/.

AERA Consensus Panel on Teacher Education.The AERA Consensus Panel is an 18-month ini-tiative intended to provide a synthesis of exist-ing empirical and conceptual research related tothe preparation of new teachers. Co-chaired byMarilyn Cochran-Smith and Ken Zeichner, the17-member panel was convened partly in re-sponse to conflicting public claims about the re-search evidence for competing reform agendas.The work of the panel revolves around severalcontroversial areas in teacher preparation: de-mographics, the components and pedagogy ofteacher preparation, accountability systems,and the preparation of teachers for minoritypopulations and for learners with special needs.Outcomes will include an edited volume, a spe-cial issue of this journal, and symposia at majorconferences. For information, contact Kim Fries,project manager: [email protected].

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement ofTeaching Study of the Education of Teachers. Led byCarnegie President Lee Shulman, the Carnegieinitiative is a 5-year study of the pedagogies ofteacher education, which is part of a larger se-ries of studies on preparation for the profes-sions. A team of five university scholars isworking with Carnegie staff within three strate-gic sites in teacher education, which have analo-gous practices in other professions: liberal artsand sciences, methods courses, and supervisedfield experiences. Cross-cutting these sites arekey questions about pedagogies in teacher edu-cation, which are defined as decisions aboutwhat and how to teach and the assessment of

what has been learned. The team is working on allaspects of the study at key sites with the assistanceof local co-researchers. For more information, con-sult: http://www.carnegiefoundation. org.

Committee on Teacher Education of the NationalAcademy of Education (CTE). Cochaired by LindaDarling-Hammond and John Bransford, CTE isa 2-year initiative designed to make curriculumrecommendations to U.S. teacher preparationprograms based on the knowledge teacher can-didates need to become effective new teachers.The initiative is designed to be distinct from pre-vious knowledge base projects in that it ad-dresses curriculum issues directly and draws onboth the individual and collective expertise ofits members. The CTE initiative has a 28-mem-ber committee of diverse practitioners and re-searchers, a reading subcommittee chaired byCatherine Snow, and seven cooperating univer-sities. Funded by OERI, the committee will meetsix times over the 2-year period so that ongoingwork can be combined with face-to-face discus-sions among CTE members. For more informa-tion, consult: http://www.nae.nyu.edu/cte.

The Teacher Qualifications and the Quality ofTeaching Study (TQQT). TQQT is a 3-year projectconducted collaboratively by Mary Kennedyand Betsy Jane Becker (MSU). Funded by OERI,the project will synthesize research over the past40 years that examines teacher qualifications(e.g. level of education, courses taken, majorand minor areas of study, test scores, certifica-tion) in relation to quality of teaching practice(e.g. observations of teaching, artifacts frompractice, pupil achievement). The synthesis—which will include qualitative and quantitativestudies, multiple indicators of teaching quality;and multiple genres of research—will be used todevelop a model of the complex relationshipsbetween teacher qualifications and teachingquality that accounts for confounding variables.For information, consult: www.msu.edu/user/mkennedy.

Although some of these initiatives overlap incertain ways, they are not the same in intentionand design or in organizational structure and

348 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 5, November/December 2001

authorship; several are intended to synthesizeand critique existing research; several representnew research or new analyses of existing databases; and some focus on the teacher educationcurriculum. Despite both differences and over-laps, it is interesting that all of these initiativeshave emerged at roughly the same historicalmoment when teaching and teacher educationare intensely publicized and politicized.Although “desperately seeking solutions” maybe a catchy title for an editorial, none of theseprojects is either “desperate” in the sense ofreckless and frantic or “seeking solutions” in thesense of attempting to dictate final and univer-sally effective policies and practices. These ini-tiatives do, however, share a sense of urgencyabout the need to improve teaching, teacherquality, and teacher education in order toaddress the problems (some might indeed say,“desperate” problems) of teaching and school-ing in America. These initiatives also share abasic sense of confidence in what I have calledelsewhere the “evidentiary warrant” in teachereducation reform (Cochran-Smith & Fries, in

press), or the belief that rigorous and “unbi-ased” empirical research has the capacity to offerdirections and guidelines about how to solvethe problems of teacher preparation. Althoughimportant, this approach de-emphasizes theideological, political, and moral aspects ofteaching and teacher education, areas that mayalso need to be debated further. (Future JTE edi-torials will explore these issues in more detail.)

REFERENCESCochran-Smith, M. & Fries, M. K. (in press). Sticks, stones

and ideology: The discourse of reform in teacher educa-tion. Educational Researcher.

Fullan, M. (1998). The meaning of educational change: A quar-ter century of learning. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman,M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), The international hand-book of educational change (pp. 214-228). Boston: Kluwer.

Goodlad, J. (1990). Teachers for our nation’s schools. San Fran-cisco: Jossey-Bass.

Imig, D., & Switzer, T. (1996). Changing teacher educationprograms: Restructuring collegiate-based teacher edu-cation. In J. Sikula, T. Buttery, & E. Guyton (Eds.), Hand-book of research on teacher education (2nd ed., pp. 213-226).New York: Macmillan.

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 5, November/December 2001 349


STUDENT COHORTSCOMMUNITIES OF CRITIQUE OR DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES?

Mara Sapon-ShevinKelly Chandler-OlcottSyracuse University

The study was designed to trouble the commonsense notion in the field that cohorts, groups of stu-dents who move through an educational program together, provide the optimal structure for prepar-ing future teachers. Using collaborative inductive methods, this study by two universityresearchers of their teaching within a preservice education program explored the following ques-tions: What is the relationship between the positive aspects of being a community and students’ability and willingness to become critical practitioners? What happens to relationships betweenstudents and between students and faculty when there are ruptures or critical incidents within thecommunity? How is the role of faculty members teaching cohorts different from the role of facultymembers teaching classes organized in more traditional ways? The study raises questions aboutvarious factors that affect community within the cohort and about differences between students’and faculty’s perceptions of critical ruptures within the classroom.

Students in our teacher education programwere participating in a class on cooperativelearning that was collaboratively planned andtaught by the three faculty, including ourselves,who taught methods courses to this cohort thatsemester. After a discussion of the principles ofcooperative learning and a read-aloud of a pre-dictable book, we placed students in randomlyassigned small groups to conceptualize theirown book with a predictable pattern and todraw the book jacket and illustration. Special at-tention was given to the social skills that wouldbe required for the group to work cooperatively,including consensus building and balancedparticipation in the final product.

As we walked around checking on students’progress, Mara heard John,1 an assertive malestudent, saying loudly that his group shouldwrite a book about a pig who was in jail. He pro-posed that the pattern be about other animalsasking why the pig had been sent to jail and thepig describing various crimes. In the end, itwould be revealed that the pig was in a zoo.

Both of us were concerned about the appropri-ateness of this topic, but, after a brief consulta-tion, we decided to see what happened duringthe presentations before we intervened.

Serving as the spokesperson for his group,John explained the pattern, the twist, and theaccompanying illustration of the pig in jail.Although the rest of the class was asked forfeedback on each presentation, no one made anycomments about this story’s content. After all ofthe presentations were over, Mara facilitated adiscussion of process, asking each group to talkabout how it made decisions. Karen, an older-than-average returning student and one of veryfew working-class students in the cohort, raisedher hand and said that her group, the one led byJohn, did not get along very well: “I had somedifferent opinions, but the group didn’t listen.But that’s okay. It was a majority.” Karen wasinitially reluctant to describe the disagreement,but our repeated questions led her to admit shewas uncomfortable with the book’s content. Shefelt that kids whose parents were in jail would

350


be very troubled by the way the book made lightof prison. “Well, this would give them a betterperspective on jail,” John scoffed. Even afterboth of us discussed the need to consider books’content carefully, John insisted that we weremaking a big deal of nothing and that the pigstory would be fun for kids. No one else in theclass said anything, although one student didask in a written evaluation of class whether itwas “appropriate to criticize the pig project insuch a ‘public’ manner.”

Although the professional literature onteacher education tends to talk glowingly aboutthe advantages of preparing students withincohort groups, the previous story, describedmore fully in Sapon-Shevin and Chandler(1999), presents an alternative image of cohortsas learning communities. Although specificdetails of their structure vary from university touniversity, cohorts are generally defined asgroups of students who move through theirteacher education program together, sharingcoursework and developing a sense of commu-nity and support.

Many studies of cohorts emphasize the bene-fits of preservice teachers experiencing collabo-rative learning environments. Writing about agraduate teacher education cohort group,Burnaford and Hobson (1995) stated that beingpart of a cohort enables students to learn “in aclimate of cooperation and trust” (p. 69), experi-encing the sense of community and practicingthe group process skills they will implement intheir own classrooms. According to theseauthors, “Building community in their class-rooms with young children is supported by theindividual teachers’ participation in a similargroup of their own peers” (p. 69).

Peterson et al. (1995) shared their study of apreservice teacher education program that usedflexible thematic cohorts. Their cohort groups—15 to 30 teacher candidates who begin and com-plete a program together—are described posi-tively, and the only “disadvantages” theydescribed relate primarily to structural compli-cations (scheduling, faculty load, etc.).

In a study comparing the perceptions of stu-dents in two different teacher preparation pro-grams, both of which used student cohort

groups, Kelly and Dietrich (1995) found that“the cohort configuration appeared to be a pow-erful force in the success of these two dissimilargroups” (p. 8). They also stated that

the confidence expressed by both groups of studentsprior to student teaching/internship may be attrib-uted to strong support and a sense of communityprovided by members of their cohort. Peers provideeducational and emotional support through studygroups and informal peer counseling. This groupidentity, which remains for several years after grad-uation, helps build confidence as students begintheir professional careers. (p. 5)

The expectation is that because studentsknow one another well and have a shared his-tory, they will help one another become betterteachers. Some evidence exists that this is not al-ways the case. For example, in a study ofpreservice teacher education cohorts at a south-eastern university, Radencich et al. (1998) exam-ined the culture of cohorts. They began with theassertion that “the continuing and mutual sup-port of such a plan results in positive academicand social gains” (p. 109) is largely unexplored.In their study, they used faculty and student fo-cus groups as well as other data sources to ex-amine the culture of four different elementaryand early childhood student cohort groups.They found that team cultures were almost bi-modal: “on the whole very positive or almostpathological” (p. 112). The influences they iden-tified on the development of that team cultureincluded “the family-like context of teams, theotherness felt by professors and students notmembers of teams, cliques, group pressure, co-operative assignments, academic performance,professors, and team supervisors” (p. 112).

Although our teacher-education colleagues’public stances about their cohort groups weregenerally positive, we had both had privateconversations in less formal settings thatyielded a different picture, one more in line withnegative findings by Radencich et al. (1998).Many teacher educators shared with us storiesof cohorts gone wrong. Colleagues expressedpuzzlement about what makes a good or a badcohort and how that might be affected by factorswithin or outside their control.

The research on which we have embarkedwas designed to trouble the commonsense no-


tion in the field about cohorts, particularly therelationship between student cohorts and fu-ture teachers’ abilities to become critical, reflec-tive practitioners. By breaking what Newkirk(1992) would call the “silences” in our publicteaching stories about the group dynamics ofcohorts and their effect on teaching and learn-ing, we hoped to come to understand studentcohorts more fully and refine our teachingwithin them. We were interested in exploringthe extent to which a student cohort with astrong sense of community is the optimal set-ting for developing the skills of critical reflec-t ion. Our research questions can besummarized as follows:

1. What is the relationship between the positive as-pects of being a community and the ability and will-ingness of students to become critical practitioners?

2. What happens to relationships between studentsand between students and faculty when there areruptures or critical incidents within the commu-nity?

3. How is the role of faculty members teaching cohortsdifferent from the role of faculty members teachingclasses organized in more traditional ways?

This article touches on each of these questions,but it deals most fully with the second, the onerelated to critical incidents in the cohort.

INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTFOR THE RESEARCH

Our student informants were enrolled in theInclusive Elementary and Special EducationTeacher Education Program at Syracuse Univer-sity. This program is designed to prepare teach-ers to work in inclusive, heterogeneous class-rooms with a wide range of learners. Students inthe program receive certification in both ele-mentary and special education. They are largelymiddle- to upper-class White women, although,in a typical semester, there may be two to fourmen, two to four students of color, and two tofour students older than 20 to 21.

Students move through the program incohorts of 30 to 40, and they are together for allof their education courses during the last 2 yearsof their program. We are two of the four facultymembers who work in what is commonly

known as the First Professional Block, or Block Ifor short. Mara teaches EED 308, Strategies ofTeaching; and Kelly teaches EED 334, Elemen-tary Language Arts Methods and Curriculum.Two other faculty members teach reading meth-ods and the field experience seminar. DuringBlock I, students are together every morningfrom 8:30 to 12:00. Students stay together as acohort for the remainder of their methodscourses and student teaching over two subse-quent semesters.

PERSONAL CONTEXTFOR THE RESEARCH

We come to this research with a shared com-mitment to constructivist teaching (Brooks &Brooks, 1993), acknowledging that learners con-struct understandings by drawing on their par-ticular experiences, beliefs, and dispositions.We both believe it is important for teachers tomake their pedagogical decision making trans-parent and to discuss those choices with stu-dents who are learning to become teachers.Although we are responsible for different con-tent, we thread issues of power, inequities, andjustice throughout our instruction and feel thatstudents can only discuss these hard issueswithin the context of a strong learning commu-nity. We hope that students who learn to bemembers of a community within theirpreservice education program will be betterequipped to foster community within their ownelementary classrooms. In addition, each of usbrought her own agenda to the research process.

Mara. Building a classroom community is ex-tremely important to me and has been the focusof my writing and research for nearly 20 years. Iam particularly interested in the role that theteacher plays in setting the tone for student-stu-dent interaction. My course, Strategies ofTeaching, focuses explicitly on issues of com-munity building, conflict resolution, and deal-ing with issues of diversity. I have been troubledfor some time by instances when my attempts tobuild community have been disrupted by par-ticular events or student behaviors. Nearly ev-ery semester, several critical incidents have


challenged my beliefs about the powerful rolethat the teacher plays in building the community.

This research was an attempt to take some-thing that had been bothering me for some timeand turn it into a research question. Studyingmy own practice systematically seemed like ahelpful way to feel more powerful in the face ofsituations and interactions that troubled me.Finding a colleague, Kelly, with whom to pur-sue this question was enormously exciting. I feltless isolated by the dilemma and the surround-ing decisions and also that my teaching relation-ship with Kelly would be greatly strengthenedby sharing a common question. Having anotherset of ears and eyes and another mind focusedon the same question felt very positive; having acompanion in the search made me feel like itwas both doable and desirable. I was eager toavoid feeling either completely responsiblewhen things went badly (with the accompany-ing feelings of discouragement and self-blame)or retreating to feeling completely blameless forthe troubling events, with no necessity forreflection or analysis. Tackling this topictogether seemed like it would provide time anda structured space for figuring out some possi-ble solutions to the dilemma.

Kelly. This project was important for me be-cause I was a new faculty member at SyracuseUniversity when we began. Although I hadtaught several methods courses as an adjunctinstructor during my doctoral program, I hadno previous experience with a cohort model.Early on in my first semester as an assistant pro-fessor, I discovered that such a model had costsas well as benefits, but I didn’t have a repertoireof strategies from previous teaching to deal withthose costs. Focusing on the tensions with an ex-perienced faculty member reduced my stressand helped me to problem-solve in this newcontext.

I also welcomed the opportunity to inquireabout my own practice because my researchagenda centers on teacher-research processes.In addition to a 4-year collaboration with aschoolwide research collective in Maine, I con-sult with several groups of teachers in centralNew York who are exploring classroom-based

inquiry. To help these teachers reach their goalsand to have credibility with them as a partner, Ineed to engage in similar kinds of research inmy classroom setting.

Last, but certainly not least, community is acentral concept that my students and I explorein the context of writing instruction. Because Isee the construction of texts as a socially medi-ated process, it’s important for my students tothink about the ways that community—or itslack—affects what can be said, or not said, in agiven classroom. In my course, we spend a lot oftime participating in, and then debriefing, thekinds of activities that literacy experts advocatefor young learners. Without a healthy commu-nity, these activities break down and becomeless effective as learning tools. I hoped that ourresearch would help me better orchestrate alearning environment in which students canreflect on the implications of community fortheir language arts teaching while participatingin such a community as learners.

METHOD

Although teacher research has receivedincreasing attention as a way for K-12 practitio-ners to prompt educational change(Hollingsworth & Sockett, 1994), increase pro-fessionalism (Goswami & Stillman, 1987), andcontribute new knowledge about teaching totheir fields (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993), it hasnot been as widely embraced by college teach-ers. Pointing out the irony that many universityfaculty members are well trained in researchmethods but willing to use those skills only inothers’ classrooms, Short (1993) argued that“Teacher research can provide a new perspec-tive on teaching and learning for college educa-tors because it asks them to examine their ownteaching and its implications for themselves aswell as the broader educational field” (p. 156).

Our project was intended to address both ofthese concerns: to improve our own work withBlock I students and to contribute to larger con-versations about community building at theuniversity level and cohorts as an organiza-tional structure for teacher education. We alsohad a third purpose. Just as we meant to model


the benefits of team teaching and collaborationto our students by our joint planning and teach-ing of shared classes, we also meant to modelthe benefits of formal classroom inquiry withour research. We believed that our program’sgraduates would be more likely to adopt thisapproach to improve their own teaching if theyhad seen their professors engage in it as well.

Although college-level teacher research isless common than elementary- or secondary-level research, a number of studies have beenpublished in recent years that resemble our ownin approach or topic choice. In an exploration ofteam teaching at the university level ,Blenkinsop and Bailey (1997) conductedresearch on their own attempts to integrate lan-guage arts and science courses in a middle-grades teacher education program. Clyde andCondon (1996) teamed up to study their under-graduate students’ use of talk in a teacher edu-cation course on oral language in the classroom.Both research teams found it invaluable to beable to cross-check their conclusions withanother researcher who had a different perspec-tive from theirs but shared their intimate knowl-edge of student informants.

Other studies discuss university teachers’attempts to problem-solve through ruptures orsnags in their teaching as we have. AlthoughGuilfoyle (1995) expected that students wouldembrace the student-centered approaches sheinitiated in her graduate and undergraduate lit-eracy courses, many resisted her methods bothactively and passively. By studying her strug-gles systematically over a 3-year period, shewas able to make adjustments in her assign-ments and expectations that reduced students’stress while achieving her goals. After identify-ing the detrimental effects of several raciallydriven cliques, Poynor (1998) studied the fac-tors affecting classroom community in her read-ing methods class. According to students, theopportunity to share their ideas, feelings ofvalue, and having a teacher who cared were thethree most important factors for a good sense ofcommunity to exist in a classroom. That each ofthese teachers was able to glean insights fromsquaring up to a teaching challenge rather thanignoring it has been encouraging for us as we

explore the silences and tensions around com-munity in our own classes.

As Fecho (2000) pointed out and several ofthese studies demonstrate, the teacherresearcher’s status as an insider can be both the“biggest asset and biggest liability” of practitio-ner research (p. 376). In our case, we had a richsense of the context in which the data wasembedded as well as a deep commitment to itsanalysis. At the same time, our ability to dis-tance ourselves from the data was reduced. Ouractions as teachers affected the research contexton a continuous basis, making it difficult todetermine what patterns were attributable tothe dynamics of a particular group, our owninstructional choices and approaches, or a third,often unknown, factor. Fortunately, working asa team helped to ameliorate some of these issuesas it built a cross-checking system into ourdesign and helped us to see beyond ourselves.

Data Collection

We have been collecting data on our studentcohorts across a 2-year (four-cohort) period.Because the systematicness and nature of ourdata collection as well as our research questionshave shifted over time, looking at our data overa number of cohorts allows us to raise addi-t ional questions of both content andmethodology.

During the fall 1998 semester, we collected nodata beyond our regular teaching notes and arti-facts. We did meet on a regular basis to discussthe cohort, to raise concerns about individualstudents, and to plan shared classes.

In the spring of 1999, written data from stu-dents was collected naturally in the course ofour teaching. For example, when a critical inci-dent occurred during a shared class, we wereable to analyze the anonymous evaluations ofthat class that we always gather from studentsafter team-taught classes. When another criticalincident occurred in Strategies of Teaching,Mara asked students to write in response to awhole-class discussion—an approach both of uscommonly use to debrief and reflect on classactivities.


During the fall 1999 semester, we added somedata-collection strategies that were specificallytied to our research questions. Our primarysource of information was student writing inresponse to questions about characteristics of astrong community, barriers to the formation ofthat community, and personal difficulties aboutbeing a community member. Because this writ-ing was completed as an out-of-class assign-ment several weeks into the semester, studentswere aware of our personal beliefs about com-munity as well as the ways we worked to fosterit in our teaching. These were particularly evi-dent during our first shared class, which hadcommunity building and getting to know eachother as its explicit topics, topics that were com-municated to students at the top of the day’sagenda that they all received.

Concerned that the previous data set of stu-dent writing was muddied by the influence ofthese factors, we changed our data-collectionapproach in the spring of 2000. We asked stu-dents to respond to two questions in writing atthe beginning of our first class, before any of ushad the opportunity to talk about his or her phi-losophies or to demonstrate them with instruc-tional activities. The questions, along with abrief anticipatory set, were as follows:

As you already know, Block I is a connected set ofcourses that you will be taking with the same groupof students this semester. As a result of this programstructure, you will be part of a learning community.What do you think might be the positive aspects ofparticipating in this community? What do you thinkmight be the negative aspects of participating in thiscommunity?

We felt these questions would provide us withmore valid baseline data than our previousapproach, although we recognize that even theyhave their limitations given students’ probabledesire to present themselves in positive ways.About three quarters of the way through thesemester, we e-mailed students their individualresponses from January and asked them to com-ment on them using the following questions as aguide:

• What positive aspects that you wrote about havecome to pass? What positive aspects have there beenthat you didn’t anticipate in January?

• What negative aspects that you wrote about havecome to pass? What negative aspects have therebeen that you didn’t anticipate in January?

In all four semesters, we gathered anecdotaldata from our teaching journals and notes fromour research conversations. The latter was par-ticularly important to us because, like Hollins-worth and Sockett (1994), we see conversationas both a legitimate method of data collectionand a way to begin preliminary data analysis.

Data Analysis

We used a collaborative, inductive approachto data analysis. Each of us read through stu-dents’ responses independently before wetalked to each other, and then Mara made an ini-tial pass through the data, noting preliminarycodes on sticky notes. Kelly read throughMara’s codes, added some new ones, and thensorted and collapsed the entire list into a smallernumber of categories. We refined these newcodes together, then reapplied them to the data,eliminating those that did not reflect ourresearch questions or apply to more than onepiece of information. This process was not anattempt to achieve interrater reliability, as eachof us saw the data with a unique lens because ofout different backgrounds and experiences.Instead, we intended to coconstruct categoriesand codes through our talk rather than arrivingat them independently and cross-checking ourimpressions with each other.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Semester 1

An experience during this semester had aprofound effect on our understanding of thecomplexity of cohorts as an organizationalstructure for instruction. Many of the studentsenrolled in the Block I methods courses werealso taking another course that was not a part ofthe methods block. A critical incident occurredduring that outside course that provoked strongfeelings among many students that becamevery obvious in the block classes. Studentswould make caustic remarks about the situa-


tion, the instructor, and the content. This placedus in a challenging situation, which can be sum-marized as follows:

• Something was happening in another context thataffected our student cohort.

• We did not have full, accurate information about thesituation, and it was difficult to ascertain more infor-mation.

• Students began coming to us with tales of the otherclass and demands for “action,” wanting to tell theirside of the story.

• Although we wanted very much to support the fac-ulty instructor of the other course, we struggled withthe seeming conflict of our roles as student allies andprofessional colleagues.

In other words, something that was a sharedexperience for many of the cohort members wassomething that we as methods professors couldnot easily access or intervene to change. This sit-uation is closely related to our second and thirdresearch questions relating to critical incidentsand the role of faculty members vis-à-vis thestudent cohort. We struggled not only with howto respond to a disruptive incident within ourown cohort but also with how to maintain sup-portive, appropriate relationships with otherfaculty members within and outside the cohort.

Semester 2

This cohort brought us experiences and dataof another kind. Throughout the semester, therehad been tensions between different students,particularly when issues regarding race werediscussed. There were definite cliques in thecohort, manifested by seating patterns andwork-partner choices. On the last day of class inStrategies of Teaching, an eruption occurred.Students performing a role-play about racismand prejudice were yelled at by another studentwho didn’t distinguish the roles the studentswere playing from their personal feelings.Attempts to process what had happenedbecame the occasion for more anger, shouting,and hurt feelings. After the break, Mara madeanother attempt to talk about the issues and theimportance of community, but the class endedwith no resolution and a good deal of emotion.Students were asked to write down what they

were feeling and what they thought needed tohappen.

That written data indicated that studentswere uniformly upset. Some said they felt likecrying. Many said they were scared by what hadhappened; others were angry. Many mentionedthe group’s lack of respect. “I feel that there are alot of different groups and nobody tries to haverespect,” one said. “I think there are more per-sonal attacks on individuals than people sayingwhat they think. I feel by some people I havebeen degraded and called a bad teacher. I didnot pay $28,000 to hear that.”

According to another:

I feel insulted, offended and laughed at. I noticedhow people would talk and others laugh at theircomments. I noticed disrespect for peoples’ feelings,intelligence and time (when people are speaking).Right now I am shaken up so I am not able to processall my thoughts and what I am feeling.

One connected the conflict to her futureteaching:

I leave today’s class with the idea that I am going tobe a horrible teacher because I am immature and stu-pid. I am not prepared to deal with people in thisworld! [This was said by one of the students to theother students]. I am scared to go out into schools!This class could have been an incredible communitywith the exception of a few. We cannot end our Blocklike this! Something needs to be done NOW!!!!

Many students said that the atmosphere inthe class made them feel unsafe or unwilling tosay what they thought. As one explained, “I amscared to talk because they will personally at-tack me. I felt bad for L___ today because shewas crying but didn’t want to say anything be-cause the security and safety does not exist inthis community.” Another wrote,

We resort to name calling instead of compromis-ing—in hopes to reach some common grounds. Welook at comments as personal attacks and that is nota safe place for us to share. Without safety there isnothing, only fear to share.

Several students commented that others inthe cohort did not listen well. “This class wassupposed to be about building communitiesand I believe it completely destroyed what little


community we had,” one wrote. “People dislikeeach other in here—we all know that. But thosewho complain about all of us not listening arethe ones who throw snide comments aroundthat are really insulting.”

Another was similarly critical of her peers:

I feel like everything in this class turns into a de-bate. . . . One person hears one thing, completely dis-agrees, and attacks that person. It turns into an “I’mright, you’re wrong” issue, not a content issue. We allneed to learn to listen to our very diverse opinionsand how to respond to them constructively and re-spectfully.

Some students spoke directly to the questionof whether being a community meant that ev-eryone had to be friends:

This is a support system. It is not about making bestfriends. Respect is not something that is happeningin this class because people do not open their mindsto others’ views.

I don’t think that a community is a circle of friends.Rather, it is a group of people who can learn fromeach other!!! WE can’t do that the way things are.

I am not best friends with everyone in Block I, how-ever I try to be open-minded, showing respect for mypeers and not attacking them for their opinions.

Several students made connections beyondthe Block I community and considered the im-plications for their future teaching, insights thatrelated directly to our first research question.“How can we expect to teach children and workwithin a school with other teachers and admin-istrators if we don’t extend the same courtesy toour classmates?” one asked. “I feel as though theproblems of society were just acted out in thisclassroom,” wrote another. A third consideredeven broader implications, drawing on recentevents in the news:

I think that to change the hatred and violence in soci-ety, we all need to be able to interact with each other.Peace isn’t something we discuss, it’s something wedo, and it horrified me to see that the future teachersin this classroom can’t do it. What happened inLittleton [Colorado] can’t change until what hap-pened in here changes.

Only three students directly mentioned therole of faculty in their comments. Two students

blamed their teachers for having a role in thelack of community, saying that faculty did nothave enough contact with students or knowthem well enough to build community. But twostudents said that faculty had done well in estab-lishing a community because they felt theycould go to everyone else in the class as a col-league for support.

Only a few students felt that this blow-upwas part of the process of becoming a commu-nity and were more hopeful. One wrote aboutfeeling

personally disappointed because I feel people thinkour community was a failure and it is hopeless. Thatis just as bad as the teacher who has one bad experi-ence with cooperative group work and gives up. Ithink the fact that we had this conversation todayshows potential for a community of respect and pos-sible understanding.

According to another, “Community is some-thing that is an ongoing process. Conflict willhappen, it’s how we resolve them that matters.”

The semester with this cohort was very diffi-cult for faculty. Whereas the blow-up occurredin one person’s class, it reverberated through-out the rest of the program. It also occasionednew thinking about the expectations we weregiving students about what it meant to “be acommunity.” We wondered how they devel-oped the expectation that they would all befriends or that a good community never had anyconflicts. How did we as faculty contribute tothose expectations? Did students’ conceptionsof community set them up for major disruptionsor make them more disappointed and dis-tressed when those critical incidents occurred?

Semester 3

In this semester, we focused on understand-ing how students defined community. We feltthat differences in students’ definitions acrossthe 30-person cohort, as well as differencesbetween their definitions and our own, mightexplain some of the ruptures or critical incidentswe had observed with previous groups. For thisreason, we asked students to write, from theirperspectives, about the five most crucial charac-


teristics of a healthy community as well as thefive most significant barriers to establishing thatkind of community. Although, as we mentionedearlier, this data was gathered in the midst of thesemester—making it subject to influences fromour explicit teaching about community—thetrends and patterns were still of interest to us,and we include them here.

The most commonly cited characteristics of astrong community were respect, caring, encour-agement, and cooperation. Students also dis-cussed the importance of healthy communica-tion practices, with honesty and carefullistening—the very things their predecessorsfelt were lacking—earning high marks.

The cohort was split on whether friendshipbetween members was a necessary characteris-tic of a strong community. Some agreed with thestudent who argued, “It is important that class-mates are friends with each other or like eachother in order to develop trust and security.”Others saw another student’s point that it wasnecessary to “be friendly to one another” butnot necessarily to “become the best of friends.”

Trust was another commonly cited character-istic of a strong community and, not surpris-ingly, its absence also surfaced frequently instudents’ discussions of barriers to community.When students trusted each other, they felt theycould take risks with their comments and ques-tions in class. When that trust was missing, theyfelt less comfortable sharing ideas, particularlyif they were not sure how others would construetheir points. Several students worried thatpeers’ negative impressions of them would behard to live down, given the intensity and ex-tended duration of their contact with each other.As one explained,

If I don’t trust the rest of my peers or if I am not com-fortable talking to them about personal issues wecan’t learn the most possible. I think this is going tobe especially true once we have our first placementsession and we come back to the classroom to talkabout it. Say I want to share a story about a lessonplan that didn’t work well in my classroom. I think itwould be useful for me to get their input. But if thetrust is not there, then I either won’t want to sharethings or I will be afraid to tell my classmates in fearof being laughed at or that it will leave the classroomin terms of me looking like a failure. I think that is thehardest part about being in Block I with a group of

students we have spent 2 years with and will have tospend the next 2 with as well.

Students also explored the issue of dissent asa potential barrier. As we had expected, givenour data from previous semesters, most of themsaw varying viewpoints as a threat to commu-nity rather than a potential strength:

• The students in the classroom should be one. Theyshould try to get along with each other and negotiatetheir class as a whole.

• As a member of a community, the individual has astrong connection to his peers and therefore shouldnot endanger the ties by dissenting against his fellowmates.

• No single member should have the right to reject orput down an idea of another single member.

George, one of the few men in this cohort, alsowrote about consensus and dissent, but he put adifferent spin on it, addressing an issue that hademerged in previous semesters and that we haddiscussed in our research conferences. Hetalked about the way that a cohort can beswayed by strong personalities within it, oftenleading to conflict between the group as a wholeand the instructor. As he saw it,

The hardest part of being a member of the First Pro-fessional Block community might be myopinionatedness. I stand by my personal beliefs andam usually not afraid to let people know when I amnot happy in a given situation. I can see this as aproblem because I can often convince others that myopinions are correct causing a resistance againstthose who possess more authority than I do.

Finally, a number of students wrote aboutbarriers to community that were under the sur-face of our classes and often missed by us asteachers, particularly when their roots were inother classes than the ones we were teaching.Molly expressed concern about issues of respectand emotional safety: “I have noticed that somemembers of the class make faces and snicker be-hind others’ backs. I do not feel these actions areappropriate in a classroom community.” An-other student, whose closest friends wereabroad during the semester she took Block I,said,

I know most of the 29 other students but I do not feellike I connect with any of them. . . . I am trying to getto know people I do not know and try to foster some


connections with ones I do. The funny thing is, peo-ple I came into block as friends with are not bother-ing with me and I am afraid to approach them.

Asignificant influence on our decision to con-tinue our research into a subsequent semesterwas our desire to devise research strategies thatwould allow us to tap these previously hiddenissues in our classes. Without the focused free-writes, we probably would not have knownwhat either of these students was experiencingin the context of Block I. We expected that therewere other undercurrents within the cohort thatour students had not revealed, either becausethey did not feel comfortable doing so or be-cause our data-collection methods did not openup enough space for their concerns. We resolvedto try different strategies in the subsequent se-mester in hopes of understanding these moreclearly.

Semester 4

Of the four cohorts we studied, these 34women were the most positive as a whole abouttheir experiences as a community. In January,they identified three benefits they felt theywould reap as a part of Block I: new and stron-ger friendships with peers; more support andhelp from others who were in, to quote one stu-dent, “the same boat”; and a richer and larger setof ideas and experiences. Their writing 3months later reflected these same trends, withvery few additions in terms of content. Thefollowing April update was typical of what wereceived:

My [positive] opinions have not changed. As a resultof spending so much time together with the otherstudents in Block I, I have made many more friends. Ihave had the opportunity to “bond” with fellow stu-dents about teaching, our classes, and the place-ments we are placed in. This experience is somethingI would not want to go through alone. I truly valuethe fact that there is so much group support and en-couragement. I feel comfortable being a part of thisBlock.

One new benefit was articulated by this stu-dent, who talked about a new spirit of profes-sionalism that was rooted in community discus-sion about field placements:

We all knew each other prior to Block I but the bondswe have made in the past months are different thanbefore. Through working together and having simi-lar experiences in the field we have developed astrong connection. I feel that our relationships havechanged from that of friends and classmates to thatof professionals. I didn’t expect that at all. This hasoccurred especially with those classmates who are atthe same school as me. I find that instead of talkingabout our plans for the weekend or homework as-signments, we have begun to talk about issues weare having in our teaching.

There was more variation between the nega-tive aspects students anticipated in January andthose they reported actually experiencing. Stu-dents’ concerns at the beginning of the semesterincluded the effects of personal disputes, un-even contributions to group work, feelings ofisolation from others outside the program, andcompetition. The most commonly cited concernwas how negative personal relationships mightinterfere with the work of the block. In January,students worried that they would “get irritatedseeing the same faces 3 hours daily,” “get sick ofeach other,” and experience “clashing of per-sonalities.” These concerns all but disappearedin their April reflections, however. One studentwho worried about personal disputes was re-lieved to see little evidence of that: “Luckily, Ididn’t see any major disputes that hindered ourlearning process. I am EXTREMELY happy withthe group of girls in Block I and don’t think thatit could get any more friendly.” Another talkedabout being “surprised by how well we all getalong. I am extremely lucky to be in this blockand I am glad that I can be with the same peoplefor Block II.” Although one person acknowl-edged the existence of cliques, there was littleother evidence that students perceived personalstatic within the block as detrimental to theirlearning or the functioning of the community.

The second most common concern in Januarywas around group work, with five students spe-cifically discussing potential frustration if oth-ers in their groups did not shoulder their shareof the task. Sheila’s comments were typical:“I’m always nervous about working in groups(especially on papers/projects) because I findthat I always work extra hard so not to let thegroup down and often others don’t do their


share.” After several months of working ongroups, three members still expressed this con-cern, but Sheila’s fears had not come to fruition:“I think I will always be wary of group projectsbut my experience was not negative with themthis semester. This may be due to the fact thateveryone in Block I worked hard and wanted todo well.” Her position was echoed by Marlene,who also mentioned group work concerns inher January writing:

The negative aspect that I wrote about, how one per-son might not contribute, really did not happen.There were a couple of times when a person mightnot have finished their reading, so that made itharder to talk in discussion groups, but I don’t thinkthat there was a time when a person really didn’tparticipate.

Robin, the one student who worried in Janu-ary that quieter students would be silenced inthe large group, actually retracted those con-cerns in April:

I was afraid quieter students would get lost in thecrowd, but each teacher made sure that that wouldnot happen. I loved how you taught us to be aware ofgiving others opportunities, especially in smallgroups, and I saw those tactics in action. If someonewasn’t saying much other people in the groupswould always ask if they had anything to say or add.

Not everyone shared Robin’s perspective,however.

Sometimes I want to participate [Deanna wrote], butthere are so many other people who also want to par-ticipate that once the teacher has finally gotten to meanother person has said my idea. I am very nervousin large groups, and sometimes I need time to planout what I am going to say in my head. But this timethat I need is never available, only because everyonejumps at the chance to talk.

This issue of “air time” in a large group was asignificant ongoing concern for us as facultymembers, but no one save these two studentsmentioned it in either set of data.

As it had in the previous semester, dissentand its converse, consensus, were discussed bya small number of respondents. In the Januarydata, four students wrote about the potential forcommunity conflict that different opinions onissues might raise. Two of these students werecareful to explain, in parentheses, that although

they were putting their responses in the nega-tive category, such differences of opinion wouldnot, as one of them put it, “necessarily be a badthing.” In April, no one tackled this question atall, except for one student who wrote that therewere no disagreements about issues in the block“because everyone basically believes the samething about inclusion.” Although we did notnecessarily think this was the case, the student’sperception was not surprising to us, given thetrends in data we already had.

Finally, whereas competition within thegroup had been mentioned by only one studentin January, three students wrote about it inApril. According to one, “I see a little competi-tiveness between each other in terms of whateach of us got on our papers, etc. but I know thatthis happens all the time, so it is not really a bigdeal.” Another concurred: “Almost always stu-dents compare their grades, but I feel this is anormal and unavoidable part of school.”

We were surprised by the positive nature ofnearly all of the data from this cohort. Althoughsome negative issues that previous cohortsraised were mentioned, they tended to be citedby a small number of students and in a muchless emphatic way. As faculty, we found thesetrends to be encouraging; as researchers, wewondered if there was more to the story. Werethere issues and concerns that students did notfeel able to share? Would we hear about themlater? Would these stories become part of thelore passed from cohort to cohort but inaccessi-ble to us?

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

As the above data indicate, the four cohortsdiffered widely in their perceptions of commu-nity within Block I. Whereas the students inSemester 4 reported a tremendous sense of trustand support within the cohort, the students inSemester 2 reported hostility, factions, and dis-appointment. Experiences in Semesters 1 and 3were more mixed. Given that there were no sub-stantive changes in the syllabi, assignments, orpedagogy across those four semesters, thisdegree of variation was surprising to us.

We wonder about the influence of variousfactors on specific cohorts. For example, gender


and racial imbalances seem to make a differencein the class. Although male students are alwaysa tiny minority, they often absorb a dispropor-tionate amount of talk time during discussions,and they change the group dynamic. We haveobserved that the presence of four men inSemester 1 created a different dynamic than inSemester 4, when there were none. In addition,issues of race and ethnicity moved into the fore-ground in our program because it is designed toprepare students to teach in diverse classrooms.Most courses require students to engage withcontent about diversity in schools and socialinjustice, and all students are required to haveurban placements where they often work withchildren very different from those with whomthey grew up. Consequently, conversationsabout race and ethnicity arise frequently withinour classes. Although the number of students ofcolor in each cohort is fairly consistent (two tofour), these students’ histories and experienceswith people of different backgrounds vary, as dothe histories and experiences of the White stu-dents. Because of this, the comfort level aroundsuch discussions also varies. In some semesters,we have been able to address issues of racismand prejudice with a high level of studentengagement and participation, whereas in othersemesters, such activities have created dissen-sion and tension within the group.

Students with strong personalities alsoappear to have the power to alter classroomdynamics and our impressions of the cohort as awhole. Our feelings about one student we per-ceive as antagonistic can color how we reacttoward the entire cohort. Those dominant stu-dents also appear to affect other students’ will-ingness to share particular viewpoints in class.

These emerging conclusions have a variety ofimplications for our practice and our research.Although Block I faculty have always stressedthe importance of becoming a strong learningcommunity at the beginning of and periodicallythroughout the semester, we have made somechanges in our approaches with students. Inresponse to the concerns described above, wehave implemented activities and assignmentsdesigned specifically to promote critical reflec-tion on practice. We have also seized “teachable

moments” relative to critical reflection andcommunity to emphasize our commitments tostudents. Mara, for example, has been veryintentional about praising students for engag-ing in critical evaluation after community build-ing and encouraging students to process whatthey are told by classmates relative to the suc-cess or complexities of the activity they havetried. Within this context, she has stressed theimportance of maintaining an open,nondefensive stance in the face of classmates’comments and critical feedback as well as theimportance of providing that feedback in waysthat can most easily be heard and responded to.Kelly has added a dialogue-journal assignmentto her syllabus and explicitly taught studentshow to provide their partners with feedbackand response that is both supportive and criti-cal. We will continue to look for opportunities toteach and evaluate specific behaviors that wesee as central to students’ development as acommunity of critique, despite structural andtime constraints within the program. We alsointend to stress that members of a communitydo not always agree, that conflicts occur even(perhaps especially) in strong communities,and that collegial relationships are not alwaysthe same as friendships.

Students do not always share our valuesabout community, however. Nor do theyalways see the value of processing conflicts andcritical incidents. Despite our enthusiasm forthe opportunities for growth and reflection thatsuch occasions offer, students often see them aspainful, undesirable, and the mark of an unsuc-cessful classroom community. Because theybring a wide range of personal histories, predis-positions, and feelings to the cohort, they“read” the common text of tension-filledmoments in different ways—ways we cannotfully predict or control.

As teachers in the context of a larger teacher-education program, we are also concernedabout our responsibilities to other faculty mem-bers who will work with our cohorts in subse-quent semesters. On one hand, we desire to pro-vide all students with a fresh start, regardless ofnegative experiences they might have had withus and with the cohort. On the other, we are


aware that information from us might help ourcolleagues to meet students’ needs better aswell as to provide a valuable trail of data shouldfuture problems occur. This is an ethicaldilemma that we have not yet resolved.

Implications for Teacher Education

Our research confirms the findings byRadencich et al. (1998) and Kelly and Dietrich(1995) that the team cultures that develop incohorts can be powerfully positive or disturb-ingly negative. Rather than seeing this uneven-ness in cohort nature and function as a reason toabandon cohorts, we would argue that this vari-ability demands further investigation of the fac-tors that affect these various outcomes. The cli-mate of cooperation and trust that Burnafordand Hobson (1995) saw as essential to success-ful cohort function cannot simply be assumedbecause a group stays together for a period oftime. Teacher educators must take active stepsto continually monitor, assess, and address thequality of interactions within the cohort.

We also found, as did Clyde and Condon(1996), that the opportunity to cross-check ourobservations and conclusions with anotherresearcher was invaluable to our collaboration.Not only did our collaboration challenge thetypical isolation of teaching, but it enabled us togrow as teachers and researchers. Using foureyes, four ears, and two brains to understandthe same group of students enriched our analy-sis and broadened our individual lenses as well.Collaborating with another faculty memberalso helped balance the tensions of being aninsider-outsider to our own research, the assetand liability of practitioners’ research elabo-rated by Fecho (2000). Although we were clearlyinsiders in our own classrooms, we were semi-outsiders to one another’s—same students, dif-ferent content, different format.

Based on our findings, we offer the followingsuggestions for successful cohort developmentand maintenance:

1. Faculty should discuss with student cohorts the ra-tionale, hoped-for benefits, and possible land minesfor the use of the cohort model.

2. The ways in which cohorts function should be anexplicit part of the curriculum of any teacher educa-

tion program. That is, forming community, dealingwith differences, and negotiating conflicts within thecohort and in the K-12 classroom should all be explic-itly studied as part of preparation for being a teacher.

3. Teacher educators must implement mechanisms formonitoring and assessing the changes within thestudent cohort. Faculty can use quick writes,journaling, class discussions, and classroom meet-ing formats to make transparent the functioning ofthe community as well as to model how these strate-gies can be used in K-12 classrooms.

4. Faculty members who share a group of studentsmust find ways to exchange information essentialto continuity and smooth functioning of the cohort.The professor who meets with the cohort on Tues-day must know what happened in class on Monday,not only the content that was addressed but also ifthere were any significant events in the “life of thecommunity.” High points (a unique communitybuilding moment or bonding experience) as well aschallenges must be shared, as they will inform whathappens next for the learners involved.

Implications for K-12 Practice

There are strong parallels between teachereducation cohorts and the classroom communi-ties in elementary and secondary schools. Whena group of students remains together forextended periods of time and shares commonexperiences, the group often develops an iden-tity and a history of its own. The positive aspectsof this shared construction of community caninclude common stories (“Remember the timethat Michael . . . ”) and shared triumphs (the suc-cessful school play). Some of the challenges wehave articulated in teacher education cohortsalso exist in K-12 classrooms. Practicing teach-ers in our graduate classes relate critical inci-dents from their own classrooms that havemuch in common with the narrative we used toopen this piece.

Many of the issues that are difficult to discussin teacher education classes are equally chal-lenging in elementary and secondary class-rooms. When issues of race, religion, families,sexual orientation, and other differences arise,teachers often feel inadequately prepared torespond constructively to such tricky terrain.Individual student comments become the occa-sion for classroom conflict, and students canbecome marginalized and excluded in thirdgrade just as they are in college classrooms.


Teachers need to realize that their positioncan limit their knowledge of the classroom’speer culture. Interactions take place betweenand among students that affect the classroomcommunity but remain outside the teacher’sradar screen. Our research suggests that class-room teachers need strategies that will allowthem to gather information about the classroomdynamics. Only when teachers have sufficientdata about the relationships and events of theclassroom can they decide whether to interveneand what to do.

Many of the same approaches we used in ourresearch to gather data about our classroomcommunities can be used in K-12 settings toguide teachers’ practice. Asking students towrite (sometimes anonymously) about class-room events and dynamics on a regular basiscan help teachers see the diversity of perspec-tives and move beyond a generic understandingof how things were going. Instead of assumingthat class went well for everyone or that all thesmall groups have functioned cooperatively,teachers can actively solicit more detailed feed-back. Frequent whole-class debriefing sessionsmay provide another source of informationabout classroom events. Such discussions notonly provide information but also model forstudents the legitimacy of openly tackling hardissues and conflicts.

As classrooms and schools become more col-laborative and involve multiple professionalswho work with the same group of students, itbecomes imperative that K-12 teachers, like uni-versity teachers, develop mechanisms for shar-ing information. When students return fromphysical education upset about something thathappened during a game, the regular classroomteacher needs access to that informationbecause the residue of the incident will affect therest of the day.

Implications for Research

Our data also raise methodological issues, inparticular questions about how best to conductresearch on cohorts while simultaneously teach-ing them. Obtaining access to information aboutcohort dynamics is difficult because it some-

times puts students in the position of having to“tattle” on each other. The timing of our probesmakes a difference as well. If we ask students totalk about the community after a critical inci-dent, when feelings are high, they provide dif-ferent information than they do during less vol-atile moments. In addition, we receive differentdata if we collect it during stressful times of thesemester—for example, when students areworking on multiple projects. Although thedata from Semester 4 are very positive, theywere collected before students’ second fieldassignments were due, a period that consis-tently creates tension and competition amongthe cohort. Last but perhaps most significant,we are researching a phenomenon that changesconstantly, often because of our own decisionsas teachers. In a sense, we are shifting the veryground we are trying to describe.

Our future research will need to addressthese concerns. Although the methodologicalissues make this a challenging task, we are com-mitted to exploring ways to combine teachingand researching this topic. We believe that stu-dents’ ability to participate as thoughtful andcritical members of cohorts increases their like-lihood of creating such learning communitieswithin their own future classrooms. As our datademonstrate, such a goal, although worthy,requires attention to many variables andacknowledgment of the messiness and com-plexity of the teaching-learning process.

NOTE1. All student names have been changed.

REFERENCESBlenkinsop, S., & Bailey, P. (1997). Creating reciprocal rela-

tionships in language arts and science: A collaborativeexploration of subject area integration. InH. Christiansen, L. Goulet, C. Krentz, & M. Maeers(Eds.), Recreating relationships: Collaboration and educa-tional reform (pp. 181-190). Albany: State University ofNew York Press.

Brooks, J., & Brooks, M. (1993). In search of understanding:The case for constructivist classrooms. Alexandria, VA:Association for Supervision and CurriculumDevelopment.


Burnaford, G., & Hobson, D. (1995). Beginning with thegroup: Collaboration as the cornerstone of graduate tea-cher education. Action in Teacher Education, 17(3), 67-75.

Clyde, J. A., & Condon, M. (1996). “School talk”: Exploringthe uses of language in middle school teacher prepara-tion. In K. F. Whitmore & Y. M. Goodman (Eds.), Wholelanguage voices in teacher education (pp. 75-84). York, ME:Stenhouse.

Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1993). Inside/outside: Teacherresearch and knowledge. New York: Teachers CollegePress.

Fecho, R. (2000). Critical inquiries into language in anurban classroom. Research in the Teaching of English,34(3), 368-395.

Goswami, D., & Stillman, P. (1987). Reclaiming the class-room: Teacher research as an agency of change. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook.

Guilfoyle, K. (1995). My journey through the land of trans-formation: Navigating uncharted territory. TeacherResearch: The Journal of Classroom Inquiry, 3(1), 89-104.

Hollingsworth, S., & Sockett, H. (1994). Teacher researchand educational reform: Ninety-third yearbook of theNational Society for the Study of Education. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Kelly, S. M., & Dietrich, A. P. (1995, November). The influ-ence of program structure and learner characteristics onteacher training outcomes. Paper presented at the Mid-South Educational Research Association, Biloxi, MS.

Newkirk, T. (1992). Silences in our teaching stories: Whatwe leave out and why. In T. Newkirk (Ed.), Workshop 4:The teacher as researcher (pp. 21-30). Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.

Peterson, K. D., Benson, N., Driscoll, A., Narode, R.,Sherman, D., & Tama, C. (1995, Spring). Preserviceteacher education using flexible, thematic cohorts.Teacher Education Quarterly, 29-42.

Poynor, L. (1998). Rolled eyes and heavy sighs: Classroomcommunity in a teacher education class. TeacherResearch: The Journal of Classroom Inquiry, 5(2), 127-138.

Radencich, M. C., Thompson, T., Anderson, N. A.,Oropallo, K., Fleege, P., Harrison, M., Hanley, P., &Gomez, S. (1998). The culture of cohorts: Preserviceteacher education teams at a southeastern university inthe United States. Journal of Education for Teaching, 24(2),109-127.

Sapon-Shevin, M., & Chandler, K. (1999, October). Teachercohorts: The good, the bad and the highly dysfunctional.Paper presented at the Conference of Curriculum Theo-rizing (Bergamo), Dayton, OH.

Short, K. (1993). Teacher research for teacher educators. InL. Patterson, C. M. Santa, K. Short, & K. Smith (Eds.),Teachers are researchers: Reflection and action (pp. 155-159).Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Mara Sapon-Shevin is a professor of education atSyracuse University. Her areas of interest include teach-ing for social justice, teacher education, and cooperativelearning. Her most recent book is Because We CanChange the World: A Practical Guide to BuildingCooperative, Inclusive Classroom Communities(Allyn and Bacon). She works actively with districts andschools on inclusion issues and antiracism curricula.

Kelly Chandler-Olcott is an assistant professor ofreading and language arts at Syracuse University. Herresearch interests include classroom-based inquiry byteachers and adolescents’ use of electronic technologies intheir literacy practices.



PLAYING IT SAFE AS A NOVICE TEACHERIMPLICATIONS FOR PROGRAMS FOR NEW TEACHERS

Sharon M. ChubbuckMarquette University

Renee T. CliftUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Joanne AllardPrincipal, Delphi Community Middle School

Jane QuinlanROE SchoolWorks, Champaign/Ford/Vermilion Counties, Illinois

Prompted by the continuing attrition rate of novice teachers, this study examines 1st-year teachers’needs in the context of a university-regional partnership sponsored support program for noviceteachers, the Novice Teacher Support Project (NTSP). Using the concept of reality shock as occur-ring in the interaction of person and environment, the authors examined novice teachers’ expressedneeds and how those needs are met. Throughout all the findings, the novice teachers expressed aneed for safety, a mix of support and challenge that was best provided by a combination of both inter-nal resources from the district and external resources such as the NTSP. The authors suggest con-ceptualizing support as an interactive process that includes person, school context, supportcontext, and personal relationships. This can help support the creation of the type of emotionallyand professionally safe environments new teachers need to develop their professional lives.

Many published calls for reforming schools andteaching end with a challenge to preservicepreparation programs that goes something likethis, “Teacher preparation programs should re-quire that their students be able to _____.” Theblank is then filled with a knowledge, skill, or af-fective component that summarizes the focus ofthe article or the research. For example, the U.S.Congress Office of Technology Assessment(OTA) (1995) called for preservice programs todo more with computer technology. Cummins(1989), Nieto (1996), and Sleeter and Grant(1988) called for preservice programs to preparestudents to teach in ways that accommodatecultural and linguistic diversity. Content orga-nizations such as the National Council of

Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) (2000) pro-vide standards and examples that encouragenew ways of teaching mathematics. A recent is-sue of the Journal of Teacher Education (Vol. 52,No. 3) was devoted to the connections betweenreform in teacher education and school im-provement. Indeed, preservice teacher educa-tion is viewed by many as a hopeful force forchanging teaching practice in America’s schoolsand improving teaching and learning for all stu-dents.

Many educators recognize, however, that onecannot make a simplistic assumption thatefforts at the preservice level automaticallyresult in the opportunity for, or the encourage-ment of, newly graduated teachers to put their

365


fledgling ideas about innovative teaching intoactual practice. More realistic suggestions weremade by the Holmes Group (1995) and JohnGoodlad (1994). Both called for the creation ofsome form of partnership between schools anduniversities that would privilege the simulta-neous improvement of both school teachingand learning and university teaching and learn-ing. The grants awarded under Title II of theHigher Education Reauthorization Act man-date that university-based teacher educationprograms work in partnership with schoolshousing large numbers of students who are aca-demically “at risk.” The goal is simultaneouslyto improve teacher education and studentachievement in these schools. Each of these ech-oes the call found in the comprehensive reportby the National Commission on Teaching andAmerica’s Future report (1996) to think of edu-cational improvement as “an entire tapestrythat is tightly interwoven” (p. 116).

In this article, we explore one part of the tap-estry envisioned by educators and policy mak-ers, those threads that represent novice teachersduring their 1st year of practice. We base ourexploration on a study of the beginning teach-ers’ expressed needs for support and profes-sional development as they participated in aregional partnership. This partnership, com-posed of a university and two regional offices ofeducation, was created to provide new teacherswith a forum for continuing their education inan environment that linked those responsiblefor preservice education (the university staff)with those who were charged with continuingprofessional development (the regional officestaff and school district staff).

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Our home state of Illinois (like many states)makes a distinction between teachers new to theprofession and those who are experienced. In1998, the Illinois General Assembly created atiered licensing system in which novice teacherswould be issued an “initial” teaching certificateand would need to pass some (as yet undefined)assessment before receiving a “standard” teach-ing certificate. Although the law specifies thisassessment be made prior to the standard

license’s being awarded, it does not refer to anysupport, either structural or fiscal, for the noviceteachers to succeed during their first 4 years orto work toward passing the assessment. Thus,the state is creating a high-stakes evaluation ofthe most difficult time in a teacher’s career with-out building in any safety net for these teachers.

This situation is troubling to all of us who areinvolved with teaching teachers, whether weare university-based educators, members ofteachers unions, administrators, or professionaldevelopment specialists. In 1997, university fac-ulty and administrators from across the campusat the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-paign, representatives from two regional officesof education (Champaign-Ford Counties andVermilion County), superintendents from theschool districts in the two regions, and unionpresidents from those regions met to discussways they might work together in a partnershipfor the mutual benefit of educators and stu-dents. Researchers from the participating uni-versity conducted a needs assessment of 1st-through 3rd-year teachers in the area to deter-mine if and how induction support would be ameaningful contribution to the region. Based inpart on that data and dialogue, all parties agreedto create, implement, and evaluate an initialpartnership project to support novice teachers,which is now known as the Novice Teacher Sup-port Project (NTSP). Once the decision to moveforward was definite, representatives of all thepartners gathered as a design team commis-sioned to create a vision of an ideal support pro-gram for beginning teachers. Using their ideas,the steering committee, a smaller subset of part-ner representatives, established a several-stageplan for implementing the NTSP. Originallyfunded by the university and the regionaloffices, the project now receives support fromthe Illinois State Board of Education and is in its4th year of operation.

Traditionally, the link between institutionsthat provide preservice education and the dis-tricts that hire new teachers is weak or, moreoften, nonexistent. This results in very fewstructures that help beginning teachers success-fully translate preservice theory into classroompractice (e.g., Fox & Singletary, 1986; Holland,


Clift, & Veal, 1992; Odell & Huling, 2000;Wilkinson, 1994). This fragmentation can leavenovice teachers experiencing a strong sense offailure, particularly if they have not been able toimplement instruction in ways that are consis-tent with their philosophy of teaching (e.g.,Bullough, 1989; Huling-Austin, 1992). Indeed, itis well documented that 1st-year teachers areoften given the toughest assignments and havevery few professional resources to aid them asthey take on the most challenging classes andwork with some of the most alienated students(Clift, Veal, Holland, Johnson, & McCarthy,1995; Reiman & Parramore, 1994). For these rea-sons, as well as others, the teaching professioncontinues to lose talented, but frustrated, indi-viduals from a variety of preservice back-grounds (Birrell, 1995; Cole & Knowles, 1993;Schmidt & Knowles, 1995). Some data suggestthat nearly 50% of teachers entering the profes-sion leave within the first 5 years (“Who ShouldTeach? Quality Counts 2000,” 2000).

Our work is framed by the analyses of newteachers’ learning needs detailed by the nowclassic article, “Perceived Problems of Begin-ning Teachers” (Veenman, 1984). In that article,the concept of reality shock was articulated as acollapse of ideals formed prior to teaching asone experiences everyday classroom life.Through an analysis of 83 studies (most ofwhich employed questionnaire methods of datacollection), Veenman (1984) argued that theways one does or does not experience realityshock is not simply an individual trait but aninteraction between person and environment.Gold’s (1996) review of literature on beginningteacher attrition, mentoring, and induction pro-vided support for Veenman’s argument. Herreview of studies of teacher burnout (most ofwhich were published after Veenman’s report)concluded that adverse school environmentshad a strong and negative impact on newteachers but that there was some evidence thatprograms that “planned to meet teachers’ psy-chological needs along with their professionalneeds clearly can lead to greater satisfaction,productivity, and lower attrition rates.” (p. 559)

As we tried to identify some of the cognitiveand emotional factors that were important in

supporting these teachers in their 1st year, webegan to move from thinking in terms such asreality shock or survival, because the context inwhich our program operated was not affiliatedwith a school or district, but it did attempt tomeet both the psychological and professionalneeds of new teachers. Therefore, we wereattempting to assist young (and several not soyoung) professionals as they made the transi-tion from student to teacher. As we tried to iden-tify some of the cognitive and emotional factorsthat were important in supporting these teach-ers in their 1st year, we began to hear about andunderstand better an expressed need to feel safethat was embedded within their ideas of bothsupport and practical knowledge for teaching.

LEARNING FROM FORMATIVEEVALUATION DATA

The data on which this article is based aredrawn from the formative evaluations of the 1stand 2nd years of the NTSP project, with a valid-ity check based on data from the 3rd year. Ourpurpose in using these data is not to provide thedetails of the evaluation results but to sharewhat we have learned through that evaluationdata about how novice teachers perceive theirneeds, how meeting those needs relates to theircolleagues as well as to our project, and the roleof safety as novice teachers undergo and precip-itate change in the process of meeting theirneeds. Although we are not advocating a partic-ular view of change, our experiences with theparticipants of the NTSP have shown us theimportance of recognizing the role of noviceteachers in the process of change leading toreform. And in recognizing the role of noviceteachers in the process of change, we havefound ourselves continually considering issuesof safety.

Participants

During the 1st year of the NTSP, 37 first-yearteachers from three counties participated in theproject. The 2nd year of the program, 40 first-year teachers and 20 returning 2nd-year teach-ers participated. Both years, the teachers repre-sented a wide range of grade level, content area,


and district size. The elementary teachersranged from Pre-K to self-contained 6th grade.Middle school teachers (6th to 8th grade)included math, English, social studies, com-puter, and physical education teachers. Thehigh school teachers from districts of varyingsizes included math, English, French, Spanish,science, vocational training, and agriculturalteachers. There were several special educationteachers at both the elementary and middleschool levels. Cross-age teachers included K-8reading/Title I teachers and 6th- through 12th-grade music and art teachers. In all groups,teachers represented both rural and larger, uni-fied school districts. This level of diversity con-tinued in the 3rd year of the NTSP.

Data Sources and Data Analysis

Written surveys, focus group interviews,notes from planning sessions, and formal andinformal notes from NTSP planners were usedto prepare this article. At the end of the 1st yearof the program, 27 of the 37 NTSP teachers,including all grade levels and content areas,completed a written questionnaire. At the endof the 2nd year, 31 of the 40 first-year partici-pants and 17 of the 20 second-year participantscompleted evaluative surveys in which theynumerically rated and commented on the effec-tiveness of NTSP and the value of specific ses-sions. Both years, the teachers also responded toseveral open-ended questions about the project.All responses were summarized within ques-tions and were then grouped according to simi-larity. The most frequently mentionedresponses were noted. The open-endedresponses, across questions, were sorted intothemes, separately, by two of the coauthors,who then compared findings to reach consen-sus with one another.

In addition to the questionnaire, we con-ducted a focus group interview with 9 represen-tative NTSP participants at the conclusion of the1st year, with 6 first-year participants and 4 sec-ond-year participants at the conclusion of the2nd year, and with 10 first-year participants atthe conclusion of the 3rd year. These teachers

were invited to participate on the basis of thelevel of their activity in the year’s work sessions,their willingness to participate, and a partialrepresentation of grade, content area, and dis-trict size. In the interview, we asked six open-ended questions designed to elicit more detailsabout the nature of their experiences as 1st-yearteachers and the support (or lack of support)they received from their schools, districts, andfrom participating in the NTSP. The interviewwas transcribed, and responses to each questionwere categorized. The entire body of interviewswas then recategorized thematically acrossquestions. Again, the categories were identifiedseparately by two of the coauthors and thencompared to reach consensus.

A third source of data came from a summerplanning session in which 4 first-year partici-pants met with project administrators and vet-eran teachers after the 1st year of the program toplan an extension of the NTSP for the returning2nd-year cohort of participants. The notes fromthis discussion provided additional insight intothe teachers’ learning needs as participants be-gan to delineate the difference between 1st- and2nd-year needs. The notes also served as one tri-angulation point for confirming ordisconfirming conclusions drawn from otherdata. The final source of data consists of the indi-vidual and informal notes kept by the projectteam throughout the year. These notes were re-viewed to provide another point for verificationof category formation. Four of the categories areespecially relevant to this article:

1. need for practical, logistical information about op-erations within novice teachers’ buildings;

2. need for practical, subject-specific ideas providedby practicing teachers that can be implemented im-mediately;

3. need for time for reflection on experience followedby discussion with others; and

4. need for nonthreatening, nonevaluative emotionalsupport that does not force one into another’s mold.

PERCEIVED NEEDS

The novice teachers’ expressed needs includerequests both for information and for support-ive and informing relationships with other


teachers, both veterans and other beginningteachers. Furthermore, our work indicates thatmany new teachers place a heavy emphasis onthe importance of opportunities to engage inanalysis of and reflection on their practice.

Practical, Logistical InformationAbout Specific School Contexts:“They just forgot that I was new . . . ”

The importance of receiving practical, logisti-cal information about operations within thebuilding was mentioned frequently. The begin-ning of a new school year is demanding for allteachers and administrators. In some of ournovice teachers’ schools, the pace and demandsof the first few weeks often crowded out admin-istrators’ and experienced teachers’ awarenessof the need to communicate adequately the nec-essary information to the newcomers.

There are 41 people there in my building—none ofthem have retired in 28-41 years—they just forgotthat I was new. There would be a faculty meeting andthey’d go, “Where is Evan? Nobody told him. We al-ways have them Thursday morning for 15 years!”

I would have to agree with Evan because everybodyin my building with the exception of one person, hasbeen there 9-10 years plus and after the one who hasbeen there 9-10 years, everybody has been there like20 years. So it has been hard. The principal did giveme a mentor but it was another specialist and I feltlike sometimes I missed the ins and outs. You knowyou would talk [here at NTSP] and everybody elsewas going, “Yeah, I’ve had that happen to me,” and itmakes you feel better—makes you not feel so left outeverywhere.

[It felt like] “Here’s the key to your room. . . . Here’syour class schedule, and notice a new class has beenadded. . . . ” The secretaries and janitors were mosthelpful. . . . I was embarrassed to have to ask wherethe teachers’ lounge was located.

There was even less attention paid to creatingtime for conversation or informal, supportivediscussions. One teacher described the experi-ence this way: “They (fellow teachers) are like,‘Hi, how are you?’ and they’re on their way andyou’re just out there on your own.” Anothersaid, “I didn’t get a chance to talk to many otherteachers. They just kind of threw the book [at

me] and said, ‘Here you go.’ ” Even though theteachers clearly saw their colleagues as “goodpeople,” they were “too busy” or they had “for-gotten what it’s like to just be starting” or theysimply weren’t close enough, physically oremotionally, to talk to when the needs arose.

Novices also cited the lack of certain types ofmore sensitive communication. One teachermentioned political issues in her school, havingbeen put in a situation in which she had torespond to a history of “bad blood” she hadn’trealized existed. “It’s just been a nightmare.You’re just like, ‘I didn’t know that, nobody toldme.’ And I don’t know where you’d go to findout about these things because you don’t wantto gossip.” Other teachers described a similarlack of somewhat sensitive information on howto negotiate sharing resources in light of fellowteachers’ ownership of their created materials.“Going to borrow things is kind of tricky. . . . Ialways make copies of my stuff for everybody.Why don’t they think to make copies for me?”

The novice teachers expressed strong frustra-tion that this need for practical, logistical infor-mation, both physical and interpersonal, wasnot met. The depth of the need was most clearlyindicated by one teacher who, although a 1st-year teacher, had been in her particular buildingfor 3 years and still felt a keen need for basic in-formation. In her words,

I did my student teaching in this school, then I wasan aide, now I am a teacher. So nobody told me any-thing. They assumed I knew it, so I had to go huntingand dig and ask. It has been kind of hard to ask thosequestions.

Practical Exchanges With PracticingTeachers: “Lots of beautiful ideas . . . ”

Some of the NTSP novices in larger districtswere given formal and informal opportunitiesto discuss ideas with their colleagues. The vastmajority, however, regardless of district size,were not. The reality of the need surfaced as theNTSP teachers gave the highest ratings to work-shops led by practicing teachers and, in theircomments, requested more time to engage in di-alogue with those teachers about the issues thenovices were facing.


[This project helped me because] I got lots of beauti-ful ideas from this workshop. I thought the ones inthe spring were especially useful because we metwith a reading teacher or whatever our need was.She gave a lot of useful ideas you could take back atlittle cost and do in your classroom immediately.

My greatest need at the beginning was we had agreat big computer lab that was not networked andnot ready to go. So I went from classroom to class-room trying to pull out kids and do things and Ineeded to figure out some quick, easy short things todo with all these kids and this [project] helped out alot because I got a lot of really neat ideas of short littlethings we could do and that has worked well.

The beginning teachers in the 1st year of theNTSP were virtually unanimous in their cry forpractical, contextualized information they couldtake back to their classrooms. During the 1st yearof the NTSP, the novices expressed frustrationover presentations that were theoretical and clam-ored for more and more practical suggestions.

There was too much theory and too little practicaladvice.

[Drop} the idealistic sessions. . . . We’re in the realworld now.

Bring in examples of systems that really work for tea-chers. “I do this” and “This is how I grade essays, etc.”

The planners of the NTSP responded to those1st-year demands for practical ideas by adjust-ing the 2nd-year workshops to provide morecontact with practicing teachers and more prac-tical suggestions. We were rewarded by an en-thusiastic 2nd- and 3rd-year evaluation inwhich the teachers almost unanimously com-mented on their appreciation for the increasedlevel of practicality and exposure to practicingteachers. This strong response confirmed ouroriginal identification of novice teachers’ signif-icant need for practical, subject-specific ideasthat could be implemented immediately.

The NTSP inspired us through meetings with mas-ters in the field of education.

The instructional strategies that were named hereand put out to us about how to use them in a schoolsetting that I could translate to my own helped a lot.

I loved the practical ideas, presented by practicingteachers.

Reflection on Experience Followedby Discussion With Others: “Weneeded help from each other.”

The NTSP teachers recognized the impor-tance of reflection, which was also mirrored inthe findings of the initial needs assessment. Inthat assessment, 1st- through 3rd-year teachersidentified a lack of time for reflection on theirpractice as one of their major concerns, corrobo-rating the findings of Holland et al. (1992). TheNTSP participants identified an expanded defi-nition of reflection that included both their ownpersonal contemplation and study and the op-portunity for interactive exchange with peers tofurther examine ideas.

In most all of the sessions that we had, they left youwith something to think about. Either about whatyou can use or about what you are already doing. SoI’d say that each of the sessions left you with someway to think about improving or implementing.

The biggest way it has impacted me is when I went tothe instructional strategies session and there wereideas that I thought really might work for my class-room and it caused me to explore them or go studyup on them and see if that is something that could beused in my class.

The NTSP did a good job in allowing for reflectionand interaction because we needed help from eachother.

In response to the needs assessment, theNTSP planners incorporated reflection intomany of the work sessions, devoting one entiresession to a reflection exercise. This session re-ceived the second highest ratings of all the ses-sions presented. Qualitative data from thequestionnaire and the focus group interviewalso supported the value beginning teachers as-signed to reflection. Several participants ex-pressed appreciation that the entire NTSPproject both “sparked thought” and providedstructured opportunities for reflection. Thevalue of reflection was further enhanced by theopportunity to do so interactively. In one partic-


ipant’s words, “I loved talking in groups withother 1st-year teachers.”

The 2nd-year evaluation confirmed the sig-nificance of the need for reflection and discus-sion. Once again, the novice teachers gave analmost unanimous response of approval ofopportunities for reflection and discussion.“The NTSP met a fundamental need to connectwith others in similar situations.” In particular,one teacher commented on her peers’ wistfulresponse that they, too, needed such an oppor-tunity. “People in my school say that it is reallynice that I have someone else to talk to besidesthe school. They really wished that they couldhave had it, too.” This quote demonstrates theneed to reflect and discuss, and, by emphasizingthe value of discussing with someone “besidesthe school,” it hints at the final category:nonevaluative, noncoercive support.

Emotional Support That Does NotForce One Into Another’s Mold:“ . . . together as peers withoutworrying . . . ”

The novice teachers commented moststrongly on the value of the emotional supportthey gained from meeting with others in similarsituations. The support the NTSP teachersgained in having a place to express frustrationand emotions remedied their sense of isolation.The support confirmed that the difficult experi-ences they were encountering were not uniqueto themselves but were common to most of theirpeers.

I think the biggest aspect is that I wasn’t the only one.That everybody else was dealing with the samethings, feeling overwhelmed, having the same sortof difficulties, problem kids, whatever. So, the net-working with teachers I think was helpful. . . . It wasgood to verbalize the emotional stress.

They had not realized how much they wouldneed that emotional support, and several ex-pressed surprise at how valuable it had beenthroughout the year. Comments like, “I didn’tknow how much I would need others” and “Itwas good to hear other people’s experiences—to realize I was not alone” were in abundance

throughout the questionnaires and the focusgroup interviews. Whereas Klug and Sultzman(1991) described the beginning teacher’s needfor a network to engage in problem solving, theNTSP participants placed their need for emo-tional support as an equally high priority. Thissupport is apparently lacking, according to par-ticipants’ reports, in a high percentage of theschools represented, particularly in smaller dis-tricts with only one new teacher.

Several comments particularly emphasizedthe value of emotional support that was encour-aging and inspiring, not coercive or threatening.In particular, teachers expressed an apprecia-tion for the sense of safety that they felt in thesupport that they experienced. The NTSP plan-ners had made concentrated efforts to offer sup-port to the teachers with no hint of evaluation.The sense of safety the novice teachers experi-enced in the NTSP seemed related to that lack ofevaluation and to the fact that the NTSP worksessions and participants were separate fromthe evaluators located in their respectiveschools. The participating teachers clearly val-ued that component of emotional safety.

The NTSP did a good job of providing a forum forideas to be discussed because they established anonthreatening environment . . . a good job of allow-ing us to be together as peers without worrying thatsomeone would repeat what we had to say to thewrong person!

It was wonderful being able to talk about what washappening in a nonthreatening environment.

This program was a step away from our own per-sonal teaching within a school and it gave us an out-side ventilation. It helped us circulate ideas, kind ofa safety net [that] was separated from our own per-sonal building.

The nonevaluative, nonthreatening supportneeded by the novice teachers was specificallyexpressed as a need to explore their own teach-ing styles without the fear of colleagues disap-proving or attempting to restructure their ideas.This has led us to revisit Veenman’s (1984) con-clusions—not to challenge them but to providean elaboration of support as an interactive pro-cess, one that takes person, school context, sup-


port context, and interaction between personsinto account as new teachers seek out an emo-tionally and professionally safe space to developtheir teaching beyond their preservice training.

EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF SAFETY

The novice teachers’ expressed need for prac-tical information about teaching and instructionand opportunities to reflect on their practiceoften implied a struggle to maintain positiveand professional relationships with their schoolcolleagues while, at the same time, seeking tocreate their own identity as teachers—in otherwords, a need for a safe environment in whichto grow and effect change in their practice.Whatever practical information the teachersneed is not usable if it is not grounded in a safecontext and it does not seem safe to the noviceteachers to implement the information. In thisfinal section, we discuss the nature of safety—orperceived lack of safety—in the context of learn-ing to teach and the dangers of “playing it safe”if real safety is not available.

Perceived Lack of Safety: “I dosort of feel a little paranoia . . . ”

Our participants expressed enthusiasmwhen other teachers shared activities and ideasthat could be incorporated into lessons immedi-ately, but our participants did not want to beturned into clones of their colleagues. Com-ments such as “I don’t want to be told what todo” and “I do sort of feel a little paranoia aboutwhat they think of me and my teaching style”revealed the difficulty of trying to maintain in-dividuality in contexts containing perceivedhints that conformity might be desirable.

I had one teacher that just didn’t like what I was do-ing, or like the idea of it at all. And she made my lifemiserable for a while. . . . Other things, I hear peoplesay, “Well, you know, I know the teacher down thehall doesn’t really do this but this is what I do withmy kids,” and I think, “OK, step outside of that andI’ll let her do her thing and I’ll do my thing and we’lldo what’s best for the kids in our own way,” so thathelped me in that aspect.

Indeed, several participants expressed a fearthat talking about ideas with school-based col-

leagues would lead to being forced to teach likethose around them. Although few of the noviceteachers participated in formal mentoring pro-grams, nearly all viewed mentors as possiblesources of information concerning specific con-tent and methodology—sources that could bevaluable. The danger of an assumed conformity,however, was clear. One teacher commented onthe danger of philosophical disagreements:

Mentors could be a double-edged sword, ’cause youcould get a teacher that imposes upon you all of theirphilosophies and if you don’t do it, it’s like you’regoing to be a bad teacher, and you don’t want that ex-tra pressure.

Another stated, “At the beginning of the yearsomebody was hinting around all over to be mymentor and I knew our styles would be com-pletely different and this would not be a goodthing for me . . . ”

When novice teachers discuss innovative the-ories acquired in preservice training with vet-eran teachers who hold those preserviceinstitutions in a certain amount of disdain forbeing out of touch with the “real world” of thefield, novices are even less safe in pursuing thecritical examination of practice that is so crucialto their growth and participation in educationalimprovement. At times, this lack of safety comesin the form of an unreceptive audience in theschool, and that lack of receptivity can under-mine a novice’s developing sense of confidence.

If I named five of those strategies, they don’t ap-pear—they do not appear. So I couldn’t go to some-body and say, “You’ve done it for 20 years—how do,say—literature circles—how do they work?” I justwanted to talk to somebody to see if it works. Thatkind of thing. So in this group, I heard it once againand thought maybe it is possible to use. [Laughter]

That is the case in my school too, that a lot of theteachers aren’t using the strategies or methods that Ilearned and so it is nice to have a reminder that it stillis OK and a good idea to use these things eventhough not very many other people are doing it.

Sometimes the ideas I got here were similar to thingsI was doing, and it would make me feel better be-cause some of the other teachers in my departmentwere a little more conservative. I would question myown ideas, but then I’d come here and hear some-thing similar and I’d think, “Okay, I’m on the righttrack.” Reassurance. Validation.


In the unsafe contexts where novices felt theywere pressured to conform or were devalued intheir own philosophical and pedagogicalchoices, they were able to use the external forumof the NTSP to meet their need for safe input andinteractive reflection that was noncoercive andnonevaluative. Beyond pressure to conform or adevaluation of their ideas, in some school con-texts the novice teacher’s exploration of newideas was perceived as threatening and possiblycritical. In these situations, too, several novicesfound the NTSP helpful, in this case as a bufferto protect them from difficult situations.

What I used the program for, if I go in and say, “Ihave an idea. What do you think?” they say, “No,thank you”; but if I go in and say, “You know thatprogram? I heard this thing in instructional strate-gies that could be used. Have you ever used it?” thenthey will open up to me. But if I come in and it is justme with an idea, they don’t want to talk about it. Sothat has been very helpful. A little entrée to them.

Yes, I guess I find that too. That is always nice to havesomething to back it up. Don’t say this is my idea—say, you know, I learned this.

Yeah, that helped some with this one particularteacher that I had—it was like, I was there last Satur-day and they talked about this, have you ever donethis? And it was like, oh yeah, yeah. Then she was allexcited and more than willing to share her ideas.

Well, it’s nice because then it doesn’t come off as youcriticizing the way they do things when you say,“Well, I haven’t tried this either but it looked reallygood to me.” That doesn’t seem so critical.

Dangers of Playing It Safe

For many of the novice teachers, one possibleresponse to this perceived lack of safety seemedto be to close their doors and experiment in iso-lation with possible solutions to the problemsthey were encountering. The result of thisapproach, all too often, can be the adoption oftechniques that produce survival but that maynot produce a positive learning environment forstudents. This was apparent in one novice, amiddle school reading teacher who excitedlyreported her “discovery” of “a wonderful man-agement technique”—Round Robin Reading asan effective method for keeping seventh-grade

students on task. Choosing to retreat into thesafety of their rooms leaves novices vulnerableto a survival technique that can calcify into inef-fective teaching methods.

Another area where novice teachers playedit safe was interactive reflection with col-leagues. Our data suggested that, over thecourse of the year, reflection was highly valuedby our participants, as seen in such comments as“It [the work session] did make me reflect onwhat I was doing in my classroom and how I canmake it better” and “Even though I didn’t getout of the session what I wanted, I alwayswalked away thinking about something differ-ent. It gave me some other possibilities. Things Ididn’t consider before.” One 2nd-year partici-pant mentioned that she was able to “return totheory that we didn’t find useful in the past torelate to our problems now—I forgot those the-ories and now I see how they help after I’ve hadexperience.”

When placed in an interactive context withcolleagues, however, this tool of reflection canharbor another damaging form of playing it safefor the novice teacher. The beginning teachermay be unsure of his or her own abilities; theschool’s expectations; and the curriculum, ped-agogy, and management techniques that wouldbest serve her or his particular group of stu-dents. In the context of constant demand and in-tense uncertainty, novice teachers areparticularly vulnerable when faced with the po-tential disconnect between preservice trainingand 1st-year experience. Struggling with thatsense of failure in a context of isolation, begin-ning teachers venture out in hopes of discover-ing direction. This venture can be discouragingif one meets with experienced teachers whohave calcified into a set of practices that, on re-flection, should be modified, as the followingcomment illustrates:

You sort of like sound out a teacher. How about thismethod on p. 348? [They say,] “Oh, I must have goneto a workshop back in the ’50s on that one! I guess. . . .Nobody uses those things.” So you couldn’t go andsay, “How do you use this in the classroom?” Theydon’t use it.

The sharing of stories of frustrations in an ef-fort to form collaborations and supportive net-


works ideally results in constructive feedbackand assistance in problem solving in addition toencouragement and support. This ideal sce-nario is not always the case, however, as veteranand other beginning teachers may respond withsimilar experiences, offering the camaraderie ofcommiseration and a corresponding reductionof responsibility and creative energy to explorealternative solutions. “I’m not alone” can moveto “There is nothing that works. This class is im-possible!” A decreased sense of responsibilityactually results in diminished agency and a de-moralizing disempowerment of teachers.Playing it safe in this context can soon deterio-rate into trading stories about perceived studentdeficiencies and family pathologies to avoid thedifficult reflection and study needed to explorealternative means of meeting the students’needs. Once that dynamic is established, teach-ers often encourage each other in “readily iden-tifying perceived weaknesses of individualstudents to be reassured that their own practiceis not at fault” (Lipman, 1997, p. 17). Afew of theNTSP participants seemed to have fallen intothis trap. They offered a regular negative re-hearsal of the impossible difficulties of theirteaching contexts and frequently demonstratedtheir unwillingness to consider the viability ofsuggested solutions to their problems. TheirNTSP colleagues discreetly referred to them as“the whiners.” One novice teacher articulatedthe feelings of several of her colleagues whenshe encouraged the NTSP planners to “try to re-direct conversations away from complainingand sensational story telling and towards sup-port and encouragement.” Novice teachers whoopenly share their reflection on their practicemay run the danger of reinforcement of victimblaming and diminished sense of self-efficacy,both of which discourage exploration.

If we are concerned with the concepts ofimprovement and reform, we will need to createmany forums in which practice can be studiedand discussed in ways that novice teachers donot experience as evaluative or coercive. One ofthe most encouraging conclusions from ourdata is the value of having novice teachers moveoutside of their school setting to find suchsupport.

IMPLICATIONS

Novice teachers need real safety to make andlearn from mistakes in their initial practice. Apoorly conceived and poorly administered“safety zone,” however, can produce adverseeffects rather than the help that is needed. Col-leagues who join the novices in the reflectiveprocess with less support and more coerciveattempts to tell them what to do and how to do itare not effective and may produce greater insu-lation as novices play it safe behind closeddoors. On the other hand, supportive sharing ofstories without the challenge to explore alterna-tive methods and solutions can cripple a begin-ning teacher’s growth as novices play it safeinside collaborative commiseration. If not care-fully orchestrated to create a complementarybalance, the necessary components of supportand challenge in the sharing of information andin the reflection process can, in fact, workagainst each other.

In light of this complexity, the data our partic-ipants generated reveal an intriguing (andhopeful) dichotomy that seems to indicate thatthey are aware of these potentially conflicting,potentially complementary components of sup-port and challenge. Safety for the novice teacherappears to be both the challenge of practicalsuggestions and enough room for nonthreat-ening analysis of practice and opportunity toexplore alternative practices. Taking advantageof this dichotomy is, in our opinion, the founda-tion for creating structures that support educa-tional improvement.

If we, both teacher educators and employingschools, believe in the primary importance ofteaching in educational improvement, and if weare committed to incorporating new teachers inthat process of change and improvement, weneed to work in tandem to create the type ofenvironment that enables novice teachers togrow as their needs are being met. To accom-plish that goal, attention must be paid to cogni-tive needs of teachers; however, people operateon an emotional level as well. Emotional needsdemand equal attention, and the issue of safetycannot be ignored. Support for novice teachers’cognitive needs challenges them to examine andcritique methodological options. Emotional


support encourages them to engage in honestreflection without the threat of coercion or nega-tive evaluation. The dual need for both emo-tional and cognitive support in a safe contextwarrants our expansion of Veenman’s (1984)conclusions to conceptualize support as aninteractive process that includes person, schoolcontext, support context, and interactionbetween persons. That expanded notion cansupport the creation of the type of environmentneeded by new teachers as they seek out anemotionally and professionally safe space todevelop their teaching beyond their preservicetraining.

At the beginning of this article, we noted thatmany reformers advocate that school reformbegin with initial teacher preparation, with thehope that early learning will influence laterpractice. Although we would not argue the factthat preservice teacher education is important,our work compels us to conclude that abandon-ing graduates to school systems (whether thosesystems are in need of “reform” or not) propelsthe prospective teacher into a context in whichexploring and implementing recommendedpractice may well be unsafe. Our experiencewith the NTSP teachers indicates the impor-tance of identifying and utilizing the differencesof in-school or in-district resources plus thoseoutside of the school or the district. Whereasschool administrators and colleagues offer sig-nificant input of both on-site support and con-textually relevant information, they alsoinclude an evaluative component as well asdaily relational dynamics that can threaten theprocess of collaborative reflection. Outsidesources such as those involved in partnershipsamong educational institutions can enablepreservice educators to create safe places toextend support and to help new teachersexplore alternative methods of creating educa-tional improvement—without the added pres-sure of evaluation and daily relational contact.We also acknowledge that the support andexploration coming from the outside cannotmatch the contextual knowledge provided bythe insider forces. Both are needed to create asafe context for novice teachers to gain the sup-portive relationships needed, the information

and resources required, and the opportunity forsolitary and collaborative reflection that iscognitively challenging and emotionallysupportive.

REFERENCESBirrell, J. (1995). Learning how the game is played: An eth-

nically encapsulated beginning teacher’s struggle toprepare Black youth for a White world. Teaching andTeacher Education, 11, 137-147.

Bullough, R. V. (1989). First year teacher. New York:Teachers College Press.

Clift, R. T., Veal, M. L., Holland, P., Johnson, M., & McCarthy, J.(1995). Collaborative leadership and shared decision making:Teachers, principals, and university professors. New York:Teachers College Press.

Cole, A., & Knowles, J. G. (1993). Shattered images: Under-standing expectations and realities of field experiences.Teaching and Teacher Education, 9, 457-471.

Cummins, J. (1989). Empowering minority students. Sacra-mento: California Association for Bilingual Education.

Fox, S. M., & Singletary, T. J. (1986). Deductions about sup-portive induction. Journal of Teacher Education, 37, 12-13.

Gold, Y. (1996). Beginning teacher support: Attrition,mentoring, and induction. In J. Sikula (Ed.), Handbook ofresearch on teacher education (2nd ed., pp. 548-594). NewYork: Macmillan.

Goodlad, J. (1994). Educational renewal? Better teachers,better schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Holland, P. E., Clift, R. T., & Veal, M. L. (1992). Linking pre-service and in-service supervision through professionalinquiry. In C. D. Glickman (Ed.), Supervision in transi-tion: The 1992 ASCD Yearbook. Reston, VA: Associationfor Supervision and Curriculum Development.

The Holmes Group. (1995). A report of the Holmes Group.East Lansing, MI: Author.

Huling-Austin, L. (1992). Research on learning to teach:Implications for teacher induction and mentoring pro-grams. Journal of Teacher Education, 43, 173-180.

Klug, B. J., & Sultzman, S. A. (1991). Formal induction vs.informal mentoring: Comparative effects and out-comes. Teaching and Teacher Education, 3, 241-251.

Lipman, P. (1997). Restructuring in context: Acase study ofteacher participation and the dynamics of ideology,race, and power. American Educational Research Journal,34, 3-38.

National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.(1996). Summary report: What matters most: Teaching forAmerica’s future. New York: Author.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2000). Prin-ciples and standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA:Author.

Nieto, S. (1996). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical contextof multicultural education. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Odell, S. J., & Huling, L. (Eds.). (2000). Quality mentoring fornovice teachers. Washington, DC: Association of TeacherEducators/Indianapolis, IN: Kappa Delta Pi.


Reiman, A. J., & Parramore, B. (1994). First-year teachers’assignments, expectations, and development: A collab-orative investigation. In M. O’Hair & S. Odell (Eds.),Partnerships in education. Fort Worth, TX: HarcourtBrace.

Schmidt, M., & Knowles, J. G. (1995). Four women’s storiesof “failure” as beginning teachers. Teaching and TeacherEducation, 11, 429-444.

Sleeter, C. E., & Grant, C. A. (1988). Making choices for multi-cultural education: Five approaches to race, class, and gender.New York: Macmillan.

U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment. (1995).Teachers and technology: Making the connection (Rep. No.OTA-EHR-616). Washington, DC: Government Print-ing Office.

Veenman, S. (1984). Perceived problems of beginningteachers. Review of Educational Research, 54(2), 143-178.

Who should teach? Quality Counts 2000. (2000, January13). Education Week [Online]. Available: http://www.edweek.org

Wilkinson, G. A. (1994). Support for individualizingteacher induction. Action in Teacher Education, 16, 52-61.

Sharon M. Chubbuck is an assistant professor atMarquette University. Her specializations include the

role of preservice and in-service professional developmentfor increasing teachers’ effectiveness in literacy instruc-tion with students of color.

Renee T. Clift is a professor at the University of Illi-nois at Urbana-Champaign. Her specializations include theinter-action of teacher education programs and part-nerships in providing in-service support for beginningteachers.

Joanne Allard, a doctoral student at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a middle school princi-pal in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her specializations includethe dynamics of partnerships.

Jane Quinlan is the director of ROE SchoolWorks, theprofessional development arm of the Vermilion Countyand Champaign-Ford Counties Regional Offices of Edu-cation in Illinois. She is a professional developmentspecialist.



TEACHER STORIES AND TRANSACTIONAL INQUIRYHEARING THE VOICES OF MENTOR TEACHERS

Catherine ZeekTexas Woman’s University

Martha FooteCarole WalkerTexas A&M University–Commerce

The authors trace their work with mentor teachers in a southwestern U.S. professional developmentschool. These mentors met to tell, write, share, and analyze stories of their experiences as mentors topreservice teachers. As the authors worked with several groups of teachers, they began to analyzethe processes involved in the sessions. An outcome of the authors’ discussions was the idea oftransactional inquiry, a method grounded in narrative inquiry, transactional literacy theory, andliterary analysis. Transactional inquiry provides a vehicle for teachers to reflect on their own andothers’ professional development, identify lessons from their teaching, and connect with otherteachers through the inquiry process. This article describes the evolution of transactional inquiry aswell as the mentors’ stories and sharing.

Professional development schools are designedto engage university and public school partnersin a systemic restructuring of preservice teacherpreparation that integrates practical experienceand theoretical knowledge (Boyer, 1983; Carne-gie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986;Fullan, 1996; Goodlad, 1987, 1993; HolmesGroup, 1986; Levine, 1992; National Commis-sion on Excellence in Education, 1983; Wise,Darling-Hammond, Berry, & Klein, 1987;Zeichner, 1992). Experienced public schoolteachers mentor novice teachers during intern-ships in public school classrooms, collaboratingwith university liaisons to scaffold preserviceteachers’ developing competencies. This three-way partnership among preservice teacher,mentor, and university liaison values both thepractical and the theoretical as essential ele-ments of teaching success and offers opportuni-ties for all voices to be part of the preserviceteacher’s growth. Mentors thus have a critical

role in the success of preservice teachers andprofessional development schools.

Whereas mentors’ involvement is central tofield-based programs, specific roles and respon-sibilities are shaped by the goals and structuresof the partners in each professional develop-ment school, the participating school systems,and the individuals themselves. Mentor teach-ers’ thoughts and experiences undoubtedlyinfluence their practices and may lead them toview themselves as nurturers of preserviceteachers (Gold, 1996), facilitators and profes-sional contributors (Little, Gallagaran, &O’Neal, 1994), change agents involved in educa-tional improvement (Bahney, 1995; Bova & Phil-lips, 1984; Fullan, 1993b; Stevens, 1995), or somecombination of all of these. Mentors may alsofind that their participation in field-based edu-cation programs provides them with opportu-nities to improve the education profession andto continue their own professional develop-

377


ment (Bahney, 1995; Foote, Walker, Zeek, &Filkins, 1997; Zeek & Meers, 1996).

Field-based teacher education thus has thepotential to provide fresh, new contexts for theprofessional growth of mentor teachers. Toooften, however, mentors’ ideas are not heardoutside their classrooms, and their opportuni-ties for professional growth are limited. Theinquiry we describe here grew from ourresearch into ways to recognize and value ingenuine ways mentor teachers’ voices whilealso encouraging them to take ownership oftheir professional growth. The purpose of thisarticle is to discuss the development oftransactional inquiry, our method of engagingmentors in sharing, responding, and reflectingon their own and others’ stories aboutmentoring. Based on our ongoing research(Fleener, Walker, Foote, & Zeek, 1998; Footeet al., 1997; Foote, Zeek, Walker, & Fleener, 1998;Walker, Foote, Fleener, & Zeek, 1998; Walker,Zeek, Fleener, & Foote, 1997; Zeek & Walker,1998; Zeek, Walker, & Foote, 1999, 2000; Zeek,Walker, Foote, & Fleener, 1999), we trace thedevelopment of transactional inquiry throughthree stages: beginning, extension, and consoli-dation. For each stage, we describe context andstructure, analyze and reflect on process andproducts, and build the theoretical frameworkthat supports and extends our thinking. Weclose with a discussion of the continuing evolu-tion of the method and ongoing directions ofour inquiry.

STAGE ONE: BEGINNING

The authors’ inquiry began when we soughtways to recognize mentors’ professional voices.We were all university liaisons in a professionaldevelopment school (PDS) whose partnersincluded four school districts near Dallas,Texas. Our initial questions arose from a quanti-tative study conducted for this PDS that sug-gested that teachers in this PDS volunteered tobe mentors primarily out of concern for the edu-cation profession but continued to mentor inlarge part because the experience benefitedtheir own professional development (Bahney,1995; Zeek & Meers, 1996).

To inquire about the specific benefits mentorsidentified, we organized four informal conver-sations with mentors from grades K-6 in three ofthe partner districts. Mentors voluntarilyattended the conversations, which were sched-uled in their buildings after school for about 60minutes each. Attendance at each conversationranged from 7 to 12 mentors, with a total of 34participants across the conversations. Partici-pants’ classroom teaching experience rangedfrom 2 to 20 years, whereas their mentoringexperience ranged from one to four semesters,the length of time the PDS had been in opera-tion. We explained to the mentors that wewanted to know more about the benefits theyreceived from mentoring.

The conversations were recorded on audiotape, while one of the researchers typed the dia-logue into a computer as a backup to the tape.During these initial conversations, we posedfour questions suggested by Stevens (1995): (a)How has your classroom performance changedas a result of the mentoring experience? (b) Howhave your attitudes toward teaching changed?(c) How have you grown professionally? (d)How have your relationships with your fellowteachers changed?

Analysis and Reflection

We transcribed the audio tapes and computerrecords of all of the mentor conversations andthen read and discussed them with two otheruniversity colleagues to identify clusters of sim-ilar ideas across the four transcripts. As we re-flected on the transcripts, field notes, and ideaclusters through conversations with our univer-sity colleagues, four critical insights led us to re-consider our research strategies for bringing outmentor voices and documenting their ideas.First, the mentors indicated in their conversa-tions that the process of discussing theirmentoring experiences with university andpublic school colleagues empowered them byvaluing their teaching experience and ideas.One exchange is reproduced here.

Mentor 1: It’s [mentoring] helped me to know what amentor is. I didn’t really know. I thought it meantjust procedures. I wasn’t really aware to check onthem [preservice teachers]. I didn’t want to push my


ideas on them. I wanted them to do their own thing.This has helped me to grow as a leader instead of be-ing a follower and going along with the crowd.

Facilitator: What does that mean?Mentor 2: My ideas are worthwhile; my ideas are mean-

ingful.

This first insight led directly to the second,that the mentors welcomed the opportunity toexpress their opinions and share their experi-ences through talking with other mentors anduniversity liaisons. One mentor exclaimed, “Wethought you’d never ask!” The conversationsran beyond their scheduled 60 minutes, lastingup to 90 minutes, and led to similar conversa-tions among mentors within their school days.Our third insight came as we realized that men-tors responded to our questions by telling sto-ries to illustrate their points. One mentor, forinstance, told the story of how her studentteacher had completely rearranged the class-room to accommodate better the integrated unitshe planned to teach. Finally, as we constructedthemes from the conversations, we recognizedthat we had only asked and answered our ques-tions, although we strive for organic collabora-tion (Dixon & Ishler, 1992) in our PDS work. Thementors’ questions were not yet a part of theinquiry.

Building the Theoretical Framework

As we reflected on the insights we hadgained, we looked again at theory and researchthat could help us move to the next stage of ourinquiry. Our analysis of the conversations sug-gested to us that the conversational structure ofthese sessions could value and recognize men-tors’ voices and led us to consider how to (a)focus the talk on mentors’ experiences andquestions and (b) expand the conversations toinclude the voices of more mentors. To accom-plish those goals, we drew on the concepts of“personal practical knowledge” (Connelly &Clandinin, 1988) and “professional knowledgelandscape” (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995) asshown in teachers’ narratives of practice. Theseconcepts suggest that teachers’ classroom prac-tices are influenced by past experiences andfuture plans and that teacher knowledge isshaped by the contexts in which teachers work.

It seemed reasonable that these ideas and thenarrative approach would also apply to men-tors’ knowledge. In their conversations, thementors told stories that demonstrated theirpersonal practical knowledge and hinted attheir professional knowledge landscapes. Theyalso responded to the stories other mentors told.Fullan (1994) suggested that a critical element ofredefining teaching is teachers’ knowledge ofthe change process, which involves bothrestructuring schools and reculturing the peo-ple in them. Although the mentors did not spe-cifically refer to either restructuring orreculturing, their stories reflected personalchange. We therefore selected the narrativeinquiry method (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) asthe framework for the second stage of ourinquiry to allow mentors to tell their own sto-ries, identify the lessons embedded in them,and then share the stories with other groups ofmentors.

Narrative inquiry encourages reflective prac-tice (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990); captures thecomplex, nonlinear nature of developing prac-tices and beliefs (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990,1999; Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995); makes visibleteachers’ thought processes (Connelly &Clandinin, 1990; Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995; Rich-ardson, 1994); and focuses on developing beliefsand practices (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985,1990, 1995; Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995; Meyer,1996; Stansell, 1993). By focusing on teachers’stories and the lessons embedded in them, wehoped to integrate the goals of formal research,intended to increase the knowledge base of theprofession as a whole and the goals of practicalinquiry, intended to improve local classroompractice (Richardson, 1994). We expected thatthis integration would help mentors identifypivotal experiences in their own professionalgrowth and provide connections with othermentors through the analysis process.

Hearing the stories of teachers at many levelsof expertise in different situations can provideinsight into the events that form their profes-sional knowledge. Reflecting collaboratively onthe stories and their lessons can provide under-standing of how teachers make sense of theirexperiences and incorporate them into their


personal practical knowledge (Connelly &Clandinin, 1990, 1999; Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995;Richardson, 1994). Sharing stories and lessonsamong teachers can further build a sense ofcommunity, reduce the isolation so endemic toteaching, and encourage teachers to see them-selves as intentional practitioners integratingskill and art into their practice. All of these fac-tors can combine to help teachers recognize andfacilitate the process of change in their profes-sional lives.

STAGE TWO: EXTENSION

In Stage 1, the beginning stage of our inquiry,we used a conversational structure that broughtout mentors’ voices in their buildings and dis-tricts. In Stage 2, the extension stage, our explo-ration of narrative inquiry led us to use narra-tive to capture mentors’ experiences and sharethem with mentors in other buildings and dis-tricts. Jalongo and Isenberg (1995, p. xxi) main-tained that the narrative mode provides anunequaled avenue for exploring the complexi-ties of what it means to teach because “it is in thenarrative mode that teachers consider dailydilemmas, examine their motives and misgiv-ings, savor their successes, and anguish overtheir failures.” Therefore, we focused on devel-oping and analyzing stories to further extendmentors’ voices.

The second stage of our inquiry was designedto explore the question of how telling and ana-lyzing narratives can promote mentors’ reflec-tion on pivotal mentoring events. It initiallyinvolved 15 mentors from grades K-6 in threeschools from two of the original partner districtsas well as the student teachers and universityliaisons who work with them. At weekly meet-ings and mid-term and end-of-semester portfo-lio conferences, participants on each campusassess the progress of individual preserviceteachers and raise relevant program issues.Mentors’ voices are a critical component ofthese conferences; thus, the forum and formatfor conversations among mentors about theirmentoring experiences were already in place.

Data collection and analysis began whenthese 15 mentors shared their stories of pivotalevents in their experience as mentors to

preservice teachers. The prompt, “Tell me aboutan interesting thing that your intern or resident[first- or second-semester student teacher] didthat turned out better than you thought itwould,” evolved during portfolio conferencesto assess preservice teachers’ growth. These sto-ries were transcribed by preservice teachers orliaisons and edited by the mentors. Mentorsgave pseudonyms to themselves and the stu-dent teachers to protect their anonymity whentheir stories were shared with others. Researchquestions and data collection are describedabove; analysis is described in the next section.


The initial round of edited stories was ana-lyzed collaboratively across sites during profes-sional development sessions for mentors. Thesessions were designed to encourage conversa-tions among mentors about pivotal events intheir experiences. (This analysis is describedmore fully in Walker et al. [1998].) Mentors inthree districts—the two in which the storieswere written and one other—met in smallgroups to read the stories and respond to threeprompts: (a) Give the story a descriptive or pro-vocative title. (b) What is the moral of the story?(c) What message does this story have for you asan experienced mentor? These groups of men-tors then shared “an interesting thing that myintern or resident did that turned out better thanI thought it would.” The titles, morals, and mes-sages were read and discussed by mixed groupsof mentors, liaisons, and preservice teachers,suggesting five themes.

1. Student teachers tend to use less cautious ap-proaches than their mentor teachers. In one story, astudent teacher brought “gobs of rice (about 50pounds)” to teach a first-grade lesson on mea-surement. Although the mentor “thought itwould be a complete disaster . . . the lesson wentbetter than I expected, and the students reallylearned volume measurement. I gave him greatcredit for taking a risk I have not yet taken on myown.” In another story, a student teacher video-taped a newscast of sixth graders’ research find-ings on explorers. The mentor described how“they created a backdrop, went out in full cos-


tume, and had their own little skits . . . it was areal good lesson.”

2. The wise mentor graciously supports the stu-dent teacher while she or he learns to teach. Onementor said, “I began raising my hand to askquestions or add information [instead of watch-ing my student teacher drown during a particu-larly difficult moment in a lesson] because of mybelief that we are all a team.” During analysis,this story was given the title The DrowningLesson.

3. Drowning can be a graceful choice. In other sit-uations, however, mentors chose not to inter-vene: “As the lesson was dying, I let it play outand then discussed with my [student teacher]how it could have been improved.” Anothermentor described the confusion that groupwork set off:

It was suddenly bedlam in the room . . . and she didn’tdo anything until it was too late. . . . After the lessonshe cried. I told her I had decided to see what shewould do, and she realized she needed to do more—a whole lot earlier—before the kids became the onesin charge. After that she began using managementskills better, and I saw a more confident teacher.

4. Teamwork leads to success. Mentors analyz-ing The Drowning Lesson proposed this moraland added their own stories of teamwork. Onementor summed up her mentoring reminis-cences by saying, “[My student teacher] wasvery much a team player. It’s neat when they canjust jump in and work like we do.” Anothermentor joyfully wrote, “We began to use everyteachable moment to the fullest . . . every sparemoment to finish a job. . . . We learned to prob-lem solve together and be oh so flexible. It wasan awesome experience for both of us.”

5. Partnering happens. Several mentors re-called arriving late to class to find their partnerteaching. For example, “[After a ‘bumpy’ morn-ing] I arrived to find the day had started as nor-mal. All the children were on task with theirmorning routine, and [the student teacher] wascalm and in total control. . . . We had a partner-ship . . . I should have known what I wouldfind.” Other stories involved exchanges of in-

formation and materials between expert andnovice, who had become colleagues. One exam-ple, from the story Communication Is a Two WayStreet, describes the bonds that form betweenveteran and novice teachers from different cul-tural backgrounds: “The children loved [thestudent teacher’s] lesson about Kwaanza. I wasimpressed and educated as well. In fact, later Iborrowed her artifacts and still use them today.”

We found again that the participants eagerlyshared their stories, thoughtfully reflected ontheir content, and anticipated the next opportu-nity to share. The structure of narrative inquirymade mentors’ voices both the subject and themode of inquiry, accomplishing our goals ofcapturing mentors’ experiences and sharingthem with a broader audience. Our conversa-tions with the participants and among our-selves led us to our next critical insights. First,the overall purpose of relating mentoring prac-tices called for a focus on relating events to awider audience, whereas questions about title,moral, and message called for a literary point ofview. This combination balanced the efferentand aesthetic stances in the participants’responses (Rosenblatt, 1978). Second, we sawthe teachers engaged in transactions(Rosenblatt, 1978) among the written texts, theirown experiences, and each other through theirdiscussions. It was at this point that we began todevelop the concept of transactional inquiry.

Building the Theoretical Framework

Transactional inquiry is the term we chose todescribe the process of a group of educatorsresponding to and reflecting on a text as well asthe responses of others to the text for the pur-pose of informing and guiding further inquiry.The texts we have used focus on critical experi-ences in mentors’ professional developmentand are based on their work in this establishedPDS. The transactional inquiry approach hasroots and analogues in several broad philosoph-ical and theoretical fields: the transactional pro-cess (Dewey & Bentley, 1949); the transactionaltheory of literacy, or reader response theory(Rosenblatt, 1938, 1978, 1994); the social con-struction of knowledge (Vygotsky, 1986); and


the thesis that human beings perceive the worldnarratively (Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995).

Dewey and Bentley (1949) suggested that theterm interaction implies separate entities actingon one another but not being changed by theinteraction. In a transaction, on the other hand,the elements are part of an ongoing process,with each conditioned by and conditioning theother. Rosenblatt (1978) extended the concept oftransaction to the literacy process and focusedon the transaction occurring between the readerand the text. Readers actively construct mean-ing, respond to a text, and reflect on theirresponses, all within a specific context. Themeaning of a text is not found in the printedwords but is constructed by each readerthrough a unique transaction. Rosenblatt fur-ther suggested that a reader approaches a textfrom a stance that lies along a continuum fromefferent to aesthetic. Efferent reading focuses onthe public aspects of meaning, preparing thereader to recall information found in the read-ing for such purposes as group discussions, testtaking, or formal debates. Aesthetic readingfocuses on the private aspects of meaning,emphasizing the reader’s personal experiencesand responses. Blending aesthetic and efferentstances in literary analysis has been found toresult in a high level of complex response strate-gies (Many, Gerla, & Ellis, 1995) as well as pro-moting critical thinking skills (Esplugas &Landwehr, 1996) and reflection (Kramp &Humphreys, 1993).

Vygotsky’s (1986) premise that knowledge isconstructed through social interaction and dia-logue with others further supports using storiesto examine the nature of learning and to promptfurther inquiries. As teachers reason and reflecton their own stories and the stories of others,they carefully consider the success or lack ofsuccess in each. This process leads to new anddeeper insights that they could not have gainedthrough private reflection alone and encour-ages participants to reflect on complex events(Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Jalongo &Isenberg, 1995).

In transactional inquiry, responses and reflec-tions are guided by prompts, such as those usedin our extension stage, which encourage a bal-

ance between aesthetic and efferent stances:Mentors respond to the situation that promptedthe story, discuss its literary aspects, and applyits lessons to their individual situations.Throughout the process, they engage in a trans-action among the story, their own experiences,and the social context in which they encounterthe story. As a method of research, transactionalinquiry invites all participants to explore theirquestions and to collaboratively design activi-ties to suggest possible answers. In our situa-tion, because we work in several school dis-tricts, this method allows a wide variety ofmentors to participate in telling, analyzing, andinterpreting stories in multiple contexts andfrom multiple perspectives. This social con-structivist process also contributes to triangula-tion of results and member checking, validatingthe groups’ conclusions.

In developing the concept of transactionalinquiry, we emphasized the value of approach-ing a text from both efferent and aestheticstances to promote schema elaboration andapplication as well as to evoke personalresponses. We also stressed the transactionalnature of mentors’ reflections; that is, eachgroup of mentors engaged in a transaction withthe text, their own prior experiences and knowl-edge, and the group context. Because the pro-cess is a social one, mentors also interacted witheach other to construct understanding of thestories and of the concept of mentoring.

STAGE THREE: CONSOLIDATION

Revisiting the stories and conversations fromStage 2 suggested to us that the process oftransactional inquiry was simultaneously pro-voking cognitive dissonance and creating “ah-ha” moments of insight as mentors realized thatmany of their own experiences, concerns, andquestions about mentoring were evident inother mentors’ stories. As a result of what welearned in Stage 2 of our inquiry, our researchquestion in Stage 3 focused on how trans-actional inquiry could facilitate professionalgrowth among mentors in multiple PDS sites.

We invited 24 mentors from grades K-6 in twoof the partner districts to participate in 11

2- to 2-hour sessions rather than the earlier 45- to 60-


minute formats to allow for more group time.Each mentor selected a title for a made-for-TVmovie about her or his life as a mentor teacher,shared titles with a partner, and suggested a titlefor a movie sequel. Small groups of mentorsthen read and analyzed stories written at othersites, suggesting title, moral, and elements thatmake it a good story. The message prompt weused in Stage 2 was expanded to encourage thegroups to discuss what the story told themabout teaching, learning, and mentoring. Thegroups recorded their responses on chart paperand responded to each of the charts in a gallerywalk. Individual mentors then wrote their ownmentoring stories with the title The Day I Turnedthe Corner and Became a Mentor. The sessions con-cluded with a whole-group discussion in whichinsights and questions were shared in the formof “pluses and wishes.”


Our analysis of these stories continues in con-versations with each other, mentor teachers,and university colleagues, suggesting some in-triguing directions. First, there is an element ofintertextuality not present in earlier stories andanalyses. For instance, one mentor comparesher experience to what she calls “the rice story,”in which a student teacher brought “gobs ofrice” for a measurement lesson. Second, the ini-tial themes are being repeated in these stories,validating the original analysis. We see frequentexamples of partnership, trust, and risk taking.One mentor tells the story of “breaking therules” to help her student teacher set an appro-priate atmosphere for a Readers Theater by“[lighting] a candle for ambiance.” Another de-scribes her student teacher’s successful idea forhelping a disruptive child manage his behaviorby using “a clip board, a piece of paper and pen-cil . . . for the child to tell every time he was ableto raise his hand and not call out during classtime.” Still another mentor tells of her studentteacher’s determination to use Play-Doh in amap-making lesson. We also see examples ofThe Drowning Lesson as student teachers strug-gle with classroom management and inappro-priate book selections. Third, in these newstories, we see the mentors recalling their own

experiences as students or new teachers andusing these recollections to guide them as men-tors. One tells of feeling “unsupported, lost, andheartsick” at her cooperating teacher’s sugges-tion that “I might want to consider another pro-fession” and her resulting determination tosupport the student teachers she now mentors.Finally, the mentors’ stories reflect a wide vari-ety of literary styles. Some are informative: “I’velearned things from each of my interns . . . newactivities to use in the classroom . . . a new[adult] perspective on a student.” A few storiesare fluently narrative:

It was Tuesday, I think, when Willis turned in arough, rough draft of the first part of his autobiogra-phy. Bless his heart, we had brought him over to ourside. . . . Much to his surprise I saved his work and[later] printed it out for his mother. She rememberedhe had asked a bunch of questions about himself as ababy, but she didn’t have time to sit down and talk.That explained why he didn’t start on time.

This range of styles is in line with Rosenblatt’s(1994) suggestion that writers as well as readerstake predominantly efferent or aesthetic stances.

CONCLUSIONS ANDFUTURE DIRECTIONS

We began our inquiry by seeking ways foruniversity-based teacher educators truly to hearmentor teachers’ voices. Our findings suggestthat mentors’ narratives can point to events thatare critical in mentors’ professional develop-ment and that transactional inquiry provides astructure for discussions across school sites. Asthe concept of transactional inquiry develops,we keep the mentors’ ideas and feedback clearlyin mind. In their evaluations, we see evidence ofrespect for the process and the profession:

“Interesting way of thinking of our experiences (asmovie titles, songs, etc.).” “I enjoyed the chance towrite; I love to write!” “I liked the imaginative waywe were able to tell our own mentoring stories.”“This session was very enlightening and very relax-ing.” “[It] was not a lecture!” “Interactive!!!” “Inspi-rational stories help remind us why we chose thisprofession.”

As we continue our work with mentorsthrough transactional inquiry, we keep theirhard questions visible: “Could we have more


time to reflect?” “Could we get to know othermentors from the other [district] schools . . .maybe have a network of mentors and [studentteachers]?” “Would it be possible to have less‘activities’ [and more] open discussion betweengroups about what worked, what didn’t?”“Could we take time to share our own stories?”“Could we have more information on the [field-based teacher education] program?” “Could wehave more strategies to use with [student teach-ers]?” “Can I be sure I am providing everythingfor my mentee that she needs to be a successfulteacher?”

Our use of narrative and our development oftransactional inquiry focuses on teachers’answers to the complex issues surroundingteaching, learning, and professional develop-ment. Too often, we hear only the voices of oth-ers—administrators, legislators, and others farremoved from the realities of the classroom—who seek to explain education in terms of num-bers, statistics, or linear processes designed toyield specific results. The narrative mode addsthe voices of teachers and the faces of learners,empowering them as advocates for education.As teachers tell their stories, we hear the author-ity and perspective that comes from time spentwith learners. As teachers respond to and ana-lyze stories, we hear the voices of reflectivepractitioners interactively examining theirbeliefs and practices.

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Catherine Zeek is chair of the Department of Readingand an assistant professor at Texas Woman’s Universityin Denton. Her research interests include changes inteacher beliefs and practices and use of narrative in in-service and preservice teacher professional development.

Martha Foote is an associate professor in the Depart-ment of Elementary Education at Texas A&M University–Commerce. Her areas of research include changes in teacherbeliefs and practices and home-school partnerships.

Carole Walker is an associate professor in the Depart-ment of Elementary Education at Texas A&M University–Commerce. She has had extensive experience at both theschool and district levels with the Duval County (Florida)Public Schools. Her research focuses on teacher empower-ment within field-based teacher education.



MULTIPLE ANNIESFEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURAL THEORYAND THE MAKING OF A TEACHER

Alecia Youngblood JacksonUniversity of Georgia

Feminist poststructural theories of subjectivity posit a notion of the self as a site of disunity and con-flict that is always in process and constructed within power relations. In teacher education, this the-ory of subjectivity troubles the notion of a predetermined, unified teacher identity assumed toemerge if a novice follows a linear, already-completed path of the student teaching experience. Thisarticle presents the story of Annie, a young woman learning to teach under the guidance of two co-operating teachers, Candace and Sheila, who espoused opposing discourses of teaching andmentoring. Deconstruction of Annie’s experience illuminates how her subjectivities shifted be-tween competing discourses within the discursive field of her student teaching experience. Annie’sbecoming a teacher was a wrenching, uneven process as she constructed her teacher subjectivitieswhile situated within the unstable relationships between power, knowledge, and experience. An-nie’s experience of learning to teach offers a postmodern perspective on the normalizing assump-tions and discourses embedded in current teacher education practices.

Poststructuralist theories of subjectivity1 rejectthe humanist2 notion of a unified, fixed self thathas a stable, essential core and instead proposethe self as a site of disunity and conflict that is al-ways in process and constructed within powerrelations (Britzman, 1994; Flax, 1990; Kondo,1990; St. Pierre, 2000; Weedon, 1997). Further-more, feminist poststructuralism posits thatsubjectivities shift among the discursive fieldsthat create them and that the individual is “al-ways the site of conflicting forms of subjectiv-ity” (Weedon, 1997, p. 32). Weedon (1997) de-scribed this feminist concern withpoststructural theory as a way to conceptualizemultiple subject positions within varied dis-courses,3 a way to give voice to constructedmeaning and to rewrite personal experiences(p. 33). For Weedon, this opens up space for con-sciousness raising and resistance.

The social structures and processes thatshape our subjectivities are situated within dis-cursive fields where language, social institu-

tions, subjectivity, and power exist, intersect,and produce competing ways of giving mean-ing to and constructing subjectivity(de Lauretis, 1986; Kondo, 1990; Weedon, 1997).Reflecting certain values, competing discoursesemerge within discursive fields, and the lan-guage and practices of these discourses give riseto an individual’s conflicting subjectivities. Inthis way, the meaning of structures, as well asthe subject positioned within, become sites ofpolitical struggle (Weedon, 1997).

Embedded in the normative discourse ofteacher education is the valorization of experi-ence, and subsumed in this is the idea that learn-ing to teach is a linear process in which a novicestudent becomes a teacher through the functionof unproblematic experience. Britzman (1994)critiqued this discourse as too simplistic in itsview of experience as following a preordainedpath, or a map, that excludes “an interrogationinto how the dynamics of social activity andexpression produce our understanding of expe-

386


rience” (p. 60). Britzman used poststructuraltheory to trouble the notion of a predetermined,unified teacher identity assumed to emerge if anovice assimilates and follows the already-organized, complete path of the student teach-ing experience. She claimed that learning toteach and shaping a teacher identity are strug-gles “to borrow, to negotiate, to claim owner-ship, and to take up that which seems alreadycompleted” (p. 54). Student teaching, in particu-lar, provides a context in which novices must“speak and act as subjects from within a discur-sive field that they did not set up” (p. 61).

In teacher education, the teacher/student,expert/novice binaries are laden with meaning,meaning constructed by those who are situatedwithin the unstable relationships betweenpower, knowledge, experience, and subjectivity.The normative discourse holds that those whohave the most experience possess the mostpower and knowledge, and those who tout thisdiscourse expect novice students to conformand fluidly take up an identity similar to that oftheir mentor, who is the master teacher. Other,competing discourses vie for the students’ sub-ject position, discourses constructed by the val-ues and beliefs of those in power—mainly otherteachers, university people, and administrativepersonnel who work with student teachers.Therefore, the discursive field of the studentteaching experience offers multiple, conflictingsubject positions for novice students.

METHOD

A feminist, poststructural deconstruction4 ofAnnie, a young woman learning to teach illumi-nates how her subjectivities shifted among com-peting discourses within the discursive field ofher student teaching experience. Annie is a 22-year-old, White, middle-class woman who wasenrolled in an initial teacher certification pro-gram at a major southeastern university. Shecompleted her student teaching practicum inEnglish at a large, suburban high school duringspring semester 2000. She was under the tute-lage of two White, middle-class women:Candace, who has been teaching for 8 years, andSheila, a veteran teacher of 26 years. Annietaught two classes of 10th-grade college-prep En-

glish in Candace’s classroom and two 9th- gradehonors English classes in Sheila’s classroom.Almost all of the students in these classroomswere White and from middle- and upper-classsuburban families.

During Annie’s 9-week practicum, I workedas her university supervisor. I visited her school,observed her teaching, met with her cooperat-ing teachers, and discussed her experienceswith her. Over this period of time, I observedher teaching four times (twice in each class-room), and I was struck by how different shewas as a teacher in these settings. In Candace’sclassroom, she was vibrant—moving about theroom, engaging students in animated discus-sion, smiling, and taking risks in her pedagogi-cal choices. In Sheila’s classroom, however,Annie stood immobile behind a podium, recitednotes from the overhead projector, passed outworksheets, and seemed detached from the stu-dents. I asked her about this difference, and wehad many talks both over the telephone andduring seminar meetings about the conflicts shefelt and her attitude toward her frustratingexperience of having to operate within twoopposing discourses of teaching espoused byCandace and Sheila.

As a feminist who is theoretically positionedwithin poststructuralism, I became interested,as I worked with Annie, in her conflicting sub-ject positions as a teacher and how hersubjectivities were constructed in response tothe power relations inherent in her teaching sit-uation. My feminist poststructural proclivitieslure me into the constant critique of structures,what those structures produce, and their partic-ularly devastating effects on women. Annie’ssituation—one in which she was constructedwithin two conflicting discourses—lent itself toa poststructural analysis to explore what histor-ical processes and discourses produced her, tointerrogate this construction, and to examinehow Annie resisted the trap of competing dis-cursive practices, opening up space for agency(Butler, 1992; Scott, 1991).

Because Annie’s experience was stressful,confusing, and emotionally draining for her, wehad casual conversations (in person, over thephone, and via email) several times per week.


At these moments, Annie needed more than auniversity supervisor or a mentor; she neededsomeone to listen to her as she attempted towork out the tension and conflict she faced dailyduring one of the most important experiences ofher life. Although I offered to step in andattempt to mediate the situation, Annie insistedthat she handle it alone. My own subjectivitieswere implicated and remained in productivetension throughout the duration of this relation-ship: My feminist tendencies to rush in and lib-erate Annie from her oppressive situation weretempered by my poststructural hesitancy toavoid imposing what I perceive as theemancipatory path of liberation, potentiallypositioning me in the oppressor role. Myresponsibility grew into necessary counsel withAnnie constantly to assure her that she was not“schizophrenic,” as she put it; to assuage herfeelings of incompetence; and to support heracts of accommodation and resistance throughmy explanations about how structures andpower relations were operating in her specificexperiences that produced the conflicts and ten-sions in her learning to teach.

As a result of these talks in which Annie hadconfided in me, we built a friendly, trusting rela-tionship and developed a positive rapport.Therefore, Annie did not hesitate to participatein an interview study after she completed stu-dent teaching and left the high school. I askedher to speak more formally with me about themisalignments between the two classrooms andher teacher self so that we could both makesense of what happened in those classrooms.Annie told me her stories during two separate,1-hour interviews that took place in my office oncampus. These interviews were loosely struc-tured around Seidman’s (1998) guide to in-depth, phenomenological interviewing. Myintent was to have Annie reconstruct the phe-nomenon of her learning to teach from her ownperspective. In the first interview, I asked Annieopen-ended questions that allowed her to focuson the details of her experience, describing hermentor teachers, her own teacher identity, criti-cal incidents in learning to teach, and a typicalday moving from one classroom to another.During the second interview, I asked Annie

more pointed questions about those details, andin this interview, she reflected on the meaning ofthese experiences, described the nature of herinner feelings during her practicum, explainedwhy she chose particular incidents as critical toher learning to teach, and imagined how herexperience might shape her first year of teach-ing. With Annie’s written consent, I audiotaped,transcribed, and analyzed our conversation forthis article. To ensure confidentiality, the namesof Annie, Candace, and Sheila are pseudonyms.

Through feminist poststructural theory, I useall of the above data5 (observations, formalinterviews, casual conversations) to decons-truct how Annie shifted her subjectivities andcarved out spaces in which to experiment, toaccommodate, and to resist as she learned toteach. How she took up multiple subject posi-tions was never seamless and never withouttensions, and how she moved among thesespaces was in response to the power structureswithin the context of a particular classroom.This became a wrenching, uneven process asshe negotiated the bumpy terrain of being andbecoming a teacher under the supervision oftwo very different mentor teachers whoespoused opposing discourses about teachingand mentoring.

To understand Annie and her experiences, Itake up the feminist researchers’ concern of hon-oring the voices of women, using a multiplicityof data, and starting with women’s personal ex-periences (Reinharz, 1992). I also take thepoststructuralist stance that our knowledgeclaims are locally situated (Haraway, 1988) andthat we use language to “word the world as weknow it” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 483). I am most in-terested in Annie’s stories because, as Britzman(1991, p. 59) wrote,

Cultural stories can narrate the painful and privatemoments when student teachers fall back on uselessroutines, become confused or anxious when thingsdo not go as planned. . . . To study the cultural storiesof student teaching, then, is to study the uncanny, thecreepy detours, the uneasy alliances, and the obvi-ous clashes between authoritative and internallypersuasive discourses.

For these reasons, I foreground Annie’s ownwords, her use of language to shape her mean-


ing of learning to teach, throughout this text.Her stories are evidence of the “creepy detours”and “uneasy alliances” that erupted during herstudent teaching experience.

In the following sections, I present Annie’sperceptions of the two teachers, Candace andSheila, who mentored her during the 9-weekstudent teaching practicum in English. In thefinal section, I use feminist poststructural the-ory to deconstruct how power, discourse, sub-jectivity, and experience operated in troubling,complex ways during the making of Annie’ssubjectivities as a teacher.

“LIKE A SNEAK ATTACK”: CANDACE

Annie said that she and Candace “clicked im-mediately” when they met. During one of theirfirst conversations, Annie realized that she andCandace shared the same philosophy of teach-ing, and she believed that it would be easy tostep into Candace’s student-centered classroomand assume the identity of the teacher. Anniedescribed Candace as “little but loud,” alludingto Candace’s short stature (barely 5 feet tall) butloud and commanding voice. Annie com-mented that Candace’s voice and her presencein the classroom make her a dynamic teacher:

She has good projection and volume, but it’s morethan that. She knows what she’s talking about. Shehas everything planned out before a lesson—the ra-tionale, the objectives, everything—but when shegets up there you can’t even tell it’s like that. It flows,and she’s very open in discussion. She never usesworksheets; she uses lots of activities to get kids in-volved. It’s like a sneak attack—kids don’t know thatthey’re learning.

Annie described Candace’s teaching style as“loose,” “spontaneous,” and receptive to stu-dents’ needs, and she admired Candace’s skilland subtlety in guiding students through read-ing literature. Annie remarked that the student-centered, open environment of Candace’s class-room was conducive to “great discussion,” buteverything “ran smoothly.” Annie attributedthis smoothness to the structure and expecta-tions in place. According to Annie, althoughCandace was loose about curriculum and plan-ning, she had “strict rules” about trivial things,

such as her intolerance for students’ forgettingtheir books or needing to leave the room for abathroom break.

Although Candace kept tight control overstudent behavior in her classroom, Annie saidthat Candace put no constraints on her. Anniebelieved that Candace’s flexibility with curricu-lum, planning, and student learning—herteaching style—influenced her mentoring style.Annie said, “Candace threw me into it [teach-ing] and said, ‘Do it. It’s yours.’ ” She went on todescribe the first week of her student teaching inCandace’s classroom:

I was there a couple of days observing. Then on thethird day, she said, “You watch me teach third pe-riod, then you do fourth period.” I modeled herteaching for a couple of days and then the next weekshe said, “They’re all yours.” She wanted me to jumpin and to develop my own style to see what wouldwork for me.

Annie said that Candace left her alone in theclassroom beginning that second week to giveher space to construct her own teaching style;after the first couple of weeks, Candace did notinsist that Annie mimic her approach. She said,“In Candace’s classroom, I can be the type ofteacher that I want to be.” Annie noted thatCandace did sit in on some classes to observeand to offer suggestions, but the nature of thisfeedback centered on “little hints to keep theclass running smoothly.” Because of Candace’shands-off approach to mentoring, Annie feltfree to experiment with her teaching style andidentity in this setting, with her mentor ready tooffer help if she asked.

When I pressed Annie to explain “the type ofteacher she wants to be” and the sense of free-dom she felt in Candace’s classroom, she haddifficulty articulating what this looked like,which connotes her process of constantly con-structing her teaching identity and having thespace to do so. Annie said that she was able tohave “open-ended discussion” with her stu-dents about literature. She also commented, “Ican use my sense of humor, keep everythinglight, relate to the kids, and help them under-stand literature.”

However, constructing a teacher identity inCandace’s classroom was a different process for


Annie from that in the classroom of Sheila, herother mentor teacher. Candace’s and Sheila’sclassrooms offered two opposing discourses, andcarving out space to craft her own teacher iden-tity within the structures of Sheila’s classroomproved to be no easy task for Annie. Annie wasmore persuaded by the discourse of Candace’sclassroom, so she shifted her subjectivities toresist and accommodate within the structuresimposed on her in Sheila’s classroom. Dis-cerning the complex nature of the power, dis-course, and subjectivity struggles inherent inher student teaching practicum requires under-standing Annie’s perception of Sheila.

“SHE WANTED THINGS INTHEIR PLACE”: SHEILA

During our conversations (both formal andinformal), Annie spent much more time speak-ing about her other mentor teacher, Sheila. Evenwhen I asked questions directly focused on herexperiences in Candace’s classroom, Annieshifted her responses to talk more about hersubject position in Sheila’s classroom. Her expe-riences as a teacher with Candace’s guidanceserved as points of departure—of comparisonand mostly contrast—and she struggled to findwords to describe her feelings of confusion,betrayal, suspicion, oppression, and exhaustionin Sheila’s classroom. In this struggle, her multi-ple experiences in the two classrooms foldedand unfolded on one another, remaining inexo-rably intertwined. Annie, in constructing herteacher identity, was not an “autonomous, freeagent who merely chose the discourse of theday” (Britzman, 1994, p. 58). Instead, as a vul-nerable subject who occupied multiple, clash-ing subject positions, she constructed an iden-tity in response to the power of the normalizingexpectations in each of the two classrooms. Thepain she experienced as a subject in process(Weedon, 1997) was evident in everything thatshe did, signifying compliance or resistance toopposing norms of what it meant to be a teacher.The continuous redefinition and constant slip-ping (Weedon, 1997) of her subjectivity was aneffect of the conflicting discourses in Candace’sand Sheila’s conceptions of what it means tolearn to teach.

According to Annie, Candace’s teaching andmentoring styles contrast sharply with Sheila’s,a veteran teacher of 26 years. Annie describedSheila’s pedagogy as “rigid, teacher centered,and test driven.” According to Annie, Sheila is“worksheet oriented” and “teaches straightfrom the book.” Annie said,

Sheila takes all her questions for class discussionfrom the teacher’s edition. The teacher’s edition hasthis sidebar for help, and she takes them straightfrom there. . . . She made the kids have her answers ontheir worksheets because their answers had to matchher questions that were on the test.

Annie observed that Sheila’s teaching consistsof guiding student discussion to ensure thatthey are able to recite the prescripted answerson a worksheet taken directly from the teachingmaterials that accompany anthologies. FromAnnie’s point of view, Sheila is most interestedin her students’ abilities to copy, memorize, andreproduce material for a test; no space exists foropen, creative, critical thinking. Annie was baf-fled over how to engage students when suchrigid teaching practices are central to classroomactivity.

Inherent in Sheila’s classroom pedagogy isher desire to control every aspect of teachingand learning. Annie perceives Sheila as the typeof teacher who is mostly concerned about a per-fect correlation between what the teacher saysand what students write on their tests. What ismost remarkable about their relationship is howSheila’s pedagogical approach spilled into hermentoring of Annie, who was a student but alsoan educated, adult woman. Annie felt thatSheila wielded similar control and dominationover her—telling Annie what to teach and howto teach it. Such unbalanced power relationssubjugated Annie’s autonomy, and she feltpainful, internal tension.

Sheila did not permit Annie to write her ownlesson plans, forcing her to use plans that werewritten by the entire group of ninth-grade Eng-lish teachers. Furthermore, Sheila used beguil-ing tactics to give Annie the impression that shehad carte blanche in planning and teachingwhen actually she did not. Annie explained,

I had 2 weeks with the poetry unit, and she wouldn’tlet me plan it. It was all her plans, and I had to follow


them. I asked her if there was a specific way shewanted me to teach it, but she said, “No, do what-ever you want.” But that was not the case. I wouldteach my own way, and we would discuss things af-terwards. She would say, “You should do it thisway. . . . ” She was very rigid with me. Everythingthat I did, I had to run through the mill. It was crazy. Iwas actually trying to plan the poetry unit, and I wasshowing her some things, and she kept saying, “No,we’ve got this planned.”

Annie continued by recalling many other in-stances of Sheila’s telling her to write plans andshow them to her, only to instruct her to modifyher plans to fit Sheila’s preconceived vision ofhow the lessons should look. Sheila wrote a unittest first, then planned “backwards” to force a fitbetween the worksheets and the test. In con-trast, Annie liked to be more spontaneous in herplanning, adjusting activities daily to fit theneeds of her students and crafting alternativeassessment tools, such as portfolios, that wouldexhibit what students learned. Sheila, however,was not receptive to Annie’s more “open andflexible” style of teaching and required her todesign tests and worksheets modeled after herown.

Sheila also attempted to script Annie’s way ofmanaging difficult students. One of Annie’sclasses, consisting of ninth-grade honors stu-dents, often became “chatty.” Annie was “both-ered” and “amazed” by Sheila’s method ofquieting the class. Annie told me that she heardSheila say to this chatty class, “Guys, you’rehonors students, not college prep. I expect moreout of you.” Annie, reflecting on this method,said,

That just killed me. I could not stand it. And she toldme one day, “If they talk too much just say that.” AndI was like, “No way.” I mean, that is one thing Iwould never say to them.

As we discussed this more, Annie admitted thatit was degrading to set up hierarchies in thismanner, in which certain students are privi-leged over others. Her refusal to allow Sheila toscript her classroom management methods wasone of the ways she resisted slipping into thetype of teacher she did not want to be.

Annie spoke with disdain when she talkedabout Sheila’s “ridiculously organized” man-agement system. Annie said that everything in

Sheila’s classroom is color coded, from herteaching files to her grade book. Annie de-scribed herself as “scattered but organized,”with papers and books piled in stacks for easyretrieval as opposed to tucked away in theirproper place. Annie noted a recurring incidentthat always left her feeling shocked and invaded:

Sheila could not handle my organized mess. I wouldhave my papers sitting on my desk, and when Iwould come back from lunch, they were all neat andfiled away. She would go through my notebook ofplans and write in things that she wanted taught.She’d even move my books from where I was sittingwhen I was at lunch. I’d come back and say,“Where’s my stuff?” And she’d say, “I put it overthere.” I never even asked her why. There was noreason. I know why she did it . . . because she wantedthings in their place.

The irony of Sheila’s desire to keep Annie inher place also was not lost on Annie. Throughher mentoring practices, Sheila controlled An-nie’s power and authority in the classroom. An-nie said that she was never “the teacher” inSheila’s classroom, not only because she had nofreedom in her teaching methods or planningbut also because of the inordinate and unneces-sary amount of time Sheila spent in the roomwhile Annie was teaching. With Sheila remain-ing in the classroom the entire duration of An-nie’s 9-week student teaching practicum, thestudents never viewed Annie as the person incharge; more important, Annie never felt likethe authority figure that she was in Candace’sclass. Annie explained,

If the students [in Sheila’s classroom] had a question,they wouldn’t come to me, they’d go to her. AndSheila wouldn’t say, “Go to the teacher.” She’d an-swer their question. It made me feel like I was beingundermined—just her chipping away at me. I’dthink, “Well, then, I’m not their teacher!” Candacewould actually say, if [the students] came up to her,that I was the teacher. I really appreciated that. ButSheila never did.

Through her mentoring style, Sheila ex-pected Annie to “smoothly assemble into a por-trait of the ‘self’ . . . that is almost nevercontradictory or multiple, and whose traits areheld to be equally characteristic of all membersof a particular group,” creating a homogenized,undifferentiated, and limited self (Kondo, 1990,


pp. 36-37). Sheila did not acknowledge differ-ence and assumed that Annie would assimilateto teach exactly like her, even though Annie’smethod of teaching is nearly opposite Sheila’s.Annie advocates a more open-ended, student-centered discussion of multiple interpretationsof a text, whereas Sheila expects the students toparaphrase a text and to understand theworksheet answers, which are Sheila’s own in-terpretations. Sheila expected Annie to followsuit and use the same methods of teaching liter-ature. Furthermore, Sheila gave Annie no spaceto interpret her experience as contradictory ormessy; Sheila insisted on the appearance ofunity despite any inconsistencies or conflicts. Inthis discursive field, which allows no space fordifference, Annie was expected to follow a pre-determined path of experience that would moldher into Sheila’s preconceived type of teacher,and Annie experienced the violent tension oftaking up a “discourse that is at once authorita-tive and impossible” (Britzman, 1991, p. 57).Nevertheless, poststructuralism suggests that“the space of freedom available to us is not at allinsignificant, and we have the ability to analyze,contest, and change practices that are beingused to construct ourselves and the world”(St. Pierre, 2000, p. 493). Foucault’s theories ofpower relations (Martin, Gutman, & Hutton,1988) show us that Annie is freer than she feels;and examining Annie’s agency throughpoststructuralism reveals how she worked tosubvert Sheila’s structure and to refuse an iden-tity that was imposed on her.

“CAVING IN” AND “SLIPPING IN”:POWER, ACCOMMODATION,AND RESISTANCE

Foucault’s (1976/1978) strategical notion ofpower posits that power is and comes from ev-erywhere, that it exists in relations, that in theserelations it is unstable and shifting, and that itproduces resistance. Power is implicated in dis-course because “discourse illustrates how lan-guage gathers itself together according tosocially constructed rules and regularities thatallow certain statements to be made and notothers” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 485). What gets to be-

come “true,” then, is an effect of power relationswithin certain discourses:

There can be no possible exercise of power without acertain economy of discourses of truth which oper-ate through and on the basis of this association. Weare subjected to the production of truth throughpower and we cannot exercise power except throughthe production of truth. (Foucault, 1980, p. 93)

As Weedon (1997, p. 110) maintained, power is a“dynamic of control, compliance, and lack ofcontrol between discourses and the subjectsconstituted by discourses, who are theiragents.” Multiple power relations operate si-multaneously, and because subjectivity is impli-cated in unbalanced power relations, power canbe productive and create resistance; resistancethen becomes less a thing to be done but more adaily, ongoing effect of power relations. (Kondo,1990; St. Pierre, 2000).

Foucault’s theories of power and discourse asproducing realities, truths, and freedom makepossible the idea that what is constructed can bedeconstructed and contested. For Annie, powerrelations within certain discourses produced a“truth” about what it means to be a teacher. Thedanger of this construction is that it forcedAnnie, in Sheila’s classroom, into a subjectivitythat was “always already” there (Butler, 1992), asubjectivity that was always and should alwaysbe “true.” However, because this “truth” issocially constructed by the material and culturalpractices of its subjects, it is open for reconfigu-ration and transgression: “Discourse transmitsand produces power; it reinforces it, but alsoundermines and exposes it, renders it fragileand makes it possible to thwart it” (Foucault,1976/1978, p. 101).

The ubiquity of shifting, unequal power rela-tions in Annie’s relationships with her mentorteachers caused her to adopt multiplesubjectivities in her conformity to and resis-tance of the antagonizing discourses of teach-ing. This is most evident in the way Anniedescribes a typical teaching day, moving be-tween “being” the teacher within the opposingdiscourses of two classrooms. After spendingher morning teaching in Candace’s classroom,Annie felt a shift in her subjectivities as she pre-pared to enter Sheila’s classroom. During the


first two classes she taught, Annie describedherself as follows: “I could be how I wanted tobe, how I envisioned myself next year in myown class.” However, when the bell signaledAnnie to leave Candace’s room for Sheila’s, shefelt dread and the “pressure to perform” thatwould ensue. As she gathered her materials towalk to Sheila’s room, Annie said that she would“take big, deep breaths.” She went on to say,

As soon as I walked in the door and see her in there, Iwould tense up. I’d be thinking, “Is she going to stayin here?” Most of the time she stayed. And, some-times she would take her time getting her stuff to-gether and leave later, like she was listening to mestart the class to make sure I was teaching the way shewanted me to.

Annie described this “teaching the way shewanted me to” as making sure students couldread the text and answer the questions that wereon the worksheet, a worksheet that Sheila al-ways provided for Annie’s use. Annie felt intim-idated and doubtful of her abilities when shewas under the authoritative gaze of Sheila,which became disciplinary power in a space ofdomination that “holds [subjects] in a mecha-nism of objectification . . . [and] manifests its po-tency, essentially, by arranging objects”(Foucault, 1975/1995, p. 187). Unfortunately,Annie believed that she was always under sur-veillance because Sheila rarely left Annie alonewith her students and, when she did, it was onlyfor a brief period of time. Furthermore, Anniebelieved that she remained vulnerable toSheila’s authoritative gaze regardless of Sheila’spurpose in the classroom; on one occasion,Sheila completed a formal evaluation of Annie’steaching, without alerting her, under the guiseof doing her own work. Annie characterizedthis as “sneaky,” and it angered her so much thatshe could not eat lunch that day. Annie ex-plained that, in contrast, she was accustomed toCandace’s openness about her reasons for re-maining in the classroom, especially when shewas completing a formal evaluation of herteaching. Because of this perceived trickery anddeception, Sheila’s presence made Annie feel“suspicious” and “nervous.”

Just the feeling of her [Sheila] in there made me for-get what I wanted to say. I’d start saying something,

and I’d wonder, “What is she thinking about whatI’m saying?” It was terrible. It would wear me down.I’d feel so exhausted after that class.

The unequal power relations between Sheilaand Annie produced a state of domination andcaused Annie to defer her own emotional andpsychological needs to those of Sheila. Anniespoke of the fear of “breaking down” Sheila’sstructure while her own subjectivity was being“chipped away.” How Annie’s subjectivitiesshifted in response to the power relations inSheila’s classroom is evident in the followingcomment:

I would try to do different things to keep from hav-ing discussion while she was in there. I worriedabout her critique of me, worried about the struc-ture, worried that she would think I was breakingdown her structure. Her structure is so important toher. When she left, I felt free to teach the way I knowit would be more effective—more effective than rely-ing on worksheets. I would really let loose. I’dbreathe a sigh of relief and say to the class, “Let’sstart talking.”

Although Annie seemingly accommodatedto Sheila’s rigid methods of teaching, she re-sisted during those few times that Sheila left theroom, physically taking her authoritative gazewith her. As Annie said, she “breathed a sigh ofrelief” and told the students, “Let’s start talk-ing.” She shifted her subjectivities and movedthe classroom discourse, for example, to an ac-tive interpretation of the text, not rote memori-zation of literary devices. Sometimes, withSheila gone, Annie quickly covered theworksheet answers with the students and thenmoved on to a student-centered discussion ofthe text. Annie described it as “just slippingthings in that the kids would need for the test sothat we could really discuss.” With Sheila andher disciplinary power temporarily absent,power relations shifted; and Annie moved intoa more persuasive discourse and constructed asubjectivity from a different set of power rela-tions: Annie as the teacher, Annie as the one incharge. However, Annie’s resistance ended assoon as Sheila was present again, and the previ-ous, familiar, unbalanced power relations fil-tered back into the classroom. Annie felt theinternal shift when Sheila returned, and Annie


explained that she “picked up the worksheet”and geared her teaching back to Sheila’s expec-tations. Annie adopted multiple selves inSheila’s classroom and was able to slip back andforth in response to Sheila’s dominating pres-ence, which determined—even translated—Annie’s way of being a teacher.

Theorizing from feminist poststructuralism,Annie’s redefinition of and slipping amongsubjectivities in response to shifting power rela-tions illustrate that “knowledge of more thanone discourse and the recognition that meaningis plural allows for a measure of choice on thepart of the individual, and even where choice isnot available, resistance is possible” (Weedon,1997, p. 102). When Annie could freely choosethe discourse of what it meant to be a teacher inCandace’s classroom, she embraced it; whenshe could not, as when she was forced into thediscourse of Sheila’s classroom, she resisted.Annie’s subjectivities were inscribed in herpractices of resistance, refusal, and complianceas a result of her naming the discontinuitybetween the normalizing discourse of Sheila’sclassroom and the more persuasive discourse ofCandace’s classroom. This is not to say thatAnnie did not resist or accommodate at all inCandace’s classroom; nor is it possible thatthere were no power relations between Annieand Candace. However, the power relations inCandace’s classroom were not blocked by dom-ination and unnecessary authority as they werein Sheila’s classroom. Annie’s subjectivity inCandace’s classroom made her “feel like ateacher,” and she accommodated and main-tained Candace’s “trivial” classroom rulesbecause, within that particular discourse, shehad a sense of freedom to use her own methodswhile doing so. For example, she upheldCandace’s rule of giving detention to those stu-dents who forgot their books for class. UnlikeCandace, though, Annie did not verbally repri-mand the students, disrupting classroom teach-ing and learning; she calmly, without comment,simply wrote the students’ names on the boardif she noticed them without their books.

The contrast between Sheila’s and Candace’smentoring styles and expectations further exac-erbated Annie’s multiple subject positions in

their classrooms. In writing lesson plans,Candace told Annie, “Do whatever you want.”From Sheila, however, Annie heard, “You can’tdo this.” Annie said, “I do things for Sheila that Idon’t have to do for Candace, but I do them justto get Sheila off my back.” Also, Sheila acceptslate work from her students, but Candace doesnot, so Annie had to negotiate these contradic-tory expectations. When she approached bothmentor teachers with her own ideas about latework policies, Candace told her, “As long as youcan justify it to parents.” However, Sheila said,“No. We do it this way.”

In response to these contradictions, Anniecoped with this attitude: “Some battles justdon’t need to be fought. I’ve learned to cave in onmost things.” Annie became exhausted from“caving in” on all issues in Sheila’s classroom,from planning and teaching methods to class-room discipline and organization. At the sametime, she grew savvy in her subversion of theunbalanced power relations between Sheila andherself. Nevertheless, this violent, uneven pro-cess of shifting her self from one type of teacherto another every day caused Annie to feelsilenced, displaced, and controlled in a class-room that was supposedly “her own” for9 weeks.

CONCLUSION

Feminist poststructural theory, used here todeconstruct the relations between power, dis-course, subjectivity, and experience, is con-cerned with “how material discursive realitiesact upon the actions of others . . . no matterwhere and how differently placed we are in thegrid of identity and privilege these realities con-stitute” (Bové, 1990, p. 59). This concern is apro-pos to teachers and the construction of theiridentities because these constructions are his-torical products of the intersection of power anddiscourse within particular institutions andspecific disciplines. As Bové wrote,

“Discourse” is one of the most empowered ways inmodern and postmodern societies for the formingand shaping of humans as “subjects.” In a now-fa-mous play on words, we might say that “power”through its discursive and institutional relays “sub-jects” us: that is, makes us into “subjects,” and it


“subjects” us to the rule of the dominant disciplineswhich are empowered in society and which regulateits possibilities for human freedom—that is, it “sub-jugates” us. (p. 58)

Clearly, Annie worked within two very differ-ent structures, and poststructural theory movesus beyond questions of meaning (e.g., What didAnnie’s experience mean?) to ask differentquestions of structures: “How does discoursefunction? How does it get produced and regu-lated? What are its social effects?” (Bové, 1990,p. 54).

Because the interrelationship between power,discourse, and experience produces certainsubjectivities, we should consider what itmeans for Annie (and other novice teachers) toconstruct a teacher identity from her studentteaching experience. Feminist poststructuraltheory posits that “identity is not a fixed ‘thing,’it is negotiated, open, shifting, ambiguous—theresult of culturally available meanings and theopen-ended, power-laden enactments of thosemeanings” (Kondo, 1990, p. 24). The construc-tion of the self, then, becomes a heavy task oftaking up certain subjectivities in response tocontextual demands. What makes this“subjectivities in process” theory even morecomplex are the ways individuals interpret theirexperiences. In opposition to the humanist no-tion that meaning is “out there” for language toreflect, feminist poststructural theory assertsthat meaningful experience is constituted in lan-guage. de Lauretis (1984, p. 159) redefined expe-rience as a continuous process in which

subjectivity is an ongoing construction, not a fixedpoint of departure or arrival from which one then in-teracts with the world. On the contrary, [subjectivity]is the effect of that interaction which I call experi-ence . . . and thus it is produced by . . . practices anddiscourses that lend significance to the events of theworld.

Scott (1991), taking up de Lauretis’s notion ofexperience, challenges the normative under-standing of experience as “uncontestable evi-dence” and the origin of knowledge (p. 777) toposit that

it is not individuals who have experience, but sub-jects who are constituted through experience. Expe-rience in this definition then becomes not the origin

of our explanation, not the authoritative evidencethat grounds what is known, but rather that whichwe seek to explain, that about which knowledge isproduced. (p. 780)

In this continuous process of interacting withthe world, in which our subjectivities are histor-ically produced by our experiences, we con-struct meaning about things by thinking andspeaking about them. In this way, experience isopen to “contradictory and conflicting interpre-tations,” debunking the myth that language ex-presses already-fixed meanings (Flax, 1990;Weedon, 1996). This means that interpretations,and the voices giving meaning to the experi-ence, are historicized—they are temporary, spe-cific, and open to challenge.

Haraway’s (1988) postmodern desire for“radical historical contingency for all knowl-edge claims and knowing subjects” insists on

the power of modern critical theories of how mean-ings and bodies get made, not in order to denymeanings and bodies, but in order to build meaningsand bodies that have a chance for life. (pp. 579-580)

The “meanings and bodies” that get producedin teacher education do have a “chance for life”when feminist poststructural theories of power,discourse, experience, and subjectivity are uti-lized to problematize the notion of a linear ver-sion, or “truth,” to the student teachingexperience as well as the assumption of a uni-fied, completed identity that emerges from thisexperience. To deconstruct the power and struc-tures that produce certain subject positions is tobuild new, different, and contingent meaningsthat are not fixed but open to resistance andchange. Butler’s (1990, p. 16) question, “Whatcan be meant by ‘identity,’ then, and whatgrounds the presumption that identities areself-identical, persisting through time as thesame, unified, and internally coherent?” opensup the category of “teacher” to reenvision thisidentity not as a normative ideal but as a de-scriptive feature of experience.

Annie’s experiences—and the power anddiscourses—that produced her teachersubjectivities are local and specific and there-fore open to multiple interpretations. Throughmy positioning as a poststructural feminist, Iam able to move from descriptive questions of


what it means to learn to teach toward a decons-truction of the structures that produced Annie.Power and discourses that operate within insti-tutions to produce certain subjectivities becomeexposed in feminist poststructural theories, andthe situatedness of experiences andsubjectivities become concerns for teachereducators.

I agree with Haraway’s (1988) view of thepolitics of interpretation as a “power-sensitiveconversation,” one in which “stuttering transla-tion” is always partially understood (p. 589). Itis not my intention here to present one theoreti-cal interpretation—or translation—that is thebest or right one, realizing the power implica-tions in making such a move as well as the dan-gers of “simplification in the last instance”(Haraway, 1988, p. 590). Instead, I am interestedin providing a partial and positioned interpreta-tion that opens up the category “teacher” andinvites teacher educators to reimagine what ourresponsibilities should be. If we accept, aspoststructuralists do, the idea that foundationalknowledge is constructed and contingent (But-ler, 1992), then we can believe that structures arenot absolute and we become responsible for ex-amining those structures and exposing whatthey do. Foucault (1984a, p. 343) explained, “Mypoint is not that everything is bad, but that ev-erything is dangerous, which is not exactly thesame as bad. If everything is dangerous, then wealways have something to do [italics added].”St. Pierre (2000, p. 484) posited that

feminism’s slogan that everything is political mustbe joined with the poststructural idea that “every-thing is dangerous.” . . . If everything is both politicaland dangerous, then we are ethically bound to payattention to how we word the world. We must payattention to language that . . . rewards identity andpunishes difference.

In teacher education, feminist poststructuraltheories can help us to ask new questions aboutpower, discourse, experience, and the produc-tion of teacher subjectivity. Specifically, as Scott(1988, p. 35) suggested, we should consider thespecific contexts and processes that producemeaning, leading to questions that employ cri-tique about how some meanings emerge as nor-mative and how others are eclipsed. We should

be concerned about the structures and the inher-ent power relations that produce our teachers:universities, public schools, and the personnelwho espouse the sometimes competing dis-courses within these institutions. Indeed, we areresponsible for taking up Bové’s (1990) ques-tions to expose how these structures functionand what their effects are on those who are pro-duced as teachers within them. When we seehow certain structures and discourses get pro-duced and regulated (and others silenced), thenwe might contest them, reconfigure them, andmake space for new ways of learning to teachthat reward difference rather than identity. It isthen that we can give up the idea of expecting apredetermined teacher “self” to emerge from alinear path of the student teaching experienceand instead open up new possibilities of multi-ple and contingent knowledges, experiences,and subjectivities that are productive in themaking of a teacher.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author would like to thank Dr. BettieSt. Pierre, Margaret C. Hagood, Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Kit Tisdale, and the external review-ers for their careful reading of this manuscript.

NOTES1. Weedon (1997, p. 32) defined subjectivity as “the conscious

and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, hersense of herself, and her ways of understanding her relation to theworld.”

2. For further reading in humanism, see Davies (1997) andFoucault (1984b).

3. Bové (1990, pp. 54-55) did not define discourse but explainedhow discourse functions:

Discourse provides a privileged entry into the post-structuralist mode of analysis precisely because it is the or-ganized and regulated, as well as the regulating and consti-tuting, functions of language that it studies: its aim is todescribe the surface linkages between power, knowledge,institutions, intellectuals, the control of populations, andthe modern state as these intersect in the functions of sys-tems of thought.

St. Pierre (2000, p. 485) explained discourse in the Foucauldiansense as “never just linguistic since it organizes a way of thinkinginto a way of acting in the world.”

4. It is important to note that deconstruction neither points outerrors nor seeks to destroy categories. Lather (1991, p. 13) wrotethat “the goal of deconstruction is neither unitary wholeness nordialectical resolution . . . [but] to keep things in process, to dis-rupt . . . to fight the tendency for our categories to congeal.” The ef-


fect of deconstruction is to “find questions where others hadlocated answers” (Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998, p. 12).Deconstructionist methodologies do not reveal absolute truths(doing so would violate deconstruction’s premise); they exploresocial realities and challenge dominant assumptions.

5. My emotional and physical immersion in Annie’s experi-ence cannot account for all the data that inform this writing. Al-though not all the data were collected systematically, I contend,along with St. Pierre (1997), that some data escapes language andbecomes nontraditional.

REFERENCESBové, P. A. (1990). Discourse. In F. Lentricchia &

T. McLaughline (Eds.), Critical terms for literary study(pp. 50-65). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Britzman, D. P. (1991). Practice makes practice: Acritical studyof learning to teach. Albany: State University of New YorkPress.

Britzman, D. P. (1994). Is there a problem with knowingthyself? Toward a poststructural view of teacher iden-tity. In T. Shanahan, (Ed.), Teachers thinking, teachersknowing: Reflections on literacy and language education.Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Butler, J. (1990). Subjects of sex/gender/desire. In J. Butler(Ed.), Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1992). Contingent foundations: Feminism andthe question of “postmodernism.” In J. Butler & J. W. Scott(Eds.), Feminists theorize the political (pp. 3-21). NewYork: Routledge.

Davies, T. (1997). Humanism. New York: Routledge.de Lauretis, T. (1984). Alice doesn’t: Feminism, semiotics, cin-

ema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.de Lauretis, T. (1986). Feminist studies, critical studies.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Flax, J. (1990). Postmodernism and gender relations in fem-

inist theory. In L. J. Nicholson (Ed.), Feminism/postmodernism (pp. 39-62). New York: Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1978). Method (R. Hurley, Trans.). In The his-tory of sexuality: Vol. I. An introduction (pp. 92-102). NewYork: Vintage. (Original work published 1976)

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviewsand other writings 1972-1977 (C. Gordon, Ed., C. Gordon,L. Marshall, J. Mepham, & K. Soper, Trans.). New York:Pantheon.

Foucault, M. (1984a). On the genealogy of ethics: An over-view of work in progress [Interview, conducted 1983].In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 340-372)(C. Porter, Trans.). New York: Pantheon.

Foucault, M. (1984b). What is enlightenment? InP. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 32-50). (C. Por-ter, Trans.). New York: Pantheon.

Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of aprison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage. (Origi-nal work published 1975)

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The sciencequestion in feminism and the privilege of partial per-spective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599.

Kondo, D. K. (1990). Crafting selves: Power, gender, and dis-courses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press.

Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research and peda-gogy with/in the postmodern. New York: Routledge.

Martin, L. H., Gutman, H., & Hutton, P. H. (Eds.). (1988).Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault,October 25, 1982 (R. Martin, Interviewer). In Technol-ogies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 9-15).Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Popkewitz, T. S. & Brennan, M. (Eds.). (1998). Foucault’schallenge: Discourse, knowledge, and power in education.New York: Teachers College Press.

Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist methods in social research. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Scott, J. (1988). Deconstructing equality-versus-difference:Or, the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism.Feminist Studies, 14(1), 33-50.

Scott, J. (1991). The evidence of experience. Critical Inquiry,17(4), 773-797.

Seidman, I. (1998). Interviewing as qualitative research: Aguide for researchers in education and the social sciences.New York: Teachers College Press.

St. Pierre, E. A. (1997). Methodology in the fold and theeruption of transgressive data. International Journal ofQualitative Studies in Education, 10(2), 175-189.

St. Pierre, E. A. (2000). Poststructural feminism in educa-tion: An overview. International Journal of QualitativeStudies in Education, 13(5), 477-515.

Weedon, C. (1996). Feminist practice and poststructuralist the-ory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Alecia Youngblood Jackson is a Ph.D. student in theDepartment of Language Education at the University ofGeorgia. Her interests in critical, feminist, andpoststructural theories inform her work in the areas ofqualitative research methodology, women’s studies, andreading/writing/language theories in secondary Englishcurriculum.



EXAMINING THE MISMATCH BETWEENLEARNER-CENTERED TEACHING ANDTEACHER-CENTERED SUPERVISION

Cynthia ParisSuzanne GespassRider University, New Jersey

Student teacher supervision, with few exceptions, remains a teacher-centered enterprise. Typicalsupervision policies, procedures, and forms focus on teachers’ observable behaviors. They grant au-thority to the perceptions of the supervisor/teacher. The concerns, questions, professional knowl-edge, and deliberative processes of the student teacher/learner are secondary, if they are consideredat all. In this self-study, the authors explore alternatives to teacher-centered supervision by first su-pervising each other in their own learner-centered college classrooms, then extrapolating what waslearned to their student teaching supervision. Data analysis yielded themes of responsibility, power,and purpose; challenges to the lesson as the unit of analysis and standard sources of data on studentteachers’work; and the importance of the social construction of roles and meanings. The authors’ in-tent is not to put forward yet another model of student teacher supervision but to describe a process ofcoconstructing supervision with student teachers so that the student teacher/learner is at the center.

Another meeting about supervision of studentteachers. Another round of wrestling with thecontradictions between the ways we teach ourcurriculum and foundations courses and theways we supervise our student teachers. Ourprogram focuses on preparing students to de-velop learner-centered classrooms and to inter-nalize a reflective, inquiring stance towardteaching and learning. This focus on developinga learner-centered critical rationality stands insharp contrast to a technical rationality that em-phasizes the uncritical performance ofgeneralizable teaching strategies and that per-vades most professional education (Schon,1987). The critical rationality (Feiman-Nemser& Buchmann, 1987; Zeichner, 1996) we seek as-sumes a constructivist view that professionalknowledge, of necessity, is constructed and re-constructed by observant, reflective, decision-making teachers in response to their messy, un-predictable, and unique contexts (Connelly &

Clandinin, 1985; Cornbleth, 1989; Dudley-Marling, 1997; McDonald, 1992). It is a view thatfocuses squarely on the perceptions, thinking,and actions of the learner—whether the studentas learner or the teacher as learner. We strive tomodel this stance in our own teaching.

Yet, when it comes to student teaching super-vision, we have been bound by practices thatassume teacher-centered instruction, focus onthe evaluation of teachers’ observable behaviors(Nolan & Francis, 1992), and grant authority tothe perceptions of the supervisor/teacher overthe experiences of the student teacher/learner.These inconsistencies serve only to confuse ourstudent teachers and validate rather than chal-lenge the teacher-centered assumptions mostbring with them to the program. “Don’t come toobserve me today,” they say when they are plan-ning individual writing conferences with chil-dren or organizing and supervising small groupinvestigations. “I won’t be teaching today.”

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As we faced these contradictions in our workwith our students, we recognized that we, too,were observed and evaluated in a similarlyteacher-centered fashion for reappointment andpromotion. Our teaching performances are typ-ically observed for one class period, thendescribed against a fairly standard set of expec-tations that assume a teacher-centered philoso-phy and classroom structure. Organization andclarity of presentations are noted, and the com-munication of and adherence to schedules andpredetermined assignments are considered.The observer produces a written report that pro-vides his or her description and assessment ofwhat transpired. The process is not sensitive tothe learner-centered goals, activities, and struc-tures that are central to our teaching. It does notrecognize our efforts to encourage learners totake initiative and responsibility for their learn-ing. It does not account for the fact that wecoconstruct much of what transpires in ourclasses with our students. Nor does it help usadvance our own thinking about our teaching.In a twist on the student teacher’s plea above,one of us found a former colleague reluctant toobserve our decidedly student-centered class. “Icame to your door several times,” he explained,“but left when I saw that you weren’t teaching.”

Clearly, neither our need to maintain continu-ity between our courses and our student teach-ing supervision nor our needs as developingprofessionals were being met. We both enteredthis particular meeting with these frustrationsweighing heavily. We met to discuss an articleby Sui-Runyon (1995) that described anapproach to supervision that attends to learn-ers’ behaviors and perceptions as well as theteacher’s and gives equal attention to the physi-cal context and culture of the classroom. It pro-vided the catalyst we needed to stretch ourthinking beyond the lesson as the unit of analy-sis and observation as the primary source ofdata and to expand our conception of the rolesand relationships of the participants. In thespirit of critical inquiry, we set out to address thecontradictions between what we profess andwhat we do. We began by supervising eachother.

We did not enter into this potentially riskyrelationship lightly. For 8 years prior to begin-ning this work, we had engaged in an ongoingdialogue about our goals for our students andour assumptions about teaching, learning, cur-riculum, and research. We had talked about ourwork with Foxfire and Whole Language, twograssroots, progressive, school reform move-ments. We had cotaught corequisite courses andserved on curriculum revision committeestogether. We learned that our philosophies areconsistent and our teaching styles complemen-tary. We both believe, for example, that teachingis a deliberative process rather than the mereperformance of particular teaching strategies orbehaviors and that reflection is a tool for helpingstudents come to know themselves as learnersand teachers (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990;Dewey, 1938). We both want our students tolearn to ask critical questions about social justiceand equity, to articulate and defend a position,and to take risks in their thinking and practice.We both put a great deal of effort into commu-nity building in our classes and creating both aculture and a physical space that support dia-logue and reflection on experiences and textsthat yield professional knowledge (Dewey,1938; Olson, 1997). And we both share ananthropological view of qualitative researchthat casts the researcher as outsider and theresearched as the one with power, voice, andvalid perspectives.

So we set a trio of nested tasks for ourselves:first, to create a process that would address ourneed for peer review and professional develop-ment in our learner-centered classrooms; sec-ond, to assess both the process and the out-comes of that work; and third, if the processproved valuable, to extrapolate from our workwith one another to our work with our studentteachers. We would document our thinkingtogether in notes kept on our discussionsthroughout the work, notes taken during ourvisits to each other’s classroom, summaries weconstructed for each other from those notes, andour ongoing written reflections on our courses.With full knowledge of each other’s assump-tions and convictions and the parameters of our


work established, we set out to reconsidersupervision from the inside.

IT’S NOT “SUPER” AND IT TAKESFAR MORE THAN “VISION”

We began by acknowledging that we neededto create a process that would fulfill our contractrequirements for peer observation and review.Yet, we knew we needed a process thateschewed one-up one-down power positioningfor a nonhierarchical, supportive learning rela-tionship. The presence of a silent outsider in theback of the room taking notes and producingreports on classroom activities guided by anobservation instrument or the personal per-spectives and past experiences of the observerconstitutes an imposition of focus and perspec-tive from outside and above. Not only does sucha procedure fail to provide the kinds of profes-sional engagement and learning we hoped forour students and ourselves, it sabotages it. Priv-ileging the perceptions, experiences, and con-cerns of the supervisor narrows the focus,thereby severely limiting the potential learningfor all involved.

We were certain at the outset that the kind ofprofessional development we sought for ourstudent teachers and ourselves would take farmore than observation to accomplish. Althoughobservation of the teacher yields useful infor-mation, it can tell only a small part of the story ofwhat transpires in a complex, highly interactivelearning community (Sui-Runyon, 1995). Atten-tion to teachers’ observable behaviors concen-trates attention on technical performance andfails to capture the centerpieces of learner-cen-tered classrooms: students’ and teachers’ think-ing and learning; their intentions and strategies;and the roles, relationships, tasks, and culturesthey have negotiated to support these.

We also wanted a process that would bringreflection to a more conscious level of aware-ness and that would engage us and ultimatelyour students in articulating, deepening, andextending our thinking about teaching, learn-ing, and curriculum and broader issues ofschooling. Reflection of the sort described byDewey (1904, 1916, 1933) and Schon (1983, 1987)has been a central part of our program’s philos-

ophy and mission for a number of years. Werequire our students to keep reflective journalsabout their fieldwork and routinely ask them towrite reflective responses to in-class activitiesand out-of-class assignments, fieldwork, andtheir own progress. And we are both veteran, ifnot regular, writers of reflective journals andnotes on our own teaching. Yet, we still find itdifficult to make reflection productive andhabitual. We needed a process that would putreflection at its core, thereby providing yetanother opportunity to think about teachingand learning in a deliberate, focused, and publicway.

We also sought to create a process that wouldhelp stretch us beyond what we might accom-plish in our solitary reflections. Our roots in asocial constructivist psychology and personalexperiences talking and working together ascolleagues led us to look for more systematicways of using each other to force us to articulateand refine our thinking (Vygotsky, 1978). Wesought a level of professional engagement thatwould allow us to use language as a tool to chal-lenge and deepen our understanding of ourwork (Polanyi, 1958; Vygotsky, 1986; Wertsch,1985). The process and relationship we soughtbore some relationship to that of collaborator(Friesen, 1997; Glickman, 1992; Olson, 1997) orcritical friend (Gitlin & Smyth, 1989) in that ouraim was to affect each other at the level of think-ing, not just action, in the context of a procedurethat was primarily educative and only second-arily evaluative.

Finally, we wanted to create a process thatwould be responsive to our own particular con-texts and those of our students’ teaching, map-ping onto what existed rather than disrupting orintruding. The process should not intrude ontime that would otherwise be spent on meetingstudent learning goals, whether in our coursesor our student teachers’ classes. Where it didalter routines, it would have to do so in such away as to help students and teachers alike prog-ress toward significant learning goals. The pro-cess we created would have to be aligned withthe particular teaching philosophies of the par-ticipants, respecting personal values, beliefs,and goals. It would have to enhance, in other


words, rather than disrupt the culture andnorms of interaction that were in place. Yet, inthe end, it would have to lead us to question andchallenge those very values, beliefs, goals,norms, cultures, and practices.

THE COURSES

We each selected one of our courses as thefocus of our work. Cynthia’s course, Contexts ofSchooling, is an introductory foundationscourse in the undergraduate elementary teacherpreparation program. It is designed to intro-duce students to the social, historical, political,and philosophical contexts in which teachersand students conduct their work. A twice-weekly field experience in which the studentsobserve and assist in teacher-planned learningactivities in local, suburban, elementary schoolclassrooms accompanies and is integrated intothe course. Some of the students observed and/or participated in learner-centered teaching intheir field placements.

The course reflects a progressive, Deweyanphilosophy as operationalized in the FoxfireApproach to teaching, learning, and curricu-lum. The intent is to build a democratic, collabo-rative learning community where the studentsand instructor negotiate how they will worktogether toward course goals. Students’ ques-tions, concerns, and experiences provide pathsfollowed to reach those goals. Much of the con-tent and schedule for each class session isplanned by the students and instructor together.They modify or create classroom routines andschedules, make group and individual choicesabout topics to pursue, participate in creatingand implementing evaluation procedures, andreflect together on how well plans are helpingeveryone to meet course goals.

Suzanne’s course, Learning Language andLiteracy: A Personal View, is one of two lan-guage arts courses required in the undergradu-ate elementary teacher preparation program.The field experience is in an inner-city school.The main goals of the course are for students tobecome aware of their own literacy and con-sider its meanings for them as prospectiveteachers of language arts. They are simulta-neously learning the knowledge, skills, and atti-

tudes of effective language arts teachers. In thefield, students plan and implement instructionfor both small and large groups.

The course is rooted philosophically in theprinciples of Whole Language. Students partici-pate in writing workshops and literature studygroups, keep reflective learning logs, areencouraged to work collaboratively on inquiryprojects they have chosen for themselves, androutinely assess their own learning. There are, attimes, sharp contrasts between this campus-based learning environment and what the stu-dents see demonstrated in the field componentof the course. Whereas the field site school con-tinues to move toward a more learner-centeredview of teaching, the orientation remains pri-marily a teacher-directed transmission model ofinstruction.

INVENTING THE PROCESS

What would a supervision process thatmatched our philosophies and addressed ourparticular institutional contexts and constraintslook like? And how would we go about creatingthis process? We rejected structured proceduresand standardized instruments or forms withpredetermined observation categories that nar-row focus and impose predetermined ways ofseeing and interpreting. Working from agrounded theory perspective (Glasser &Strauss, 1967), we set out to understand the cate-gories that guided our work, find our questionswithin them, and develop ways to address themthrough focused, purposeful, reflective talk andwriting.

We began by talking at great length about ourgoals, the culture of our classrooms, the physi-cal settings, and what had transpired thus far inthe semester. We talked, too, about the assign-ments, texts, in-class activities, and work in thefield sites—the tools and products or artifacts ofour courses. And we thought together aboutour concerns about students’ progress, theeffectiveness of particular practices, and the ten-sions and frustrations we were experiencing.Not wanting our familiarity with each other’swork to blind us or our similarities to lead toassumptions that we truly understood theother’s intentions, we continued to talk to


uncover each other’s frameworks for teaching.We were adamant about not presuming tounderstand the other’s work or impose our ownframes on the other’s work.

We were careful, too, not to adopt the lan-guage or categories of supervision that reflectassumptions about teaching and learning thatwere inconsistent with our own. Rather thanbeginning with categories such as questioningtechniques, clearly stated objectives, well-orga-nized plans, or efficient use of time, we listenedfor our own categories to emerge. Our catego-ries, such as the culture of the classroom and theroles assumed by the teacher and learners, weremore global and included the students’ activi-ties as well as those of the teacher.

Our questions emerged from this initial talkas well. It was important to both of us that webetter understand what our students werelearning, how they were learning, and whetherand how they knew they were learning. We bothwere aware of the great distance between theconstructivist, learner-centered, democraticapproaches to learning that we were introduc-ing and our students’ prior experiences inschools as well as some of their fieldwork andcollege coursework. And there was tension inboth our classes between our expectations forour students’ participation as decision makers,evaluators, and initiators and the students’expectations of how a course should work.

We decided that while visiting each other’sclasses, we would ask the students a series ofquestions that we hoped would help us under-stand how our students were experiencing ourlearner-centered classes. The questions wouldbe posed to the full class with the teacher absent,and again to individuals and small groupswhile the class was at work on small grouptasks. The questions sounded deceptivelysimple:

• What are you learning in this class?• How do you learn in this class?• How do you know you are learning these things?• What are some of the artifacts of this class and what

are their functions in this class?

These questions proved difficult for the stu-dents to answer but yielded a great deal of use-

ful information (summarized below and treatedmore fully in Gespass & Paris, n.d.).

Our notes from talking with students and ob-serving were far richer and more varied thanthose that either of us made during studentteaching visits. They took the form of vignettes,snippets of dialogue overheard, and our ownquestions, expressions of awe, or frustration re-garding what was transpiring. These notes andthe reflections we each wrote following the vis-its were catalysts for many extended conversa-tions. For example, when Suzanne was inCynthia’s classroom, students were marvelingat how children they had observed had accom-plished group tasks independently. Whenasked how they thought the teacher had pre-pared the children to do this, their responsessuggested they believed that only what theteacher was doing was salient. Suzanne’s notescaptured this discussion as well as her ownthoughts:

This was an interesting interchange for me because Iremember being really excited about the initial in-sight the students seemed to have about the class-room setting and what conditions enable students tobecome involved. However, when they were askeddirectly I was disappointed because their responsedealt exclusively with teacher talk and actions suchas telling, summarizing, and giving assignments.Not that these things aren’t important, it’s just thatthey don’t really get beyond a surface level of overtteacher behavior.

This brief aside invited shared reflection on amoment that might have gone by barely noticedor not been pursued as deeply. Our honest, gen-uine musings invited conversations that al-lowed us to puzzle together over our students’perceptions of teacher and student roles, try outinterpretations, and play with implications inour practice.

Throughout the process, talk and writingserved as the primary vehicles for our work.Our talk and writing differed in character fromthat which is common in more traditional, for-malized supervision processes. First, our talkand writing were reflective throughout. Ratherthan delaying reflection until after the class-room visit, reflection was the hallmark of theentire process, from thinking together about


purposes and problems and articulating ques-tions before the classroom visits to the ques-tions, musings, and connections that werenoted, along with details of what transpired ineach other ’s class (Cochran-Smith, 1989;Friesen, 1997; Olson, 1997).

Second, our talk and writing were wide-rang-ing in that they took in far more than the singleclass session visited. Rather than seeking to sim-plify or reduce, we expected and sought out themessiness of teaching that McDonald (1992) rec-ognized and celebrated. Although we talkedbefore the visits about what would transpire onthe day we each spent in each other’s class, thisdescription was embedded in stories of eventsthat preceded and shaped what would mostlikely be happening on that particular day. Afterthe visits, we used the ideas sparked by what wehad experienced to look outward to the whole ofour teaching. Our talk was laced with referencesto analogous situations in previous classes nowunderstood differently or more clearly. Singleinstances captured in a quote from a student, avignette recorded in our notes, or a reflectionwritten in our notes were seen in relation to thewhole of our teaching and took on addedweight when understood as part of a largerpattern.

Finally, our writing and talk also differed inpurpose. Our purpose was not merely to docu-ment, report, assess, or coach but to deepen andextend our understanding of our teaching.Although we did produce reports that served aspeer reviews, these were but the by-products ofthe process. The real value was in the processand the opportunities it provided us to stretchand challenge our understanding of ourteaching.

EXAMINING THE PROCESS

But did the process yield enough learning tojustify the time and effort expended? And, if so,were there features that could be used in oursupervision of student teachers?

We have no doubt that we gained importantunderstandings about our teaching. Readingand rereading the data, we sought patterns thatwould help us understand the experience oflearning and teaching in learner-centered

classes. As categories emerged, they were testedusing a constant comparative approach (Glas-ser & Strauss, 1967). The data against which wetested these categories included, but were notlimited to, data collected in preparation for, dur-ing, and following our classroom visits. Webrought forward past events in these classesand others in efforts to confirm or disconfirmwhat we were finding. For the remainder of thesemester and throughout the writing of this arti-cle, we continued to test and refine the catego-ries against evolving experience. Those thatremain have withstood exceptional testing andquestioning in our day-to-day practice.

The themes we identified were, not surpris-ingly, present in both classrooms: responsibility,power, and purpose. Each highlighted areas oftension, provided a close-up view of these areasof our work, and brought forward tacit knowl-edge for closer examination. (See Paris &Gespass, n.d., for a more detailed discussion.)

Responsibility, we knew, was a complex andunresolved issue for our students. In spite of themany opportunities we provide for them to takeresponsibility for their learning—setting per-sonal goals, making decisions about how theywould meet certain course requirements, con-ducting their own inquiry and reading groups,and setting daily schedules, for example—welearned that few took these on happily or easily.

Those who did appreciated the respect theseresponsibilities communicated as well as thefreedom they allowed. A dawning appreciationof their responsibility for their learning wasdemonstrated in their descriptions of the rolesthey took on in both classes and how these dif-fered from their roles in other classes. Furtherinto the discussion of the question, What areyou learning? one student responded, “I didn’treally understand how much I was learning.There’s a lot of responsibility. We’re all learningfrom each other.” Another student remarkedthat the conscious reflection on the group pro-ject helped her see that she was responsible forher own learning. A third student said withpride, “We’re given so much responsibilityhere . . . more than in other courses.”

Others endured the responsibilities offeredthem. Some resisted. We were accustomed to


hearing the refrains, “Just tell us what to do!”and “Tell us what you want!” Making revisionsand making choices about group work oragenda setting were occasions for reluctanceand resistance.

Overall, we were struck by how few studentssaw themselves as active participants in theirown learning. Some of those who did appearedto come to this realization slowly. When dis-cussing how they learned in these classes, theyregularly referred to teacher-selected materialsand teacher-instigated activities such asassigned readings. They neglected those thatthey had created themselves. Students inCynthia’s classroom were surrounded by wallscovered with large newsprint sheets on whichthey had recorded their questions about varioustopics, what they had learned in group explora-tions, and educational jargon they had found intheir reading. Students in Suzanne’s classroomsat among the children’s books they had justwritten and their own reflective journals. Bothgroups had written self-assessments during theclasses visited. Yet, they overlooked these,appearing not to recognize that these artifactsrepresented opportunities for them to shapeand control their own learning.

There was a dawning recognition in some ofthe students of the scope of their responsibilityas we asked each other’s class to talk about howthey knew if they were learning. Responsescame slowly, and their first answers put respon-sibility on us. The comment, “Dr. Gespass com-ments on my log” drew appreciative nods fromclassmates. With time and further thought,other answers surfaced that acknowledged thatthey did not have to rely on us for assurancesthat they were learning.

In small group and full class discussions I know. Ifyou have things to say, you know something. If not,you don’t!

It was weird for me. When my parents asked me howI was doing in this course I didn’t know what to tellthem. In other courses I could tell them what grades Igot on the tests. I realized that I was learning becauseI could talk to them about issues in education.

These responses illustrate the struggle manystudents have thinking about themselves as ac-tive participants in their own learning.

Power, a related issue, was problematic aswell. We were well aware that no matter howdemocratic we tried to be, by virtue of our statuswe and our students are in unequal power rela-tionships (O’Reilly, 1989). Issues of sharingresponsibility for grading were particularlystrained, for here the issues of power wereundeniable. One of Cynthia’s students, whootherwise found learner-centered approacheswell suited to her independent style and was aleader in group decision making, spoke for anumber of her exasperated classmates when shedeclared in the midst of creating a gradingrubric, “Well, why don’t you just do it yourself?You’re the one who has to give us our grades!”

Learning to exercise power involves takingrisks. Whenever students recommended grad-ing criteria, established class agendas, selectedreadings, organized groupings, or suggestedchanging a procedure or activity, they were risk-ing possible negative responses from theirpeers. An event in Suzanne’s class offers a strik-ing example of the personal vulnerabilityinvolved in exercising power. Astudent chose tospeak out about the rudeness of fellow class-mates during a peer presentation. Her concernswere met with tears and anger from her class-mates. In contrast, the same comment made bySuzanne in other situations had been acceptedwithout incident.

Exercising power requires trust in oneself aswell. Suzanne observed a very rich and complexdiscussion in Cynthia’s class in which studentscritiqued their group exploration to set goalsand parameters for their individual explora-tions. Their assessments were sharp, their rec-ommendations valid. Most were engaged. Butfew recorded any of the ideas shared. Yet, assoon as Cynthia added her guidelines for cita-tions and voice, the students no longer wereinterested in their discussion but chose, instead,to copy down furiously each word Cynthiauttered. The change in the atmosphere wasquite jarring. Her comments shut down themore interesting discussion in which studentswere crafting their next assignment. And wewere reminded that creating settings that sup-port students’ assumption of power is notenough.


Finally, we were confronted with the dispari-ties between our students’ purposes and ourown. Their purposes were most often finite andspecific. For example, some saw the goal of anactivity as producing a lesson plan; we saw it aslearning about curriculum-making and cri-tique. Some saw materials and activities wemodeled in class as the way to teach a particularskill or analyze a particular event rather than asstrategies or tools to be used in myriad situa-tions. A simple quote from a student calledattention to these differences in purpose. Itcaused us to recall similar instances and com-ments from other students we have taught. Indescribing how she learned, the student said,“She [Suzanne] puts us in these situations.”Where we saw in-class and out-of-class activi-ties as continuous and interrelated experiences,she and many others saw a series of discon-nected “situations.” If we had not visited eachothers’ classes, we would not have heard thosewords in the same way. We would not havequestioned their meaning or launched into aprobing discussion that allowed us to thinkabout purposes from our students’perspectives.

The process clearly yielded learning that mat-tered to us and that would immediately affectour teaching at the level of our thinking. Some ofwhat we learned was a surprise. Much was notaltogether new to us but had been dimly per-ceived in the past. Our writing and conversa-tions allowed this tacit knowledge to becomeexplicit (Polanyi, 1958). Had we not engaged inthis process, we would not have been remindedof the extent to which our students need supportand explicit instruction in taking on responsibil-ity and power. And we would not have beenaware of the degree to which our students’ pur-poses and our own diverged and of the need tomake our purposes explicit and help studentsarticulate and examine their purposes. This wasthe kind of learning we wanted for our studentteachers.

GENERALIZING THE PROCESSTO STUDENT TEACHING

Looking at the process apart from the detailsof our particular questions and the ways we de-

vised to address them, we see that the processhad the following generalizable features:

Determining boundaries for the process: We acknowledgedinstitutional constraints that set boundaries on whatmight be an acceptable peer review process in ourpromotion and tenure process. Our philosophies,our purposes, and the particular contexts of ourclassrooms constituted another set of givens. Wethen invented freely within these boundaries.

Establishing a shared task: We talked about our goals, ourconcerns, our philosophies, and our contexts to de-termine the focus of our work together. In doing so,we constructed a shared task that, in our case, was tounderstand how our students were experiencingour learner-centered classrooms. Clear parametersfor the work to be done together were established.

Delineating responsibilities in our shared task: We decidedhow to work together to pursue answers to thequestions we had posed. We negotiated our rolesand responsibilities in response to the demands ofour shared task. Within the task we took oncomplementary roles, but we had a shared purposefrom the outset: to increase our understanding ofteaching.

Deciding what counts as data: With our questions andpurposes in mind, we imagined ways to gather in-formation. To do so, we needed to address the priorquestion of what counts as useful data. Observationprovided only one source of data, and it was re-corded without interpretation. Students’ perspec-tives provided the central source of data. Our ownreactions, questions, and musings formed an addi-tional but separate source of data. These notes, stu-dents’ written reflections, and our own writtenreflections all combined to form a shared databasefrom which we could work toward answers to thequestions we had posed for ourselves.

Enlarging the unit of analysis: Having begun by discuss-ing the whole of our teaching, then identifying aquestion or concern that was relevant to more than asingle activity, we broke through the boundaries ofthe lesson as the unit of analysis. All of our teachingbecame available to bring to bear on our questions.

Coconstructing meanings: From the initial conceptionthrough planning, implementation, and analysis,we thought, talked, and wrote together. Our roles,the shape the process would take, and the meaningswe derived from the experience were socially con-structed through the medium of language. Workingfrom the perspective of grounded theory, we helpedeach other construct questions that reflected ourconcerns. We did not rely on the standard languageof supervision and its categories for observationsuch as clarity, organization, and such that limitwhat we see and constrain thought and analysis.Forced to name our own categories, we were re-quired to engage in shared analysis of what we val-


ued and what we hoped to achieve. Even if some ofthe traditional categories and language emerged,the shared construction of understanding that thewords represented advanced our thinking.

All of the above placed us, the teacher/learn-ers, at the center of the process. Our beliefsabout teaching and learning, as manifested inroles, activities, structural features, and thequestions we posed gave direction to the pro-cess. We were actively engaged incoconstructing and codirecting the process.And while acting as each other’s partner in thisprocess, the one was not positioned above butbeside the other in her work to understand herteaching more fully.

Shifting the teacher/learner to the center ofthe process and the focus from the technical per-formance of discrete teaching techniques andstrategies to the development of professionalthinking yielded a process of greater breadthand continuity. With our thinking as the focus,all of our teaching was drawn into the processand the conception of supervision wasenlarged. Reflective conversations grew for-ward into our ongoing teaching; they reachedbackward and outward. A single remark calledto mind a host of earlier events in the coursesand from other parts of our teaching pasts. Ittriggered rounds of storytelling. Past experi-ences were brought forward and examinedtogether and given new meaning by this singleremark. We were engaged in what Ben-Peretz(1995) called a “critical refinement of memory”through dialogue and a transformation of expe-rience into professional wisdom. Notes takenduring and after the classroom visits were lacedwith references to analogous situations in previ-ous classes now understood differently or moreclearly. Similarly, incidents in later class ses-sions, a bit of professional reading, a conversa-tion with another colleague, a private musingkept reviving the initial conversations, drawingthem forward into our current teaching. Singleinstances captured in our brief time together inour classrooms were seen in relation to thewhole of our teaching and took on addedweight when understood as part of a larger pat-tern. We had created a process that linkedtoday’s learning to what came before and built a

foundation for subsequent thinking and learn-ing, what Dewey (1938) called ‘continuity’ andidentified as an essential quality of educativeexperience.

EXPERIMENTING WITH LEARNER-CENTERED SUPERVISION

Now, with some generalizable structuresidentified, we set out to apply these to our stu-dent teaching supervision. It was not our inten-tion to reproduce the process we devised forourselves. The questions we posed and theways we worked together were a function of ourparticular concerns, our stages in our careers,our institutional requirements, and our long-standing professional relationship. We took thegeneralizable features we had identified and,informed by what we had learned about the sig-nificance of issues of responsibility, power, andpurpose, established a structure for moving ourstudent teacher/learners into the center of thesupervision process. What we share below is asummary of our first tentative experiments withthis process.

Planning and documenting the work. We beganby replacing the traditional supervision formfor reporting on the lesson observed with a tem-plate that would guide and document all of ourwork together. Although on the surface thismay appear to be a mere exchange of one formof paperwork for another, it was not a trivialchange. As Apple (1986) argued, the texts andother tools of our work exert technical control,defining and limiting the exercise of profes-sional thinking and action. Standard supervi-sion forms limit attention to only those aspectsof the student teacher’s work that someone out-side the setting has deemed important and de-fine the work of the supervisor as documenting,evaluating, recommending changes in the stu-dent teacher’s performance, and reporting. Thestudent teachers are cast as objects of rather thanactors in the process. We needed a tool thatwould alter the exercise of power and responsi-bility and include the student teacher in settingthe purposes. The template contained the fol-lowing headings:


Setting personal goals: The student teachers were re-quired to set personal goals for their own profes-sional development, discuss them with theircooperating teachers, and revisit and revise thesegoals regularly.

Establishing a focus for each visit: In preparation for eachvisit, we talked with the student teacher about his orher goals and used them to decide together on a fo-cus for the visit.

Gathering documentation: Together we decided whatkinds of observation data might be useful for us togather during the classroom part of the visit. We alsoconsidered what other forms of data might beneeded when we met after the classroom visit tothink together about their questions or goals. Rele-vant material might include old plans, their reflec-tive journals, samples of student work, texts,curriculum guides, professional reading they weredoing, and so on.

Written reflection on the work done in the visit: Followingthe visit, the student teacher drafted a reflectivesummary of our work together and sent it on to us.We added our perspectives and posed questions de-signed to challenge their thinking further and re-turned it to them for additions or revisions.

Revisit and revise personal goals: During each visit, and inphone calls and meetings between visits, we woulddiscuss their personal goals. Each report ended withreflection on and revision of their personal goals.

During the past 2 years, 28 student teachershave participated with us in developing studentteacher/learner–centered approaches to super-vision. Below, we outline some of the ways wehave worked with these student teachers withinthis structure extrapolated from our work ascolleagues. Excerpts from collaboratively writ-ten reflections following classroom visits, ourown reflections and notes from visits, individ-ual meetings with student teachers, course eval-uations, and a focus group meeting illustratewhat we have learned so far about thisapproach.

Determining boundaries for the process. The in-stitutional requirements that bounded our workwere clear. Supervisors were required to com-plete six classroom observations with post-conferences and file six observation reports inthe director of field placement’s office. In addi-tion, the student teachers’ progress on the re-quired teaching unit had to be monitored andlesson plans checked regularly. We wereguided, as well, by our own convictions about

the value of learner-centered practices. Our goalwas to establish a structure for a process thatwould be responsive to both our convictionsand the requirements of our institution.

Looking back, we recognize that we held thepower to shape the process described above. Wealso acknowledge that it is both our responsibil-ity and our purpose to establish boundaries andstructures that will increase our students’opportunities to succeed (Dewey, 1938). Yet, bybeing aware of our use of this power, we canremain open and flexible to challenges to thestructures in place and invite students to alterthe structures to better suit their purposes andneeds.

Establishing a shared task. For our studentteachers to take a more central role in this pro-cess, they needed to know the institutional re-quirements as well as our philosophies andpurposes. Consequently, our first meeting withour student teachers focused less on proceduralmatters and far more on making institutionalconstraints and our own perspectives, ques-tions, and purposes explicit. We also helpedthem articulate their own concerns and goals.With all relevant knowledge aired, we couldmore fully share responsibility for the workahead.

The shared nature of the process was evidentthroughout. The student teachers set personalgoals that they used to determine the focus ofthe work we did in each visit. We plannedtogether how we would collect relevant data toaddress that focus, and we coauthored a reflec-tive summary of the work done in each visit.Purposes were jointly set; responsibility for theconduct of our work was shared.

An extended example from a student teacherplaced in a full-day kindergarten illustrates theshared construction of a semester-long task sheset for herself. Three weeks into her studentteaching experience, she asked Cynthia to thinkwith her about “fostering independence” in herstudents. Together, they decided that at the nextvisit Cynthia would keep notes on any eventshaving to do with independence. Following theclassroom portion of the visit, they wouldexamine those notes as well as any of her earlier


lesson plans that she felt were relevant to herconcerns. But clarification was necessary—What did she mean by “independence”? Ratherthan selectively noting events related to herown meanings, Cynthia prefaced the notes shetook with this question: “How do you defineindependence? Depending on your definition,the following could foster or prevent the growthof independence.”

Descriptions of seating arrangements, proce-dures for children speaking in turn, and givingdirections for a project followed. The discussionduring this visit centered on the studentteacher ’s uncovering and articulating hermeanings for independence and Cynthia’sworking to understand her meanings. Together,they were coming to some understanding of theparameters of this shared task. In a reflection onthis goal written shortly after the visit, the stu-dent teacher recorded some of her initial strug-gles with what fostering independence meantto her and her own assessment of her progresstoward doing so.

I try to allow students choices surrounding a struc-tured lesson. . . . I feel I have a long way to go until Ibecome a teacher who promotes independent learn-ing in which students coconstruct the lesson. As ofthis point, I feel that I have given students some in-dependence which allows them to think on theirown, but I feel I need to integrate more.

Over the course of the semester, fostering inde-pendence was an undercurrent of their work to-gether, and each took responsibility forrevisiting it. Cynthia noted opportunities forfostering independence that she recognized inthe classroom for them to consider together; thestudent teacher mused in writing aboutwhether a teacher can foster independencewhile conducting a full-group lesson.

It is important to note that it is the sharednature of the work that maintains the integrityand rigor of the process. Learner centerednessdoes not mean abandoning the studentteacher/learner to find his or her way alone.Success is a shared responsibility (Starnes &Paris, 2000). Thinking together and planningwork together provides checks on setting a friv-olous purpose, too narrow a focus, or drawingunwarranted conclusions. But here, the issue of

power looms large. We needed to constantly beon guard against acting in ways that permittedor encouraged student teachers to defer to ourperspectives when it was important that theyconstruct their own.

Delineating roles and responsibilities in ourshared task. The distribution of responsibilityand power is clear in traditional supervision.The observer must conduct a preconference, ob-serve closely and record what transpires duringthe teaching episode, and provide descriptionand evaluation to the observed. The observedmust produce and discuss a lesson plan in ad-vance, be present to teach at the agreed-on time,and receive the observer’s coaching and evalua-tion. These responsibilities are clearly differenti-ated, ritualized, and conducted to a large degreeindependently. In our shared process, the rolesare interdependent and less clearly differenti-ated in terms of power and responsibility. As il-lustrated in the example above, questioning,planning, wondering, challenging, and assess-ing were not assigned exclusively to one or theother.

In a taped session with our student teachersnear the end of a semester, we all reflected on theprocess, and the students shared their percep-tions of the roles and responsibilities we negoti-ated together:

I went into student teaching thinking that [she] wasmy supervisor and I was the student teacher and shewas up here and I was down here. And I was so im-pressed to find out that was totally not what it was.When we did our observations, we did them to-gether. We did them eye-to-eye. . . . In that sense, weworked as a team rather than instructor and student.

Others shared their agreement, then anotherstudent added,

I liked that we talked about the focus before everylesson we presented so that we were on the samepage when she came in to observe, so she knew ex-actly what she was in coming in [for], and what myobjectives were, what she wanted me—er, what shewanted me to have her focus on. That was clearly un-derstood before she came in.

As the last student’s hesitation and pronounconfusion reveals, the roles and responsibilitieswere new to all of us. Sharing such responsibil-


ity and power requires a great deal of mutualtrust, which must be cultivated in a relationshipof undeniably unequal power.

And we were asking extraordinary things ofthem. Coplanning our visits and coconstructingreports requires more time, effort, and vulnera-bility than leaving such tasks to the supervisor.So, too, does expecting student teachers towiden their focus to include not only their day-to-day performances in the classroom but thewhole of their professional development. Therole and responsibilities of the student teacherwere significantly enlarged.

Although a few student teachers have re-sisted what they perceived to be too many revi-sions of the coconstructed reports, most havehad more positive experiences. This is remark-able in that no other student teachers at the uni-versity are required to participate in writingthese reports. The following comments takenfrom taped reflections on the process suggestthat they appreciated the opportunities thatcowriting these reports provided for productivereflection.

It got my thinking constantly going when I had to sitdown and write [the supervisor] that e-mail on thereflection. It gave me time to think, to sit back and re-ally think.

It’s kind of like a self-realization process where youtake a look at somebody else’s perspective and yourperspective, and it makes you see things that youdidn’t see. And then you’re able to think themthrough in the reflections.

Furthermore, student teachers have told us thatthey appreciated the fact that thesecoconstructed reflections on each supervisoryvisit were submitted to their files in place of therequired supervisory reports, giving them voicein ways that others did not.

But this expansion of the student teacher’srole and responsibilities did not diminish ourown. In many ways, we discovered more waysto engage with the student teachers. When gath-ering observation data and when coauthoringthe report, for example, we found many oppor-tunities to share what we were thinking, whatpuzzled us, and what came to mind when weencountered a particular event or idea. For ex-ample, while visiting a student teacher’s class-

room, there were several instances of childrenfreely sharing their misunderstandings andconfusions. It prompted one of us to share herown musings about what she had seen, therebyinviting them to see and think with a more expe-rienced teacher:

I’m thinking about why the children feel so free toadmit not knowing in this class. The demands for ex-cellence are high. And the curriculum is challenging.Why do they feel it is OK not to know?

By looking to the student teacher/learner andthe questions—theirs and ours—that arose outof their experiences, our role was, in fact, inten-sified. Dewey (1938) described putting thelearner’s experiences at the center of teachingand learning as allowing “more multiplied andmore intimate contacts” between the matureand the novice, and “consequently more, ratherthan less, guidance by others” (p. 21).

Deciding what counts as data. Once the focus ofeach visit was established, we decided togetherwhat kinds of data we would each bring to thework. Looking beyond the development oftechnical skills to the whole of their professionaldevelopment required that we not rely solely onobservations of their teaching to address theirquestions. Together, we gathered materials. Oldplans and those in preparation, written reflec-tions, samples of student work, professionalreading, materials from professional work-shops, curriculum guides, resource books, chil-dren’s literature, and notes on children wereconsidered as possible sources of data to bringto our work together.

In this way, student teachers shared responsi-bility for making the professional decisionsabout how to go about finding answers to theirquestions about their teaching. Old lesson plansand plans in progress might be examined as wepuzzled over their questions about curriculumor management. This gave careful documenta-tion of their preparations for teaching, anauthentic purpose that was often absent whenwe simply required our student teachers toshow us their plans in the past.

Enlarging the unit of analysis. From the outset,we treated what transpired in the classroomsduring our visits as windows through which we


and our student teachers would examine largerissues in teaching. When setting goals and se-lecting a focus for our work during one of thevisits, we encouraged student teachers to lookbroadly at their work. Sometimes, they identi-fied discrete skills such as working on the intro-duction to their lessons, but more often theirconcerns were far larger. One student spentmuch of the semester seeking ways to help herfifth graders become self-reliant, independentlearners. Another was interested in increasingher observation skills and exploring other waysto assess her students. These students’ purposeswent beyond developing the skills required, al-though that is not to say skills were not attendedto. They were developed, and made meaning-ful, as student teachers focused on the larger,more complex issues of the teacher’s role as fa-cilitator and kid-watcher and as they found andexplored questions that could not be satisfied byimplementing a single strategy or perfecting adiscrete skill. Reflecting on the process at theend of her student teaching experience, one stu-dent wrote, “I felt I was the main componenthere—not how my 1-hour lesson went, but me,how I handled myself, how I’ve grown, andwhere I’m going.”

Coconstructing meanings. By focusing on thestudent teachers’ questions, concerns, and ex-periences, we could provide the students withopportunities to construct meanings out ofthose experiences in the writing and talking wedid together. Concepts they may have encoun-tered before took on new relevance and depth asthey worked them through in writing and talk.For example, a student teacher wrote the fol-lowing reflective summary of a visit, drawingon her experiences and the subsequent talkabout those experiences:

In doing journals today, I listened to their differentstories more thoroughly and asked them more ques-tions about what they wrote and were drawing. It isreally amazing to hear all of the different things theyare able to recall through a few things drawn on thepage. I also noticed that when you talk with themabout their drawing and writing, they are more aptto try and write. For instance, when I was talkingwith N. about her weekend, she told me that sheplayed with her friend S. We talked about the differ-

ent things they did. She then came back to me a whilelater and told me that she had written a poem aboutthe different things they did. It was fascinating.

Had she not been given the opportunity to thinkand talk and write about this with someone else,she might never have recognized the power oftalking to children about their writing. It was apractice she had learned about before, but nowit became part of her larger understanding of theteacher’s role in a child’s literacy development.Talking to children about their writing was not askill to be checked off on an observation list. Itwas a concept that was addressed explicitly inher planning following this visit until it becameintegrated into her repertoire.

SO WHAT IS IT IF IT’S NOT“SUPER”-“VISION”?

Bateson (1989) pointed out that our languageoffers no words to describe asymmetrical butnondominant mentoring relationships, “a termthat would assert both collegiality and the factthat the process is made possible by our differ-ences” (p. 102). Like so many others who havegrown uncomfortable with the traditional lan-guage of supervision (Glickman, 1992), we triedon a series of weak words to replace the termsthat no longer fit what we are and do. We talkedabout working together rather than supervisingand planning our visits rather than our observa-tions. Maybe thinking together or learning togethercaptures the spirit of the shared deliberations oftwo professionals at different points in theircareers. There is some real charm to such vague,colloquial terms. They seem less likely tobecome jargon, less likely to harden around a“model” of how to work with student teachers.

And guarding against this hardening isimportant to us. Our purpose is not to put for-ward yet another model of supervision. Instead,our intent is to emphasize the importance ofdeveloping a process that grows out of theneeds of particular teachers, responds to theirassumptions and goals, recognizes the con-straints and possibilities of the context, andrespects the ongoing work of all participants. Inother words, we are not suggesting a competingmodel to be adopted by others but proposing


one way of developing a process of workingtogether to help meet particular needs and capi-talize on particular strengths. We want to effectwork at the level of thinking about practice.What we are suggesting is that we need to moveaway from trying to squeeze all teaching andprofessional development relationships into theformalized clinical supervision mold (Gold-hammer, 1969; Showers & Joyce, 1996). And it isnot even sufficient to adapt and refine thatmodel to accommodate progressive, learner-centered, democratic, or critical teaching.Instead, we need to think in terms of the particu-lars of teaching. We need to develop ways ofworking together that are contextualized andphilosophically consistent and that capitalizeon our particular strengths to answer our partic-ular questions. What we offer here is not a rigidprocedure but a tool or structure for thinkingabout working with beginning teachers.

In practice, this means that each of us mayconstruct somewhat different relationships andprocesses with each student teacher. The taskmay be quite daunting—or maybe not. It willmean acknowledging that issues of power,responsibility, and purpose will shape our worktogether whether we attend to them or not. Itmay come down to an issue of wide-awakeness(Greene, 1978) or mindfulness (Langer, 1989), ofalways remaining conscious of how we arecoconstructing the process and relationshipswith our student teachers. It will mean stayingalive to the process rather than slipping into rit-ualized patterns and roles. It will mean enlarg-ing the focus of our work together to go beyondthe isolated lesson that unfolds in our presenceand to regard it as an entry point into question-ing and considering the whole of the studentteacher’s work. It will mean expanding ourthinking about what counts as data when weexamine the student teacher’s work together toinclude not only what is seen but what isthought. It will mean consciously making linkswith experiences and thinking that accompa-nied or preceded the present lesson. And it willrequire that we remain humbly aware that weconstitute only one part of this negotiated rela-tionship and process and that when we impose

too much of ourselves, we rob our studentteachers of valuable opportunities for profes-sional learning.

This is intense work by any name. There is agreat burden placed on the student teacher andthe supervisor. The process requires trust in thestudent teacher’s and supervisor’s profession-alism and reflective capacities. That is what wesay we want for our students—to become teach-ers who are responsible for their own profes-sional development and deliberative abouttheir teaching and their own professionalgrowth. For this, they must be put at the centerof the process—naming their purposes andfinding the questions, sharing responsibility forshaping the process, and taking account of thelearning.

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Cynthia Paris is an associate professor at Rider Uni-versity in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Her areas of special-ization include teacher agency and learner-centeredapproaches to teaching and learning to teach.

Suzanne Gespass is an associate professor at RiderUniversity. Her areas of specialization are literacy and lit-eracy assessment.



BOOK REVIEWS

A CAUTIONARY TALEREVIEW OF LEFT BACK: A CENTURYOF FAILED SCHOOL REFORMS

Patrick ShannonPennsylvania State University

Ravitch, Diane. (2000). Left Back: A Century of Failed SchoolReforms. (555 pages). New York: Simon & Schuster.

In Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms,Diane Ravitch tells a story of schooling in 20th-century America. I chose the word story, ratherthan history, because story connotes a subjectivevoice that directs the actions and thoughts ofcharacters to construct a plot. Typically, historyis thought to be an objective description of fac-tual events that are reported, not interpreted.Historiography does not appear to have a par-ticular point of view or a goal beyond the trans-mission of information about the past. On theother hand, stories enjoy such liberties. Historyseems to have rigor; stories do not. Yet, thesedistinctions may be more illusion than reality(White, 1978). Although historians strive to-ward accuracy, the writing of history, as with allwriting, involves choices of topic, treatments,and trope—choices that are based, consciouslyor unconsciously, on the writer’s theories of hu-man nature and social reality. During an inter-view with Aimee Welch, Ravitch made this con-nection between story and history.

Where my book breaks new ground is that it is a dif-ferent telling of American educational history. Thestory that has always been told is of the triumph ofprogressivism over traditionalism. What peoplenever got when hearing the story of traditionalismbeing vanquished was what it was being replacedby. (Welch, 2000, p. 24)

I chose the indefinite article in the phrase tellsa story (and not the story) to convey the notionthat there are many stories (histories) to tell

about 20th-century American schooling.Competing theories of human nature and socialreality can be applied to this subject (see, e.g.,Finkelstein, 1979; Kliebard, 1986; Tyack & Cu-ban, 1995). In the curriculum parlance of the lateLawrence Cremin, Ravitch’s doctoral thesis ad-viser and the premier educational historian ofhis time, Ravitch spins a humanist tale. She val-ues the development of students’ reasoningpower, sensitivity to beauty, and high moralcharacter throughout the consideration of thebest traditions of Western civilization. (As shereported to Welch [2000] during the interview,her story is intended to cancel out Cremin’s ownhistory, The Transformation of the School [1961],which promoted progressive education inschools as largely . . . well, progress.) This is notto claim undue bias on Ravitch’s part. Rather, itis to identify that she is a member of a discoursegroup—humanist educators—that shares cer-tain values, a certain language, and a particularworldview. In a sense, Ravitch does not speakfor herself; the humanist discourse speaksthrough her to other discourse groups con-cerned with education. She is a remarkably con-sistent and eloquent mouthpiece.

A HUMANIST DISCOURSE

Ravitch’s account updates the oldest modelof education, one that suggests that education islearning the best about the past through initia-tion into the world of cultural and academic dis-cipline. It is a conserving rather than necessarilya conservative discourse. Plato spoke about this

413


model in The Republic when discussing the cap-tive in the cave seeking knowledge that wouldlead him from darkness to the light. This is anapt metaphor for Ravitch’s hope—to lead stu-dents out of the darkness of incivility and igno-rance into the light of prescribed cultural tradi-tions and knowledge. The humanist discoursebegins with the assumption that there is noinnate human nature—people are not predis-posed toward good or evil—they are born withonly the potential to be rational. Humanist phi-losopher R. S. Peters (1965, p. 102) described thisassumption as “no man is born with a mind.” Todevelop a mind means to acquire an awarenessover time differentiated by the civilized tradi-tions people use to make sense of the world. Todevelop one’s mind is to become fully human.The purpose of schooling is to initiate neo-phytes into social groups with this awareness.In other words, schools create human beings byinviting the mindless to master the impersonalcontent and procedures of established and legit-imized social groups.

For humanists, then, schooling marks out noparticular type of transaction between teachersand learners; it states criteria to which suchtransactions must conform. The traditions ofsense making in the humanist model are theacademic disciplines that provide the theoriesthrough which we attempt to understand andcontrol our physical and social environmentsand the moral codes that provide the values andbehaviors that make society possible. Humanistteachers are responsible to these disciplines andcodes. Their task is to try to get others on theinside of a public form of life that they share andconsider to be worthwhile. Teachers are notdetached operators; they are insiders chargedwith the induction of new members of “their”society. This is an onerous but honorable role.As Peters (1965, p. 107) put it, “Children start offin the position of the barbarians outside thegates. The problem is to get them inside the cita-del of civilization so that they will understandand love what they see when they get there.”

Because all barbarians must be civilized lestthey wreak havoc on society, all people mustlearn as much of these academic and moral tra-

ditions as possible. This is a twofold conditionfor humanist schooling. First, schools mustenroll all students who come to their doors.Once these students are engaged, they musteach receive the same chances to acquire thehighest academic and moral knowledge appro-priate for their age. (Age is the only factor onwhich adjustments in curriculum can bemade—race, gender, and class should not giveadvantage or disadvantage to any learner.) Tobe considered educated, all must learn thebasics within a discipline and must also come tounderstand its historical structure, its ethics,and its relationships with other disciplines. Allstudents are to remain generalists, who maydevelop a specialty at some advanced stage intheir schooling. Until students choose to leaveschool, they should have equal opportunity todevelop their minds and to be “distinguishednot so much by what he does as by what he seesor grasps” (Peters, 1965, p. 100).

Second, the relationship between teacher,learner, and learning requires that learners notonly acquire new information but also developa respect and love for that content and the learn-ing itself. Without these dispositions, learnerslimit the development of their minds and arresttheir evolution as human beings. This secondaspect of the condition of schooling precludescertain pedagogical practices from humanistschools. External rewards are not needed be-cause they detract from the intrinsic value oflearning. Learners learn to love the rewards, notthe learning itself. Training cannot be used be-cause it undercuts the sophisticated aspects andconnections of content. Implicit forms of in-struction designed to enable students to dis-cover or construct their thoughts or opinionsmisrepresent the social, impersonal nature ofthe content. That is, interpretation and criticismare acceptable only from those scholars whohave been judged knowledgeable and respect-ful of the traditions by educated others.

The pupil must gradually get the grammar of the ac-tivity into his guts so that he can eventually winthrough to the stage of autonomy, but he cannot dothis unless he has mastered the moves made by hispredecessors which are enshrined in the living tradi-tions. (Peters, 1965, p. 109)


RAVITCH’S TALE

If readers understand these basic tenets of thehumanist model of education, then there arevery few surprises in Left Back. In fact, Ravitch’splot is so predictable that I am probably the onlyone who will read every word in the book, foot-notes and all. In keeping with Western tradi-tions, Ravitch chose a traditional Western storygrammar for her history. She describes a setting,offers a cast of characters, and supplies a plot (aproblem, attempts to solve the problem, a reso-lution, and characters’ reactions to the resolu-tion). The setting is simple—20th-centuryAmerican educational institutions—with mostof her attention focused on secondary schools.Ravitch varies her gaze among national move-ments, state initiatives, school district pro-grams, and rarely classroom practice. Shedevotes most of her ink to policies and the ideasthat directed policy makers toward authoriza-tion of certain values. This emphasis in the set-ting is understandable given her current role ascoordinator of educational policy research at theBrookings Institution.

Ravitch’s characters wear white hats or blackhats. (John Dewey is assigned a dunce cap forrecognizing that academics were essential butnot insisting that progressive educators includethem in their plans.) Wearing white hats areLester Frank Ward, William Torrey Harris, Wil-liam Bagley, Carleton Washburne, Isaac Kandel,Michael Demiashkevich, and Robert MaynardHutchins, all of whom refused to compromisehumanist values. Harris, Bagley, Washburne,and Hutchins should be recognizable to anyoneeven vaguely familiar with the history of Amer-ican education. They championed the develop-ment and maintenance of traditional curriculaduring the first half of the 20th century. Ravitchfinds their stance laudable because they werenot influenced greatly by the “fads” ofprogressivism.

Ward, a 19th-century sociologist, is listedamong Ravitch’s heroes because he was amongthe first to identify what Ravitch considers to bethe only shortcoming of traditional schooling(the problem for her plot). Ward noted thatknowledge and power were associated and dis-

tributed unequally among Americans to thedetriment of democracy. His solution was to useschools to close the knowledge (and thereforepower) gap between society’s haves and havenots. Such sentiment led the Committee of Tento declare in 1893,

every subject which is taught at all in a secondaryschool should be taught in the same way and to thesame extent to every pupil so long as he pursues it,no matter what the probable destination of the pupilmay be, or at what point his education is to cease.(p. 17)

This statement presents Ravitch’s preferred so-lution to the problem confronting Americanschools then and now.

Ravitch applauds Isaac Kandel, a professor atTeachers College, for ridiculing progressiveeducators when they suggested during theGreat Depression that schools should take upWard’s challenge to redistribute power in soci-ety directly.

Although Ravitch is critical of MichaelDemiashkevich’s interest in tracking, shedevotes seven pages to explaining what shelabels the sharpest critique of progressive edu-cation from any source, An Introduction to thePhilosophy of Education. “Demisahkevich con-trasted essentialism, with clear standards andbelief in moral responsibility for one’s actions,with progressivism, which approved of what-ever was useful or instrumental for themoment” (p. 294). Remarkable as it may seem,Ravitch characterizes these defenders of aca-demic traditions as a harassed minority amongthe power discourses of education in the 20thcentury.

Wearing Ravitch’s black hats are HerbertSpencer, G. Stanley Hall, Edward L. Thorndike,Lewis Terman, David Snedden, William Kilpat-rick, Harold Rugg, W. W. Charters, GeorgeCounts, and James Bryant Conants. Accordingto Ravitch, their sins were many and varied, buttheir primary fault was being united in theiropposition to humanist approaches to educa-tion entrenched in public elementary and sec-ondary schools across the United States. Eachcan be labeled progressive in the sense that theybelieved in the possibility and desirability ofmoral and social improvement in the human


condition. They sought to achieve this “prog-ress” by removing structures (physical andmental) that obstructed improvement and byadvocating measures they believed would pro-mote it. These progressives focused on thereform of humanist schooling in order that thisgovernment agency might serve all Americancitizens fairly. And this, of course, is whyRavitch paints all progressives as villains. Theysought to solve the problem of the unequal dis-tribution of knowledge through means that didnot hold the existing school structures sacred.

As Ravitch acknowledges, progressives andtheir critiques can be divided into three some-what distinct discourses: child centered, scien-tific management, and social reconstructionist.Like the humanist discourse, each has its ownshared language, values, and worldview. Eachoffers a vision of the past and future and projectsa different ideal of human development. Andeach critiques all other educational discourse asfalling short of solving the problem of inequita-ble distribution of knowledge among Ameri-cans. Hall, Kilpatrick, and Rugg represent thechild-centered discourse that disputed human-ists’ basic assumptions about human nature andsocial reality. Borrowing from Rousseau, child-centered advocates turned the humanist modelon its head. The individual is born human and isthen corrupted by social impositions of culturaland moral traditions that pull him or her awayfrom goodness. If protected early from society,the individual will learn to understand nature,himself or herself, and others (in that order)with an increased chance of social and ecologi-cal harmony as its direct consequence. In Emile,Rousseau had advised, “you have not got toteach him truths so much as to show him how toset about discovering them for himself” (1762/1972, p. 131). Such assumptions led child-cen-tered advocates to question the impersonal“truths” of academic and moral traditions thatwere imposed by the school curricula and tovalue what “truths” the children brought withthem to school as well as ones they might dis-cover while there. Moreover, for child-centeredadvocates, the process of discovery, and not thecontent of discovery, was to be most highly val-ued. When educators acted on these values, it is

easy to see why humanists like Ravitch consid-ered them villains.

Thorndike, Terman, Snedden, Charters, andConant worked from a different set of values toimprove schooling in America. Foremost intheir thinking was the notion that scienceshould be used to make schooling more effec-tive, more efficient, and more available. Plato’stheories of remembrance, Rousseau’s theoriesof mental transactions, and the like were consid-ered too subjective to calculate the workings ofthe mind, and therefore they were replaced bythe objective measurement of behavior evokedby the conscious efforts to manipulate the envi-ronment. Thorndike (1906, p. 265) explained,

The judgments of science are distinguished fromother judgments by being more impartial, more ob-jective, more precise, and more subject to verifica-tion by any competent observer and being made bythose who by their nature and training should bebetter judges. Science knows or should know no fa-vorites and cares for nothing in its conclusions butthe truth.

With nothing favored, academic and moral tra-ditions were scrutinized scientifically to deter-mine which held the highest utility forindividuals and social groups. Once identified,these experiences, ideas, and behaviors becamethe goals of schooling. In this way, schools couldmore efficiently and effectively meet the needsof society and the academic and moral tradi-tions of the humanist model. Once the goals ofschooling were identified, science could then beused to determine the most effective and effi-cient way to meet those goals. Finally, sciencecould be used to determine who is most likely tomaster which goals for what purposes, and inwhat time. Employing this logic, advocateschallenged traditional humanist curricula andorganizations of traditional schooling andsought to replace them with the best that sciencehad to offer. Advocates of scientific manage-ment were unwilling to wait for social improve-ments through evolution. Rather, they soughtscientific interventions to engineer the improve-ments. In this process, they undercut many ofthe basic tenets of the humanist model: ancientlanguages, whole class instruction, and teachercontrol of curricular content, to name a few.


Ravitch saves the darkest shades of black hatsfor the social reconstructionists—Counts andlater Kilpatrick and Rugg. Advocates of this dis-course suggested that schools should redirecttheir attention and resources to the social prob-lems of the day with the expressed intention ofmaking society more democratic, more equal,and more just. They based their argument on thefact that individuals, academic disciplines, andmoral traditions did not and could not exist insocial isolation; rather, they were products ofsocial negotiations of the past and present.Social reconstructionists interpreted Ward’sconcern for the maldistribution of knowledge asa consequence and cause of an unequal distribu-tion of power and wealth in the United States.Social reconstructionists believed that if schoolswere to contribute to the redistribution ofknowledge, then they must engage directly inthe social negotiations taking place aroundthem. As Counts (1932, p. 263) explained, “neu-trality with respect to the great issues which agi-tate society is practically tantamount to givingsupport to the most powerful forces engaged inthe contest.” Accordingly, the academic andmoral traditions promoted in humanist modelswere implicated directly with causes of the basicproblem facing 20th-century schooling. Socialreconstructionists attempted to solve this prob-lem by directing the design and practice of cur-ricula toward the development of citizens ableand willing to engage actively in civic life (local,state, national, and international) to ameliorateinequality and injustice. Citing Kandel, Ravitch(p. 227) considers social reconstructionism to be“mere nonsense.”

After tracing the failures of progressive dis-courses across most of the 20th century, Ravitchfinds resolution to her story in the standardsmovement of the 1990s. Her 90s begin in 1983with the Nation at Risk report that detailed anaccount of school failures. At the core of thataccount, Ravitch argues, is the notion that teach-ers are no longer responsible to the academicdisciplines and moral codes that enabled theUnited States to become the world leader politi-cally, economically, and culturally. Because theteachers are no longer responsible, then cer-tainly students cannot be, and our international

leadership is in jeopardy. On the heels of thatfirst report came a slew of others that attemptedto explain how schools and teacher educationmight alter their structures and activities toreverse these failures. Carefully hiding the phil-anthropic, business, and government brokeringof consensus among these reports, Ravitchexplains how these calls for academic standardsand content-specific examinations present thebest path toward regaining teacher and studentresponsibility and securing American leader-ship internationally.

Currently, 49 states have academic standardsthat specify what students should know in alltraditional disciplines, and 38 states require (orwill require) students to pass standardizedexaminations based on those standards to pro-ceed through the grades and to receive a highschool diploma. In effect, these standards andexaminations put teeth in the Committee of TenReport from 1893, making sure that all who stayin school will receive the same education. Andthe grip of these teeth is tightening. For exam-ple, during his first week in office, PresidentGeorge W. Bush gave notice that the federalgovernment will provide financial incentives tostates and districts to score high levels on theseexams and will punish those that do not. Formembers of scientific management, child-cen-tered, or social reconstructionist discourses,these are tough times. It will be difficult for anyschool personnel to resist federal and state pres-sure to toe the mark on standards and tests. Bythe end of Left Back, the humanist agenda in edu-cation is nearly completed. Ravitch’s storyoffers humanist educators a happy ending.

REACTIONS

If Ravitch’s position is clearly ascendant inthe 21st century, then why does she write a his-tory of the foibles of other educational dis-courses during the 20th? For an answer, youmust recognize that history is not only about thepast. Rather, historians write to explain thechoices available in the present as well. (Thinkof Barbara Tuckman’s A Distant Mirror, aNational Book Award Winner for History in1987, in which she detailed the 14th century to


teach us about our struggles for recognition inthe 20th century.) Ravitch tips her hand con-cerning her intentions only after 452 pages. “Ifthere is a lesson to be learned from the river ofink that was spilled in the educational disputesof the twentieth century, it is that anything ineducation that is labeled a ‘movement’ shouldbe avoided like the plague” (p. 453). It is thatsimple. She argues that Americans have noneed to question the fundamental structures oftheir schools now that standards and examina-tions are in place. We need no new educationalmovements, just as we did not need or benefitfrom the educational movements of the past.Rather, we should stay the course humanisteducators have set for us.

Without a need for questions, we have no realneed for educational experts or the places thathouse them. Although teachers must learn to beresponsible to academic standards and moralcodes, they can acquire this sense of responsibil-ity in liberal arts colleges. The pedagogy neces-sary to initiate students into authorized tradi-tions can be acquired during the practice ofteaching in schools, and therefore there is littleneed for teaching-methods courses in English,math, or the sciences. As Ravitch makes clearthroughout Left Back, colleges of education wereand are the breeding grounds of variant dis-courses that offer alternative visions of school-ing, learners, and society. She believes that with-out these pockets of resistance to the currenthumanist plans, schools can “concentrate on thefundamentals of their mission” (p. 467).

Of the 28 journal and newspaper reviews ofLeft Back that I read—some written by liberalswith thick academic credentials like DavidTyack, Herb Kohl, and Nicholas Lemann—onlyone addresses Ravitch’s purpose for writing herstory. In the conservative Policy Review (from theHeritage Foundation), attorney Jon Jewett(2000, p. 69) noted, “the reformers dominated(and through their ideological heirs, still domi-nate) the education schools, and they will con-

tinue to be impervious to the unappealing oldtime-tested truths.” If that is not throwing downthe gauntlet, then I do not know what is. Withacademic standards and content examinationssecure, Ravitch and the humanists for whomshe speaks have set their sights on their next tar-get: schools of education. If they cannot shutthem down, then they intend to make themaccountable to academic standards and themoral traditions now encoded in state laws andfederal proposals. For many who read the Jour-nal of Teacher Education, Diane Ravitch’s Left Backwill read like a horror story.

REFERENCESCounts, G. (1932). Dare the schools build a new social order?

New York: John Day.Cremin, L. (1961). The transformation of the school: Progressiv-

ism in American Education, 1876-1957. New York: Knopf.Finkelstein, B. (1979). Regulated children/liberated children:

Education and psychohistorical perspective. New York:Psychohistory Press.

Jewett, J. (2000). Progress v. Progressive Education. PolicyReview, 48, 67-70.

Kliebard, H. (1986). The struggle for the American curriculum,1893-1958. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Peters, R. S. (1965). Education as initiation. InR. Aruchambault (Ed.), Philosophical analysis and educa-tion (pp. 87-111). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Rousseau, J. J. (1972). Emile (B. Foxley, Trans.). London:Everyman. (Original work published 1762)

Thorndike, E. L. (1906). The principles of teaching based onpsychology. New York: A. G. Seeler.

Tuckman, B. (1987). Adistant mirror. New York: Ballantine.Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: Acen-

tury of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Welch, A. (2000, November 22). A culture war in theschools. Insight, 38, 24.

White, H. (1978). Tropics of discourse: Essays in cultural criti-cism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Patrick Shannon is a professor of education at Penn-sylvania State University. He is a former preschool andprimary grade teacher. His most recent books are BecomingPolitical, Too; iSHOP, You Shop; and Reading Poverty.



Journal of Teacher Education

Index, Volume 52

Number 1 January/February 2001 (pp. 1-88)Number 2 March/April 2001 (pp. 89-176)Number 3 May/June 2001 (pp. 177-260)Number 4 September/October 2001 (pp. 261-344)Number 5 November/December 2001 (pp. 345-424)

Authors

ALLARD, JOANNE, see Chubbuck, S. M.APPLE, MICHAEL W., “Markets, Standards, Teaching,

and Teacher Education,” 182.BANKS, JAMES A., “Citizenship Education and Diversity:

Implications for Teacher Education,” 5.BEN-PERETZ, MIRIAM, “The Impossible Role of Teacher

Educators in a Changing World,” 48.BEYER, LANDON E., “The Value of Critical Perspectives

in Teacher Education,” 151.BURROUGHS, ROBERT, “Composing Standards and

Composing Teachers: The Problem of National BoardCertification,” 223.

CHANDLER-OLCOTT, KELLY, see Sapon-Shevin, M.CHUBBUCK, SHARON M., RENEE T. CLIFT, JOANNE

ALLARD, AND JANE QUINLAN, “Playing It Safe as aNovice Teacher: Implications for Programs for NewTeachers,” 365.

CLIFT, RENEE T., see Chubbuck, S. M.COBB-ROBERTS, DEIRDRE, see McFalls, E. L.COCHRAN-SMITH, MARILYN, “Desperately Seeking

Solutions” [Editorial], 347.COCHRAN-SMITH, MARILYN, “Higher Standards for

Prospective Teachers—What’s Missing From the Dis-course?” [Editorial], 179.

COCHRAN-SMITH, MARILYN, “Learning to TeachAgainst the (New) Grain” [Editorial], 3.

COCHRAN-SMITH, MARILYN, “Multicultural Educa-tion—Solution or Problem for American Schools?”[Editorial], 91.

COCHRAN-SMITH, MARILYN, “Reforming TeacherEducation: Competing Agendas” [Editorial], 263.

FARAHMANDPUR, RAMIN, see McLaren, P.FEIMAN-NEMSER, SHARON, “Helping Novices Learn

to Teach: Lessons From an Exemplary SupportTeacher,” 17.

FOOTE, MARTHA, see Zeek, C.GABEL, SUSAN L., “ ‘I Wash My Face With Dirty Water’:

Narratives of Disability and Pedagogy,” 31.GALLEGO, MARGARET A., “Is Experience the Best

Teacher? The Potential of Coupling Classroom andCommunity-Based Field Experiences,” 312.

GESPASS, SUZANNE, see Paris, C.GORE, JENNIFER M., “Beyond Our Differences: A Reas-

sembling of What Matters in Teacher Education,” 124.HULING, LESLIE, VIRGINIA RESTA, and NANCY

RAINWATER, “The Case for a Third Alternative: OneUniversity’s TRIP,” 326.

JACKSON, ALECIA YOUNGBLOOD, “Multiple Annies:Feminist Poststructural Theory and the Making of aTeacher,” 386.

LEIBBRAND, JANE A., see Wise, A. E.MCFALLS, ELISABETH L., and DEIRDRE COBB-

ROBERTS, “Reducing Resistance to Diversity ThroughCognitive Dissonance Instruction: Implications forTeacher Education,” 164.

MCLAREN, PETER, and RAMIN FARAHMANDPUR,“Teaching Against Globalization and the New Imperi-alism: Toward a Revolutionary Pedagogy,” 136.

MERRYFIELD, MERRY M., “The Paradoxes of Teaching aMulticultural Education Course Online,” 283.

MOREY, ANN, “The Growth of For-Profit Higher Educa-tion: Implications for Teacher Education,” 398.

MURRAY, FRANK B., “The Overreliance of Accreditors onConsensus Standards,” 211.

MURRELL, PETER C., JR., “Development of Practice andTeacher Preparation in the Age of Education Reform”[Book Review Essay], 78.

PAJAK, EDWARD, “Clinical Supervision in a Standards-Based Environment: Opportunities and Challenges,”233.

PARIS, CYNTHIA, and SUZANNE GESPASS, “Exam-ining the Mismatch Between Learner-CenteredTeaching and Teacher-Centered Supervision,” 350.

QUINLAN, JANE, see Chubbuck, S. M.RAINWATER, NANCY, see Huling, L.RESTA, VIRGINIA, see Huling, L.SAPON-SHEVIN, MARA, and KELLY CHANDLER-

OLCOTT, “Student Cohorts: Communities of Critiqueor Dysfunctional Families?” 394.

SCHULTE, ANN K., see Zeichner, K. M.SHANNON, PATRICK, “ACautionary Tale: Review of Left

Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms” [Book Review],413.

419


SLEETER, CHRISTINE E., “Preparing Teachers for Cul-turally Diverse Schools: Research and the Overwhelm-ing Presence of Whiteness,” 94.

TEITEL, LEE, “An Assessment Framework for Profes-sional Development Schools: Going Beyond the Leap ofFaith,” 57.

VAVRUS, MICHAEL, “Deconstructing the MulticulturalAnimus Held by Monoculturalists” [Book Review], 70.

WALKER, CAROLE, see Zeek, C.WARE, LINDA, “Writing, Identity, and the Other: Dare We

Do Disability Studies?” 107.WATERS, GISELE A., see Whang, P. A.WHANG, PATRICIA A., and GISELE A. WATERS,

“Transformational Spaces in Teacher Education:MAP(ing) a Pedagogy Linked to a Practice of Free-dom,” 196.

WISE, ARTHUR E., and JANE A. LEIBBRAND, “Stan-dards in the New Millennium: Where We Are, WhereWe’re Headed” [A Statement From NCATE], 244.

ZEEK, CATHERINE, MARTHA FOOTE, and CAROL F.WALKER, “Teacher Stories and Transactional Inquiry:Hearing the Voices of Mentor Teachers,” 377.

ZEICHNER, KENNETH M., and ANN K. SCHULTE,“What We Know and Don’t Know From Peer-ReviewedResearch About Alternative Teacher Certification Pro-grams,” 266.

Articles

“An Assessment Framework for Professional Develop-ment Schools: Going Beyond the Leap of Faith,” Teitel,57.

“Beyond Our Differences: A Reassembling of What Mat-ters in Teacher Education,” Gore, 124.

“The Case for a Third Alternative: One University’s TRIP,”Huling et al., 326.

“Citizenship Education and Diversity: Implications forTeacher Education,” Banks, 5.

“Clinical Supervision in a Standards-Based Environment:Opportunities and Challenges,” Pajak, 233.

“Composing Standards and Composing Teachers: TheProblem of National Board Certification,” Burroughs,223.

“Examining the Mismatch Between Learner-CenteredTeaching and Teacher-Centered Supervision,” Parisand Gespass, 398.

“The Growth of For-Profit Higher Education: Implicationsfor Teacher Education,” Morey, 300.

“Helping Novices Learn to Teach: Lessons From an Exem-plary Support Teacher,” Feiman-Nemser, 17.

“ ‘I Wash My Face With Dirty Water’: Narratives of Dis-ability and Pedagogy,” Gabel, 31.

“The Impossible Role of Teacher Educators in a ChangingWorld,” Ben-Peretz, 48.

“Is Experience the Best Teacher? The Potential of CouplingClassroom and Community-Based Field Experiences,”Gallego, 312.

“Markets, Standards, Teaching, and Teacher Education,”Apple, 182.

“Multiple Annies: Feminist Poststructural Theory and theMaking of a Teacher,” Jackson, 386.

“The Overreliance of Accreditors on Consensus Stan-dards,” Murray, 211.

“The Paradoxes of Teaching a Multicultural EducationCourse Online,” Merryfield, 283.

“Playing It Safe as a Novice Teacher: Implications for Pro-grams for New Teachers,” Chubbuck et al., 365.

“Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools:Research and the Overwhelming Presence of White-ness,” Sleeter, 94.

“Reducing Resistance to Diversity Through Cognitive Dis-sonance Instruction: Implications for Teacher Educa-tion,” McFalls and Cobb-Roberts, 164.

“Student Cohorts: Communities of Critique or Dysfunc-tional Families?” Sapon-Shevin and Chandler-Olcott,350.

“Teacher Stories and Transactional Inquiry: Hearing theVoices of Mentor Teachers,” Zeek et al., 377.

“Teaching Against Globalization and the New Imperial-ism: Toward a Revolutionary Pedagogy,” McLaren andFarahmandpur, 136.

“Transformational Spaces in Teacher Education: MAP(ing)a Pedagogy Linked to a Practice of Freedom,” Whangand Waters, 196.

“The Value of Critical Perspectives in Teacher Education,”Beyer, 151.

“What We Know and Don’t Know From Peer-ReviewedResearch About Alternative Teacher Certification Pro-grams,” Zeichner and Schulte, 266.

“Writing, Identity, and the Other: Dare We Do DisabilityStudies?” Ware, 107.

Book Review Essays

“Development of Practice and Teacher Preparation in theAge of Education Reform,” Murrell, 78.

Book Reviews

“A Cautionary Tale: Review of Left Back: A Century of FailedSchool Reforms,” Shannon, 413.

“Deconstructing the Multicultural Animus Held byMonoculturalists,” Vavrus, 70.

Editorials

“Desperately Seeking Solutions,” Cochran-Smith, 347.“Higher Standards for Prospective Teachers—What’s

Missing From the Discourse?” Cochran-Smith, 179.“Learning to Teach Against the (New) Grain,” Cochran-

Smith, 3.“Multicultural Education—Solution or Problem for Amer-

ican Schools?” Cochran-Smith, 91.“Reforming Teacher Education: Competing Agendas,”

Cochran-Smith, 263.

A Statement From NCATE

“Standards in the New Millennium: Where We Are, WhereWe’re Headed,” Wise and Leibbrand, 244.


JTE Submission RequirementsGeneral articles and research manuscripts. Authors must send six printed copies (unstapled) along with a self-

addressed stamped 9½” x 12½” envelope with sufficient postage for one manuscript to Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Editor,Journal of Teacher Education, Campion Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA02467. (Electronic submissions will not be ac-cepted.) Additional information regarding the submission of manuscripts can be found on the Internet at www.aacte.org.The editors submit manuscripts to blind review; therefore, writers must exclude authors’ names, institutions, and clues tothe authors’ identities.

Length. Manuscripts must be typed or word processed. A manuscript, including all references, tables, and figures,should not exceed 25 pages. Authors should keep tables and figures to a minimum and include them at the end of the text.

Typing. All text, including title, headings, references, quotations, figure captions, and tables, must be typed double-spaced with one-inch margins all around.

Style. For writing and editorial style, authors must follow guidelines in the Publication Manual of the American Psycho-logical Association (1994, 4th edition). The editors request that all text pages be numbered.

Abstract. All general and research manuscripts must include an abstract. Abstracts describing the essence of the manu-script must be 150 words or less and typed double-spaced on a separate page.

Cover page. Authors must include their names, titles, institutions, mailing address, daytime phone number(s), fax num-ber(s), and e-mail address. Also provide a brief (10 words or fewer) description(s) of author(s)’ area(s) of specialization.

Book reviews. The JTE accepts unsolicited reviews of current scholarly books on topics related to research, policy, orpractice in teacher education. Book reviews may be submitted to either themed or open topic issues of the journal. Prefer-ence will be given in the review process to book review essays that review and comment on two or more related books.Book review essays should not exceed 12 double-spaced typed pages and include city, state, publisher, and the year of thebook’s publication. Reviews of single books should not exceed 5 double-spaced typed pages. Authors must send sixprinted (unstapled) copies along with a self-addressed stamped 9½” x 12½” envelope with sufficient postage for onemanuscript to Gerald Pine, Book Review Editor, Journal of Teacher Education, Campion Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill,MA 02467. (Electronic submissions will not be accepted.) The editors submit book reviews to blind review; therefore, writ-ers should exclude authors’ names, institutions, and clues to the authors’ identities.

Upcoming Issue Themes

November/December 2002

International Perspectiveson Teacher Education

As we enter the new century, the appropriate role of col-leges and universities in the preparation and ongoingeducation of teachers is highly contested in the U.S. andin many other nations around the world. In fact, someof the reforms that are now emerging in the UnitedStates have already been experienced in other nations(e.g., reduction in the ranks of tenured and tenure-trackfaculty, severe limitations or even elimination ofteacher education at postsecondary institutions, ex-panded state and/or national control of teacher educa-tion and certification, growing varieties of alternativeroutes to teacher certification, and new structures forteacher preparation programs such as for-profit andonline teacher education). We seek manuscripts thattake an international perspective by considering theseand other reforms and developments in teacher educa-tion. Manuscripts may address lessons to be learnedfrom cross-national comparisons, the factors that con-tribute to the development of specific reforms in spe-cific locations, perspectives on international reforms inteacher education that are informed by historic, cul-tural, and national differences, and/or the role thatteacher education can or should play in societies.

Manuscript submission deadline: January 1, 2002

September/October 2002

Open Topic

The editors seek manuscripts dealing with any appro-priate aspect of research, practice, and policy in teachereducation. We particularly encourage writers to takecontroversial stands, challenge orthodoxy, and stimu-late thoughtful reflection and discourse. Both empiricaland conceptual manuscripts are encouraged.

Manuscript submission deadline: November 1, 2001.

January/February 2003

Open Topic

The editors seek manuscripts dealing with any appro-priate aspect of research, practice, and policy in teachereducation. We particularly encourage writers to takecontroversial stands, challenge orthodoxy, and stimu-late thoughtful reflection and discourse. Both empiricaland conceptual manuscripts are encouraged.

Manuscript submission deadline: March 1, 2002.

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