GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE:
THE CONFLICT OF PARADIGM SHIFT

Rhonda May

Once the snow falls in Manitoba, drivers are faced with constant decisions. Drive in the ruts or make a new path. Slow down and risk getting stuck in the snow or plow ahead full speed and take your chances at the next intersection. The ruts are safest. You know where you're going and you can see where others have been before you. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get out of the ruts once you're in them, and should you need to turn a corner, you may find yourself unable to. Sometimes the snow is so deep that you do not realize you're driving in the ruts until you try to change direction and find you can't. Unwillingly, many of us bounce from one set of ruts to another. For me, a paradigm shift is like winter driving. Teachers who are struggling to understand and find their way between paradigms are traveling on snow-covered, icy roads.

There wasn't one specific moment when I began to question the wisdom of traveling in the ruts; rather, it was a series of events which coincided. One such event was the decision to join a group of Seven Oaks teachers who are pursuing their Masters' degrees, and the work which followed.

The initial focus of the study group was teacher action research. An important component of the program was the gathering of data from our teaching experiences and reflection on that data and on readings related to research and teaching. During that time, one critical incident which consumed much of my time and energy related not to my classroom but to my horse, Blazing Heart. She became injured during a training session with a visiting clinician. He was attempting to show my equitation coach a particular training technique. He was aggressive and demanding, and as a result, my horse reacted in fear and anger. Fortunately, no one was riding her at the time. She reared, leapt in the air, then came crashing down on her hip. Her head had been restrained, and she could not recover her footing. She was seriously injured and required several hours of nursing and therapy each day.

The incident was witnessed by several people. I wasn't there, but I watched it on video tape later that day. The stories about the incident were told and retold, and the changes in the retelling reflected many factors. My coach was initially motivated to tell the story in such a way as to downplay the trainer's responsibility, with the strong suggestion that my horse was trying to attack the trainer. Observers saw other reasons for the outcome. When I watched the tape, I saw something different. Each witness retold the story several times. It prompted some negotiation on the part of those involved, some changes in training technique, and rethinking. My coach modified her initial response as she thought back to her own experience and relied less on the visiting expert. She took some of his instruction to heart, but considered her own experience and modified her approach.

The visiting trainer, for several possible reasons, ignored some basic principles of learning. It was as if he was teaching a child to add. He began with single digit numbers. The student was confused and couldn't answer correctly. He slapped the student's fingers. The student still didn't understand. He gave the student double digit numbers instead. The student grew increasingly frustrated. He kept slapping her fingers. Is it any wonder the student reacted the way she did? He assumed that his training technique was unsuccessful because she did not want to learn.

I wrote about the incident in a research journal I was keeping for class, and used it in my next class assignment. It seemed natural to relate the experience to my teaching.

Of course the parallels to the classroom are many. The subsequent events were educational as well. The difficulties of time management, of negotiating curricula, of the need to understand the causes of refusal and failure, of how difficult it can be to work as a team when the team members do not share some common philosophies, these are some of the issues which arose for me as a teacher. As curriculum leader, this incident so closely paralleled some of my experiences last year that I might have used it to write my portfolio evaluation.

I was a learner in this story. My horse had never needed such extensive therapy and care. I felt anger, frustration, fatigue, worry, and depression throughout the process of learning how to manage my horse's recovery. Many times I understood how my students could react because I felt the same way.

How can teachers who need to work as a team best negotiate practice and philosophy? How can we best determine the causes of a child's failure and acting out? How can I manage my time better to allow for unforeseen difficulties?

Judith Newman, the course instructor, suggested that this piece would be a cornerstone in my research narrative. At the time, I wasn't so sure, but I wrote the phrase, "All my kids are Blazing Hearts" on the cover of my text and left it at that. I had, early in my studies, read a piece by Frank Conroy, in which he suggests that "The light bulb may appear over your head,… but it may be a while before it actually goes on." (1991)The light bulb had appeared for me, but it wasn't until much later that it glimmered. Many other critical incidents would occur, along with a great deal of discussion and reflective writing before that was to happen.

One of the most significant of those critical incidents which was to challenge the paradigm in which I functioned was a brief dialogue with one of my students. Kent was a Senior 4 student in an English class which I took over a few weeks into the term. Prior to being assigned this class, I had become involved in a divisional research project which involved several of the senior four students in another class. I had attended a work session with these students at the school board office and as we entered the school I stopped to chat with Kent

"Hi Ms. May. Where were you today?" I explained briefly about the special project.
"How did those students get chosen?" Kent asked.
"I asked them if they would join the project." I answered.
There was a pause, then Kent said, "You didn't ask me."

Those four words struck me forcibly. Afterward I thought, why didn't I ask him? In this instance I had a good excuse, since I wasn't teaching Kent when I took on the project, but I knew that I would probably not have asked him anyway. At that time I looked for students who would be motivated to complete what would be a long term project, and who had shown good academic skills. Kent belonged to a group of students many teachers in our school called "G" kids. These students had chosen to enter an English stream in senior three which was traditionally for students who did not, for a variety of reasons, wish to continue their education after high school. At that time, I would not have asked students from these classes to work on a long-term project such as this one. It had been my experience that many of these students were uninterested in extra projects, were unengaged, and would not have been interested in the work the project called for. Two things prompted me to reconsider these assumptions. One was Kent's question. It seemed as if several other questions lay below the surface. What assumptions did I make about these students? What was I trying to avoid by seeking students who had a proven track record? What did this decision suggest about my attitudes toward these students?

Another reason that Kent's question resonated so strongly for me related to changes I had made in the approach I took with his class, partly in response to the Provincial examination. I had administered the exam in first semester to specialized senior four classes, and had found it within the abilities of my students. However, I felt my class of "G" students would be challenged by many aspects of the exam. I felt concerned for their well being, both academically and emotionally. The students in my general class had been in a streamed system for most of their senior years' experience. The group included ESL transition students, students who were chronic non-attenders, and students who, for one reason or another, had chosen or been recommended to what was seen as a less demanding academic path. Now, they were faced with writing a provincial exam for which they were unprepared. They had written exams, but always tailored to a less demanding curriculum. Reading and writing ability in a general class was, on average, considerably lower than in a specialized class. I faced the provincial exam full of apprehension for my students. How was I going to help them do their best? It was important to me that they "do well." It was important to me that they fulfilled my definition of literate. How could I prepare them? What were my concerns? How could I get them engaged?

I began trying to create an environment which encouraged students to write. I had begun with top-down, teacher-centred assignments, but the students didn't complete them. I offered more choices in topic and format, according to the students' needs and interests. I did not assign content- based questions, and students had some choice in the novels and thematic material they read, and I encouraged all of the students to use word processors which were situated just outside of my classroom. The results were encouraging. Many students became eager to do their best and anxiously awaited their results. They stopped asking, "What mark did I get?" and asked instead, " Did you read my story? What did you think?" I began to make the assignments more open-ended to encourage as much choice as possible. The more freedom I gave, the more writing I got. Students who worked at the computer were outside my room. No teacher hung over them, and, more often than not, I was too busy to trouble shoot when they had questions about their work or the computers. Of necessity they became less dependent on me. They relied on each other for help, both with the computers and with their writing. I installed a grammar program and showed one of my second-language students how it worked. Before that time, his mechanics had severely impeded the reader's ability to understand his content. With a computer to make his text legible, and the grammar and spell programs to assist with mechanics, his writing began to reflect the maturity and complexity of his thoughts for the first time. He was also able to assist other students with their writing.

My classroom began to look much different from the beginning of the term. To the casual observer, there were few differences. Frequently the room was empty. This time, though, the students weren't skipping, they were working at computers, or at the library, or curled up with a book on the carpet in the open area. Students sought me out for editing assistance, to read their documents, or to chat about their writing assignments. I no longer began the class with, "Today we're going to…." Instead, class often began with a parade of students who entered the room, grabbed either a folder or a computer disc, and said, "Hi Miss May. I'll be at the computer working on my story. I'm almost ready to print. What are we doing today?" The question of that day's lesson always seemed to come last. Was this what a student-centred class looked like, I wondered.

It was the difficulties presented by individual students which pushed me to challenge some of my long-held beliefs and to change my practice further. Kent had been a passive member of the class for most of the term. For Kent, school work was closely related to his personal values. He did the assignments because school was important, and completing the work was respectful, appropriate behaviour. Learning wasn't an issue. The final novel assignment was an essay. I felt driven to assign one more essay before the exam. Kent came to see me.

"I don't know what to write about.", he said.
"Write about some aspect of the novel that interests you." (Some days the lights are on but no one's home.)
"Nothing in the novel interests me." he said.
"Nothing?"
"Well, I'm not really interested in baseball."
"Then why did you pick that novel?"
"I thought it would be easier than the other ones."
"Kent, I really need you to write one more essay. Just for the practice and so you can be sure you know how. I'm pretty sure there will be some type of essay on the exam. Is there nothing you've read this term that you could write an essay on?"
"Not really. "
What would it matter if he didn't write an essay on something he'd read? Wasn't I only concerned that he be able to write one? "OK," I said, "How about you just write me an essay on anything. Make sure you have a clear thesis statement, and that you develop your paragraphs well."

Kent handed in his essay a few days later. His topic? His personal viewpoint on the Serb.-Croatian conflict. The writing? Clear, coherent, and effective. No wonder he felt no connection to a man who builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield. Kent was far more concerned about his parents' homeland and his cousins' involvement in the fighting there. Kent's work showed me that my earlier insistence on giving essay topics or even assigning a particular novel in no way guaranteed that the student would learn something useful.

I wasn't ready to completely free my students, but I was becoming far more open minded not only about how my students could develop and demonstrate writing skills but also about how rigid my practice still was. This awareness would not have been possible had I not become involved in a study of the teacher action research process. Offering more choice, more opportunities for students to work independently was only the beginning of my understanding of the paradigm in which I operated as a teacher. An work by Guba and Lincoln marked the beginning of major change in my "universe." The authors thoughtfully distinguished between two paradigms which I had never before considered: the conventional, or positivistic, and the alternative, or naturalistic. The authors state that "Reality is multiple; those multiple realities are the constructions made by the human actors involved, and there are as many realities as there are actors. " (1988) I was beginning to see the enormity of the chasm between my practice and my growing understanding of constructivist theory, but I still had a long way to go before I understood the scope of the journey I had begun.

One week before the exam Julie came to see me. She had been skipping class to be with her boyfriend, and now she wanted help.

"Can you show me how to write an essay?", she asked. How do I do this? Teach essay structure in 15 minutes or less? I pulled out an exemplar from the previous exam. It was a very structured piece, with a formulaic organizational pattern. (The same pattern I had learned in high school in the early 70's.)
"This is a student's essay that the markers thought was good." I said.
"Let's look at how it was done." We read the introductory paragraph together. I pointed out the thesis statement. " Now," I said, "looking at these sentences here, what do you think the first paragraph should be about?"
"It should be about how society accepts violence."
" OK, let's look to see what the writer has done." The writer consistently followed the pattern indicated by the introduction. Julie saw the structure emerge as we looked through the essay, going from the thesis to each body paragraph.
Her understanding popped out with an "Oh!" I explained that the pattern we looked at wasn't the only way to write an essay, but that It would work for most essay assignments she might be given on an exam. Julie went away feeling confident that she could use that structure, and I finally figured out that the best way to teach a writing pattern was to let the students see it for themselves.

Since then, I have used student writing samples in the classroom in a variety of ways with some success. For years I had been teaching writing structure using a transmission model . The immediacy of Julie's understanding was powerful, and I didn't feel that I had transmitted anything. Julie saw for herself how one writer organized an essay. I had always believed on some level that learning is personal. Finding out for oneself is always more potent than being told, yet I continued to teach in a transmission mode. I began to question my beliefs abut learning. If transmission teaching was as ineffective as it seemed to be, what was my role as teacher?

At the end of term, I asked Julie to make up some assignments. It was the last few days of the last term of her high school years, and she had to do some work in English. I didn't have much stomach for this. She had written her final exam, we were both tired, and I wasn't looking forward to trying to figure out how much or even what I should ask her to do. I wasn't even sure what to do in regard to marks. One assignment wouldn't mathematically give her a pass. I didn't want to fail her. I didn't want to pass her just because of that. It wouldn't be fair. I didn't feel she had completed the course. Again, my beliefs about teaching were being strained.

Julie arrived to complete an assignment, with a boyfriend hovering in the open area outside my room. He sat, and tapped his feet, and swayed in his seat, and looked in the window, got up, left, came back, sat down, got up, looked in the window, paced, and on and on. I thought Julie would, at any moment, run screaming from the room. She stuck it out, but wrote nothing. Finally, she said she had to leave and promised to return. The next day she came back without the boyfriend. She still had not put pen to paper. Instead, she talked and I (mostly) listened about the trouble with boyfriends, and parents, and cultural differences, and I confirmed my feeling that the whole endeavour of fulfilling a writing assignment that had no relevance to her life was futile. I recognized the stress she was under in her personal life. She wanted to complete a writing assignment. She didn't want to feel her credit for the course was a gift. Perhaps remembering my experience with Kent, I told her to forget the assignment she was supposed to be finishing. "Just go home and write about something that is important to you. Make sure you have a main idea you want the reader to understand. It should come to some conclusion, even if the conclusion is that there isn't one. " The next day she brought in her piece . She was happy with it. She seemed more relaxed, and her work showed not only a reasonable mastery of communication skills, but also strong, developed and well thought -out content. Aha. Done. One day, one talk, one assignment. Julie had demonstrated that her communication skills were well within a range of ability which I could reward with a credit.

Julie prompted me to really question my beliefs and assumptions about evaluation and marks. I had experimented with alternative evaluation in optional classes in the past, but I had some strong attitudes toward marks and what they stood for. This episode also prompted me to consider further my role as teacher. I had played two roles: I talked with her, and I gave guidance or objectives for her writing. Each activity was significant. What effect did our conversation have on her writing process? My initial purpose in speaking with her was not to help her with her writing, yet instinct tells me that the opportunity to "sound out" her ideas helped her focus her writing. Perhaps I was a human journal, serving much the same purpose as the action research journals I had been keeping throughout my course.

These, and episodes like them prompted me to make what I felt were significant changes in my approach to evaluation and to my philosophy of what learning and literacy looked like amongst my students. However, as I continued to investigate my practice through the teacher action research process, I discovered that what I thought were profound changes were not as earth-shattering as I had imagined them to be. The observation, recording of data, and reflection demanded by the action research process forced me to examine my actions in light of the paradigm I was beginning to understand.

As I struggled to recognize and understand the disparity between my practice and growing philosophical understanding, my frustration grew.

I returned again and again to my journals and the written reflections I had written on course readings. Mezirow states that

"…becoming critically aware of our own presuppositions involves challenging our established and habitual patterns of expectation, the meaning perspectives with which we have made sense out of our encounters with the world, others, and ourselves (1990)."

The perspective I had habitually used no longer felt right, but I hadn't come to terms with the shift in paradigm. Wayne Serebrin, my course instructor, succinctly expressed my difficulty when he told me I had "one foot in the boat and one foot on the dock."

A tentative resolution to the conflict of paradigm shift has come slowly, from the place where it began. I return to my critical incident narratives and examine them again, with "fresh eyes and ears." The power of those critical incidents lay not in the incidents themselves, but in the way I wrote and thought about them. My understanding of constructivist theory enabled me to reconsider my earlier experiences and to work at continually constructing my own knowledge.

"He assumed that his training technique was unsuccessful because she did not want to learn."
"What assumptions did I make about these students?"

The echo of this idea stands out powerfully for me. I have long understood how powerful assumptions can be, and now realize how insidious they are as well. Navigating paradigm shift requires vigilance. Awareness of our assumptions and actions enables us to monitor our behaviour. I continually struggle with the disparity between action and belief, but I also recognize that that struggle is an aspect of paradigm shift which is continuous as our understanding changes.

"The stories about the incident were told and retold."
"I was a learner in this story."

It is largely through the process of constructing and revisiting narrative that we make and remake meaning. A professor once told me that you couldn't rely on what authors said about their work, because often they didn't know what was there. At the time, I thought, Hogwash. Now, through the process of examining my own narratives and reflective writing, I finally understand how that could be possible.

"It was important to me that they ‘do well'."
"They stopped asking, ‘What mark did I get'?"

The cyclical nature of the teacher action research process ideally prompts us to improve our practice, benefiting both ourselves and our students. For example, my reflection has prompted me to experiment with alternative evaluation, and to enter into a partnership with my students in the creation of an evaluation process. As a result, some of my conflicts begin to resolve themselves. That doesn't mean that more won't arise, but time, reflection, observation, discussion and research are effective tools in the process of coming to terms with disparity between what we think we believe and what our actions reveal.

It's snowing again as I type this, but I have few worries about getting to school with a minimum of difficulty. I often drive alone down deserted country roads to travel to the stable where I keep my horse. For safety and security my husband and I acquired a four-wheel drive vehicle and a cell phone. Traveling slowly but steadily I get to where I want to go, and if I need help along the way, there are many people out there on whom I can call. Occasionally I travel in the tracks of others, but I have the freedom to safely blaze new paths whenever I choose.

Conroy, Frank 1991 Think About It: Ways We Know, and Don't. Harper's Magazine, Nov: 68-70.

Guba, Egon G. and Yvonna S. Lincoln 1988 Do Inquiry Paradigms Imply Methodologies? In: David M. Fetterman (Ed) Qualitative Approaches to Evaluation In Education: The Silent Scientific Revolution. New York: Praeger: 89-115

Mezirow, Jack 1990 How Critical Reflection Triggers Transformative Learning. In: Jack Mezirow (Ed) Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood: A guide to Transformative and Emancipatory Learning. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass Publishers: 1-20.