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Original Source: http://www.7oaks.org/ttt/ttt11.htm#TENSIONS%20OF%20TEACHING:%20BEYOND%20TIPS%20TO Tensions of TeachingDr. Judith M. Newman Tensions of Teaching, a collection of narratives of practice written by Canadian teachers, was recently published. Matt Meiers asked Judith Newman, editor of this book, some questions.
Judith wrote: "Let me attempt to answer them for you." What I was Trying to Show For nearly fifteen years now, I’ve been working with teachers in an action research context. When we began in 1984 we didn’t know that the activity we were engaged in was called “action research” but that was, in fact, what we were doing. I wanted to help the teachers to take a critical look at what was happening in their classrooms: first, to help them uncover the assumptions that were shaping their instructional decisions; second, to allow them to have a glimpse of what their students were really experiencing. I wanted to shift the teachers’ gaze from “teaching” to “learning”--both their students’ and their own. We invented a vehicle for ourselves--critical incidents--to help us explore what was happening in our classrooms. I started out by asking the teachers to make note of whatever was going on that made them uncomfortable, moments when they weren’t sure what decision to make, or where they were unhappy with the consequences of some judgement they’d made. We recorded very brief accounts of these moments on small index cards and then discussed these incidents in class. These stories became the basis of our inquiry into curriculum. Writing was an important aspect of our work. I’d come to appreciate how writing helped me discover what was going on in my own teaching--I believed it would be beneficial for teachers also to write as a way of creating a new understanding of their professional lives. I encouraged people to keep a journal. I asked them to write to me on a regular basis to share connections they saw from the professional reading they were doing and what was happening in their classrooms. The next step was to take some aspect of their professional lives and craft a narrative account of it for readers other than ourselves. This particular anthology of teachers’ writing grew out of the 1994-95 “Action Research” graduate class at UM. The teachers had no idea at the outset that they would become published authors. Although that is always a potential goal of mine, I, too, wasn’t certain at the beginning that we’d succeed. My purpose was to have the teachers explore their teaching to discover what they could learn from their students and if at the end we had publishable stories to share all the better. But first, and foremost, my intention was to help these teachers become what Donald Schon called “reflective practitioners.” Tensions of Teaching, then, is a collection of our thoughts and reflections on our teaching and learning experiences. Through this writing, we have attempted to show what we’ve learned about the political nature of teaching. We’ve tried to show, as well, the complexity of the everyday decisions we face in a classroom context. We share the suprising insight that every action and every decision in a classroom carries with it the potential both to support and to interfere with students’ learning. We reveal our feelings of vulnerability. We explore our new-found understanding that teaching is fraught with tensions. We wrote hoping that our readers would better understand the constraints under which we, and they, work. The Critical Issues in Professional Practice Teacher / action research is about discovering ourselves, about uncovering our assumptions -- assumptions about learning, about teaching, about values and beliefs. Teacher research is driven by a desire to understand the theoretical rationale which influences the instructional judgements and decisions that we make. An important first step in becoming a teacher / action researcher is to enter into an exploration of how we compose our practice. What beliefs underlie what we choose to do in the classroom? What internal and external constraints and pressures affect the decisions we make? What counts as “data”? What might we do differently? At the heart of teacher / action research is the struggle to learn from our students. What sense are they making of what’s going on? Are they engaged or turned off by the experiences we offer them? How are they preceiving the classroom world. Most teachers find becoming a “kid-watcher” a difficult undertaking. Learning to observe students and to see the world from their perspective is not easy because it means allowing ourselves to become vulnerable. Given the realities of classrooms it’s a certainty that whatever activity we try, whatever invitation we extend, it will be wrong for some students. Consequently, becoming a better observer means discovering what’s not going right. It requires an act of bravery to engage in this kind of inquiry. Sometimes inquiry begins because a teacher has already identified tensions and is now wondering where to go next. Sometimes mandated curriculum change serve as the jump-off. Other times simply the desire to understand what’s going on in the classroom situation sets the process in motion. The major impetus, however, for examining our assumptions generally comes from our students--particularly students who reject school. At some time or other we all face students who resist what’s going on in the classroom. That’s a fact of classroom life. The traditional way of dealing with this resistance is to identify resisting behaviour as “bad” and to punish students. More effective, however, is to attempt to understand students’ resistance, and then to try to find ways of inviting students into learning. In either case, the teacher / action researcher is driven by a need to understand what’s involved in taking a new path. An inevitable outcome of inquiry into practice seems to be the realization that the classroom calls for something new. The evidence from our observations of what’s happening in our classrooms makes it clear that if we really want to engage students, we’re going to have to do things differently. The point of teacher / action research isn’t to prove anything--the reason for engaging in teacher / action research is to confront such questions as “How is my teaching affecting my students?” “How might I improve what I’m doing?” We want to gain insight into learning and teaching as well as into the political pressures which affect our decision-making. Teaching is full of contradictions. There is always a gap between our intentions and our actions. In some sense, we’re always “becoming” as teachers; that is, there’s always something new to learn--new students present new challenges and changing times requires changing our ways of teaching. Because our judgements are based largely on our tacit theories, on values and beliefs that are culturally determined and not explicitly articulated, the act of creating a narrative permist us to distance ourselves from our judgements a bit and affords an opportunity to make the basis of our work open to inspection. The critical issues uncovered through action research are all political. Recently I compiled a partial list of tensions facing teachers. The list included such things as engagement vs coercion; collaboration vs learning in isolation; issues of power and control; students “not-learning”; choice and ownership; negotiating the curriculum; the pressures associated with standardization--of curriclum, of assessment, or reporting; dealing with opposing ideologies, etc. Our inquiries all lead us to ask questions about power and whose interests are being served. This reflective activity takes us outside the status quo of schools--it permits us to ask questions about what is worthwhile in teaching and why. It allows us to challenge the taken-for-granted. The Role of Narrative Let me excerpt a bit from “On Becoming a Better Teacher”--one of my pieces in the book.
Narrative, I’ve discovered, is perhaps the most valuable tool for exploring what’s happening in my teaching . It’s through my journal jottings and my subsequent attempts to see beyond the moment to the issues affecting my decision-making that allows me to be more responsive to my students. I believe it’s important to understand that we will always have not-learning going on in our classrooms and that if we want to help reverse it we have to recognize our contribution to students’ decision to be not-learners. Other Important Stuff Ultimately, teacher / action research is about researching and changing myself. The vast literature on restructuring schools, on school reform, is “pie-in-the-sky” stuff because it doesn’t take into account the fact that teacher change has to be individual. Any educational reform must involve helping individual teachers and administrators to see their work in new ways. I don’t see much of that happening--instead, I see coersion--standardized tests, standardized curriculum being foisted upon teachers making it harder and harder for them to take the time to build relationships with their students. Yet, it’s that relationship building that is at the heart of any sustained engaged learning. The teacher / action research movement is becoming more and more widespread. In publishing Tensions of Teaching, I was hoping to furnish further resources for teachers unhappy with the status quo, to help them develop tools to explore what’s going on in their classrooms, and to help them better understand the political pressures and the tensions which affect their every decision, their every judgement, in the classroom. References: Kohl, Herb 1994 I Won't Learn From You. In: I Won't Learn From You. New York: The New Press: 1-32. Newman, Judith M. 1997 Interwoven Conversations:
Learning and Teaching Through Critical Reflection. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press.
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