Concerns about practice – whole class teaching
While teaching as a traditional teacher I meet many students who are happy with didactic approaches and others who are resistant to learning in this way. I am not sure why this is. Maybe it is the constraining nature of the classroom. It is implausible that everyone will find that sitting still in a two foot square for six hours a day is the most effective way to learn, or that reading books or writing into a copy book is the most effective way to learn for all people (Gardner and Hatch 1989; Gardner 1993). From my observations I find that some students find activity works better; either moving continuously or the opportunity to move around a room from time to time. For others it seems to be the sense of taking control of what they are doing rather than passively listening that works.
From this I express my major area of concern in the following way: |
Concerns about practice – keys as symbolic control
A recent edition of the ‘Time Team’, a popular TV programme which undertakes archaeological excavations, featured the discovery of a medieval skeleton during a dig on the site of an old priory. The casual viewer could see little, apart from a small bundle of bones in a hole in the ground. One of the archaeologists, Phil Harding, told the viewers that this was a woman of high status. He knew this because he could see a few small pieces of corroded metal on a chain which had been a set of keys. “She is a woman of high status” he said. “The keys show she has control over the sacred places.” Her keys were an element of symbolic control: an element that was still interpretable a millennium after her death (Bernstein 1996; Bernstein and Solomon 1999).
From this I express my major area of concern in the following way: |
| I have concerns that the modes of thinking underlying my own practice result in me missing opportunities for learning. At the same time these modes of operation are preventing my students improving their own learning. |
I have concerns that within my workplace a social formation exists which has internalised domination and control and that this social formation is denying the creativity of individuals and preventing them from realising their natality. |
Concerns about the social order – democracy
Apple (2003: 12) describes the situation where the citizen’s only opportunity to participate in the democratic process is by ‘voting’ or ‘buying’. He refers to this as ‘thin democracy’. He contrasts this to ‘thick democracy’ where community activists and parents and sometimes students themselves are full participants in the development and articulation of policies and where even the principal is elected by the local community (Gandin and Apple 2002; 2003). In my own school the citizen-student has no means of participating in the democratic process. The citizen-teacher participates by voting for board of management members. But the board has been designed so that one group, the trustees, always has a voting majority.
From this I express my major area of concern in the following way: |
Concerns in relation to educational theory
Education is often seen in terms of a ‘transmission metaphor’, where knowledge is transferred from the ‘knower’ to the ‘learner’ (Sfard 1998). The model, which Freire (1972: 45-50) refers to as the ‘banking model’, is the dominant model in use in schools (Green 1995). I have often and still find myself accepting this status quo. The banking model is good at helping us to know ‘about’ things. By contrast, phronesis, which Korthagen and Kessels translate as ‘practical wisdom’, places the emphasis on perceiving more in a particular situation and finding a helpful course of action on the basis of strengthened awareness. A more perceptive approach can lead to alternative readings of a situation and may reveal alternative means of challenging oppressive power relations. It may be that classical thinking, leading to fragmentation, prevents us from seeing unity of theory and practice.
From this I express my major area of concern in the following way: |
I have concerns that the model in use in the traditional systems operating within our schools and in official policies discriminate against some students and prevent them achieving their goals.
In addition I have concerns that the academic model of the established Leaving Certificate is unsuitable for a proportion of the students that I te lack of opportunities for participative action within my professional community. |
I have concerns that the dominant form of theory in education is propositional in nature. It is based on the transmission metaphor and the ‘banking’ model and there is considerable resistance to change. The use of this banking model is tied to our ideas of educational theory. |
Concerns about method – technical rationality
Schön (1983) argues that scientific research has been seen as the basis for professional practice. Social science research is based on the models of medicine and engineering with their emphasis on ‘measurement, controlled experiment, applied science, laboratories and clinics’ (Schön 1983: 39). The dominant view of professional knowledge is as the application of scientific theory and technique to the problems of practice (ibid: 30). Within education and elsewhere the dominant model is the technical rational model (Schön 1987: 3). The problems I face defy technical rational solutions and therefore I have concerns around approaches based on technical rationality.
From this I express my major area of concern in the following way: |
Concerns about my own capacity to act
In my role as form teacher I hear students being referred to as ‘uneducable’ and ‘unable to learn’. I am told that they ‘should be placed in a sin bin’. Students tell me that their teacher ‘is mad’.
When I meet these situations and hear these things; when I see how students, teachers and administrators are affected, ‘I am no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander’ (Arendt 1994: 4-5). I have a responsibility to think as an independent person and resist the dehumanisation of students, teachers and administrators; I have a responsibility to ‘support them in being the best that they can be’ (Arendt 1958: 19).
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| I have concerns that the dominant form of theorising ICT is around productivity. The kind of knowledge underpinning this is instrumental, functional, and utilitarian. |
My response is to follow Schön’s advice: ‘If she is to deal with it competently, she must do so by a kind of improvisation, inventing and testing in the situation strategies of her own devising’ (Schön 1987: 5). My work proceeds then, after Schön, ‘by a kind of improvisation’ engaging with students, engaging with teachers, engaging on a basis that is open to others’ points of view, which is free from coercion, which accepts others as equal participants (Mezirow 1991: 78 based on Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action 1984) |
