SELF, STUDENT, AND CONTEXT IN REFLETIVE TEACHING Chapter 6

1. Reflective Teaching: An Introduction2nd EditionRoutledge 2013 Kenneth M. Zeichner and Daniel P. Liston SELF, STUDENT, AND CONTEXT IN REFLETIVE TEACHINGChapter 6 In our view teaching is not simply information conveyance but a process through which students have the opportunity to know and understand, and become more adept at dealing with themselves, others, and their worlds.   In this final chapter we pursue understandings of teaching as work, as a professional effort, or a vocational endeavor - connected to a teaching self.

2. The Teaching Self Some teachers view teaching as work, others as a profession, and still others see teaching as more akin to a vocation, a “calling”. Teaching as work construes teachers as engaged in instructional labor; it is work that attempts to enhance students’ skills in, and knowledge about the world. This “teaching as work” perspective entails minimal connection to a teaching self. Teaching as a vocation understands teaching as a call from within, a desire to serve students by providing an instructional setting that attends with care and compassion to students’ needs.

3. Over the last decade plus, Parker Palmer (1998/2007) along with the Center for Courage and Renewal have brought a notion of the teacher’s “inner self” to light. One of the central features of this framing of the teacher self is a view that for better or worse, teaching draws from the depths of teachers’ lives. Referring to these depths as the soul or the inner landscape of teachers’ lives, Palmer writes: As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life. Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror, and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain self-knowledge – and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject.

4. Attending to Students One prevalent feature of the recent educational reform movement is the mantra of student outcomes and learning. However, some look back upon past educational policies and practices and see subject matter coverage, not students, as the central focal point of classroom instruction. Many critics of recent federal legislation (such as No Child Left or Race to the Top) maintain that its policy efforts are too focused on student test outcomes and inadequately concerned with the actual processes of student learning.

5. Increased focus on student academic outcomes, greater attention to student thinking, and an enlarged awareness of student social and emotional learning – these are all examples of attending to students. Teachers need to consider the degree to which they incorporate students within their instructional designs. In what ways do you focus on students’ academic outcomes, their cognitive processing, and/or their social and emotional learning?

6. The Context of Schooling Some 25 years ago we wrote a book, Teacher Education and the Social Conditions of Schooling, in which we argued that greater attention should be given to the social, political, and cultural contexts of teaching. We want to stress the importance of examining the social and political contexts of schooling. This is a huge topic. Over the past twenty-three years many educators within university-based teacher education programs have come to agree that these contexts constitute substance for teacher candidate reflections. In fact many programs adopted a “social justice” orientation.

7. In teaching we encounter difference and diversity daily. Whether we are teaching students whose circumstances and cultures are markedly different from or remarkably similar to our own backgrounds, differences in assumptions and understandings exist. As teachers grow more aware of the cultural differences between themselves and their students (and families), teachers and the school communities in which they work are called upon to find ways to work together. Whether in civic life or our school days, it’s important to reflect on the ways in which we see (and don’t see) our interconnection and interdependence with others.