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Proposal from Helen Duffy:Proposal and its educational significance Much
has been made in the policy arena about what teachers need to know and
be able to do in order to be successful. Indeed, even a cursory look at the INTASC standards
for new teachers indicates the complexity of the job. Included in those standards is a recognition
of something that goes beyond mere cognition – what INTASC calls “dispositions.”
And yet in the policy arena, reform efforts that might improve
the quality of teaching often revolve around holding teachers accountable
for content knowledge, knowledge of child development and knowledge
of educational foundations. While those elements are certainly essential to good teaching, in
urban contexts in particular, knowing a content area deeply and being
able to present that knowledge to young people is not enough to ensure
success. Because of the social inequities of the larger
society that play themselves out in very concentrated ways in urban
schools, we cannot ignore the importance of the more ethical or political
aspects of teaching or the commitments that are essential to teachers’
success in urban contexts. Moreover,
while standards documents separate out the various domains of knowledge
teachers should acquire, we know very little about how teachers integrate
that knowledge in ways that are useful in practice. Consider
the following scenarios taken from my dissertation data.
In an interview, Robert, an English teacher in his tenth year
at a high school in southern California described the political context
in which he teaches. He explained that very little of the school board’s policy-making
supported his work to improve the reading and writing of students at
his school. In fact, he said,
some of their policies interfere with rather than support his work. Later that week, Robert appeared before the board to explain how
the new policies regarding text selection have affected his reading
program. He described for them
the central role that his independent reading program played in his
students’ reading development and the step-by-step process one must
follow for getting a book approved by the district which can take as
long as two and a half years. The
result, he told them, is the death of innovation in teaching and the
stability of the canon. Delores,
an English teacher in her second year at a high school in San Jose,
spent two weekends in March washing cars with the students in her sophomore
English class to help raise the money they needed to charter a bus in
April for a tour of southern California universities and colleges. She met with parents two different evenings
before the trip to explain the schedule, to explain how the students
would be supervised and to address the concerns that parents might have
had about the trip. She then
accompanied them on that three-day tour during their spring break. While
these are not the kinds of heroic acts that make their way into the
public consciousness through films like Stand and Deliver or
other media, these two brief scenarios that emerged from my dissertation
data illustrate a broader commitment to the communities where the teachers
work. What these two teachers
have in common are the contexts in which they work – urban, predominantly
communities of color – and a broad view of their roles as teachers. As teachers, these individuals are committed
to taking into consideration the community context, the political and
policy climate in which they work, as well as how that climate affects
the students’ lives and their access to educational opportunities. The focus of my study will be not only a more precise articulation
of those commitments, but also the development of video cases that might
help improve opportunities teachers have to learn what those commitments
might look like in practice and the ways in which those commitments
integrate with content and pedagogical content knowledge. My
proposed work will have three phases; however, describing those phases
should not imply that they will be separate processes for they will
in fact overlap. In the first
phase, I will identify, interview, and observe expert teachers who have
been nominated by various institutions and organizations as being advocates
for young people in urban contexts.
[1]
Doing so will allow me to understand more precisely
the dimensions of the commitments required, how these teachers describe
their commitments, and how they think those capacities are developed. During the course of those observations, I
will videotape classroom interactions as well as teachers’ interactions
with parents and other community members outside of the school context. During the early part of this project, I will
meet with some of the folks in the Bay Area, southern California, Santa
Cruz and the University of Virginia who have been thinking carefully
about what constitutes a video case and how teachers can be supported
in case-based learning. In addition,
I have been in touch with researchers involved in a consortium of educators
at U.C. who are examining video case development in math and others
at West Ed who have done work with printed case material development
as well. The
second phase of the project then will be the development of a collection
of video cases that begin to capture and make visible the integration
of the knowledge that teachers must access in order to support students’
academic and leadership development.
The video cases will be focused on language arts and will be
selected for their potential to capture moments that reflect some of
the signature pedagogical challenges that language arts teachers face. For example, one case that I am currently developing
from my dissertation data shows a teacher moving his students from response
to a text to interpretation of a text – a complex pedagogical challenge
that all secondary English teachers would recognize as important. Grounding the cases in content and in context
will help make visible the complexity of the moment-to-moment decisions
that teachers must make. The
third phase of the project will be the development of scaffolds that
will help make these cases useful to a wider audience of teachers –
both pre-service and in-service. The
development of the questions that guide new and experienced teachers
through the cases will be central in steering them away from a tendency
to slip quickly into evaluation of the teaching presented (Lampert &
Ball, 1998) toward a stance that allows teachers viewing the tapes to
understand more deeply the processes and knowledge that are the foundation
of effective teaching and the ways in which subject matter knowledge
gets transformed in classroom interactions.
In addition, to the extent that the cases make visible teachers’
commitments to students and their communities, they will serve as a
tool for broadening the more conventional view of the teacher as simply
a content expert. Ken
Zeichner (1998) calls that additional aspect of teaching “dispositions”
and has outlined some of the skills and attitudes that teachers need
to develop in order to have the capacity for working in diverse, urban
contexts. These aspects of teaching
are often discussed under the umbrella of social justice with curricular
decision-making identified as the visible evidence of its presence (Ellwood,
1990; Villegas, 1991). Or they
are framed as a habit of mind, most often in terms of inquiry or reflective
practices that characterize good teaching.
However, I will focus my attention on those aspects of teaching
that occur at the intersection between ethics, politics, content area
expertise and how those combine to create a different conception of
the professional roles of teachers.
My study will extend its focus beyond just the ways in which
those commitments play themselves out in curricular decision-making
to look at extra-curricular, advocacy activities as well. In
many ways then, this study builds upon the work of Gloria Ladson-Billings
(1994, 2001) and others, both in its design and its focus. Using a framework proposed by Lee Shulman in
his examination of issues related to research on the teaching of mathematics
in the 1970’s, Ladson-Billings’ 1994 work examines the “wisdom of practice”
(Shulman, 1978) of expert teachers of African American students. She finds that one important dimension of teachers’
work with African American students is the view they take of their professional
responsibilities. In defining
what she calls “culturally relevant teaching,” Ladson-Billings says
that the teachers she studied work “in opposition to the school system
that employs them” (128) and turn their critiques of the system “into
action by challenging the system” (128).
And yet even though her more recent research on the Teach for
Diversity program (2001) makes clear the importance of teachers’ capacities
to seek out networks of strength in students’ communities and see students’
achievement as connected to the “public good” (121), it’s unclear how
one learns to do that. It is my hope that the video case studies
that emerge from this project will help in the development of those
capacities. Brief
review of relevant research /policy
In
an article that appeared in the Harvard Educational Review in
1986, Jim Cummins argued that “legislative and policy reforms may be
necessary conditions for effective change, but they are not sufficient. Implementation of change is dependent upon
the extent to which educators, both collectively and individually, redefine
their roles with respect to minority students and communities” (19). Written fifteen years ago, the article seems
particularly apropos in the political and policy climate that exits
in California today. Conducting
this research is an important step in understanding the commitments
that provide a foundation for efforts to improve the educational opportunities
for underrepresented students and the ways in which we might improve
the preparation of teachers to work in diverse communities, particularly
given the current political climate in California where the study will
be situated. There
have been a number of responses to the call for improved educational
opportunities for underserved students including curricular reform (Banks,
1988; 1997; Villegas, 1991), reform of the instructional strategies
that frame the curriculum (Delpit, 1988, Applebee, 1996, Duffy, 2001),
an acknowledgement and integration of what Luis Moll has called students’
“funds of knowledge” (Moll, 1988; Harris 2001; Lee, 1992; 2001), as
well as examinations of teachers’ roles in the classroom (Vasquez, 1988;
Cummins, 1994; Valenzuela, 1999). Building
on the work of researchers who saw a need for teachers in urban, multilingual
contexts to become advocates for their students (Cummins, 1986; Lucas,
Henze, & Donato, 1990), those working in multicultural education
are beginning to broaden their conception, moving well beyond the classroom
to theorize multicultural education itself as social activism (Trueba,
1999). Christine Sleeter (1996)
discusses the implications that “multicultural education as a social
movement” might have for teachers, explaining that when one takes the
metaphor seriously, a broader, more ethical dimension of teaching is
created in which teachers work in alliance with communities and act
as advocates for the young people they teach.
Other researchers are enlisting the young people themselves as
advocates. Teacher
education has also tried to respond to this educational need.
Zeichner and Hoeft (1996) conclude that a “priority in research
on teacher education for cultural diversity should be to investigate
how particular kinds of experiences for teachers at the pre-service
or in-service levels are connected to the character and quality of their
teaching (p. 541). Stodolsky
and Grossman’s (2000) work has also examined the ways in which teachers
adapt to the changing demographics in the schools where they teach.
Given the central role that these dispositions play in the professional
lives of teachers, it is especially important to expand the kinds of
experiences that teacher education programs might provide to support
their development. Video cases
can aid in that process. Much
of the research regarding the effectiveness of video cases has focused
using video as a means to support reflection after viewing cases of
their own teaching (Hasseler & Collins, 1993; Potter & Richardson,
1999; Wedman, Espinosa & Laffey, 1999). Case-based reasoning, however, holds much promise
for helping teachers – especially new teachers – integrate the knowledge
that teachers must access. Ball
and Cohen (1999) have argued that records of practice help ground discussion
in ways that merely considering an issue does not, a finding that seems
particularly promising when addressing issues such as the integration
of subject matter knowledge with ethical and political commitments. However, simply viewing classroom videos is
insufficient; viewers must be directed to notice particular aspects
of the case in order to draw inferences that might later be useful in
practice. Description
of methodology including proposed data collection and case development
techniques Understanding
the development of the capacity for work in urban contexts presents
several methodological challenges. First, how can the capacity for work in urban
contexts be made visible? What
is it? And how do those who
have that commitment describe its dimensions and its sources? Second, what constitutes a video case in English language arts?
And how can video cases make those more ethical/political dimensions
of teaching visible to other teachers? And third, how can the video
cases be structured to provide additional opportunities for teachers
to develop those capacities? Through
the networks I have developed I will identify teachers
[2]
who have the kinds of commitments that the research
says are necessary for sustained success in urban settings.
Those expert teachers will help me articulate more precisely
what those commitments are and how, in their view, those commitments
developed. Data will consist of interviews and extended
observations that are video taped.
Extended observations will allow me to understand how teachers
position themselves both within the school community and in their communities
outside of school to determine whether they draw upon those positions
in the development of these commitments.
I will limit the project to teachers at the secondary level because
although we know that the sorting begins early in students’ educational
experiences, (Oakes, 1985) it is in high school that access to resources
become most visible in the choices that students have for their futures.
Using
the data collected during the first phase of the study and the video
editing capacity in the U.C. Berkeley School of Education, I will then
develop the video case studies as well as the scaffolds that help make
the integration of those commitments with content and pedagogical content
knowledge accessible to viewers. During
the project, I will partner not only with my mentor, but have established
additional partnerships with Pam Grossman and Peter Williamson from
Stanford who will collaborate in the collection, development and vetting
of the cases. In addition, I have contacted other potential
advisors who have worked on written case development in the language
arts at WestEd and others who have worked on video case development
for mathematics at UC Berkeley, the University of Virginia, and UC Santa
Cruz. There
are several goals then of this proposed project. One is a more precise articulation of what
we mean by this set of commitments and its dimensions as well as a clearer
sense of the experiences that can support its development. A second goal is the development of a set of
cases that make those commitments and their integration with content
and pedagogical content knowledge visible.
The third goal is a set of questions that can serve as scaffolds
that direct teachers’ attention to particular aspects of the case that
will later make it useful in their own practice.
Importance
to research and practice
In
his exploration of reform efforts in American classrooms during the
twentieth century, Larry Cuban (1993) found that the persistence of
teacher-centered pedagogical practices, especially at the high school
level, is not the result of poor teacher preparation, teacher incentives
nor of the regulation of reform efforts.
Rather the persistence of those teaching practices was the result
of teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning and of organizational
constraints on practice. From
his work, we might conclude then that any significant effort to reform
teaching practices would not simply impose specific classroom curricular
practices nor focus on some specific local effort, but would address
both teachers’ assumptions about teaching and learning as well as the
organizational constraints which narrow the possibilities for reforming
teaching practices. It
is my hope that this study of the commitments of teachers will add to
our knowledge of how we might change teachers’ conceptions of teaching
and learning in ways that will sustain their work both inside and outside
the school. My own dissertation
research – and the work of several other researchers in the last 20
years – has confirmed for me the importance of making the walls of the
classroom and the school more permeable, particularly in urban settings
serving the needs of underrepresented students.
And yet, while we know that those commitments are important,
we still know very little about the structured opportunities teachers
have to develop them. In that way, this study and the video cases
that emerge from it will add both to what we know about and how we describe
those commitments as well as what structures might support their development
in pre-service education and beyond – both arenas where policy and practice
can make a difference.
[1] This process will require that I tap into existing teacher networks that combine issues of equity and access to higher education with subject matter expertise in powerful ways – for example, the High School Puente Project (and other UC outreach programs that have proven successful), Teachers for Social Justice, the Bay Area Writing Project, and IDEA. [2] Because the project will last only one year, I expect that I will be able to develop this research and the video cases with three, but no more than five teachers. My dissertation experience has taught me that getting human subjects consent with video tape in public schools is sometimes more time-consuming because it often involves district legal departments. However, the funding of this project would jump-start what I hope is a longer-term project of video case collection.
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