Thinking About Schools A Foundations of Education ... - (Part III What Are The Roles and Responsibilities of Teacher Leaders)

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Par t III
WHAT AR E TH E ROLES
AN D R ESPONSI B I LITI ES OF
TEACH E R LEADE RS?
Copyright © 2011. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Blair, Hilty, Eleanor. Thinking about Schools : A Foundations of Education Reader, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011. ProQuest Ebook
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I NTRODUCTION
Teacher leadership cannot exist in a vac- ents must understand the gain that will
uum; expanded roles and responsibilities occur when teachers are provided with an
for teachers inevitably have an impact on arena for the knowledge and expertise
all aspects of teachers’ lives. A “new” fo- that they bring to schools. Consideration
cus on teacher leadership is one of the of these ideas is essential if teachers are to
most exciting trends in education today. work in schools in which they will have
In the position of teacher leader, teachers the opportunity to embrace opportunities
are given opportunities to assume roles of to assume new roles and responsibilities.
responsibility and leadership in schools Thus, the readings in Chapters 11–15 by
and classrooms. Furthermore, a focus on Henry A. Giroux, Phillip C. Schlechty,
leadership capacity building places teach- Linda Lambert, Marilyn Cochran-Smith,
ers at the center of attempts to increase and Joe L. Kincheloe provide a founda-
student achievement (and school effec- tion for thinking about the roles and re-
tiveness) through broad-based participa- sponsibilities of teacher leaders. Each of
tion in the leadership of schools by a these writers views the recognition of
variety of stakeholders. teachers as intellectuals and capable lead-
This movement is critical for teachers ers as essential to school reform. Simulta-
to gain the power that is needed to move neously, there is also acknowledgment
the profession toward higher professional that teacher leadership is multifaceted and
status; however, I also believe that we that there is no “one size fits all” recipe for
can’t change the profession without lay- teacher leadership. Guiding the work of
ing the foundation for change within the each teacher are the unique values, beliefs,
bureaucratic and institutional structure of and interests that will also shape the roles
the schools. We must create school com- and responsibilities that he or she will as-
munities that are receptive and supportive sume as a teacher leader. These readings
of changing roles for teachers. Teachers provide a variety of perspectives on the
and administrators and students and par- work of teacher leaders.
181
CHAPTE R
Henry A. Giroux 11
Teachers as
Transformative Intellectuals
The call for educational reform has gained from the everyday realities of classroom
the status of a recurring national event, life.2 The message appears to be that teach-
much like the annual Boston Marathon. ers do not count when it comes to critically
There have been more than 30 national re- examining the nature and process of edu-
ports since the beginning of the 20th cen- cational reform.
tury, and more than 300 task forces have The political and ideological climate
been developed by the various states to does not look favorable for teachers at the
discover how public schools can improve moment. But it does offer them the chal-
educational quality in the United States.1 lenge to join in a public debate with their
But unlike many past educational reform critics as well as the opportunity to engage
movements, the present call for educa- in a much-needed self-critique regarding
tional change presents both a threat and the nature and purpose of teacher prepa-
challenge to public school teachers that ap- ration, in-service teacher programs, and
pears unprecedented in our nation’s his- the dominant forms of classroom teach-
tory. The threat comes in the form of a ing. Similarly, the debate provides teachers
series of educational reforms that display with the opportunity to organize collec-
little confidence in the ability of public tively so as to struggle to improve the con-
school teachers to provide intellectual and ditions under which they work and to
moral leadership for our nation’s youth. demonstrate to the public the central role
For instance, many of the recommenda- that teachers must play in any viable at-
tions that have emerged in the current de- tempt to reform the public schools.
bate either ignore the role teachers play in In order for teachers and others to engage
preparing learners to be active and critical in such a debate, it is necessary that a theo-
citizens, or they suggest reforms that ignore retical perspective be developed that re-
the intelligence, judgment, and experience defines the nature of the educational crisis
that teachers might offer in such a debate. while simultaneously providing the basis for
Where teachers do enter the debate, they an alternative view of teacher training and
are the object of educational reforms that work. In short, recognizing that the current
reduce them to the status of high-level crisis in education largely has to do with the
technicians carrying out dictates and objec- developing trend toward the disempower-
tives decided by “experts” far removed ment of teachers at all levels of education is
183
184 | Henry A. Giroux
a necessary theoretical precondition in order schools is the increasing development of

for teachers to organize effectively and estab- instrumental ideologies that emphasize a
lish a collective voice in the current debate. technocratic approach to both teacher
Moreover, such a recognition will have to preparation and classroom pedagogy. At
come to grips not only with a growing loss the core of the current emphasis on in-
of power among teachers around the basic strumental and pragmatic factors in school
conditions of their work, but also with a life are a number of important pedagogical
changing public perception of their role as assumptions. These include: a call for the
reflective practitioners. separation of conception from execution;
I want to make a small theoretical con- the standardization of school knowledge
tribution to this debate and the challenge it in the interest of managing and control-
calls forth by examining two major prob- ling it; and the devaluation of critical, in-
lems that need to be addressed in the intellectual work on the part of teachers
terest of improving the quality of teacher and students for the primary of practical
work, which includes all the clerical tasks considerations.3
and extra assignments as well as classroom This type of instrumental rationality
instruction. First, I think it is imperative to finds one of its strongest expressions histor-
examine the ideological and material forces ically in the training of prospective teach-
that have contributed to what I want to ers. That teacher training programs in the
call the proletarianization of teacher work; United States have long been dominated
that is, the tendency to reduce teachers to by a behavioristic orientation and emphasis
the status of specialized technicians within on mastering subject areas and methods
the school bureaucracy, whose function of teaching is well documented.4 The im-
then becomes one of managing and imple- plications of this approach, made clear by
menting curricula programs rather than Zeichner, are worth repeating:
developing or critically appropriating cur-
ricula to fit specific pedagogical concerns. Underlying this orientation to teacher
Second, there is a need to defend schools as education is a metaphor of “production,”
institutions essential to maintaining and a view of teaching as an “applied science”

developing a critical democracy and also to and a view of the teacher as primarily an
defending teachers as transformative intel- “executor” of the laws and principles of
lectuals who combine scholarly reflection effective teaching. Prospective teachers
and practice in the service of educating stu- may or may not proceed through the
dents to be thoughtful, active citizens. In curriculum at their own pace and may
the remainder of this essay, I will develop participate in varied or standardized
these points and conclude by examining learning activities, but that which they
their implications for providing an alterna- are to master is limited in scope (e.g., to a
tive view of teacher work. body of professional content knowledge
and teaching skills) and is fully deter-
Toward a Devaluing and mined in advance by others often on the
Deskilling of Teacher Work basis of research on teacher effectiveness.
One of the major threats facing prospec- The prospective teacher is viewed prima-
tive and existing teachers with the public rily as a passive recipient of this profes-
Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals | 185
sional knowledge and plays little part in sion. For example, the “need” for external
determining the substance and direction rewards and punishments to “make kids
of his or her preparation program.5 learn” was taken for granted; the educa-
tional and ethical implications were not
The problems with this approach are addressed. There was no display of con-
evident in John Dewey’s argument that cern for stimulating or nurturing a child’s
teacher training programs that emphasize intrinsic desire to learn. Definitions of
only technical expertise do a disservice good kids as “quiet kids,” workbook work as
both to the nature of teaching and to their “reading,” on task time as “learning,” and
students.6 Instead of learning to reflect getting through the material on time as “the
upon the principles that structure class- goal of teaching”—all went unchallenged.
room life and practice, prospective teach- Feelings of pressure and possible guilt
ers are taught methodologies that appear about not keeping to time schedules also
to deny the very need for critical thinking. went unexplored. The real concern in this
The point is that teacher education pro- discussion was that everyone “shared.”7
grams often lose sight of the need to edu-
cate students to examine the underlying Technocratic and instrumental ratio-
nature of school problems. Further, these nalities are also at work within the teach-
programs need to substitute for the lan- ing field itself, and they play an increasing
guage of management and efficiency a role in reducing teacher autonomy with
critical analysis of the less obvious condi- respect to the development and planning
tions that structure the ideological and of curricula and the judging and imple-
material practices of schooling. mentation of instruction. This is most evi-
Instead of learning to raise questions dent in the proliferation of what has been
about the principles underlying different called “teacher-proof ” curriculum pack-
classroom methods, research techniques, ages.8 The underlying rationale in many of
and theories of education, students are these packages reserves for teachers the
often preoccupied with learning the “how role of simply carrying out predetermined
to,” with “what works,” or with mastering content and instructional procedures. The
the best way to teach a given body of method and aim of such packages is to
knowledge. For example, the mandatory legitimate what I call management peda-
field-practice seminars often consist of stu- gogies. That is, knowledge is broken down
dents sharing with each other the tech- into discrete parts, standardized for easier
niques they have used in managing and management and consumption, and mea-
controlling classroom discipline, organizing sured through predefined forms of assess-
a day’s activities and learning how to work ment. Curricula approaches of this sort
within specific timetables. Examining one are management pedagogies because the
such program, Jesse Goodman raises some central questions regarding learning are
important questions about the incapacitat- reduced to the problem of management,
ing silences it embodies. He writes: i.e., “how to allocate resources (teachers,
students and materials) to produce the
There was no questioning of feelings, as- maximum number of certified . . . stu-
sumptions, or definitions in this discus- dents within a designated time.”9 The
underlying theoretical assumption that in purely instrumental or technical terms.

guides this type of pedagogy is that the be- Second, it clarifies the kinds of ideological
havior of teachers needs to be controlled and practical conditions necessary for
and made consistent and predictable across teachers to function as intellectuals. Third,
different schools and student populations. it helps to make clear the role teachers play
What is clear in this approach is that it in producing and legitimating various
organizes school life around curricular, in- political, economic and social interests
structional, and evaluation experts who do through the pedagogies they endorse and
the thinking while teachers are reduced to utilize.
doing the implementing. The effect is not By viewing teachers as intellectuals, we
only to deskill teachers, to remove them can illuminate the important idea that
from the processes of deliberation and re- all human activity involves some form
flection, but also to routinize the nature of of thinking. In other words, no activity,
learning and classroom pedagogy. Needless regardless of how routinized it might be-
to say, the principles underlying manage- come, can be abstracted from the function-
ment pedagogies are at odds with the prem- ing of the mind in some capacity. This is a
ise that teachers should be actively involved crucial issue because by arguing that the
in producing curricula materials suited to use of the mind is a general part of all hu-
the cultural and social contexts in which man activity we dignify the human capac-
they teach. More specifically, the narrowing ity for integrating thinking and practice,
of curricula choices to a back-to-basics for- and in doing so highlight the core of what
mat, and the introduction of lock-step, it means to view teachers as reflective prac-
time-on-task pedagogies operate from the titioners. Within this discourse, teachers
theoretically erroneous assumption that can be seen not merely as “performers pro-
all students can learn from the same mate- fessionally equipped to realize effectively
rials, classroom instructional techniques, any goals that may be set for them. Rather
and modes of evaluation. The notion that [they should] be viewed as free men and
students come from different histories and women with a special dedication to the val-
embody different experiences, linguistic ues of the intellect and the enhancement of
practices, cultures, and talents is strategi- the critical powers of the young.”10
cally ignored within the logic and accounta- Viewing teachers as intellectuals also
bility of management pedagogy theory. provides a strong theoretical critique of
technocratic and instrumental ideologies
Teachers as underlying an educational theory that
Transformative Intellectuals separates the conceptualization, planning,
In what follows, I want to argue that one and design of curricula from the processes
way to rethink and restructure the nature of implementation and execution. It is im-
of teacher work is to view teachers as portant to stress that teachers must take
transformative intellectuals. The category active responsibility for raising various
of intellectual is helpful in a number of questions about what they teach, how they
ways. First, it provides a theoretical basis are to teach, and what the larger goals are
for examining teacher work as a form of for which they are striving. This means
intellectual labor, as opposed to defining it that they must take a responsible role in
shaping the purposes and conditions of knowledge, language practices, social rela-
schooling. Such a task is impossible within tions, and values that are representative of
a division of labor in which teachers have a particular selection and exclusion from
little influence over the ideological and the wider culture. As such, schools serve to
economic conditions of their work. This introduce and legitimate particular forms
point has a normative and political di- of social life. Rather than being objective
mension that seems especially relevant for institutions removed from the dynamics of
teachers. If we believe that the role of politics and power, schools actually are
teaching cannot be reduced to merely contested spheres that embody and express
training in the practical skills, but involves, a struggle over what forms of authority,
instead, the education of a class of intel- types of knowledge, forms of moral regula-
lectuals vital to the development of a free tion, and versions of the past and future
society, then the category of intellectual be- should be legitimated and transmitted to
comes a way of linking the purpose of students. This struggle is most visible in
teacher education, public schooling, and the demands, for example, of right-wing
inservice training to the very principles religious groups currently trying to insti-
necessary for developing a democratic or- tute school prayer, remove certain books
der and society. from the school library, and include certain
I have argued that by viewing teachers as forms of religious teachings in the science
intellectuals those persons concerned with curricula. Of course, different demands are
education can begin to rethink and reform made by feminists, ecologists, minorities,
the traditions and conditions that have pre- and other interest groups who believe that
vented schools and teachers from assuming the schools should teach women’s studies,
their full potential as active, reflective schol- courses on the environment, or black his-
ars and practitioners. It is imperative that tory. In short, schools are not neutral sites,
I qualify this point and extend it further. I and teachers cannot assume the posture of
believe that it is important not only to view being neutral either.
teachers as intellectuals, but also to contex- In the broadest sense, teachers as in-
tualize in political and normative terms the tellectuals have to be seen in terms of the
concrete social functions that teachers per- ideological and political interests that
form. In this way, we can be more specific structure the nature of the discourse, class-
about the different relations that teachers room social relations, and values that they
have both to their work and to the domi- legitimate in their teaching. With this per-
nant society. spective in mind, I want to conclude that
A fundamental starting point for inter- teachers should become transformative in-
rogating the social function of teachers as tellectuals if they are to subscribe to a view
intellectuals is to view schools as economic, of pedagogy that believes in educating stu-
cultural, and social sites that are inextrica- dents to be active, critical citizens.
bly tied to the issues of power and control. Central to the category of transforma-
This means that schools do more than pass tive intellectual is the necessity of making
on in an objective fashion a common set of the pedagogical more political and the po-
values and knowledge. On the contrary, litical more pedagogical. Making the ped-
schools are places that represent forms of agogical more political means inserting
schooling directly into the political sphere of critique with the language of possibility,
by arguing that schooling represents both so that social educators recognize that they
a struggle to define meaning and a strug- can make changes. In doing so, they must
gle over power relations. Within this per- speak out against economic, political, and
spective, critical reflection and action social injustices both within and outside of
become part of a fundamental social proj- schools. At the same time, they must work
ect to help students develop a deep and to create the conditions that give students
abiding faith in the struggle to overcome the opportunity to become citizens who
economic, political, and social injustices, have the knowledge and courage to strug-
and to further humanize themselves as gle in order to make despair unconvincing
part of this struggle. In this case, knowl- and hope practical. As difficult as this tack
edge and power are inextricably linked may seem to social educators, it is a struggle
to the presupposition that to choose life, worth waging. To do otherwise is to deny
to recognize the necessity of improving its social educators the opportunity to assume
democratic and qualitative character for the role of transformative intellectuals.
all people, is to understand the precondi-
tions necessary to struggle for it. NOTES
Making the political more pedagogical 1. K. Patricia Cross, “The Rising Tide of
means utilizing forms of pedagogy that School Reform Reports,” Phi Delta Kappan,
embody political interests that are eman- 66:3 (November 1984), p. 167.
cipatory in nature; that is, using forms of 2. For a more detailed critique of the re-
pedagogy that treat students as critical forms, see my book with Stanley Aronowitz,
agents; make knowledge problematic; uti- Education Under Siege (South Hadley, MA:
lize critical and affirming dialogue; and Bergin and Garvey Publishers, 1985); also see
make the case for struggling for a qualita- the incisive comments on the impositional
nature of the various reports in Charles A.
tively better world for all people. In part,
Tesconi, Jr., “Additive Reforms and the Re-
this suggests that transformative intellectu-
treat from Purpose,” Educational Studies 15:1
als take seriously the need to give students (Spring 1984), pp. 1–11; Terrence E. Deal,
an active voice in their learning experi- “Searching for the Wizard: The Quest for Ex-
ences. It also means developing a critical cellence in Education,” Issues in Education 2:1
vernacular that is attentive to problems ex- (Summer 1984), pp. 56–67; Svi Shapiro,
perienced at the level of everyday life, par- “Choosing Our Educational Legacy: Disem-
ticularly as they are related to pedagogical powerment or Emancipation?” Issues in Edu-
experiences connected to classroom prac- cation 2:1 (Summer 1984), pp. 11–22.
tice. As such, the pedagogical starting point 3. For an exceptional commentary on the
for such intellectuals is not the isolated stu- need to educate teachers to be intellectuals,
dent but individuals and groups in their see John Dewey, “The Relation of Theory to
Practice,” in John Dewey, The Middle Words,
various cultural, class, racial, historical, and
1899–1924, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Car-
gender settings, along with the particular- bondale, IL: Southern Illinois University
ity of their diverse problems, hopes, and Press, 1977) [originally published in 1904].
dreams. See also Israel Scheffler, “University Scholar-
Transformative intellectuals need to de- ship and the Education of Teachers,” Teachers
velop a discourse that unites the language College Record 70:1 (1968), pp. 1–12; Henry
A. Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of 7. Jesse Goodman, “Reflection and Teacher
Schooling (Philadelphia: Temple University Education: A Case Study and Theoretical
Press, 1981). Analysis,” Interchange 15:3 (1984), p. 15.
4. See for instance, Herbert Kliebard, “The 8. Michael Apple, Education and Power
Question of Teacher Education,” in D. Mc- (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982).
Carty (ed.), New Perspectives on Teacher Educa- 9. Patrick Shannon, “Mastery Learning in
tion (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973). Reading and the Control of Teachers and Stu-
5. Kenneth M. Zeichner, “Alternative dents,” Language Arts 61:5 (September 1984),
Paradigms on Teacher Education,” Journal of p. 488.
Teacher Education 34:3 (May–June 1983), p. 4. 10. Scheffler, op. cit., p. 11.
6. Dewey, op. cit. —————
CHAPTE R
Phillip C. Schlechty 12
On the Frontier of
School Reform with Trailblazers,
Pioneers, and Settlers
Improvement focuses on doing the same Differences That

things better with the intent of changing Make a Difference
and enhancing the performance of indi- Staff development which is aimed at im-
viduals within existing systems. Restruc- provement is typically based on prior
turing is aimed at changing systems so that experience and research. This is seldom
new types of performances will be possible the case with staff development aimed
and encouraged and new or different out- at encouraging or supporting restructur-
comes can be produced. ing. Restructuring creates new conditions
Educational leaders and those in charge which neither the staff developer nor the
of training and development activities in participants have experienced. Restructur-
schools have had much more experience ing, therefore, always requires one to be
in trying to improve things than in trying to willing to act beyond the data and with-
restructure. As a result, the training and sup- out benefit of guidance from empirical re-
port which is provided to encourage and fa- search. Creating new systems, which is
cilitate restructuring is often inappropriate. what restructuring is about, calls for faith,
Distinctions between improvement and logic, wisdom, and intuition, at least to
restructuring are significant and have im- the degree that it calls for disciplining ac-
plications for those who lead restructuring tion with facts.
efforts and for those who provide training Most staff developers have been taught
and support to participants in the restruc- to place experience and research at the
turing process. Unfortunately, too few ed- center of their agenda. They are often not
ucational leaders and staff developers seem prepared to proceed in areas where faith
to appreciate the significance of the dis- and a new vision, more than research and
tinction. In this article, I share some of the prior experience, must serve as a guide to
lessons I have learned about providing action. Yet, this is what they must do if
training and support to those who are try- staff development is to be relevant for the
ing to restructure schools. restructuring effort.
191
192 | Phillip C. Schlechty
Four Key Questions “Can it be done?” seek assurance that what

Four key questions must be answered if they are being called on to do is possible
the process of restructuring is to move and that, if they commit effort to the task,
forward effectively. These questions sug- it is likely that they can do what the con-
gest four different types of “lessons” that cept or vision calls them to do.
must be taught by leaders and need to be Modeling and illustrating are tech-
learned by all if the restructuring process niques associated with demonstration les-
is to be properly directed. The content sons. Where real life situations do not yet
and structure differs for each of the four exist, simulating actions based on theo-
lessons. retically derived models are often used.
1. What is the new circumstance or sys- 3. Should we do it? This question calls
tem that we are trying to create? This for the analysis of values, beliefs, commit-
question asks that a vision, direction, or ments, context, studies of the past, and
intention be clearly articulated. It must anticipation of the future. This requires a
be articulated in a way that the person values clarification lesson.
asking the question understands the an- Value clarification lessons, like concept
swer and in a way that is appealing and development lessons, rely heavily on dia-
compels action. This requires a concept logue, discussion, and logical analysis.
development lesson. Such lessons require detailed attention to
Those who are best at concept devel- the values which participants bring to the
opment often seem to rely heavily on So- discussion, the values which the proposed
cratic dialogue, focused discussion, and change promises to enhance or serve, and
pointed questions, combined with the the values which the change is likely to
use of metaphors and counterexamples threaten. For example, the value of secu-
intended to distinguish the concept of rity is most likely to be threatened by any
concern from other notions with which it radical change. Thus, those who promote
might be confused. (For example, I be- restructuring must be carefully attuned to
gan this discussion with a distinction be- the significance various actors give to secu-
tween improvement and restructuring, rity, for it is in protecting this value that
and now I am using that distinction as an some of the greatest resistance to change
example of another concept—the con- can occur.
cept of a concept development lesson.)
4. How do we do it? The last question is
2. Can it be done? This question is a re- a request for assistance in developing the
quest for real-life, hands-on experience or skills and habits required to do the job.
testimony from those who have had such This requires a skill development lesson.
experience. This requires a demonstration Skill development lessons, like demon-
lesson. stration lessons, usually rely heavily on
Demonstration lessons require models modeling and simulation. But skill de-
and exemplars which are real or contrived, velopment lessons are more likely to be ac-
empirically demonstrable, or theoretically tive and involve opportunities to practice,
described. Those who ask the question coaching, experimental efforts, and correc-
On the Frontier of School Reform with Trailblazers, Pioneers, and Settlers | 193
tive feedback. Demonstration lessons are motivated by novelty and excited by risks.
intended to be persuasive, to show that Once trailblazers have found a vision in
things can be done. Skill development les- which they believe, all they want and need
sons are intended to develop understand- is encouragement and support for that
ings, skills, attitudes, and habits of mind pursuit. Most of all, they want to be rec-
that permit one to do with confidence and ognized for their unique brand of courage,
ease that which is at first exceedingly diffi- and they want to be celebrated, recognized,
cult, awkward, and, perhaps, even threat- praised, and honored—at least most of
ening and frightening. them do. Staff developers and school lead-
ers must, therefore, find ways to celebrate
Five Types of Roles the trailblazers among them.
There are five types of roles that become Trailblazers are not egomaniacs, but
activated in the restructuring process. Each they are often monomaniacs with a mis-
of these role types requires support from sion. They know where they are going,
staff developers and other school leaders. even if they are not quite sure how they
Some of these roles are more prominent at are going to get there or what obstacles
some stages of restructuring than at others. they will confront on the way. When they
Further, those who play these roles have confront obstacles, they are likely to view
vastly different training and support needs them in highly personal terms, for the vi-
related to the lessons for the four key ques- sion of the trailblazer is a personal vision,
tions previously posed. It is, therefore, crit- and anything that stands in the way of the
ical that staff developers understand who pursuit of that vision is a personal threat.
they are addressing at distinct stages in the Thus, trailblazers need much personal and
process, for the needs of different actors personalized support.
will be different from time to time. Staff developers and other school lead-
ers should be sensitive to the fact that trail-
1. Trailblazers. Paradigm-breaking jour- blazers need to be constantly reinforced
neys are not for the timid, and one should that the vision they are pursuing is worth
not expect everyone to volunteer to under- the quest and that others, especially pow-
take such a journey. Those who take the erful others, see that what they are about is
first steps in restructuring are trailblazers, important. It is important enough, in fact,
for they are willing to go—in terms under- that the trailblazers should receive unusual
stood by Star Trek fans—without maps to latitude and unconventional forms of sup-
places where no person has gone before port (e.g., noncategorical funding, flexible
them, without the benefit of empirically schedules, and special access to the human
based models, and with little to guide and physical resources of the system).
them except belief in themselves, a desire Equally important, trailblazers need to
for novelty, the freedom to try, and a vi- be constantly reminded that it is a com-
sion that motivates and guides them. munity quest they are on, not a private
The most important requirement for venture. Because the vision the trailblazer
trailblazers is a clear guiding vision. Trail- pursues is a private vision, it is up to other
blazers want to know that there is some- leaders in the system to link it to a larger
place to go that is different; they are shared vision. For example, Lewis and
Clark were motivated by the excitement trailblazers on America’s frontier got in-
of exploring new frontiers, and Thomas formation from other trailblazers. Today,
Jefferson linked their quest to a vision of we refer to such rendezvous as “networks”
America that spread from shore to shore. where people who are moving in a com-
Teachers who become enthusiastic about mon direction develop mechanisms to
one curriculum innovation or another ensure regular interactions. Providing op-
also often need leaders to help them see portunities for such networking is one of
the linkage between their private adven- the primary contributions staff developers
tures and the common good. can make to the continuing growth and
Since trailblazers lead the way into a development of trailblazers.
new world, whether that world is a physi- It is important to understand that net-
cal frontier or the creation of a new way works and rendezvous do much more
of doing business, they do not have access than provide opportunities for the sharing
to a body of research and experience to of information. Such networking pro-
guide them. What then do trailblazers use vides opportunities for self-affirmation
as guides? and more than a bit of bragging and sto-
First, they use experiences they and oth- rytelling. Networking turns lonely ordeals
ers have gained in circumstances that are into shared ordeals. Lonely ordeals debili-
analogous to those they are about to con- tate; shared ordeals inspire and motivate.
front. For instance, it is not coincidental, I Alert staff developers and trainers who
think, that the language of space travel is listen to these stories can learn much that
laced with language which refers to early will be of value to pioneers (the second
explorers who took voyages on the ocean, type of role). Furthermore, if staff devel-
just as spaceships now take voyages to the opers watch carefully, they can get some
moon. And names of spacecraft often refer insight concerning which of the trailblaz-
to explorers in other times. ers have the temperament and the style to
Trailblazers need the opportunity to be guides as well as trailblazers. After all,
read about and visit with trailblazers from the pioneers and settlers who come later
other fields (e.g., business, the military, will need guides as well.
medical services, and so on). They also Leaders and staff developers need to
need time to discuss and assimilate what create conditions so that what is learned by
they learn from these encounters. It is the trailblazers is not lost. Trailblazers tell
from such experiences that relevant analo- stories. Unfortunately, they seldom turn
gies are discovered and come to be under- the stories into lessons for others. It is up to
stood. I have found that leaders whose the staff developers, therefore, to turn the
language is rich with metaphors and who stories of trailblazers into lessons that can
argue by analogy are particularly good at serve as sources of guidance for those who
inspiring and directing trailblazers. would follow. This is much like the map-
A second source of guidance for trail- makers of the early fourteenth century who
blazers is the experiences of other trail- translated the tales and reports of the early
blazers who are moving in roughly the explorers into crude maps which in turn
same direction and over the same terrain. were rendered more accurate and refined
The rendezvous was one of the ways early with further exploration.
Trailblazers need public acknowledg- Thus, pioneers need concept develop-

ment for their efforts. They need the opment lessons, value clarification lessons,
portunity to tell others about places they and demonstration lessons. They do not
have been and about what they have done. need skill development lessons, and staff
Such storytelling not only serves as a developers would be ill-advised to try to
source of information for others, but it provide them.
also serves as a continuing source of moti- What does all of this mean in practical
vation for the trailblazers. Furthermore, terms? First, it means that when staff de-
telling stories also gives one the opportu- velopers approach pioneers, or are attempt-
nity to listen to the stories of others and ing to recruit them, their best allies are
thus to learn from others as well, especially those who write about trailblazers (e.g.,
from other trailblazers. Fiske, 1991, Smart Kids, Smart Schools;
Staff development budgets that do not Sizer, 1992, Horace’s School ). Such writ-
make provision for sending trailblazers to ings do not provide research data, but they
conferences where they can brag a bit are do provide anecdotal accounts, reports,
not adequate budgets. And staff developers and stories. Such stories can inspire
are not doing their job if they do not seek prospective pioneers to take the journey.
every opportunity to put local trailblazers These stories contain some possible lessons
out in front, including helping them write regarding what one must know and be able
proposals that will get support for their to do to survive the rigors of the journey.
work and that will permit the trailblazers Trailblazers can help motivate pio-
to share their work at conferences. neers, especially if they are colorful and
good storytellers. Davy Crockett did
2. Pioneers. Closely following the trail- much more to inspire pioneers than he
blazers are the pioneers. Like the trail- did as a true trailblazer. Indeed, one could
blazers, pioneers are an adventurous and argue that Davy Crockett was a staff de-
hardy lot and are willing to take consider- veloper rather than a trailblazer since he
able risks. often took the stories of others and em-
Pioneers have many of the same needs as bellished them a bit, making himself the
trailblazers. Like trailblazers, concept devel- hero. He used the stories to inspire others
opment lessons (i.e., the development of a to act. Thus, an effective trailblazer may
vision that links a personal quest to a larger provide needed assurances to encourage
agenda) are the most important lessons pioneers.
they must learn. But the pioneers also have I have found that trailblazer teachers
considerable need for assurance that the trip and administrators are invaluable sources
upon which they will embark is worth- of inspiration and direction for pioneers,
while. More than the trailblazers, pioneers and even for settlers (which are discussed
need demonstrations to provide assurances next). But a caution is in order. Too often
that the journey can, in fact, be made. But staff development specialists, in their
pioneers understand that there are really quest for authenticity, remove trailblazers
few people who can teach them “how to do from their natural habitat on the “fron-
it” since only the trailblazers have gone to tier” and move them into the central of-
the frontiers which they are set to explore. fice, or worse to the university campus, in
the hope that the stories they will tell will lessons. They want to be sure they know
reach a wider audience. how to do what will be required of them.
Sometimes this works, but more fre- Indeed, many potential settlers will not
quently it is a bad experience for both the move until they have assurance that the
trailblazer and for those with whom they requisite knowledge and support are avail-
work. The teamwork that it takes to able to them.
“build community,” which is what pio- School leaders and staff developers who
neers must do, requires a different style support them must, therefore, give at-
than does the early explorations of new tention to providing systematic training
frontiers. which is supported by coaching, oppor-
Monomaniacs with a mission can tunities for feedback and critique, and,
quickly come to appear to others to be above all, protection from negative conse-
egomaniacs whose only mission is to ad- quences for failed efforts.
vance themselves. Trailblazers are needed, Perhaps the most critical thing to re-
but they are not easy to live with in the member about settlers is that they need
more sedate environments of committee strong, constant, and reassuring leadership
meetings and seminar rooms. that inspires them to keep going when
they are tempted to turn back. Change of
3. Settlers. After the trailblazers and pio- the sort envisioned in an honest restruc-
neers come the settlers. Settlers need to turing agenda is likely to create uncer-
know what is expected of them and where tainty, doubt, and confusion. The new
they are going to go. They need much practices called for are likely to be fright-
more detail and more carefully drawn ening and demanding, and the results may
maps than do those who have gone before be no better—at least in the short run—
them. Settlers are bold, but they are not than doing things the “old way.”
adventurers. They need to be persuaded Fullan’s (Fullan with Stiegelbauer, 1991)
that the venture upon which they are be- notion of the “implementation dip” comes
ing asked to embark is worthwhile. Thus, to mind here; he assumes that a natural
staff developers must provide value clarifi- part of the change process is short-term de-
cation lessons that help the settlers under- terioration in performance capacity. This
stand why the change is needed. occurs because the new way is unfamiliar
Settlers also want assurance that the and requires learning and practice. While
task can be accomplished and that they are the old way of doing things may not be as
not set on a fool’s mission. Thus, settlers good as the new way, at least it is familiar
have considerable need for demonstration and people know how to do it.
lessons (e.g., site visits where pioneering Without persistent leadership by people
work is already under way, conversations who have been there and without encour-
with pioneers and trailblazers, testimonials agement from others who are going there
from those who have tried, books and arti- (settlers traveled in wagon trains and were
cles that provide rich descriptions of what not isolated travelers), it is unlikely that
can be expected, and so on). settlers will stay the course. Thus, it is crit-
Much more than either pioneers or ical that staff developers and leaders un-
trailblazers, settlers want skill development derstand the terrain well enough that they
can point out progress when settlers be- better life, or a fuller realization of exist-
come discouraged. ing values—that causes risks to seem tol-
Benchmarks of progress and feedback erable when measured against rewards.
regarding progress toward these bench- The Utopian settlements on the Ameri-
marks are essential. To this extent, assess- can frontier are examples of such vision-
ment and constant monitoring, coupled driven change.
with public appraisals of progress toward However, as the Declaration of Indepen-
restructuring goals (as opposed to the dence states so eloquently, fundamental
goals of restructuring), are important. For changes are not lightly undertaken, and
example, a restructuring goal might be to people will tolerate a great deal rather than
have teachers and building administrators give up what is known. Furthermore, intol-
become more systematic in the use of data erable or threatening conditions, which can
regarding student performance as a means serve as an initial impetus for change, can-
of evaluating the merit and worth of de- not sustain change. In fact, negative forces
cisions the administrators and teachers are seldom adequate to motivate funda-
make. But, informed student performance mental change and are almost never ade-
would be a goal of restructuring. quate to sustain it.
Helping settlers learn how to use evi- The Mayflower Separatists—who had
dence of progress is a necessary antecedent among them some trailblazers, some pio-
to answering the question “Does restruc- neers, and a substantial number of reluc-
turing improve student performance?” tant and frightened settlers—may have left
Until restructuring has occurred, this ques- England because of oppression, but it did
tion cannot be answered. Therefore, the not take their leaders long to recognize that
first-order assessment question is “What a new and compelling vision would be re-
evidence is there that we (those who are quired to sustain them. This new vision,
engaged in restructuring) are, in fact, do- expressed first in the Mayflower Compact
ing our business differently today than and reinforced by visions based in religious
we did business yesterday, and why do we symbols, was as important to the settle-
think the new way of doing business will ment of the new world as were the oppres-
improve our results?” Settlers need the an- sive conditions that started the movement
swers to such questions to keep them going to that world.
and also to provide assurance that where Stay-at-homes are not bad people. In-
they are going is worth the effort. deed, in the long view of history, they are
inconsequential people, for no one remem-
4. Stay-at-Homes. There are two condi- bers the stay-at-homes after the change has
tions that motivate change. First, present occurred. How many Tory supporters of
conditions are so intolerable or dangerous King George are American students ex-
to one’s interests and values that the only pected to recall?
alternative is to do something. The Sepa- At the time a change is being contem-
ratists who left England to settle in Amer- plated, however, stay-at-homes receive a
ica were driven by such motives. Second, great deal—I think too much—of atten-
there is a new and compelling vision— tion. This is because most leaders need ap-
one that so inspires hope of a new day, a proval from those they want to lead,
which is usually everybody in their sphere Dewey has observed, “Familiarity breeds
of influence. Thus, those who do not re- contempt, but it also breeds something like
spond enthusiastically—or at least compli- affection. We get used to the chains we
antly—with the desires of change leaders wear, and through custom we finally em-
are often viewed as problems. brace what at first wore a hideous mien.”
Effective leaders seem to understand And there are, of course, those who
that early in the change process it is prob- are simply too timid to go to unfamiliar
ably not wise to spend too much energy places. Such persons are not likely to be
trying to convince the stay-at-homes that encouraged to move by direct assaults on
they, too, need to move to the frontier. what they currently value or by threats to
These leaders accept the fact that some what little security they now enjoy.
will never come along, and those who do
change will only do so after the pioneers 5. Saboteurs. Saboteurs are actively com-
and settlers have done their work very mitted to stopping change. Not only do
well. Of course, some will only come to they refuse to take the trip, but they do
the new land for a visit. not want others to go either.
One of the greatest dangers when deal- Many of those who take on the role of
ing with stay-at-homes in the restructur- saboteurs do so because they receive ben-
ing process is that the strategies used to efits from this role which are not pro-
entice them to change may backfire and vided if they were to support change. I
thus may convert these relatively benign have also been struck by the fact that
actors into supporters of the saboteurs some of the most effective saboteurs have
discussed below. Saboteurs’ favorite strat- many qualities and needs which are simi-
egy is to sow distrust through rumors and lar to trailblazers.
disinformation, and they will destroy even Saboteurs are often lone rangers. They
the best organized wagon train if they can are not afraid of taking risks. The differ-
gain enough followers. The most likely ence is that while the trailblazers will go
source of recruits for the saboteurs are the to places that others fear to go, saboteurs
stay-at-homes and the more timid settles are likely to remain in place when others
who feel pressured to move before they are beginning to feel afraid to stay. Lone-
have the assurances they need and before liness does not have the same meaning to
they have identified leaders they trust. them as it has to the settlers, and isolation
I have found the best strategy to use often inspires the saboteur to even greater
with stay-at-homes, at least in the early effort. To be persecuted, it seems, is to be
stages of the restructuring process, is be- appreciated, and, in a perverse way, to be
nign neglect coupled with as much gen- isolated or excluded is to be honored.
erosity of spirit as is possible. One must Saboteurs can cause trouble, no matter
remember that those who do not particu- where they are. But I have found that the
larly want to change are not necessarily best place to have them is on the inside
opposed to others changing if they choose where they can be watched rather than on
to do so. Many stay-at-homes stay at home the outside where they can cause trouble
because they truly love the place. As John without its being detected until the effects
are felt. Certainly, saboteurs can be dis- neighbors have deserted them or when
ruptive, and some will not cooperate even they muster the courage to “come for a
enough to communicate their concerns. visit” and find that they prefer it.
If, however, change leaders continue Some saboteurs will never come along,
to reach out to saboteurs and critics and and if they do, they will make the trip as
try hard to hear what they are saying, difficult as possible. Saboteurs, however,
sometimes there is much to be learned. It are people who in some prior movement
might be learned that some saboteurs to another frontier behaved as trailblazers
were once trailblazers and pioneers who and pioneers, but were betrayed by their
at some time in the past had the misfor- leaders. As a result, they became cynical
tune to follow leaders who did not give about the prospects of change. Most of all,
them the support they needed and aban- they want to be assured that those who are
doned them at the first sign of trouble. sounding the latest call to move to a new
frontier will stay the course rather than
A Concluding Comment turn around and go back.
Creating commitment to change is not Whether the present demand that our
the same thing as overcoming resistance schools be restructured will be responded
to change. To create commitment, one to positively remains to be seen. But of
must understand motives. Trailblazers one thing I am confident: Without leaders
are motivated by novelty, excitement, who will stay the course and without staff
and sometimes by the possibility of fame developers who understand what draws
and glory. Pioneers sometimes begin men and women to the frontier and what
their journey because of intolerable con- these people need to keep on going, all our
ditions, but they will stay the course only efforts to reform schools will fail.
if they become convinced that the new
world is really better.
R E FE R E NCES
Settlers need to know, almost for certain,
Fiske, E. (1991). Smart schools, smart kids.
that the world they are being asked to move
New York: Simon & Schuster.

to is better than the one they are leaving Fullan, M. with Stiegelbauer, S. (1991). The
and that the way to get there is known. new meaning of educational change (2nd
And, most of all, they need to know that ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
they are not taking the trip alone. Sizer, T. (1992). Horace’s school. New York:
Stay-at-homes will only move when Houghton Mifflin.
all—or nearly all—of their friends and —————
CHAPTE R
Linda Lambert 13
How to Build Leadership Capacity
Several years ago, I had a conversation reach the capacity to sustain improve-
with a man considered to be an outstand- ments on their own. Whether the school
ing principal. I asked, “What happened is advanced or a beginner in reform, what
at the school where you were last princi- it does not need is to start over. Each
pal? Are the reforms still in place?” time a school is forced to start over, its
“That has been a real disappointment staff and community lose some of their
for me,” he lamented. “You see, conditions personal energy and commitment.
and programs at the school soon returned If we are to sustain our improvements
to the way they were before I got there.” and build on the strength and commit-
Over the intervening years, I’ve held ment of educators, we need to address the
several similar conversations. “Returning capacity of schools to lead themselves. We
to normal” is the usual story. It is not sur- need to rethink both leadership and ca-
prising that schools do not maintain their pacity building.
improvements. New principals and super-
intendents often come to a school or dis- Rethinking Leadership
trict with their own agendas. Or they When we think about leadership, we are
respond to a charge from the superinten- accustomed to picturing people in roles
dent or board to “turn this school around,” with formal authority, such as principals,
“get us back on an even keel,” “undo what vice-principals, directors, or superinten-

the incumbent did,” or “move us into the dents. But we can view leadership as a
future.” Such sweeping mandates ignore verb, rather than a noun, by considering
the history, passions, and qualities of an in- the processes, activities, and relationships
cumbent staff, choosing instead to import in which people engage, rather than as
reforms that are both generic and popular. the individual in a specific role.
Less often do new administrators hear, Let’s define leadership as the reciprocal
“This is a good school that is getting bet- learning processes that enable participants
ter. Structures are in place to continue the in a community to construct meaning
work. Teacher and parent leadership is toward a shared purpose. This definition is
strong. We need a principal who can co- known as “constructivist leadership” (Lam-
lead this school in the direction it is al- bert et al. 1995). Leadership in this context
ready going.” means learning among adults in a commu-
Most schools cannot yet be described nity that shares goals and visions. Leader-
in these glowing terms—they have yet to ship as learning involves these assumptions:
201
202 | Linda Lambert
• Leadership is not a trait; leadership tion in the work of leadership. Leadership

and leader are not the same. A leader capacity can be seen as a complex, inter-
is anyone who engages in the work active framework, with four types of
of leadership. schools and school communities. A caveat
• Leadership is about learning that is needed here. Frameworks, matrixes, or
leads to constructive change. scales somewhat artificially categorize hu-
• Everyone has the potential and right man behavior. Individuals—and schools—
to work as a leader. have unique characteristics.
• Leading is a shared endeavor, the
foundation for the democratization • School 1: Low Participation, Low
of schools. Skillfulness. Here, the principal of-
• Leadership requires the redistribution ten exercises autocratic leadership.
of power and authority. To encour- Parents and community members
age shared learning, superintendents tend to have limited participation.
and principals need to explicitly Information flows from the princi-
release authority, and staff need to pal to the staff (often originating
learn how to enhance personal and with the district office), yet is rarely
collective power and informal au- a two-way process. This information
thority (Lambert in press). often includes rules that govern be-
havior and practices. Staff often at-
If leadership is everyone’s work, it does tribute problems to children, family,
not require extraordinary charismatic and the community rather than in-
qualities and uses of authority. If teachers structional practices. Collegial work
perceive the work as a natural outgrowth is rare. Staff members—and parents
of their roles as professional educator, and students—often express resis-
they are less likely to opt out, insisting, tance by being absent from meetings
“I’m not a leader.” Teachers have long at- or school. Teachers rarely initiate
tended to the learning of students and new practices, although they may
themselves; leadership asks that they at- comply with mandates temporarily.
tend to the learning of their colleagues as Although students may initially show
well. The skills and dispositions of effec- some improvement in achievement
tive leaders include convening and facili- when staff members implement man-
tating dialogue, posing inquiry questions, dates, they rarely sustain these gains.
coaching one another, mentoring a new
teacher, and inviting others to become • School 2: High Participation, Low
engaged with a new idea. This kind of Skillfulness. The principal’s style is
leadership is naturally engaging and leads often unpredictable or predictably
to broad-based participation. disengaged. He or she may make uni-
lateral or surprising decisions, often
Framing Leadership depending on who is asking the
Building capacity in schools includes de- question or requesting the action.
veloping a new understanding of leadership Information tends to be sparse. Fac-
capacity—broad-based, skillful participa- ulty meetings are often composed of
How to Build Leadership Capacity | 203
“sit and git” sound bites without dia- strong innovation and excellent class-
logue. No schoolwide focus on teach- rooms tend to exist, but focus on
ing and learning is evident; thus, both student learning is not schoolwide.
excellent and poor classrooms may Student achievement may show only
exist. Many staff work with individ- slight gains.
ual grants, projects, or partnerships
that are disconnected from each • School 4: High Skillfulness, High Par-
other. Staff members may not con- ticipation. This school tends to have
cern themselves with nonachieving high leadership capacity and broad-
classrooms; referrals, attendance, and based participation. The principal and
achievement differ across the school. other leaders make concentrated ef-
Roles and responsibilities are unclear. forts to include all staff in leadership
Overall student achievement is often development and decision making.
static, with higher achievement for Staff members have gathered evidence
students in particular socioeconomic from existing sources or through ac-
and gender groups. The range of tion research and tend to base deci-
achievement from high to low is as sions on these data. The school has
broad as the range of quality. a clear purpose, focusing on student
and adult learning. Information loops
• School 3: High Skillfulness, Low Par- keep staff, parents, and students in-
ticipation. This school tends to make formed, with opportunities to discuss,
concentrated efforts to provide for clarify, and refine ideas as they are
skillful leadership work for a few being formed—long before a final de-
teachers and the principal, perhaps as cision is made. Roles and responsibili-
a leadership team. These people may ties are shared and blended, but clear.
have had opportunities for training The school community tends to as-
through a reform-oriented center, sume collective responsibility for the
network, or coalition. There may be work of leadership and learning. Staff
growing polarization among the staff, members consider themselves to be

who may strengthen their resistance part of a professional community in
as they see favored colleagues leading which innovation is the norm. Stu-
a change effort. Teams have learned dent achievement is high across the
to accumulate and use data to make student population and within each
school decisions, although the data subgroup as well.
may raise objections or denials from
other staff members. Staff caught in A School on Its Way
the middle (neither thoroughly in- New Century High School (a pseudo-
volved nor disengaged) are often nym) is moving up on the scale of leader-
thoughtful allies but relatively un- ship capacity. The school joined a reform
skilled in resolving conflicts. These network and developed an effective lead-
teachers are unclear what role to play ership team. The team led in many im-
as tension increases between the provements, including the use of student
“haves” and “have nots.” Pockets of data to inform decisions. Yet the harder
204 | Linda Lambert
they worked, the more they seemed to structures and collaborative inquiry
alienate some teachers. processes.
“There are some missing pieces here,” 6. Implement plans for building lead-
reflected one team member. “We may ership capacity—and anticipate role
have to slow down to speed up.” The team changes and professional develop-
then focused on involving more staff, stu- ment needs.
dents, and parents in the leadership pro- 7. Develop district policies and prac-
cess. Team members began to converse tices that support leadership ca-
with staff—to really listen and to engage pacity building. These practices
everyone in schoolwide inquiry. include district-school relationships
Six months later, New Century’s profes- built on high engagement but few
sional culture is changing. Faculty meet- rules and regulations, as well as
ings are devoted to dialogue about teaching shared decision making and site-
and learning. The majority of the staff are based school management. Districts
involved in the reform effort. People feel should model the processes of a
that their voices are heard. There are fewer learning organization.
student referrals and failing grades. School-
wide improvement now seems possible. Sustaining the momentum of our work in
schools is essential if we are going to stay
Encouraging Leadership the course with program improvements
Schools and districts need to create the long enough to know whether they
following conditions if they are to build succeed. We must institutionalize the pro-
leadership capacity: cesses of collaboration and collective re-
sponsibility. Building leadership capacity
1. Hire personnel with the proven ca- is not the next innovation, but the foun-
pacity to do leadership work, and dation for sustaining school and district
develop veteran staff to become improvements.
skillful leaders.
2. Get to know one another; build R E FE R E NCES

trusting relationships. Lambert, L., D. Walker, D. Zimmerman,
3. Assess staff and school capacity for J. Cooper, M. Lambert, M. Gardner, and
leadership. Do you have a shared P. J. Ford-Slack. (1995). The Construc-
purpose? Do you work collabora- tivist Leader. New York: Teachers Col-
lege Press, Columbia University.
tively? Is there a schoolwide focus
Lambert, L. (In Press). Building Leadership Ca-
on student achievement and adult pacity in Schools. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD.
learning?1
4. Develop a culture of inquiry that in- NOTE
cludes a continuous cycle of reflect- 1. For surveys and rubrics on leadership
ing, questioning, gathering evidence, capacity, as well as extended case studies, see
and planning for improvement. Building Leadership Capacity in Schools (Lam-
5. Organize for leadership work by bert in press).
establishing inclusive governance —————
CHAPTE R
Marilyn Cochran-Smith 14
Against the Grain
In an essay condemning political and so- 1985). I am not suggesting that teachers
cial indifference in prewar Italy, Antonio alone have the power or the responsibility
Gramsci (1916/1977) forcefully argued to reform education by “teaching better,”
that action was everyone’s responsibility or that teaching can be understood in
and that each individual, no matter how isolation from the cultures of schools and
apparently powerless, was accountable for communities or the historical and politi-
the role he played or failed to play in the cal contexts of school and society. In fact,
larger political struggle. If we accept I argue in favor of inquiry communities
Gramsci’s notion that indifference is of- where inexperienced and experienced
ten a mainspring of history, and if we teachers learn together and in favor of
substitute the word “teacher” for Gram- teachers joining others in larger social
sci’s “man,” we have a powerful statement movements. However, teaching is fun-
about the accountability of individual damentally a political activity in which
educators for their efforts to reform U.S. every teacher plays a part by design or by
schools: default (Ginsburg, 1988; Willis, 1978).
Prospective teachers need to know from
Every [teacher] must be asked to account the start that they are part of a larger strug-
for the manner in which he [sic] has ful- gle and that they have a responsibility to
filled the task that life has set him and reform, not just replicate, standard school
continues to set him day by day; he must practices. I argue in this chapter, however,
be asked to account for what he has that working to reform teaching, or what
done, but especially for what he has not can be thought of as teaching against the
done. . . . It is time that events should be grain, is not a generic skill that can be
seen to be the intelligent work of [teach- learned at the university and then “ap-
ers] and not the products of chance or plied” at the school. Teaching against the
fatality. (p. 18) grain is embedded in the culture and his-
tory of teaching at individual schools and
I use Gramsci’s clarion call for social ac- in the biographies of teachers and their
countability to reassert that teachers are collaborative efforts to alter curricula, raise
decision makers and collaborators who questions about common practices, and
must reclaim their roles in the shaping of resist inappropriate decisions. These rela-
practice by taking a stand as both educa- tionships must be explored in schools in
tors and activists (Aronowitz & Giroux, the company of experienced teachers who
205
206 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith
are themselves engaged in complex, situa- power and knowledge relationships of the
tion-specific, and sometimes losing strug- school and the university.
gles to work against the grain.
In this chapter I briefly analyze two ap- Critical Dissonance
proaches to preparing preservice teachers One approach to preparing student teach-
to teach against the grain, critical disso- ers to work against the grain is to create
nance and collaborative resonance. I argue critical dissonance, or incongruity based on a
that programs built on the collaborative critical perspective, between what students
resonance of university and school have learn about teaching and schooling at the
the potential to provide student teachers university and what they already know
with unusually rich learning opportuni- and continue to learn about them in the
ties. Next, I take readers into four urban schools. In student-teaching programs
schools in the Philadelphia area where based on critical dissonance, the “problem
student teachers work and talk with expe- of student teaching” is generally identified
rienced teachers who, in a variety of ways, as its tendency to bolster utilitarian per-
are working against the grain. Drawing spectives on teaching and ultimately to
on data from these four schools, I present perpetuate existing practices (Beyer, 1984;
an analysis of teachers’ and student teach- Feiman-Nemser, 1983; Goodman, 1986a;
ers’ discourse during weekly school-site Tabachnick & Zeichner, 1984; Zeichner,
meetings, revealing the groups’ efforts to Tabachnick, & Densmore, 1987). The
pose questions, struggle with uncertainty, goal of these programs is to interrupt the
and build evidence for their reasoning. potentially conservative influences of stu-
These conversations provide vivid de- dent teachers’ school-based experiences
scriptive evidence that regular school-site and instead call into question the impli-
talk among experienced reforming teach- cations of standard school policy and prac-
ers and inexperienced student teachers is tice. The strategies of programs intended
an indispensable resource in the educa- to foster critical dissonance include meth-
tion of reform-minded teachers. ods courses that emphasize alternative
teaching strategies, field experiences cou-

Critical Dissonance and pled with ethnographic studies of school-
Collaborative Resonance ing, critical theory-based curriculum study,
Student-teaching programs specifically seminars and journals in which students
designed to foster critical inquiry and pre- reflect critically on their teaching expe-
pare prospective teachers to be reformers riences, and action research projects in
are part of a small minority of preservice schools (Beyer, 1984; Gitlin & Teitel-
programs across the country (Goodlad, baum, 1983; Goodman, 1986a; Zeichner
1990b; Grant & Secada, 1990; Zeichner, & Liston, 1987).
Liston, Mahlios, & Gomez, 1988). Within Programs that aim to create critical dis-
this small group of programs, however, sonance are intended to be transfor-
two variations in theory and practice can mative, to help students broaden their
be distinguished as the products of two visions and interrogate their own perspec-
different sets of assumptions about the tives. Unfortunately, these programs have
Against the Grain | 207
had limited success. Critical reflection is and may inadvertently convey the mes-
difficult, especially because cooperating sage that teachers’ lived experiences are
teachers who do not have reflective skills unenlightened and even unimportant.
themselves often co-opt the effort (Cal-
derhead, 1989). Further, the intentions of Collaborative Resonance
programs are not necessarily imple- A second approach to preparing student
mented, particularly in the interactions of teachers to work against the grain is to cre-
students and their supervisors (Zeichner ate collaborative resonance, or intensification
et al., 1988) and in methods and field- based on the joint work of learning com-
work courses (Beyer, 1984; Goodman, munities, by linking what student teachers
1986a, 1986b). Over time, such programs learn from their university-based expe-
encourage some critique, but actually al- riences with what they learn from their
ter students’ outlooks very little (Feiman- school-based experiences. In programs
Nemser, 1990; Zeichner & Liston, 1987). based on resonance, the “problem of stu-
Many educators would agree that pre- dent teaching” is its failure to provide
paring more liberally educated teachers to student teachers with not only the analyti-
think and work critically is an essential cal skills needed to critique standard pro-
goal for teacher preparation. However, cedures, but also the resources needed to
there are several troubling messages im- function as reforming teachers throughout
plicit in programs that aim to provoke their teaching careers. The goal is to pro-
critical dissonance between university and long and intensify the influences of univer-
school: the way to link theory and prac- sity and school experiences, both of which
tice is to bring a critical perspective to are viewed as potentially liberalizing.
bear upon the institutional and instruc- The strategies of programs intended
tional arrangements of schooling; people to foster collaborative resonance, some of
outside of schools are the agents who have which are similar to strategies of programs
developed these critical perspectives and intended to foster dissonance, include
thus can liberalize and reform the people placement of student teachers in sites where
and activities inside; the “wisdom” of reform and restructuring efforts are under
teachers’ practice is a conservative point way; action research and teacher research
of view that has to be gotten around, ex- projects conducted cooperatively by stu-
posed, or changed; and the language and dent teachers and experienced teachers; cur-
conceptual frameworks for describing and riculum and methods courses taught and
critiquing teachers’ work lives need not be critiqued in both university and school set-
familiar to teachers or articulated in their tings; collaborative inquiry at school-site
own voices or words. This means that meetings and university-site seminars; and
the radical critique prompted by critical joint program planning and assessment
dissonance, which argues in the abstract by teachers and teacher educators (Clift,
for the knowledge, voices, and power of Veal, Johnson, & Holland, 1990; Cochran-
teachers themselves, may in reality “set Smith & Lytle, 1993; Rochester City
up” school-based teachers to be exposed Schools/University of Rochester Ford
and criticized in university-led courses, Foundation Report, 1988–89; Ross, 1987).
Programs based on resonance share people who have insider perspectives to-
with programs intended to stimulate dis- gether with those who have perspectives
sonance the view that, in and of them- on teaching against the grain that have de-
selves, the formal aspects of preservice veloped outside of schools themselves. The
preparation are largely incapable of alt- purpose here is not to homogenize ideas
ering students’ perspectives (Zeichner, Ta- but to intensify through joint work the op-
bachnick, & Densmore, 1987), while the portunities student teachers have to learn
less formal, experiential aspects of student to teach against the grain.
teaching are potentially more powerful
(Feiman-Nemser, 1983). But unlike pro- Teaching Against the Grain
grams intended to provoke dissonance, Teachers who work against the grain are
programs based on resonance simultane- in the minority. Often they must raise
ously aim to capitalize on the potency of their voices against teaching and testing
teaching cultures to alter students’ per- practices that have been “proven” effec-
spectives by creating or tapping into con- tive by large-scale educational research
texts that support ongoing learning by and delivered to the doorsteps of their
student teachers in the company of experi- schools in slick packages. Often they must
enced teachers who are themselves actively provide evidence that their students are
engaged in efforts to reform, research, making sufficient progress according to
or transform teaching (Evertson, 1990; standard measures of learning, despite the
Richardson-Koehler, 1988). fact that they place little stock in those
Taken as a whole, the messages embed- measures and believe, to the contrary, that
ded in programs based on collaborative they work against the best interests of
resonance are significantly different from their children. It is not surprising that
those in many other programs: self-critical teachers who work against the grain are
and systematic inquiry is a primary way to sometimes at odds with their administra-
link theory and practice; inquiry is most tors and evaluators.
effective within a larger culture of collabo- To teach against the grain, teachers have
ration wherein novices and experienced to understand and work both within and
professionals alike learn from, interpret, around the culture of teaching and the pol-
and ultimately alter the day-to-day life of itics of schooling at their particular schools
schools; power is shared among partici- and within their larger school systems and
pants in the community, and knowledge communities. Unlike researchers who re-
about teaching is understood as fluid and main outside the schools, teachers who are
socially constructed; the language and cri- committed to working against the grain in-
tique of school-based reforming teachers side their schools are not at liberty to pub-
are as essential as are those of university- licly announce brilliant but excoriating
based educators and researchers; and, in critiques of their colleagues and the bu-
the end, the power to reinvent teaching, reaucracies in which they work. Their ul-
learning, and schooling is located in nei- timate commitment is to the school lives
ther the university nor the school but and futures of the children with whom
in the collaborative work of the two. Pro- they live and work. They have to be astute
grams based on resonance attempt to bring observers of individual learners with the
ability to pose and explore questions that forming teaching. Despite their inexpe-
transcend cultural attribution, institutional rience, student teachers do learn about
habit, and the alleged certainty of outside teaching against the grain when they talk
experts. They have to see beyond and with experienced teachers in learning
through the conventional labels and prac- communities where questions are urged,
tices that sustain the status quo by raising answers are not expected, and the tenta-
unanswerable questions. Perhaps most im- tive forays of beginners are supported.
portant, teachers who work against the To illustrate, I focus in the remainder of
grain must wrestle with their own doubts, this chapter on data collected in urban
fend off the fatigue of reform, and depend elementary schools in the Philadelphia area
on the strength of their individual and col- where student teachers worked actively
laborative convictions that their work ulti- with both university mentors and school-
mately makes a difference in the fabric of based teachers engaged in the enterprise
social responsibility. of reform. I explore the learning opportu-
Teaching against the grain is challeng- nities that were available to student teach-
ing and sometimes discouraging work. ers within the weekly teacher-researcher
In most student-teaching placements, school-site meeting, which was one of the
there are few opportunities for experienced major contexts of this student-teaching
teachers or student teachers to participate program. This program was intended to
in thoughtful inquiry, reflect on their build on the collaborative resonance of
daily decisions, or collaborate with others university and school experiences. Partici-
(Goodlad, 1984; Little, 1987; Su, 1990). pants in the school-site meetings were stu-
In most of their encounters with school dent teachers, cooperating teachers, and
and university supervisors, student teachers university supervisors in Project START, a
are encouraged to talk about “relevant” five-year preservice program in elementary
and technical rather than critical or episte- education at the University of Pennsylva-
mological aspects of teaching (Hursh, nia that existed from 1986 to 1996.
1988; Zeichner et al., 1988). Finally, in In Project START, all participants
most of their preservice programs, the role (students, as well as cooperating teachers,
of the teacher as an agent for change is university supervisors, and course instruc-
not emphasized, and students are not de- tors) were encouraged to view themselves
liberately socialized into assuming re- as researchers, reformers, and reflective pro-
sponsibility for school reform and renewal fessionals responsible for critiquing and
(Edmundsen, 1990; Goodlad, 1990s). creating curriculum, instruction, forms of
As this chapter illustrates, however, assessment, and the institutional arrange-
student teachers’ relationships and collab- ments of schooling. The combination of
orations with teachers who are themselves several instructional and supervisory struc-
struggling to teach against the grain make tures made the student-teaching portion of
for a different kind of experience. Work- the program somewhat unusual. Twenty to
ing and talking regularly with experienced 25 students progressed through the 12-
teachers who share the goal of teaching month program as a cohort, participating
differently allow student teachers to par- together in study groups, seminars, courses,
ticipate in their ways of knowing and re- and teacher-research groups. Each student
teacher simultaneously completed univer- This chapter draws on examples from

sity coursework and a full year of student school-site meetings that occurred over the
teaching in the same classroom with the course of one student teaching year at four
same teacher (5 months of student teaching urban schools (names of schools are pseu-
2 days per week, 3 months of student donyms): Community Central, a small
teacher 5 days per week). Subcohorts of central Philadelphia independent school;
three or four student teachers were placed Charles A. Beard, a small desegregated
at specially selected elementary school sites Philadelphia public school; Edgeview Ele-
with cooperating teachers who, in a variety mentary School, a public school in an
of ways, were working against the grain. urban area on the edge of Philadelphia;
They were involved, for instance, in cur- and Stephen R. Morris Elementary, a large
ricular redesign projects, teacher research Philadelphia public school. These four
and publication, alternative schools and schools were selected to demonstrate some
programs, grassroots parent-teacher com- of the range and variation in urban school-
munity groups, teacher networks and site discussions. The small groups of stu-
collaboratives, or other teaching- and dent teachers assigned to these schools met
school-reform efforts. Alternative methods weekly as teacher-researcher groups with
courses emphasized critical issues in theory their cooperating teachers and university
and practice and required projects that supervisors to raise questions and reflect
were implemented in student-teaching on issues of theory and practice. Over the
classrooms and critiqued in both univer- course of the year, the four schools hosted
sity and school settings. All participants in more than 70 teacher-researcher meetings,
the program were teachers, learners, and ranging in length from 30 to 90 minutes.
researchers. They had opportunities to
participate in many varieties of teacher re- Collaboration, Intellectual Work,
search through course assignments, school and the Culture of Reform
and university-site activities, in-house and I use observational data to reveal some of
regional publications and professional fo- the “intellectual work” of teaching against
rums, and the larger professional commu- the grain that occurred in inquiry commu-
nity. Each subcohort of student teachers, nities. By “intellectual work,” I mean the
cooperating teachers, and university patterns of thinking, talking, and knowing
supervisor met weekly in a school-site, about teaching that were characteristic of
teacher-researcher group meeting to reflect teachers engaged in the enterprise of re-
on their work. All cohorts met together form: the problems they posed about chil-
monthly for a university-site seminar on dren, the dilemmas they found impossible
teaching, learning, and learning to teach. to answer, the knowledge they made prob-
University supervisors and program orga- lematic, the evidence they sought in order
nizers met biweekly in a teacher-educator- to document and explore particular issues,
as-researcher group to inquire about their the bodies of knowledge they brought to
own theories and practices of teacher edu- bear on particular situations, the ways they
cation. Supervisors, program organizers, connected diverse experiences, and the
and cooperating teachers met twice yearly themes they explored as central to under-
to assess and revise the program. standing teaching. The conversations dem-
onstrate why student teachers needed op- the strategies we can use to strengthen
portunities to live and work with reformers the situation.” And that’s much more
if they themselves were to embrace a re- complicated. But you’re still modeling
former’s stance on schooling. being a thinking individual, which is
what you want to do.
Rethinking the
Language of Teaching Within a culture of reform and reflection,
At Community Central Lower School, the the teacher-researcher group at Commu-
threads of progressive philosophy were nity Central raised questions about the as-
woven tightly into long-standing tradi- sumptions underlying school policies and
tions of peaceful Quaker education. At the the consequences of their labeling prac-
core of the culture was a deep commit- tices. Borrowing from Giroux (1984), I
ment to community, diversity, and self- regard this form of intellectual work as re-
critical inquiry. Teachers strove to educate thinking the language of teaching—a col-
the mind, body, and spirit of all students laborative process of uncovering the
and to prepare them to live more fully in values and assumptions implicit in lan-
the present as well as the future. In an guage and then thinking through the na-
important sense, daily school life at Com- ture of the relationships they legitimize.
munity Central itself represented a trans- In one teacher-researcher meeting at
formative vision of what is possible in Community Central, for example, the
education. But the habit at Community group discussed the consequences of the
Central was also to question the school’s school’s long-standing practice of labeling
own practices. One teacher commented some students “transition children,” or
that she had chosen to work at the school children who completed kindergarten but
because it was never self-satisfied. She ex- were “not ready” for first grade and hence
plicitly told the student teachers: spent 2 years instead of one to make the
transition between the end of kinder-
Don’t ever apologize for being a teacher garten and the beginning of second grade.
and always talk about it in an intellectual An excerpt from their conversation dem-
way to really show that as a responsibil- onstrates what it means to do the intellec-
ity, you have to keep learning. . . . As a tual work of rethinking the language and
model for your peers and colleagues, practices of teaching.
there is a way to say that there aren’t any
easy answers. . . . Especially as a new Sherry Watson-Gage, Cooperating Teacher,
teacher, in a way you are given permis- Grades 3/4: I do not believe in a tran-
sion to ask why as a new teacher. And as a sition class, or having it—period! As a
colleague it’s your responsibility to con- parent [in this school], last January I got
stantly say, “Well, that’s an answer,” or, a letter from my child’s teacher, actually
“That’s an easy answer and what we need in November, when she had spent a
to do is to take some time to really think month and a half with him. She said
about the issue, talk about all the ways to me, “He may be a candidate for
we can get information to illuminate transition.” I said, “Why?” And she said,
what’s going on, and then talk about all “It’s not academic, it’s emotional.” . . . I
think all of those discussions are very esteem or damaging their families’ self-
fuzzy and [I know] they have to be in esteem or the way their families feel
November, but what it said to me was, about them?
“He’s not all right”—not that he’s not
perfect because, goodness, I know that, Over the course of two lengthy school-site
but it was, “He’s not all right. There is conversations, members of the teacher re-
something wrong with him. And we’re search group helped one another begin to
now going to lower our expectations do the intellectual work of rethinking the
for the amount of growth that he is language of learning and development.
going to go through because we’re not Specifically, they worked to make the la-
thinking probably that he will go to first bels, language, and practices of children’s
grade—he’ll go to transition.” early growth problematic, an activity that
Shelia Jules-James, Cooperating Teacher, Tom (1985) emphasizes is a “conscious
Grades 3/4: What would you do then attempt on the part of the teacher to sus-
with a child who was not ready? pend judgment about some aspect of the
Watson-Gage: See, that to me is a hard teaching situation and, instead, to con-
thing. What does it mean not to be sider alternatives to established practice”
ready? Because last year, I had children (p. 37). The conversation was dominated
who were “not ready” for third grade, by the experienced teachers, but it really
and they are great in fourth grade. Now began at the start of the school year (and
how do you predict? And what does it several weeks prior to the conversation
mean? I have fourth grade children who quoted above) when one student teacher
[were] transition children [years ago], commented to her supervisor, “I’m just
and it’s still an issue for them. They still not really sure what those [transition]
say, “I was a transition child.” And so classes are all about and how they came to
they are still carrying something around. be set up like that and whose decision it
And nobody ever said it with glee, “I was was and which kids get placed in those
a transition child!” . . . But what is the classrooms and that kind of thing.” This
experience? [What can we see by] fol- question was carried to the teacher re-
lowing a transition kid through to see if search group where it prompted an expe-
it really does help? rienced teacher to express dissatisfaction
[The conversation continued during the with the practice of establishing transition
group’s teacher research group meeting the classes, which eventually led to the group’s
following week.] exploration of the issue and to repeated
Jules-James: I think transition is . . . not a admissions that the question had no ready
situation that has any easy solution. answer.
And I think what works for one family Tom (1985) has argued that critical
may not work for another child or an- theorists have sometimes failed to provide
other family. I see there being children an adequate enough account of individual
who need more attention or more time intention and human agency in their ex-
in some way and they need it for a va- planations of the development and evolu-
riety of reasons, and how do we give it tion of culture, explanations that would
to them without damaging their self- help educators move beyond “determinis-
tic thinking” and toward “intentionality” that you could do something for children
(1985, p. 38). What is especially important that would be meaningful and relevant
about the intellectual work accomplished for them, but the powers-that-be had
in the excerpt above is that participants other ideas about what school was all
regarded the teacher herself as one of the about. And it really became an ongoing
agents who had the right, and indeed the theme in my life, and I think in many
obligation, to make certain aspects of people’s lives, that whatever culture the
teaching problematic. An image of the kids are from, the school culture becomes
teacher as an active agent poses a sharp yet another piece that is overlaid on them.
contrast to the image of the teacher as a And when it doesn’t have any fit with
pawn pushed around by the fingers of their own culture, with what they’ve
habit, standard procedure, and expert brought, it really becomes very hard for
outsider knowledge. them to see school as relevant and to be
able to feel themselves as valuable people.
Posing Problems of Practice And I finally had to leave that place be-
Charles A. Beard School, part of the large cause I just felt I was so stymied in what I
city school system, provided two edu- wanted to do. . . . I realized that we had to
cational alternatives to parents—“the take hard looks at the kids and do the
open classroom track” and “the traditional kind of work that they were already show-
track.” The hallmark of the culture of ing us was important to them.
teaching in the open classrooms was an
ongoing effort to learn from children’s Charles A. Beard was a small desegre-
language and work, to draw from obser- gated school with a strong history of
vations of single cases teaching strategies parent-teacher cooperation and a com-
that could be used in other cases, and to mitment to community involvement. Al-
construct curriculum that strengthened though as a school it did not have a
children’s abilities by building on their commitment to open education, the
own resources. The existence of two dis- teachers who were members of the teacher
tinct traditions of teaching provided ongo- research group were heavily involved in a
ing grist for comparison and an informal teacher-initiated, long-term, and prima-
culture of critique. As one teacher talked rily outside-of-school culture of activism,
to the student teachers about her teaching reflection, and progressive education.
history, she described the culture of re- They were founding members of a 12-
form of which she and others in the group year-old teachers’ cooperative group that
had been part for many years: met weekly in members’ homes to reflect
on their work, and they were participants
It was the beginning for me of seeing how in many local and national forums on
much what we do affects what the chil- teaching, learning, and evaluation.
dren produce and how much we limit Within a culture of commitment to
them with unspoken messages when we public education and to the social and
give them worksheets and when we give democratic construction of knowledge for
them dittos and fill-ins . . . it was very, teaching, the Charles A. Beard teacher re-
very hard to be in a place where you knew search group frequently used guidelines
from “Descriptive Review of a Child” and child when I feel some of these barriers?”
other Prospect School documentary pro- That would be one kind of question. It’s
cesses (Carini, 1986). These begin with a not just, “How am I going to work with
teacher’s focusing question about a spe- this child?”
cific child or issue to be explored through Rita Greenberger, Cooperating Teacher,
systematic observation and oral inquiry. Grade 1: Another kind of question
In site meetings over the course of a year, might be, “How am I going to get this
a frequent focus of the group’s intellectual child to know I mean business?” or
work was the development of questions, “How can I get this child to be a func-
or what Schön (1983a) describes as tioning part of the group—to improve
“problem setting.” Schön reminds us that his reading or improve the way he re-
problems of professional practice do not lates to other children?”
present themselves ready-made, but rather Sharon Bates: It also could be a question
that practice “is complex and uncertain, about reading and writing, like “How
and there is a problem in finding the can I help someone to read?” Those
problem” (p. 129). questions seem to be the ones that you
In one teacher research group conver- seem to be more comfortable with
sation, for example, student teachers were through what you have already learned
struggling to choose individual children in the [university] classroom. And
whom they would observe over time in some of these questions about social
the classroom and then present to the relationships and management are the
school-site group as a case study or de- harder ones.
scriptive review. Their cooperating teach- Jenny Gold, Student Teacher, Grades 3/4:
ers emphasized posing problems from Does it have to be a question, or can it
which they could learn how to teach the be an analysis of somebody?
individual child, as well as other children. Rita Greenberger: It can be an issue.
Their emphasis was consistently on un- Karen Johnston: What is your question?
derstanding the generalities of teaching [addressing Sharon Bates, who had
by exploring its particulars. mentioned earlier that she would be

making a presentation about a child at
Sharon Bates, Cooperating Teacher, Grade 4: a teacher research conference the fol-
The key thing is to pick a child you have lowing week.]
a question about and that you honestly Sharon Bates: It’s about how to help [a
want to describe and get feedback particular child]. He’s a person who
on. . . . You have to think of a question with reading checks things out a lot with
for the child. This is the hardest part. It adults when it doesn’t make sense . . . I
has to be with you and the child. It can’t think you [addressing Jenny Gold]
just be centered on you. experience him as very disruptive a lot
Karen Johnston, Cooperating Teacher, Grade of the time. He’s always up and down.
3: There might be a third grader [about] Jenny Gold: With activities on the rug
whom you feel, “Am I going to know I do.
that child any better when I leave here?” Sharon Bates: My question is how to sup-
or, “How am I going to work with this port him in his reading to keep the
questioning that he does, because it is ways of framing the problems and also sug-
really very valuable to him, but to help gesting new ways to think about solutions.
him become more independent, so One of the most striking aspects of prob-
that he won’t be frustrated when he lem setting is the image it conveys to
gets into a classroom situation in student teachers about the teacher’s rela-
which he might not get his questions tionship to knowledge. The teacher im-
answered. . . . He’s captured into read- plicit in the conversations at Charles A.
ing now, but you have to hold him Beard was not separated from the knowl-
still . . . so my question is how to sup- edge of teaching, nor was the teacher sim-
port him in this path. ply the practitioner or applier of others’
theoretical principles. Rather, she was a
In this and other conversations, members builder of knowledge and theory. In their
of the group explored together the process discussions, teacher researchers collabora-
of finding questions or settling problems tively built theory and knowledge frame-
about individual children. The teachers works out of the experience of specific cases
described and demonstrated the ways they that also cut across classrooms, age levels of
constructed questions out of close obser- children, and cultural backgrounds. In this
vations of children, from multiple per- way, they were intimately involved in a pro-
spectives. The questions the cooperating cess of transforming the social life of the
teachers posed were not simply versions of school.
how to teach something or how to apply
theory to practice. Sharon Bates, for exam- Constructing Curriculum
ple, posed a problem about how to under- Edgeview Elementary School served a di-
stand one child as reader, learner, and verse working-class community of mostly
asker of questions. She asked about how White families, a small number of Black
over time to connect with his resources in families, some recent immigrants from Ko-
order to strengthen them, and then used rea and Greece, and many families from
this question to explore with the inquiry other cultures who had lived in the com-
group how to teach other children. munity for a number of years. There was a
The cooperating teachers at Charles A. strong culture in the school of positive
Beard helped student teachers frame and community involvement, friendly relations
reframe questions, repeatedly directing among children, teachers, principal, and
them to return to observations from the parents, and an ecumenical tolerance for
classroom, uncover the prior questions various teaching “styles.” Although there
that were embedded in present ones, and was a comfortable sense of congeniality
develop generative structures of inquiry. at Edgeview Elementary School, teachers
Their process of mentoring was not unlike worked largely by themselves, and as is the
Schön’s (1983a, 1983b, 1987) description case in many schools, there was a culture of
of the ways supervisors in architecture and isolation. The three experienced teachers
psychotherapy work with students—by re- who were part of the teacher research
framing their ways of looking at the prob- group were united by their belief in alter-
lems of design and counseling and by both native reading/language arts programs that
implicitly criticizing the students’ own utilized literature and children’s writing.
The curriculum and assessment policies As part of a group effort aimed at cur-
of the school district were traditional, and riculum reform working within a larger
a few years earlier, the district had begun school-system culture of standardized
to place increased emphasis on standard teaching and assessment, the teacher-
procedures and curriculum uniformity. researcher group at Edgeview Elementary
The culture of reform of Edgeview Ele- School raised many questions that can
mentary School’s teacher-researcher group be thought of as constructing curriculum.
was bound up with the construction of an This was more than deciding how to
alternative reading/language arts curricu- teach the material predetermined in a
lum and with demonstrating that children teacher’s guide or a pupil’s text. It re-
could learn to read from real literature quired that teachers consider the long-
rather than from texts constructed spe- range consequences of what and why they
cifically for the purpose of instruction. teach, as well as the daily decisions about
During the year prior to the school-site how they teach it. In the conversation be-
meetings mentioned here, the teachers had low, they critiqued a school district in-ser-
struggled with administrators over whether vice session designed to get them to think
or not literature could be used at the sec- of literature as a supplement to, but not
ond grade level. One of the teachers de- an alternative to, the “real” curriculum of
scribed the struggle to her student teacher: basal reading materials.
They fought us about novels last year Charlie Dougherty, Cooperating Teacher,
[because some people think] our chil- Grade 5: One of the points that was
dren’s backgrounds are lacking and they being made to us was the possibility to
haven’t got support from home and ex- use novels as a supplement. Now that
perience in reading . . . [They think] they is what I think is ludicrous to do.
need things simpler. They need the, “See Leslie Franks, Cooperating Teacher, Grade
Dick run. See Jane run,” and the novel 5: For us.
isn’t written in that form. It’s not simpli- Charlie Dougherty: You can’t do it. Either
fied. And [they think] they’re not ready you are going to use the basals or the
except for the smart kids. . . . So our novels.
principal finally said to us, “You can use Leslie Franks: You can’t go back and
novels, but you have to test the children forth . . . because it squashes the enthu-
in the tests for the reading series, and you siasm. And what happens is the kids
have to teach the same skills that are in tend to moan and groan through the
the reading series.” . . . So I do it. And we whole basal unit that you are doing,
showed him. I mean, I have folders full and you’re ruining their growth. And
of stuff . . . where the kids are learning when you go back to the novels, they
short “a” and long—all the things that he know it is for a one-night stand. A one-
thinks they need to learn. . . . This year I night stand! And then they are back
never even went and discussed it with again to basals, which is like suicide.
him. I’m just assuming that I am going Charlie Dougherty: It’s a silly idea . . .
to do it. . . . If we hadn’t won that battle, Leslie Franks: And also as they progress in
I probably wouldn’t have come back. years, when you talk about standardized
testing, that is one of the big things that vision of teaching” is essential for all be-
you find. . . . It’s the little paragraph ginning teachers if they are going to be
that you have to read now [on the prepared to function as professional deci-
tests]—What is the main idea? Now sionmakers in their field. Without it, she
what do you want to do first? What cautions, the beginning teacher tends to
were the supporting details? And if you settle for “what works” in the classroom
can do that with the novel, you are so rather than what could be. Also under-
much more in tune to detect these [on lying this discussion was the conflict
the test]. Case in point—our kids have among teachers and administrators (and
done beautifully on [standardized com- among teachers themselves) about their
prehension] testing. roles as curriculum implementers and tin-
Charlie Dougherty: They blew the top off ! kerers, on the one hand, versus critics and
Phyllis Kim, Student Teacher, Grade 5: I creators on the other.
don’t think I understand basals well
enough, but I really don’t understand Confronting the
why you can’t go back and forth us- Dilemmas of Teaching
ing basals and novels if you were using At Stephen R. Morris Elementary School,
the same approach—an inferential the slender threads of the open classroom
[approach]? tradition were knotted and entangled
Mary Thailing, Cooperating Teacher, Grade with the broader strands of the history of
2: Yes, if you were just giving a child a segregation and desegregation in the city.
book [and not using the teacher’s man- Morris offered a small “open” track, a
uals and workbook exercises], you could “traditional” track, and a “midway” track
do whatever you wanted with it. from which parents could choose options
Phyllis Kim: I was thinking that if I were for their children. The culture of teaching
in a school district next year where I in the open track was built on a commit-
have basals and I could only use novels ment to closely observing children, pro-
when I could afford to buy them, viding a rich environment out of which
could I do something like that? children’s own curiosities could drive the
Mary Thailing: [You could do with] a curriculum, and continuously reflecting
basal story everything that you do on practice in the company of other com-
with a novel . . . mitted professionals. Morris served more
Charlie Dougherty: I don’t know if you can. than 1,200 children who, for complex
Mary Thailing: Yes you can. If it’s a story historical reasons, were from poor Black
that is a real story. I mean that’s in there homes, while the middle-class Black and
[in the basal] . . . White parents in the immediate and im-
mediately adjacent neighborhoods had
In this conversation the group strug- chosen to have their children bussed to
gled with the problem of combining two other desegregated city schools or sent
kinds of materials for reading instruction to private schools. Conditions at Morris
that are grounded in basically incom- were difficult, special programs were lim-
patible perspectives on language learning. ited, and the culture of teaching in the
Zumwalt (1989) argues that a “curricular school at large was traditional. Teachers
in the Morris teacher-researcher group school traditions and, like the Charles A.
had a transformative vision of education, Beard teachers, were founding members of
but they worked within a context of pov- a teacher collaborative that met weekly. In
erty, increasing school district testing and teacher research group meetings at Morris,
curriculum strictures, and few opportuni- teachers struggled with many questions
ties for collaboration. One teacher noted that had no answers, and many problems
to the student teachers: that had no solutions. Borrowing language
from Berlak and Berlak (1981) and Lam-
At the end of the year, I look over the pert (1985), I refer to this form of intel-
year and I always feel there’s more I lectual work as confronting the dilemmas
could have done. And there are parts of of teaching, a process of identifying and
the year I really feel good about and parts wrestling with educational issues that are
of the year I don’t feel good about. But characterized by equally strong but incom-
you’re still only one human being. You patible and competing claims to justice.
can’t do everything. I feel that what I of- In one teacher-researcher meeting at
fer children is very rich, and if children Morris, for example, the group had talked
just get a little bit of that or if they get about recent court decisions that affected
the idea that not everything has to be the girls’ and boys’ schools in the area. They
same all the time [then it’s worth it]. And also discussed the negative consequences
there’s this thing called thinking, I felt and the possible advantages for minority
that what I did was important for those children of segregated schooling situations.
children. It gave them a little experience The fact that one of the student teachers in
that maybe will stick with them. . . . the group was a Black woman who had at-
One of the thoughts I have is that I’m tended mostly White schools throughout
63. Technically, you can teach until her educational history, and that all three
you’re 70. At this point I would like to experienced teachers in the group were
teach forever. I can’t imagine doing any- White women who had made long-term
thing other than teach. But it’s not as en- personal and professional commitments to
joyable as it used to be. I mean . . . just teaching in mostly Black public schools,
being in an environment where I feel I’m were critical factors in the discussion.
unappreciated makes it very, very hard.
It’s okay once the door is closed, and I’m Ellen Freeman, Cooperating Teacher, Grade
in here, but it’s very hard to walk out of 3: One question I have is about
the door. middle-class teachers who don’t have
the experiences of the children they
As a school community, Morris did not teach . . . I have noticed something
have a commitment to the principles of about . . . a few of the Black boys that
progressive education or teacher empow- I’ve taught, and I came to some con-
erment. But the Morris teachers who were clusions about them and what would
members of the school-site group were ac- be the place for them—what kinds of
tively involved in a long-standing culture teachers would be best for them to
of teacher inquiry and British primary have. And I don’t know, I mean, I
don’t know if this is racist or not. And it does make a difference. And
There were some very bright Black some of the differences are negative.
children in that class. They were in a And it’s important to find out that
desegregated class. They were learning sometimes people can be stronger
to read and write and spell and all that, when they are with people that they
but there was also a group of extremely need to be with—when they are in
bright White boys in the class, . . . and supportive environments. . . .
the White boys were well-behaved. . . . Polly Spellman, Cooperating Teacher, Kin-
They always did the “right thing.” And dergarten: But I don’t think you learn
the Black kids often misbehaved, and how to be strong in the abstract. Just
they often baited me in some ways. as I don’t think you learn how to use
Later in fourth grade . . . [one of freedom unless you have freedom.
them] was [taken out of the desegre- Freedom isn’t something you read
gated class] and put into the class of a about and then follow directions. It’s
Black teacher with all Black kids. . . . something you have to experience.
At the end of the year, he won a behav- Well, I feel it’s the same thing about
ior award in the school. What it made kids in schools. Though I could see
me think was that . . . we need to have some positive things to girls’ schools
all boys’ high schools desegregated be- . . . I just don’t think that we get any
cause it’s important for boys to be in closer to learning how to operate by
school with girls. But we [also] need having exclusions. . . .
girls’ high schools for girls to excel Teresa Green: But you’re talking the ideal!
without men, without boys—I won- The reality is of the world. The reality
der, sometimes, if . . . some Black chil- of the situation is that Black kids can-
dren need to be in schools that are not not go into predominantly White sit-
desegregated where they see themselves uations and come out with the same
as leaders within their community— kind of security, the same kind of sup-
I don’t know—I mean it really is a port that they would get in a different
question, and I’ve thought a lot about environment. . . .

it. . . . It’s just a question because I Polly Spellman: So, let’s go back to segre-
think we need girls’ high schools and gated schools?
I think we need all boys’ schools to be Ellen Freeman: It’s not really a segregated
desegregated. . . . school, Polly. That’s not what I’m talk-
Teresa Green, Student Teacher, Kinder- ing about either. I am talking about
garten: I think that the point Ellen choices. . . . But I guess I’m not talking
brought up is important . . . I know about choices for everybody. I have to
from previous experience that an inte- say that. I don’t agree with Karen about
grated situation versus a segregated sit- boys’ high schools. I do not think that
uation can do positive or negative the people who have traditionally been
things for you . . . I’ve been a minority in power should be allowed—allowed—
in predominantly all-White situations to have choices . . .
from the time that I was six or seven. Teresa Green: But that’s contradictory—
Ellen Freeman: I know it is— about the interests served by the current
Karen Garfield, Cooperating Teacher, structures of schooling. Fenstermacher
Grade 5: What Ellen is saying is that (1990) points out that in current contro-
the heavy power [that] has always been versies over the professionalization of
a certain way needs to skew the other schooling, the moral dimensions of teach-
way . . . ing, although primary, are often either ig-
nored or forgotten. At Stephen R. Morris
In this discussion, teachers worked to- School, the group identified and con-
gether to confront the dilemmas created fronted one of the moral dilemmas of
by race, class, and gender segregation of teaching. Their intellectual work did not
educational opportunities. They wrestled “solve” the problem nor adjudicate which
to reconcile the irreconcilable issues of the side of the scale should be more heavily
possible advantages for minority children weighted in matters of race, gender, and
of going to school with children of their educational opportunity. But their work
own race or gender groups versus the clear clearly announced that there was a moral
disadvantages of being segregated from base to teaching, not just a knowledge
the culture of power. It is significant that base, and that prospective teachers had to
there was no consensus in their conversa- confront that moral base in order to re-
tion, especially in the comments of Ellen claim their responsibility in the classroom.
Freeman, who knew full well that what
she was saying was, in a certain sense, Student Teachers
both contradictory and critical. as Reformers
A key aspect of this conversation is that It is clear in the conversations above that
members of the group named one of the student teachers did not dominate, and in
dilemmas of teaching and wrestled with many instances did not take equal part
the fact that there was no answer to it in, teacher research group meetings. In
within the current structures of schooling most instances, cooperating teachers rather
and society. Their conversation makes it than university-based supervisors or stu-
clear that there is a distinction between a dent teachers themselves took the lead.
dilemma of teaching and a problem of However, the student teachers’ emerging
teaching. A problem is a question posed theories of practice were influenced by
for solution or at least action, a situation their observations and conversations with
that may be perplexing and difficult, but experienced mentors who worked against
not one that is ultimately unapproachable. the grain, as well as by their readings of
A dilemma, on the other hand, is a situa- and writings about a rich and diverse col-
tion of teaching that presents two or more lection of theoretical and pedagogical lit-
logical alternatives, the loss of either of erature. This was indicated in the lessons
which is equally unfavorable and dis- and units they designed, the questions
agreeable. A dilemma poses two or more they raised, and their efforts to under-
competing claims to justice, fairness, and stand their own efforts as urban teachers.
morality. The dilemma confronted above Though a deep intellectual discourse
probed the means-ends relationships of among student teachers and their school
schooling and raised critical questions and university mentors is essential in light
of the larger reform agenda for U.S. educa- were expected to weave their emerging
tion, it is uncommon and difficult to sus- critiques with the threads of both insider
tain during the student-teaching period. and outsider knowledge.
And yet, as the excerpts in this chapter The commitment to building collabo-
demonstrate, it is essential and possible. In- rative resonance was instantiated in several
deed, the conversations that occurred in key social and organizational structures:
school-site meetings over the course of a university-site monthly seminars where
year provide a “proof of possibility” of rich teacher-researcher teams from all school
and complex discourse among experienced sites met together over the course of a year
teachers and student teachers. This dis- to consider teaching and learning across
course is more provocative than the ex- grades, schools, and school systems; three
changes common in clinical supervision publications, distributed locally, featuring
and wider ranging than the feedback usu- news, opinion, and essays by past and
ally given in response to particular lessons present project participants; dissemination
or teaching techniques. It is clear, however, and discussion of common readings in the
that conventional supervisory structures various sites; coplanning by teacher educa-
are unlikely to generate this kind of dis- tors and school-based teachers of seminar
course (Zeichner, 1986; Zeichner & Lis- topics, student teachers’ assignments, and
ton, 1985). program strategies; and participation by
A combination of several program project members (including students) in
structures made this kind of discourse local, regional, and national networks of
possible. Most important, the foundation teacher researchers.
for all the structures was a deep commit- Second, as part of a community of co-
ment to the development of “collaborative learners, the roles of all project partici-
resonance,” or intensification of opportu- pants were redefined. Student teachers
nities to learn from and about teaching were expected to construct their own
through the joint work of learning com- emerging theories of teaching and learn-
munities. These communities were coming, call into question conventional
posed of school-based cooperating teachers, practices, write about their work, and par-
university-based program directors and ticipate with their experienced mentors as
course instructors, and student teachers inquiring professionals. It was understood
and supervisors who straddled the ground that the primary role of students was
between them. Underlying the work of not to imitate the instructional styles of
the community was respect for the knowl- their mentors. Concurrently it became
edge and expertise of those who had in- clear that the role of cooperating teachers
vested their professional lives in work was much more extensive than the dem-
inside schools, as well as those who had onstration and evaluation of teaching strat-
developed their knowledge of teaching egies. Some cooperating teachers had been
through work about, but primarily out- active for many years in teacher organiza-
side of, schools. Student teachers were tions that promoted collaborative inquiry,
invited, and indeed expected, to raise social responsibility, progressive educa-
questions and pose problems in the lan- tion, and curriculum reconstruction. They
guage of both school and university. They brought an inquiry-centered perspective
to their roles and worked to articulate their to nine participants in each group worked
perspectives to student teachers and sup- in different classrooms. Together these
port students’ initial forays into inquiry. In critical features of the program—the larger
addition, the role of the university super- collaborative community, the redefinition
visor was redefined to include research of roles, and the weekly, yearlong inquiry
on practice and co-inquiry. Supervision- sessions—created participation structures
as-inquiry meant that in addition to their (Erickson, 1981) for school-site conversa-
regular meetings with students and cooper- tions that had built into them the expec-
ating teachers, supervisors also met regu- tation of serious talk about teaching and
larly with project leaders to reflect on their reforming teaching, and made it possible
work as teacher educators and compare the for these kinds of conversations to occur.
nature of their interactions with students One of the most important things that
and teachers to the goals and intentions of happened at school-site meetings was that
the program. This provided a connection student teachers were exposed to certain vi-
between supervisor and preservice curricu- sions of teaching that are not necessarily in
lum that is sometimes missing in student- keeping with the norms of the profession.
teaching programs. Braided into the social and intellectual re-
Finally, the very existence of weekly lationships of student teachers and experi-
school-site meetings helped to make possi- enced reforming teachers is exploration of
ble an intellectually based student teacher/ alternative ways to think about and talk
experienced teacher discourse on teaching about teaching, ways perhaps not normally
and learning. Site meetings of at least 45 seen by teachers and administrators who
minutes per week were built into the work with the grain but also not normally
requirements of the program, allowing seen by university-based teachers and re-
enough time for the beginnings of sub- searchers who work outside of schools.
stantive discussion. Students’ teaching Working with experienced school-based
placements for a full year permitted conti- reformers exposes student teachers to alter-
nuity of discussions and supported the de- native visions of teaching that enrich but
velopment of each teacher-researcher also alter the perspectives they learn in

group as a community, across grade levels their university courses, as well as the per-
and experiences. This was possible in part spectives they learn from the larger culture
because group members came to know of teaching.
one another’s contexts of reference and to Reformers’ visions of teaching include
see one another’s growth from the long alternative ways of interpreting classroom
view. Finally, and perhaps most important, events, thinking through conflicts with
school-site meetings were not set up ac- parents or administrators, and interpreting
cording to the conventional model of children’s strengths and vulnerabilities.
clinical supervision, which more or less They include alternative ways of docu-
necessitates that the topic of discussion is menting and measuring learning, trans-
feedback and evaluation of individual les- forming and constructing curriculum, and
sons. To the contrary, in the site-meeting thinking through issues of race, class, and
context, individual lessons could not be culture. Struggling along with experienced
the topic of conversation since the seven teachers who are working to reform teach-
ing within complicated and highly specific bor, each individual’s opportunity to learn
situations inside of schools is the only con- from teaching is intensified and enriched
text within which student teachers can by the questions, struggles, and triumphs
have theory- and practice-based conversa- of every other individual.
tions that deal with the extraordinary com-
plexity of teaching and reforming teaching. R E FE R E NCES
There is a paradox, then, in learning to Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H. (1985). Educa-
teach against the grain—it is only in the tion under siege. New York: New World
apparent “narrowness” of work in particu- Foundation.
lar classrooms and in the “boundedness” Berlak, A., & Berlak, H. (1981). Dilemmas of
of discussions of highly contextualized in- schooling: Teaching and social change.
stances of practice that student teachers ac- London: Methuen.
Beyer, L. (1984). Field experience, ideology,
tually have opportunities to confront the
and the development of critical reflexiv-
broadest themes of reform. Essentially this
ity. Journal of Teacher Education, 35(3),
means that the only way for beginners to 36–41.
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struggle over time in the company of expe- teacher education. Teaching and Teacher
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CHAPTE R
Joe L. Kincheloe 15
What Are We Doing Here?

Building a Framework for Teaching
This book is grounded on the premise that Gaining a Sense of

we can do better—we can build a far better Where We’re Going
society and far better schools. One of the Classroom teaching that takes place out-
most important prerequisites of such an ef- side of a rigorous examination of the larger
fort involves our ability to imagine what goals of education is always trivialized and
such a society and such an education might degraded. This chapter is premised on the
look like. That’s what this book attempts notion that great classroom teaching is al-
to do—to provide a compelling vision of ways grounded on larger understandings
what classroom teachers could become. of purpose, a vision of the social role of ed-
The authors offer a hopeful, democratic, ucation, and a sense of what type of people
challenging, and pragmatic portrait of we want to be. What’s sad is that so much
classroom teaching that engages the mind, of what takes place in higher education,
heart, and creative impulse. Since I pub- teacher education, the public conversation
lished my first work almost thirty years about schooling, and elementary and sec-
ago, some readers have told me that “all ondary schools themselves is disconnected
that sounds good on paper but it’ll never from these dynamics. When analyses of
work in the real world.” There is nothing purpose and vision are relegated to the do-
impractical, I respond, about developing main of “the impractical,” there is trouble
visions of what could be. Indeed, con- in River City. In such a situation the cul-
structing such visions is a very practical en- ture has lost a central dimension of its hu-
terprise, for all innovation begins with manness, its elan vital, its life force.
vision. Without vision we are existentially I believe that human beings are en-
dead or at least dying. As creatures without riched by:
vision, we walk a meaningless landscape at-
tending only to immediate urges. I want • an understanding of the physical
more. Moreover, I believe that human be- and social universes;
ings have only begun a journey of meaning- • the historical context that has shaped
making and achievement that will take them;
them to presently unimaginable domains. • the literary and other aesthetic cre-
Education is intimately tied to—and even ations that express their hopes and
makes possible—this amazing journey. fears;
227
228 | Joe L. Kincheloe
• the philosophical insights that can often gets profoundly distorted. On nu-
help clarify and construct meaning; merous occasions over the last few years
• an awareness of the hidden cultural of standards hysteria I have heard a vari-
and ideological forces that tacitly in- ety of political and educational leaders as-
fluence their identities and values; sert these sentiments: “Why are we here?
• new cognitive insights that help stu- What is our main goal? That’s right, to
dents move to more powerful modes raise the test scores.” As my Tennessee
of thinking; and farm-based father used to say: “They’ve
• the political ideas that help them got the cart before the horse.” Obviously,
in the struggle to control their own raising standardized test scores is not the
lives. raison d’être of classroom teaching. There
is something profoundly disturbing about
We want classrooms that help produce such pronouncements regarding our goals
a society—and a world for that matter— as teachers and students. Indeed, there is a
worthy of our status as citizens. “rational irrationality,” when in the name
The way such classrooms are created of reason we lapse into irrational beliefs
involves gaining a sense of social and and behavior.
educational purpose. The title question of For example, standardized tests mea-
this chapter—what are we doing here?— sure so little of what education involves.
must be answered by teachers in order for The previous list of some of the ways a rig-
them to construct compelling, challeng- orous education can enrich our lives can’t
ing, motivating, socially responsible, and be measured by such tests. At most, such
just classrooms. Without an answer to exams pick up on some of the fragmented,
this question and a pedagogy constructed unconnected data one has obtained from
around that answer, teachers with en- schools. I and the other authors of my
gaging personalities may still motivate book Classroom Teaching: An Introduction
particular students to do certain things. argue that such unconnected data are rela-
There is little chance, however, of creat- tively unimportant in the larger vision of
ing a classroom that makes a difference in education and classroom teaching that we
students’ lives—especially students mar- are laying out here. This is not to say that
ginalized by the forces of race, class, gen- knowledge is not important. But the way
der, and sexuality—and a difference in we confront knowledge and make sense of
the larger society. I am asserting here that it is every bit as important as committing
merely getting students to prepare for the particular “facts” to memory. Being pre-
standards tests administered by the school pared to ask why we are studying “this
district or the state is not enough. In fact, knowledge” and not “this other knowl-
there’s a lot of evidence that moves me edge” is a skill that in the long run may be
to argue that such a test-based teaching far more useful than scoring high on the
and learning process may do more harm standards test.
than good. What makes the question “What are we
In these test-based contexts the very doing here?” so complex for teachers in the
question of what we are doing here too first decade of the twenty-first century is
What Are We Doing Here? | 229
that the people of the United States are so dilemma: no one else can tell us the right
divided over the answer. All educational way to teach; we have a human responsi-
questions are primarily political questions. bility to decide for ourselves what con-
Even what many might think are simple stitutes good teaching and appropriate
questions—such as “What do we teach?”— educational goals in a democratic society.
are riddled with political inscriptions. Do The authors and I believe that every
we teach the knowledge that he thinks teacher must make this decision and strug-
most important or that she thinks is most gle against systems that unreasonably at-
important? Do we teach in the way tempt to deny teachers of this professional
Dr. Smith says is the best for student learn- prerogative. This doesn’t mean that teach-
ing or in the way Dr. Brown maintains cre- ers are free to indoctrinate students with
ates the best learning environment? The fascist dogma, racial hatred, or inaccurate
answers to such questions are complex, and information. It does mean that teachers
we answer them depending on our larger can make curricular and pedagogical deci-
social, cultural, political, and philosophical sions within particular democratic and
assumptions whether or not we are con- scholarly boundaries.
scious of them. It is impossible to be neu-
tral about these questions. In Classroom The Importance of Healthy
Teaching, we hold particular social, cul- Debate About the Goals
tural, political, and philosophical perspec- of Classroom Teaching
tives. These perspectives influence our Open and rigorous debate about the goals
vision of what constitutes a good class- of education and what constitutes good
room. We talk about the biases we bring to classroom teaching is not only a good thing
our writings. None of us claim that what but is essential in a democratic society.
we are providing you is objective informa- This is why it is important for teachers,
tion about classroom teaching. It is our per- political leaders, and the public at large to
spective: nothing more, and nothing less. engage in such a conversation. Unfortu-
We try to convince you that it’s not nately, in the present political climate this
such openly admitted biases that should is not happening. Many spokespeople from
worry you. What concerns us is the in- a variety of social domains claim there is
formation that is provided to you as a consensus about what we should be doing
form of objective truth, free from interpre- in schools. We do not believe this is true.
tation and human perspective. Whenever Many assert that everyone wants high aca-
a teacher or an educational expert claims demic standards. Such a statement is—on
that she is giving me the truth, I guard the surface—probably accurate, but the
both my wallet and my intellect. A central devil is in the details. When those making
assertion of that book is that all claims of such an assertion are asked to define high
good classroom teaching are based on par- academic standards, we can begin to see fis-
ticular political/social visions—there is no sures in the faux-consensus previously
objective political/social vision. In this claimed.
context as human beings who want to be If we are to have a genuine and produc-
teachers, we are faced with an existential tive public debate about educational goals,
we must insist that such debate focus on nature. We hope that after reading this and
the clarification of guiding principles on many other sources about these issues that
which our teaching is based. Is the goal the you will insist on and participate in such
improvement of test scores, or does it in- debate in your teacher education programs,
volve the well-being of the children en- the schools in which you teach, and the
trusted to our care? Is well-being defined as communities in which you live.
the particular needs that specific students The debate that we’re trying to foster—
bring with them to school, or is it a vague about the goals of education in general and
notion that means little? The authors of classroom teaching in particular—therefore
that book believe that a variety of social, deals with the foundations of diverse per-
cultural, political, and economic factors spectives. In this context we ask what is the
have operated to diminish public life in basis for the curriculum? When we speak of
twenty-first-century America. In this age of curriculum we are not only referring to the
mediocrity the public conversation about knowledge or subject matter that is taught
these matters is truncated. Often what we in schools. In addition, we are referencing
consider “normal” is socially constructed the goals and purposes of teaching and
by modes of repression, oppression, fear- learning, methods of classroom teaching
mongering, and forces of economic, politi- and organization, and the ways we assess
cal, racial, and gender power. the quality of the teaching and learning
When we talk about having an honest taking place. We also move outside the
conversation about the goals of education classroom in our definition of curriculum,
and the nature of good classroom teaching, asserting that classroom teaching has to do
these forces often represent such activities with a myriad of things that happen in the
as some form of anti-American action. For world surrounding the school. In our ex-
example, when we argue that Americans panded and critical understanding of cur-
should have access to an education that riculum, we are also interested in the ways
provides diverse viewpoints from peoples knowledge is produced and human con-
around the world about history, science, sciousness is constructed and the role that
literature, politics, religion, and other top- power plays in these processes.
ics, this is defined as a “divisive multi- When curriculum is defined in this
culturalism” that is grounded on a “hatred expansive way, we realize that the curricu-
for America.” It is disturbing that in the lum and the present status of democratic
twenty-first century the effort to seek a va- life are inseparable dynamics that are
riety of viewpoints and to understand the mutually constituted. The curriculum to
perspectives of various peoples around the some degree reflects the prevailing defini-
world can be characterized as subversive tion of democracy existing in a particular
behavior. We believe that such perspectives society. The school curriculum and the
are dishonest, disastrous in their social im- social order are intimately connected in
pact, anti-intellectual, and destructive to a that they are constantly constructing one
free society. We are confident that a rigor- another—they are coconstructed (Carr,
ous debate about the principles on which 1998). This means that you can’t study
such educational perspectives rest will ex- one without the other. The effort to teach
pose their antidemocratic and repressive someone about classroom teaching out-
side of these larger social and political We are deeply concerned with the social
concerns is an insult to the professional- and political impact of such a corporatized
ism of teachers. Teachers are not func- school system. As unelected, unaccount-
tionaries who follow the directives of able power wielders, corporations would
experts—contrary to the makers of top- not tolerate criticism in their schools.
down standards and scripted lessons that Teaching would be deprofessionalized
delineate exactly what teachers say to and teachers would be subjected to rigid
students—but informed professionals forms of control. No elected school boards
who diagnose situations and develop ap- or political bodies would operate under
propriate curricula. We fervently believe this corporatized arrangement to address
in the dignity of the teaching profession these problems. The public’s educational
and the complex professional role of right to knowledge and democratic em-
teachers. We also believe that in the first powerment, already compromised, would
decade of the twenty-first century this no longer exist in this brave new world
dignity is under assault by forces fearful of for-profit schooling. This scenario is
of an empowered, self-directed teaching not a fantasy. Plans exist both to win pub-
profession. lic support for such changes and to im-
In this context we maintain that this plement these schools once approval is
public debate about the goals of education granted.
and classroom teaching must ask hard This privatization project is a cynical
questions about the role of US corpora- and greedy scam. It views children and the
tions in shaping the social and pedagogical schools as an unexploited multibillion-
agenda. Corporations have become in- dollar market. It ignores human possibil-
creasingly powerful over the last few de- ity, our ability to become far more than we
cades, paying less taxes as they grab more presently are. Indeed, human beings are
power and influence via their control of not simply by nature egocentric, status-
media and public information (see Kinche- obsessed, and greedy entities that always
loe, 1999, for an expansion of these ideas). operate in their immediate self-interest no
As part of this increasing corporate domi- matter what the effect on others. The class-
nation of society, they have become less room teaching that we advocate holds
willing to provide taxes to public institu- an optimistic view of what humans can
tions that they cannot control. Sensing become (Griffin, 1997). Our pedagogy is
that an empowered and self-directed teach- grounded on the belief that humans are
ing profession in public schools might be destined for greatness and can be moti-
inclined to criticize their socially harmful vated to learn on these premises. The class-
behavior, corporate leaders have aligned room teaching promoted in this book is
themselves with right-wing politicians to premised on an honest discussion of these
use their control of information to subvert competing belief systems and the ways
the idea of public education. they affect the nature of society and educa-
Never before in American society have tion themselves. It seems to me that one of
we heard so much talk about the priva- the most powerful dimensions of becom-
tization of schooling and the value of ing an educated person involves under-
corporate-operated, for-profit education. standing the great issues of one’s day.
In this spirit I argue that the curriculum cal time and social location, produce the
should be multilogical—that it should knowledge taught in school. This means
present a variety of perspectives on what that school knowledge like all knowledge is
should be taught in schools. A central fea- fallible; it is prone to error.
ture of such a curriculum would involve Think of medical knowledge in the
understanding a variety of different view- eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
points in a variety of academic domains the cures for particular diseases. In the con-
and the ideologies, values, and worldviews text of the twenty-first century they seem
on which they are based. A classroom humorous and even primitive. Remember
grounded on this multilogical curriculum how it was accepted as good sense in the
would expose students to diverse interpre- early twentieth century that women should
tations of history, science, linguistics, liter- not be allowed to vote. Females simply
ature, and philosophy while encouraging don’t have the intelligence to make such
them to support and defend their own important decisions, jurists and politicians
interpretations in these areas. An under- argued. Consider sociological knowledge
standing of diverse perspectives and the taught in mid-twentieth-century textbooks
justifications for the differences between about the infantile nature of African Amer-
them promotes intellectual and ethical icans and their inferiority to white people.
maturity (Harrington & Quinn-Leering, The point, of course, is that knowledge
1995). Many of the forces that want to do in human history hasn’t seemed to “keep
away with public education are frightened well.” It grows rancid with age and be-
by the possibility of students engaging comes unusable. Such a realization should
multiple perspectives. Those who support make us less comfortable with any as-
indoctrination and regulation of human sertion of certainty, especially our own. I
beings are always opposed to a democratic hope that what I am writing here will
engagement with intellectual diversity. not appear too silly in the twenty-third
These are the types of insights that will century. But if history is any indicator,
emerge in a healthy democratic debate twenty-third-century educators may find
about what we should be doing in educa- great humor with what I didn’t see in rela-
tion. Such debate will move us away from tion to the blinders of early twenty-first-
imposed, standardized, decontextualized, century assumptions about human beings
scripted modes of classroom teaching. It and the world.
will help us empower teachers, and, in This fallibility of all knowledge and
turn, students, to become scholars who un- the inadvisability of claiming certainty are
derstand the contexts of meaning-making central lessons of our debate. In this con-
in which schooling is structured. In this text, students, teachers, political and edu-
context they will gain the mature under- cational leaders, and the public learn that
standing that knowledge is not simply all knowledge is produced within certain
given to humans but is actively constructed conceptual frameworks and inscribed by
by individuals coming from particular lo- particular views of the world. Therefore, a
cales in the sociohistorical web of reality. central duty of scholars is to cultivate a
Individuals like you and me, operating in healthy suspicion of the information they
the observational confines of their histori- are provided, especially that data delivered
as fact. The agnostic education we are pro- by developing a literacy of power—an

moting here openly questions all cultures’ ability to discern the fingerprints and ef-
sacred canons. Some dogmatic groups may fects of power on the knowledge thrown
find this questioning process offensive, as at them.
it interrogates certain patriotic shibboleths
or articles of religious faith. But this is the Traditional Debates About the
price we pay for a democratic education. I Goals of Classroom Teaching
see little alternative if we want to live in a Contrary to the pronouncements of right-
free and egalitarian society. Obviously, we wing romantics who idealize a distant
can always opt for a totalitarian education American past where all white people
where the “party line” is outside the bound- agreed with what America was about and
aries of questioning and analysis. As I what schools should do, there has always
study schools around the country I find far been contention about the goals and na-
too many where questions about existing ture of education. Indeed, much to the
social, political, economic, cultural, philo- nation’s detriment such romantic patriots
sophical, theological, and other norms are have painted a picture of a historical Amer-
off-limits. I am very depressed by such ican consensus that never existed in an ef-
findings and consequently hold great fears fort to prove that their viewpoints are the
for the future of American democracy. “true” American perspectives. In this con-
When educational institutions restrict sensus history we are routinely shielded
what can be questioned and what inter- from understandings such as the division
pretations of the world are allowed, they in American society in regard to the Rev-
undermine a society’s capacity to deal with olutionary War. Not all Americans sup-
change and novelty. And, I would main- ported the effort for independence from
tain, in the contemporary globalized, elec- England. Historians agree that about one-
tronic, information-saturated world of the third of the population supported in-
twenty-first century, change is the status dependence, one-third opposed it, and
quo. Thus, a key dimension of a critical another one-third didn’t care either way.
and rigorous education for such a hyper- So fervently did the one-third who op-
reality involves the ability to interpret and posed independence hold to their opinion
make meaning of a barrage of information that for the first forty years of American
thrown at us by corporate-owned media nationhood—until about 1830—oppo-
and education. This interpretive ability nents viewed the Fourth of July as a day
becomes extremely important in this con- of mourning. On that day they would
text because the motive for such informa- close their houses and drape their win-
tion bombardment may be to induce us to dows with black curtains to protest. This
buy into or give our consent to ways of and countless other similar events do not
thinking that are not in our own best in- support the picture of unity we get from
terests. Such ways of thinking may serve our drum-and-trumpet school histories.
the needs of corporate power wielders more Disagreement over larger social goals
than they serve our own. I want class- is as American as apple pie. Thus, instead
rooms to help students survive in this con- of being relegated to the dustbin of offi-
temporary power-driven climate of deceit cial history, the chronicle of our past and
present disagreements should rest at the poor people when we define intelligence
center of a democratic curriculum. Teach- in a particular way? If we define politics
ers need to understand the philosophical, as the domain where power operates and
historical, political, social, and cultural questions about the best ways to share
assumptions that support their classroom power are asked, then we can begin to see
decisions. It is important to note in this the intimate connections between politics
context that it is just these types of as- and education. Depending on our defini-
sumptions that right-wing advocates of tions of dynamics such as intelligence, suc-
the privatization of public education don’t cess, and higher-order thinking, different
want you to study and understand. An people will win (gain power) and lose (lose
important aspect of the agenda of those power) in educational situations. When
who would seek to deprofessionalize teach- we accept the validity and universal pre-
ing is to abolish teacher education as it dictive power of IQ tests, for example, we
now exists. The first step in this abolition set up students from poor backgrounds for
process involves getting rid of the social, failure. The types of skills evaluated and
political, philosophical, historical, and the language used in the tests are more
cultural analysis that engages teachers in commonly found among middle-/upper-
asking about the purpose of education in middle-class students. If educators decide
a democratic society. that these test scores are “real” indications
This type of analysis is very frightening of students’ abilities, then schools will
to those who seek to privatize education treat such students as uneducable and
because such study induces teachers to ask thus guarantee their academic failure. As a
deeper questions about the real motiva- classroom teacher, how you view such is-
tions for such educational change. Once sues will make all the difference to your
we begin to study the privatization move- students, especially your most vulnerable
ment we begin to see that, in addition students.
to the huge profits to be made in the In this context, we can begin to see con-
process, new forms of political and ideo- temporary manifestations of larger histori-
logical control over teachers’ work can be cal debates over the goals of education. Is
achieved. In private schools teachers will it the function of schooling to help people
be unable to appeal to principles such as reach their highest potential, providing
academic freedom or freedom of speech them in the process with the understand-
to protect their critiques of such power ing of the forces that impede them on
wielders. Teachers who point to the op- such a quest? In such a context students
pressive power of corporations and vari- armed with this insight can work to bring
ous forms of oppression will simply be about a more inclusive and just social or-
dismissed. They will have no legal recourse der. Or is it the function of schooling to
to protect themselves from or overturn support and perpetuate the dominant so-
such firings. cial order by efficiently producing individ-
In this repressive context, questions of uals who will serve functional roles within
how certain educational purposes affect businesses, industries, and various organi-
particular groups of people or specific in- zations? The social role of such students is
dividuals are not asked. What happens to not to strive for their fullest potential or to
critique the justice of present sociopolitical role of diverse cultural knowledges and val-
arrangements, but to accept the status quo ues within the curriculum (Bruner, 1996;
and keep it operating. Or is it possible for Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997; Kincheloe,
schools to help accomplish both goals? 2001; Steinberg, 2001). In this context
Are there points at which they come into many right-wing fundamentalist Chris-
direct conflict? Can, for example, margin- tians, for example, argue that the role of
alized students work for intellectual self- the schools is to perpetuate the belief struc-
improvement and socioeconomic mobility tures of dominant culture. Teaching such
and a more just social order while working belief structures would include inculcating
to preserve the dominant social order? the superiority of Western civilization and
Such activities may collide head-on. a particular version of Christianity in the
Another theme of the traditional debate minds of all students. Obviously, different
involves the question of whether schools groups of people are very emotional about
should devote their attention to cultivat- these issues, and teachers in twenty-first-
ing the abilities of the so-called gifted and century America will have to confront the
talented students or whether they should debate and its effects at some level in their
work to cognitively and vocationally foster professional life.
the intellectual abilities of all students? Of Another debate involves what exactly it
course, such an issue is always inscribed might mean to pursue the goal of cultivat-
with profound racial and class assump- ing the intellect of students. It is unfor-
tions. Many argue (see Herrnstein & Mur- tunate that in the first decade of the
ray, 1994) that African Americans, Latinos, twenty-first century in US schools, the ef-
Native Americans, and poor people of all fort to cultivate the intellect has been re-
races simply do not have the genetic abil- duced to inculcating subskills in math
ity to succeed at academic work. In this and reading. Too often students are sub-
highly problematic context educators and jected to standards test-driven curricula
educational policymakers are urged to get characterized by skill-and-drill lessons
rid of programs designed to help students on circling the verb and drawing an X
marginalized by race and class and reallo- through the noun. As a first-year language
cate the funds for such programs to those arts teacher in a middle school in Ten-
who can profit from special programs— nessee, I was faced on the night of my first
the gifted and talented. My biases show open house with a parental rebellion. Sev-
through here, as I maintain that such eral parents had organized to hijack the
racist and class-biased approaches create language arts teachers’ presentation on
and perpetuate inequity. the curriculum we had developed. As we
Yet another old debate questions attempted to explain the communication
whether the goal of schools should involve skills that we planned to teach and how
teaching about and promoting the mores parents could help in this process, angry
and values of the so-called dominant cul- parents shouted that they saw no provi-
ture or provide validation and respect for sion for teaching how to diagram sen-
the subcultures that make up the society as tences. As I tried to explain that sentence
a whole. This debate lays the foundation diagramming was only one technique for
for discussions of multiculturalism and the teaching about the structure of language,
angry parents drowned out my voice. They triarchal, English-speaking, heterosexual

wanted no “intellectual” explanation. They nation and demand that classrooms re-
saw the teaching of sentence diagram- flect such uniformity. Diversity around
ming as important to the academic suc- issues of race, religion, gender, language,
cess of their children. It was important and sexuality does not play well with
because teachers in high school might re- these forces. Different races are “inferior”;
quire it. different religions are “ungodly”; men are
The larger notion of cultivating the in- the heads of the household; different lan-
tellect by helping students gain important guages are “un-American”; and different
writing, reading, and other communica- sexual orientations are “sick and per-
tion skills was not relevant to the parents. verted.” Indeed, so many of the issues sur-
One can understand on one level the so- rounding educational policy, teaching,
cial and cultural forces that move many and learning relate to these issues. All of
parents to think only of the “success” of these concerns are issues of power that
their children. I’m very sensitive to such raise the question of who gets to teach
concerns, especially among parents who their viewpoints as the truth that all
have never enjoyed socioeconomic success. others must learn.
Nevertheless, the question of our larger In this context the authors of this vol-
purpose in the educational context— ume believe that rigorous, life-changing
a purpose, of course, that cannot be teachers must have a complex under-
removed from these contexts—is over- standing of power and how it shapes the
looked in such circumstances. In the pro- world in general and individual lives in
cess education is reduced to a means particular. Many of the ideas I believe
toward an end of socioeconomic success, come from critical pedagogy (for an intro-
and the intrinsic value of education and duction to the field see Kincheloe, 2004).
the critical consciousness it might develop In the case of the authors of Classroom
are dismissed. The debate about the goals Teaching, we take some ideas from this
of education must bring up these issues for school of thought and mix them with
public examination. Teachers must be ideas from other schools. We share several
keenly aware of these issues as they prepare basic precepts about the need for a rigor-
their everyday work in their classrooms. ous education that explores a wide variety
of knowledges and is grounded on a belief
The Goals of in democracy and socioeconomic justice,
Classroom Teaching and but we do not hold uniform perspectives.
Questions of Power All of us do believe, however, that under-
No matter how much many people might standing issues of power and their relation
wish it were not the case, schools and to the purposes of education is central to
classrooms are battlegrounds where com- becoming a great classroom teacher.
peting interests attempt to define who we Indeed, the people we are and the na-
are as a nation (Anderson & Summer- ture of our consciousness of ourselves in
field, 2004). In many domains we see general and as teachers are directly tied to
forces that want to retain a monolithic vi- power. Our critical orientation to class-
sion of America as a white, Christian, pa- room teaching is always mindful of the
interrelationship between teachers’, stu- know exactly how I was affected by these
dents’, and administrators’ consciousness experiences. I can say that they height-
and the sociohistorical contexts in which ened my sensitivity to racial, class, gender,
they work. These historical power forces ethnic, religious, and sexual injustice and
have shaped all of us. My upbringing in a the kinds of pain and distress such op-
rural, poor area of Tennessee profoundly pression can cause. I pray I never lose such
shaped my life. I realized early in my life empathy as a teacher, lover, parent, friend,
that the dominant cultural forces moved and human being in general.
most of my peers and their parents to The teachers whom we want to see op-
hold an ethnocentric view of the world erating in schools, regardless of their own
around them. African Americans were al- backgrounds, understand such sociocul-
most always referred to as “niggers” and tural dynamics and their relationships to
consistently relegated to an inferior status. themselves and their students. In relation
Women who were suspected of having to themselves, critical teachers value self-
sex were “whores,” who were to be sexu- exploration. In relations to these power
ally pursued at night but denigrated in dynamics and their own lives, they work
the daylight. “Queens” simply were to to expose buried fragments of themselves
be beaten (often after performing par- constructed by their connections to such
ticular sexual acts with “straight” men). forces of power.
“Non-Christians”—even Catholics were Guided by such concerns, critical class-
included in this category—were not to be room teachers seek to expose what con-
tolerated. stitutes reality for themselves and for
The ironic dimension of all of this was participants in educational situations. How
that individuals from the upper-middle do educational leaders, administrators,
and upper class looked down on us as other teachers, parents, and students come
“hicks” and “white trash.” If we ever ven- to construct their views of educational
tured out of our geographical location, we reality? Critical teachers see a socially
were viewed as “hillbillies,” who were constructed world and ask what forces
ignorant and probably illiterate. I learned construct the consciousness and the ways
early that I did not want to be a part of of seeing of the actors who live in it. Why
the parochial and ethnocentric dimen- are some constructions of educational real-
sions of my low-status culture, but, con- ity embraced and officially legitimized by
currently, I did not want to be a part of the dominant culture while others are re-
the more privileged class cultures that pressed? Why do I feel so uncomfortable
looked down on my peers. Power rela- with teaching about particular issues or
tions were swirling all around me, and I raising certain questions, yet I have no
worked hard to understand the lessons to trouble bringing other knowledges into my
be learned from the maelstrom. My feel- classroom? What contexts, what experi-
ings were often conflicted; I was many ences, what belief systems have moved me
times confused, and probably I was scarred to operate in these ways? Why do I react
in ways that manifest themselves in adult- so emotionally (positively or negatively) to
hood in less-than-healthy ways. After these ideas? What are the origins of such
years of introspection, I guess I’ll never feelings?
Thus, critical classroom teachers in- students, what instructional methods may
formed by a concern with power seek a be utilized (e.g., Madeleine Hunter, Suc-
system of meaning which grants a new an- cess for All ), and what belief systems, defi-
gle, a unique insight into the social con- nitions of citizenship, and views of success
sequences of different ways of knowing, may be taught. Schools may identify, of-
different forms of knowledge, and differ- ten unconsciously, conceptions of what
ent approaches to knowledge production it means to be educated with upper-
and teaching. Teaching and knowledge middle-class white culture; expressions of
production are never neutral but con- working-class or nonwhite culture may be
structed in specific ways that privilege par- viewed as uneducated and inferior.
ticular logics and voices while silencing In this context teachers are expected
others. Why do science and math curric- to sever student identification with their
ula in the United States, for example, re- minority-group or working-class back-
ceive more attention and prestige in public grounds, as a result alienating such stu-
schools than liberal arts (Roth, Tobin, & dents through the degradation of their
Ritchie, 2001)? Critical teachers who are culture. Thus, the culture of schooling
searching for the way power helps shape privileges particular practices and certain
individual and social consciousness un- methods of discerning truth. French
cover links, for example, between the need scholar Michel Foucault argues that truth
of large corporations to enhance worker is not relative (i.e., not all worldviews em-
productivity and the goals of contem- braced by different teachers, researchers,
porary educational reform and standards cultures, and individuals are of equal
movements to reestablish “‘excellent’ worth) but relational (constructions con-
schools” (Horn & Kincheloe, 2001). They sidered true are contingent upon the power
discover relationships between the inter- relations and historical context in which
ests of business and the exclusion of the they are formulated and acted upon). The
study of labor history in Western schools. question that grounds critical teachers’
They expose the connections between the efforts to formulate a system of meaning
patriarchal Eurocentrism of educational for their classroom teaching is whether

leadership and definitions of classics that what we designate as truth is relational
exclude the contributions of women, mi- and not certain. If it is, then what set of
norities, and non-Westerners to the litera- assumptions can we use to guide our ac-
ture, art, and music curricula. tivities as professionals, to inform our
Power regulates discourses, and discur- questions as teachers and producers of
sive practices are defined as a set of tacit knowledge? This question is one that such
rules that regulate what can and cannot be teachers attempt to answer for the rest of
said, who can speak with the blessing of their lives. This is a question that runs
authority and who must listen, whose so- throughout my work as a scholar and a
cioeducational constructions are scientific teacher.
and valid and whose are unlearned and Power is an extremely complex topic,
unimportant. In the everyday world of and space limitations do not allow me suf-
teachers, legitimized discourses insidiously ficient room to discuss the multiple dimen-
tell teachers what books may be read by sions of power (for an expanded analysis of
the meaning of power, see Kincheloe & horizon, garners consent to an inequitable
Steinberg, 1997, and Kincheloe, 2002). In power matrix—a set of social relations that
the context of this discussion of the goals are legitimated by their depiction as natu-
of classroom teaching I do want to focus ral and inevitable. In this context we come
momentarily on the political notion of to believe that the world could have ex-
hegemony. Antonio Gramsci was an Ital- isted in no other way: there will always be
ian political philosopher in the first de- poor people, and there will be a bell curve
cades of the twentieth century who was distribution of student abilities in every
arrested by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist gov- classroom, so many students simply don’t
ernment in the 1920s and imprisoned have the ability to learn.
until his death in 1937. During his impris- The methods of hegemony move social
onment Gramsci kept notebooks in which domination from a yellow alert to a red
he developed some of the most sophisti- alert, or, as I like to say in this time of
cated understandings of power ever con- homeland security, from pumpkin to ma-
ceptualized. One of these concepts was genta. Critical teachers find themselves in
hegemony. In contemporary democratic a state of full alert in regard to the capac-
states, Gramsci argued, dominant power is ity of power wielders to dominate in the
no longer exercised simply by physical late twentieth century and the first decade
force but through sociopsychological at- of the twenty-first century. As previously
tempts to win people’s consent to domina- discussed, this contemporary social con-
tion through cultural institutions such as dition—we have referred to it as hyper-
the schools, the media, the family, and the reality—is marked by cultural dislocation
church. because of the bombardment of informa-
Thus, Gramsci’s hegemony posits that tion that is thrown at us by electronic me-
winning the popular consent is a very dia. This social vertigo is marked by a loss
complex process. Power groups win popu- of touch with traditional notions of time,
lar consent by way of a pedagogical pro- community, self, and history. This prolif-
cess, a form of learning that engages eration of signs and images characteristic
people’s conceptions of the world in such of information-soaked hyperreality func-

a way that transforms, not displaces, them tions as a mechanism of control in con-
with perspectives more compatible with temporary Western societies. The key to a
various elites—white supremacy, economic pedagogy that fights dominant power and
power wielders, patriarchy, heterosexuals, is counterhegemonic involves the ability
and so on. The existence and nature of to point out the way power operates to
hegemony are among the most important produce various representations, images,
and least understood features of twentieth- and signs, and the capacity to illustrate the
and twenty-first-century life in indus- complex ways that the reception of these
trialized, democratic countries. We are images and signs affect individuals located
all hegemonized, as our knowledges and at various race, class, and gender coordi-
understandings are structured by limited nates in the web of social reality.
exposure to competing definitions of What this means in everyday life, of
the sociopolitical world. The hegemonic course, is the ability of power to produce
field, with its bounded sociopsychological meaning in ways that move people to adopt
particular behaviors that are in the interests classrooms I promote. Such a concern, we
of the power wielders. One example is the argue, moves us to be aware of the fragility
way Nike has inscribed their athletic shoes of democracy in the middle of the first de-
with a signifier of status that moves kids cade of the twenty-first century.
of all socioeconomic strata to want them. These power wielders move us all as stu-
How did shoes gain such an importance? dents, teachers, parents, and citizens into
Nike poured millions of dollars into social hegemonic communities of practice. With-
research and into advertising to obtain its out any contention, such power-driven
desired effect. Elsewhere I have written communities of practice come to internal-
about McDonald’s (Kincheloe, 2002) and ize particular meanings, feelings, and val-
its successful use of advertising to cultivate ues without much negotiation or cognitive
children consumers. When corporations reflection (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996).
such as Nike and McDonald’s have pro- This hegemonic process often works so
duced positive views of their products and well that individuals deny that their world-
the act of consuming them, they generate views have been influenced by anyone.
tremendous goodwill toward the present Such a power-driven process convinces
corporate-dominated sociopolitical envi- many people that there is a pervasive con-
ronment. Add hundreds of other corpora- sensus on the society’s larger social, politi-
tions spending billions of dollars to create cal, cultural, economic, and educational
positive corporate images, and you have a goals. Political and ideological discussion
powerful political force in support of the becomes more and more a relic of a distant
status quo with its low corporate taxes and past in which such quaint issues mattered.
good business climates. And the political domain is relegated to the
The power of these corporate informa- closet of “bad taste”—“How gauche! Bob
tion producers to shape our political view- wanted to talk about politics at the party
points, our view of success, our view of last night; what a bore.”
ourselves, and our view of the world makes Thus, an invisible market ideology, a
them the most important teachers in hu- tacit politics of consumption, emerges that
man history. Classroom teachers need to subverts attempts to talk about the “public
understand that much of the most power- good.” In this ideology all in the private
ful pedagogy in the world takes place out- domain is good, as it is grounded on val-
side of the classroom in contexts carefully ues of efficiency and customer satisfaction;
produced by corporate owners of TV, ra- conversely, everything in the public space
dio, movies, CDs, video games, and so on. is bureaucratic, inept, and grounded on
Corporate-owned media can set agendas, unacceptable “high taxes.” Privatization is
mold loyalties, depict conflicts, and under- promoted as an unmitigated virtue and
mine challenges to the political status quo every human endeavor is capable of being
without a modicum of public notice. improved by the sanctification of the
Critical teachers must work to expose the market. In this ideological construct, edu-
insidious ways that power shapes our con- cation itself is reduced to a market logic
sciousness and the knowledge we are ex- that sees no problem with classrooms that
posed to both in and out of the classroom. attempt to make children receptive and
This is a central concern of the rigorous docile (Covaleskie, 2004). “Do not ques-
tion the knowledge we provide you, stu- • All true knowledge is scientific
dents. Just make sure you know it for the knowledge—it is knowledge about
standards tests—our stockholders will which we are positive. Only Western
want to see empirical proof that our edu- societies produce such knowledge;
cational system is working. Our quarterly other cultures must give up their ways
reports to stockholders must assure them of producing knowledge and follow us.
that things are going well and their money • All scientific knowledge is empiri-
is well-invested.” cally verifiable—through the senses
we can count, see, and hear things
Understanding the Alienation and thus represent the world in
of Contemporary Experience: numbers. Knowledges not grounded
The Authoritarianism of Positivism empirically and quantitatively about
A primary goal of a critical education in complexities such as feelings, emotion,
the contemporary globalized world in- hurt, humiliation, for example, are of-
volves not a quest for universal truths but ten dismissed in the positivism context.
an effort to heal the alienation of twenty- • One must use the same methods
first century everyday life (Reason & Brad- to study the physical world as one
bury, 2000). In this alienation we are uses to study the social and educa-
removed from the world and other people. tional worlds—a key dimension of
Indeed, we are often quite alienated from knowledge work in this context in-
our own selves, our erotic, passionate, lov- volves predicting and controlling
ing, interactive selfhood. In the prevailing natural phenomena. Human beings
knowledge climate of academia we often are treated like any other “variable”
observe a quest for certainty that alienates in this framework.
us by denying the complexity and ambi- • If knowledge exists, it exists in some
guity of everyday life. From the birth of definite, measurable quantity—math-
the Scientific Revolution in Western so- ematical language is best suited to
cieties in the seventeenth and eighteenth express our knowledge of the world.
centuries, René Descartes, Sir Isaac New- Many claim that the most important
ton, and Francis Bacon—the founders of dimensions of education cannot be ex-
modern science—sought a perfect form pressed in this language.
of knowledge. Such “truth” would provide • Nature is uniform and whatever in it
individuals guidance in what to do in pro- that is studied remains consistent in
fessional and personal life. This certainty its existence and behavior—there is
could only be derived by using the correct an underlying natural order in the
method in knowledge production. This way the physical, social, psychologi-
correct method we would come to under- cal, and educational domains work.
stand as the scientific method. It is the Humans, many argue, are not as pre-
foundation for the knowledge theory (epis- dictable and regular as positivists claim.
temology) of positivism. • The factors that cause things to hap-
Positivism is a key contributor to the pen are limited and knowable, and
alienation we experience in the twenty- in empirical studies these factors
first century. Positivism believes that: can be controlled—the best way to
study the world is to isolate its parts have given them. Scholarly teachers
and analyze them independently of with analytical and interpretive abili-
the contexts of which they are a part. ties do not fit in the positivism world
It is profoundly difficult, many assert, of schooling.
to control all of the factors that shape
human actions, and when we remove Positivism extends alienation, as it in-
individuals from their social context, duces individuals to focus on knowledge
we may have destroyed their natural that has little to do with the well-being
setting that makes them who they are. of human beings as a species. Questions
• Certainty is possible, and when we about environmental protection, the rela-
produce enough research we will un- tionship between humans and the cosmos,
derstand reality well enough to forgo tendencies toward militarism, the loss of
further research—research is like a community, ethical responsibilities, and
jigsaw puzzle, a search for all the the disparity of wealth are dismissed in
pieces that give us a final picture of this context. Indeed, the very insights that
the phenomenon in question. Such a would lead to a reduction of alienation are
quest focuses our attention on the triv- devalued in a positivistic epistemology.
ial, those things that lend themselves to Our efforts to engage teachers in helping
easy measurement. students develop criteria for making ethi-
• Facts and values can be kept separate, cal choices, to imagine alternatives to pres-
and objectivity is always possible— ent alienating social arrangements, are
good research is always politically consistently opposed by positivists. Be-
and morally neutral. Nonpositivists cause of a matrix of intersecting histori-
argue that values, a variety of assump- cal, social, economic, and cultural forces
tions, and power dynamics always coming together in the 1970s, right-wing
shape knowledge production. positivists were able to orchestrate an ideo-
• There is one true reality, and the logical coup by around 1980.
purpose of education is to convey The educational phalange of the coup
that reality to students—positivist was able to subvert critical efforts to raise

research tells us the best way to teach questions of educational goals in a demo-
this reality. Those who argue that dif- cratic society (Goodson, 1999). The suc-
ferent research methods and different cess of this coup is testimony to why the
values will produce different views of questions raised seem so out of place and
reality are simply misguided, positivists irrelevant to so many over the last quarter
maintain. of a century. Questions about social alien-
• Teachers in the positivist framework ation were quashed in the new regime,
become “information deliverers,” not and attempts to devise new ways of under-
knowledge-producing and knowl- standing the pedagogical cosmos were un-
edge-questioning professionals—there dermined. The ideas that human beings
is no need for teacher education in construct their reality and that some final
this context, for teachers should sim- positivist truth about the world cannot
ply pass along the truths that experts be produced by following the scientific
method scared the hell out of the leaders man beings and their physical (environ-
of the right-wing coup. When critical mental), social, cultural, political, eco-
scholars argued that reality is not as much nomic, and philosophical contexts. The
discovered as constructed and that edu- new terrain of insight we envision works
cation should reflect this epistemological to transcend positivistic forms of:
insight by encouraging teachers and stu-
dents to become rigorous researchers, • abstract individualism—viewing hu-
panic swept the positivist landscape. mans apart from the natural con-
In this context, the urgency of the contexts that have shaped them
servative effort to develop a set of content • technicalization—valuing the tech-
standards that had to be learned by every- nical over questions of human pur-
one in order to standardize the nation’s pose and wellness
curriculum becomes more understandable. • mechanization—understanding hu-
Right-wing political/educational reformers mans as machine-like and computer-
felt they needed a way to control teachers like, missing in the process the
who might be prone to question the tradi- complex dynamics that make hu-
tional positivist verities. If something was mans human
not done quickly, the right-wingers be- • economism—looking at human be-
lieved, schools could become places where ings as primarily cogs within the
genuine democratic dialogue took place, economic domain rather than as sa-
where indoctrination about the inferiority cred and unique entities with infi-
of diverse ways of seeing was not tolerated, nite capacities for doing good
where classrooms valued the insights and • nationalism—conceptualizing hu-
contributions of students from a wide man purpose in light of the compet-
range of cultures and belief systems. itive needs of the state and a narrow
“patriotism” that undermines our
Addressing Alienation: capacity to ask ethical and moral
Moving to a New questions about our collective be-
Terrain of Insight havior (Griffin, 1997)

Our social and educational imagination • rationalism—viewing humans as
cannot be destroyed. As I asserted at the “Mr. Spocks,” who operate in ways
beginning of this discussion, more is pos- that dismiss the importance of intu-
sible than right-wing ideologues and their ition, feeling, affect, emotion, and
positivist allies ever conceptualized. These compassion in the effort to under-
regressive forces have attempted to place a stand self and world
lid on human possibility and have in- • objectivism—understanding that the
duced good minds to focus on the trivial. goal of education and scholarship is
To say it once again: we can be better. I to produce and consume a body of
urge you to join with those of us who ad- neutral data that fails to engage a va-
vocate a constructive and affirmative criti- riety of knowledges produced in di-
cal pedagogy that values human dignity verse ways in differing cultures and
and the sacred relationship between hu- historical eras.
Liberated from the positivist discourse duction regardless of historical era and so-
of certainty, critically grounded students cial location and to hold them up to the
and teachers come to the realization that light of present repression (Marcuse,
there are always multiple perspectives with 1955; Bronner, 1988).
which they are unfamiliar. Searching for In this context art illuminates the prob-
new ways of seeing, they find that art and lematic, as it creates new concepts and new
aesthetics provide a rich domain for such angles from which to view the world. In
perspectives, new modes of reasoning that this way art, through its interpreters, gives
have been dismissed by a positivist culture birth to meaning, as it breaks through the
high on the tradition’s hyperrationality. alienated surface to explore the submerged
As a frame-buster, art challenges what the social and political relationships that shape
great critical theorist Herbert Marcuse events. In contemporary popular culture,
(1955) labeled: “the prevailing principle one can see these aesthetic dynamics at
of reason” (p. 185). Art, imaginative litera- work. Observing TV shows such as The
ture, and music grant teachers and stu- Simpsons and South Park, for example, one
dents an alternative epistemology, a way of can see brilliant writers parody the assump-
knowing that transcends objective forms tions that lead to alienation in contempo-
of knowledge (Rose & Kincheloe, 2003). rary US society. The prejudice, pomposity,
Literary texts, drama, painting, sculpture, self-righteousness, and gravitas of the rich,
and dance help individuals see, hear, and famous, and powerful are open targets for
feel beyond the surface level of sight and the critical arrows of the screenwriters. As
sound. They can alert the awakened to the the socially, politically, and culturally prob-
alienated, one-dimensional profiles of the lematic are exposed, the pedagogy of The
world promoted by positivistic culture. Simpsons and South Park becomes an act of
Herbert Marcuse (1955) was acutely defamiliarization. The classroom pedagogy
aware of this cognitive dimension of art we promote here takes a similar path, as
and linked it to the development of a criti- teachers learn not only to defamiliarize the
cal politics—an understanding of the way “common-sense” worlds of their peers and
power shapes our perception of self and students but also to create situations where
the world. Art assumes an ability to liber- student experience can be used to defamil-
ate us from modern alienation, he as- iarize the world of schooling.
serted, when it is viewed in light of specific As aesthetic concerns with the “now”
historical conditions. Thus, for Marcuse, defamiliarize contemporary education’s
aesthetic transcendence of repressive alien- tendency to standardize and formalize the
ation is a deliberate political act that iden- role of instruction, teachers and students
tifies the object of art with the repressive seek pleasurable ways of reconceptualizing
situation to be overcome. This, of course, and reconstructing the institution. Over-
is not to say that in the quest for aesthetic coming the tyranny of reliance on delayed
transcendence of alienation art should be gratification for future success and the de-
reduced to propaganda for a particular po- monization of learning that is fun, critical
litical perspective. It is a quite different teachers set up a mode of scholarship that
matter for the critical educator to uncover is unbowed by the alienating power of
the emancipatory demands of artistic pro- positivist truth. Emerging from this play-
ful haughtiness is the realization that the come to realize that social, cultural, liter-
arts promote a form of teaching that re- ary, political, scientific, psychological, and
quires interpretation and understanding of philosophical knowledge production rarely
context. In this context critical teachers tells an easily discerned, unitary, uncom-
fight forces that suppress intellectual and plicated story (Willinsky, 2001). The data
other types of freedom. As distasteful as it that research constructs are always com-
may be to some groups, we believe that plicated and demand interpretation and
addressing alienation necessitates the ex- contextual analysis. The effort to apply
posure of these forces, these dominant cul- such knowledge is even more complex.
tural fictions that attempt to regulate us. When we fail to realize this complexity,
scientific research often leads to new forms
The Ironic Curriculum of alienation. This new alienation involves
The critical curriculum connected to the the cognitive realm and the domain of our
classroom teaching we imagine is always being (ontology—the branch of philoso-
ironic about its goals. Such irony forces phy that studies the nature of being, in
teachers to subject this curriculum to self- this context what it means to be human).
criticism, to a questioning of the assump- A critical ontology (Kincheloe, 2003) asks
tions it is making about the world. This what the nature is of our relationship to
runs contrary to the objectives of the posi- the world, what is our being-in-the-world.
tivist curriculum and the classrooms it Cognitive alienation undermines our
supports. The purpose of the positivist ability to discern anything about the world
curriculum is indoctrination and regula- but the most surface level empirical in-
tion. There is no room in a standardized sights; ontological alienation subverts our
classroom to question the assumptions be- ability to gain insight into the forces that
hind the “facts” that appear on the stan- have helped construct our identities. When
dards test. Such a process would not help we are ontologically alienated we have a
improve test scores and would be consid- very immature sense of who exactly we are.
ered by right-wing reforms as not only a Ensnared in this cognitive and ontological
waste of time but also quite dangerous. alienation, humans find themselves able to
The pervasive assertion that reflection on gather copious data about matter and
educational purpose is a dangerous activity energy but unable to develop our under-
should alert friends of democracy to the standing of the nature of the minds that
political problems inherent in such alien- put such information to use. Over the
ated curricula. A society is democratic to past 2,000 years, for example, we have
the degree that it allows for reflection and increased our capacity to wage war, while
criticism of its assumptions and action. By at the same time learning little about the
such a measure of democracy, contempo- causes of war. We become technologically
rary American society scores low on the proficient but ethically bankrupt. We be-
democrameter. come economically prosperous but possess
Our understanding of complexity also no vision of what we can do collectively
reminds us of the problems of positivist with our wealth. A central manifestation of
curricula and classrooms. When we recog- our alienation is that we become increas-
nize the complexity of knowledge we ingly self-centered and narcissistic.
The work of the Central Intelligence behavior, and insights generated by an

Agency (CIA) provides a great example of understanding of one’s past and its con-
this alienation. Over the last several de- nection to one’s future. These are the
cades the CIA has been taken by surprise perspectives that the CIA has lacked.
again and again by the march of world Without them the intelligence organiza-
events. From the resistance of the Cuban tion will continue to rely on alienated
people against an American-led attack on ways of studying the world, in the process
Fidel Castro’s Cuba at the Bay of Pigs producing naïve data and supporting
invasion in 1961 and the Iranian Revo- counterproductive and unethical policies.
lution of 1978–1979, to the fall of the Even the CIA could use an ironic curricu-
Soviet Union in 1991 and 9/11 (to men- lum to recast its cognitive frameworks and
tion only a few examples), the CIA has develop new insights into what is missing
focused on the obvious and ignored the in its methods of knowledge production.
profound. In every case, the CIA directed The ironic curriculum promoted here
its attention to a particular national lead- for our critical classroom teaching is a vac-
ership’s fidelity (or lack of ) to short-term cination against cognitive and ontological
US military and economic interests in alienation. Thus, we bring hidden social,
the area. In every case they ignored the political, and cultural infrastructures to
social, cultural, and ideological dynamics consciousness to facilitate larger efforts
reshaping the groups and individuals that to empower teachers and students to make
did not occupy positions in formal politi- conscious choices concerning their lives.
cal institutions. In every case their under- Demonstrating their cognitive and onto-
standing of a particular state of affairs logical alienation, many educators move
was subverted by such a strategy. The through sixteen to twenty or more years
agency never learned from its mistakes. of schooling without ever being induced
This cognitive and ontological alien- to think about their own thinking and
ation has been exacerbated by a competi- the infrastructures and discourses that
tive impulse (e.g., America is better than have shaped it. The discourse of positivist
every other nation in the world; we’re science, for example, with its obsession
number one with the highest gross na- with measurement has shaped the nature
tional product [GNP] in the world; we of dominant learning experiences in
have nothing to learn from “them”). In schools. Educational and psychological
this alienated state, our social imagination science has devoted much attention to the
is restricted, as we are bound to simple development of more precise systems of
personal desires. Our affection is limited measurement and the application of such
to the family unit and a perverted sense of measurement to the minds of students. As
patriotism that promotes an unthinking a result, many educators and lay people
my-country-right-or-wrong orientation. cannot think of intelligence in any terms
This “neo-know-nothingism” decontextu- other than the number on an IQ test.
alizes the social, cultural, ethical, and the This alienating science has fragmented
temporal, in the process robbing men and the world to the point that individuals are
women of an understanding of the forces blinded to particular forms of human ex-
that have shaped them, visions of ethical perience. Attempting to study the world in
isolation, bit by bit, educational scientists schools and students in the web of reality
have separated the study of schools from and the power asymmetries that com-
society. For the purpose of simplifying the plicate any classroom experience (Apple,
process of analysis, disciplines of study are 1993).
divided arbitrarily without regard for larger Any attempt to provide an egalitarian
context (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004). Edu- and socially just experience for students in
cational reforms of recent years, including these classrooms begins not with suppres-
top-down mandated standards and stan- sion of these differences but with a recog-
dardized curriculum, have been formulated nition of them that moves us to informed
outside of the wider cultural and political action. Any classroom teaching that takes
concerns for where students come from or place outside of these insights will lead to
where they find themselves in relation to a perpetuation and an exacerbation of
education. As politicians of both major cognitive and ontological alienation. Of
parties mandate a test-driven, one-size-fits- course, this is the knowledge that makes
all curriculum, they create new strains of right-wing politicos and educational lead-
cognitive and ontological alienation. Find- ers very, very nervous. It may make such
ing its roots in positivist fragmentation, re- fear mongers nervous, but it is necessary
cent educational reforms have produced a to the survival of public education and a
“factoid syndrome,” where students learn democratic society. These are the types
isolated bits and pieces of information for of stakes critical teachers are playing for in
texts without concern for relationships the middle of the first decade of the
among the data or their applications to twenty-first century.
personal struggles or the problems of the
world. An ironic curriculum is acutely
R E FE R E NCES
aware of these issues.
Anderson, P., & Summerfield, J. (2004).
Thus, the classrooms we promote are Why is urban education different from
not grounded on an objective curriculum, suburban and rural education? In S.
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roots, its cultural, economic, philosophi- ban questions: Teaching in the city. New
cal, and social assumptions, and its loca- York: Peter Lang.
tion in history. These insights help teachers Apple, M. (1993). The politics of official
understand the diverse nature and needs knowledge: Does a national curriculum
of different classrooms and students. In make sense? Teachers College Record, 95(2),
the alienated standardized curriculum 222–241.
of the middle of the first decade of the Bronner, S. (1988). Between art and utopia:
Reconsidering the aesthetic theory of
twenty-first century, the claim that “we
Herbert Marcuse. In R. Pippin, A. Feen-
treat all students the same” is a cruel hoax.
berg, & C. Webel (Eds.), Marcuse: Criti-
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Herrnstein, R., & Murray, C. (1994). The Rose, K., & Kincheloe, J. (2003). Art, culture,
bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in and education: Artful teaching in a frac-
American life. New York: The Free Press. tured landscape. New York: Peter Lang.
Horn, R., & Kincheloe, J. (2001). American Roth, W., Tobin, K., & Ritchie, S. (2001).
standards: Quality education in a complex Re/constructing elementary science. New
world—The Texas case. New York: Peter York: Peter Lang.
Lang. Steinberg, S. (2001). Multi/intercultural con-
Kincheloe, J. (1999). How do we tell the work- versations. New York: Peter Lang.
ers? The socioeconomic foundations of work Willinsky, J. (2001). Raising the standards
and vocational education. Boulder, CO: for democratic education: Research and
Westview. evaluation as public knowledge. In
Kincheloe, J. (2001). Getting beyond the facts: J. Kincheloe and D. Weil (Eds.), Stan-
Teaching social studies/social sciences in the dards and schooling in the U.S.: An Ency-
twenty-first century. New York: Peter Lang. clopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio.
Kincheloe, J. (2002). The sign of the burger:
McDonald’s and the culture of power. —————
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Part III Additional Resources
Discussion Questions
Students should carefully read each question and support each response with examples
and specific references to the readings that are being considered.
1. How can teacher leadership and the use of Professional Learning Communities
change the culture of an entire school? How can teachers work within the bu-
reaucracy to ensure that teachers’ voices help shape policy? Whose support is nec-
essary to facilitate these changes? How likely is it that such support will be
available?
2. How might teacher leadership look from the perspective of a principal? A stu-
dent? A parent? Discuss.
3. Everything that happens in a school should focus on the well-being and success
of all students. Changing the expectations for the roles and responsibilities of
teachers assumes that all teachers are committed professionals. How does one go
about addressing the lack of teaching and learning effectiveness in some teachers’
classrooms without challenging a colleague’s competence or questioning his or
her professional commitment? Is there a role for teacher leaders in this scenario?
4. How important are personal characteristics for leadership, for example, age, gender,
experience, or race? What are the qualities and skills needed for teacher leadership?
5. Identify a teacher leader whom you have admired in the past. In small groups,
identify the traits and characteristics of that person. Attempt to answer the fol-
lowing questions: What is teacher leadership? What does it look like in a school
setting? Finally, discuss the impact of teacher leaders on the professional status of
teachers. What changes would occur in the profession if teacher leadership be-
came the norm in schools?
Guide to Further Reading

Cowhey, Mary. 2006. Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Dif-
ferently. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Danielson, C. 2006. Teacher Leadership That Strengthens Professional Practice.
Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
(ASCD).
Donaldson, G. A. 2000. Cultivating Leadership in Schools: Connecting People, Purpose,
and Practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
249
250 | Part III Additional Resources
Fullan, Michael G., and A. Hargreaves. 1991. What’s Worth Fighting For? Working To-
gether for Your School. New York: Teachers College Press.
Postman, N., and C. Weingartner. 1969. Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York:
Dell Publishing.
Sergiovanni, T. J. 2000. Leadership for the Schoolhouse: How Is It Different? Why Is It
Important? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Related Resources
http://www.cstp-wa.org
The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession
http://www.ctl.vcu.edu
Center for Teacher Leadership
http://www.teachingquality.org
Center for Teaching Quality
www.csupomona.edu/~ijtl
International Journal of Teacher Leadership
http://www.nbpts.org
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
http://www.teacherleaders.org
Teacher Leaders Network, Center for Teaching Quality
http://www.teacherleaders.typepad.com
Teacher Leaders Network, Teacher Voices
http://www.teacherscount.org
Teachers Count

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9780813344904-text_Layout 1 12/15/10 2:39 PM Page 179

Copyright © 2011. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2011. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

184 | Henry A. Giroux

a necessary theoretical precondition in order schools is the increasing development of

institutions essential to maintaining and a view of teaching as an “applied science”

Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals | 185

186 | Henry A. Giroux

underlying theoretical assumption that in purely instrumental or technical terms.

Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals | 187

188 | Henry A. Giroux

Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals | 189

Copyright © 2011. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Improvement focuses on doing the same Differences That

192 | Phillip C. Schlechty

Four Key Questions “Can it be done?” seek assurance that what

194 | Phillip C. Schlechty

Trailblazers need public acknowledg- Thus, pioneers need concept develop-

196 | Phillip C. Schlechty

198 | Phillip C. Schlechty

New York: Simon & Schuster.

Copyright © 2011. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

How to Build Leadership Capacity

“get us back on an even keel,” “undo what vice-principals, directors, or superinten-

202 | Linda Lambert

• Leadership is not a trait; leadership tion in the work of leadership. Leadership

How to Build Leadership Capacity | 203

growing polarization among the staff, members consider themselves to be

204 | Linda Lambert

2. Get to know one another; build R E FE R E NCES

Against the Grain

206 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

teaching strategies, ﬁeld experiences cou-

Against the Grain | 207

208 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Against the Grain | 209

210 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

teacher simultaneously completed univer- This chapter draws on examples from

Against the Grain | 211

212 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Against the Grain | 213

214 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

by exploring its particulars. mentioned earlier that she would be

Against the Grain | 215

216 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Against the Grain | 217

218 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Against the Grain | 219

question, and I’ve thought a lot about environment. . . .

220 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

Against the Grain | 221

222 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

velopment of each teacher-researcher also alter the perspectives they learn in

Against the Grain | 223

224 | Marilyn Cochran-Smith

In W. R. Houston (Eds.), Handbook of re- Lampert, M. (1985). How do teachers man-

course and descriptive analysis. Teaching pan, 71, 723–727.

Against the Grain | 225

Copyright © 2011. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

What Are We Doing Here?

This book is grounded on the premise that Gaining a Sense of

228 | Joe L. Kincheloe

What Are We Doing Here? | 229