Recently one of the editors – Emily – had a conversation with her sixth grade son Sam about education and schooling. Like many 11 year olds, he had been watching a you tube video and stumbled onto one about alternative models of schooling. The video led to a conversation about the purposes of schooling and how “traditional” schools tend to believe schools are there to prepare kids in academic content knowledge as opposed to preparing them to live in a democratic society. Sam noted that he could tell that most of his teachers believed the purpose of schooling to be to impart content and little else. Eighty-one years after Dewey’s clarification of constructivist teaching and learning, Experience and Education, we still find that the “norm” for schooling involves very little earnest preparation to participate in democratic society. And yet, we see the consequences of this failure all around us: growing violence, rising levels of hate speech and crimes, and deep distrust of institutions to meet the needs of all citizens. Both of us are drawn to research and writing that helps us think more radically about what might be involved in helping to support institutional and policy changes in schools that take seriously the idea that schools can and must teach us how to be members of a society built on justice, freedom, and compassion
There are any number of structural, ideological, and policy changes that might need to happen to promote active and thoughtful citizenship, as the articles in this issue help us to consider. One set of articles in this issue specifically addresses the kinds of experiences teachers need to have in order to be better prepared to create classrooms where students learn to be participatory, activist, engaged members of society. In Grant, Hann, Godwin, Shackelford, and Ames’ piece, they explore a fundamental tenet we believe underlies such a shift toward democratic practice – the development of a framework for building teacher autonomy. The authors take seriously the notion that teachers need autonomy in the classroom (much as students need to learn autonomy and develop responsible decision making), but that this needs to be done in ways that respect the community of knowledge makers of which they are a part and does not leave them feeling isolated. This conceptual piece takes seriously how to balance those tensions. Similarly, Rice and Deschaine examine how we might think about online teaching environments as having distinct teacher education and policy needs to help teachers make sense of and maximize the potential of these unique learning spaces. Doing so seems to us to be urgent in a political landscape that endorses online education as a means of cost-cutting, but also provides opportunities to broaden who has access to learning opportunities. Finally, Erdemir, Engin Demir, Yıldırım Öcal, and Kondakçi, address the conditions of the academic workforce and how increased neoliberal policies have led to a decrease in “academic freedom, autonomy, and democratic collegiality.” They explore “academic mobbing,” and abusive behaviors in academia as well as structural and leadership strategies for combatting them. We see this uncovering of abuse in higher education to be deeply linked to how we prepare teachers and students to participate in democracy.
Torff et al. explore the kinds of teacher relationships that initiated the conversation with Sam– that of teacher response style. They argue that traditional beliefs about response style – that it be high in both responsiveness and control (as opposed to more permissive styles), is not complex enough to capture the important range of teachers’ relational styles. They offer “a three-factor model and measure of teachers’ interactional styles: response, demand (academic requirements), and control (classroom discipline).” Creating a distinction between demand and control offers something important in how we might think to help teachers learn about relationships with kids – especially if we take seriously that we want to prepare them for society, not just for jobs.
Beck, Morgan, Brown, Whitesides, and Riddle’s study of preservice teachers’ understanding of data literacy for teaching, offers us insight into how we might better support preservice teachers in using data as a tool for inquiry, particularly within their own community of learners. We believe these kinds of experiences for teachers are fundamental in providing models of what authentic inquiry and learning look like so that they can later create these for their students. Similarly, Cullen, Hertel, and Nickels offer insights into how to use technology in mathematics teaching to create more constructivist learning environments. Their discussion of the four roles of technology: 1. promoting cycles of proof; 2. presenting and connecting multiple representations; 3. supporting case-based reasoning; and 4. serving as a framework to support the creation and refinement of technology courses for future mathematics teachers help us explore the kinds of instruction that lead students to be critical, independent, constructivist thinkers. Finally, Amorim Neto, Bursey, Janowiak, McCarty, and Demeter explore the barriers to teamwork among teachers and how teamwork is linked to what they call “entrepreneurial” behaviors, or behaviors that support autonomy, creativity, and problem solving.
This issue also includes Rachel Ginsberg’s review of Getting to Where We Meant to Be: Working Toward the Educational World We Imagined by Patricia H. Hinchey & Pamela J. Konkol. She writes that the book is, “is a highly accessible, compelling read, that challenges the reader to carefully and critically examine the taken-for granted assumptions that currently shape educational discourse in the hopes of articulating an explicit set of goals, contemplate a well thought out route to them, and plan actions that will get them there.”
Monica Taylor
[email protected]
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Emily J. Klein
Emily J. Klein is a former high school English teacher and current professor at Montclair State University in the Department of Secondary and Special Education. She is currently co-PI on the WIPRO Science Education Fellows grant that supports science teacher leadership in five districts in New Jersey The author of several articles on teacher professional learning, teacher leadership, and urban teacher residencies, she is deeply committed to the work and lives of teachers. Her first book Going to scale with new school designs: Reinventing high school, was published by Teachers College Press. Her second book, A year in the life of an urban teacher residency: Using inquiry to reinvent math and science education, was published by Sense Publishers in 2015.
Monica Taylor
Monica Taylor is a feminist teacher educator, social justice advocate, and parent activist. She is a professor in the Department of Secondary and Special Education at Montclair State University. She has several publications on feminist pedagogy and research methodologies, teaching for social justice, teacher leadership, and urban teacher education. She is co-PI of the Wipro Science Education Fellows grant which supports science teacher leaders in five districts in New Jersey. Her most recent book, Playhouse: Optimistic stories of real hope for families with little children, describes a progressive parent cooperative school through the interwoven narratives of her own children and those of families for the last sixty years. Her commitments to fighting sexism, heteronormativity, and racism manifest in all aspects of her life. She advocates for her own children and New Jersey students as an organizer for Save Our Schools NJ. She also deeply values the work of the many teachers with whom she is in contact.