Visioning: A Navigational Tool in Schools

At the time of writing this introduction, the world sits in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic that has never before impacted so widely our world across geographic regions and socioeconomic levels since World War II. One could argue that possessing a vision, anchored in one’s beliefs and of social justice-oriented principles, and knowledge is needed now more than ever. Indeed, when we think of visioning in our global context, we are reminded of what Hammerness (2008) wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will do” (p. 1). The need to possess a vision in schools reflective of inner beliefs, passions, and knowledge of what works best for students and communities is sorely needed today. With growing inequities, heightened racial tensions, and threats to public school funding, the need to have socially justice-oriented visions reflected in schools is vital. Fairbanks et al. (2010) emphasize the transformative power of visioning in the day-to-day lives of teachers which can also be applied to principals, schools, and communities:

Teachers with a vision may strive to be more thoughtfully adaptive because they have a driving personal commitment to impart more than just what is required. In this sense, vision may take teachers beyond knowledge, instilling in them a commitment to inspire students to be something more than just academically competent. (p. 164)

Across the literature, visioning has been described in various ways and has a long history in the field. For example, Greene (1991) articulated a vision as a “personal reality;” Shulman and Shulman (2004) described visioning as an image of learning constructed within learning activities; and Hammerness (2006) described it as an “ideal image of classroom practice.” In sum, visioning represents an image or reach for what it is a teacher may want to cultivate and develop in the classroom. Of particular importance in conceptualizing visioning is the way in which Corno (2004) describes it as an “internal guiding system.” Yet, despite its important role as a tool to help connect and guide teachers and other educational stakeholders, the field seems to continually miss opportunities to embed visioning into policy and practice. For example, in a recent conversation with a teacher friend of mine, who I know to have a strong vision of developing motivated readers, when asked why she continued with asking her students to reread the same prescribed text over several days, despite her students’ disinterest, she replied, “[Because] they told us we had to” (Vaughn et al., 2019, p. 1). The “us” referring to broader school and district mandates.

Unfortunately, conversations like this are not that surprising. Since the passing of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), teachers and administrators have been pressured to deliver “skill and drill” instruction that rarely connects to what one would call visionary teaching. In fact, too often when teachers veer away from such curricular mandates they are deemed as “radical,” “too individualistic,” or “the outlier” in their school contexts. Such perspectives seem to perpetuate the notion that possessing a vision and acting on one’s beliefs is in fact “going rogue” and not at the heart of what good teachers do. In the field, we must move to normalize visioning as a practice that is essential in teachers’ day-to-day to lives. We must incorporate visioning into our coursework, professional development, and conversations with communities to ensure that visioning can inform policy and practice.

In this issue, authors illustrate the ways in which visioning can serve as a navigational tool and a reform mechanism, thereby providing a lens for practitioners and stakeholders to view their work, envision possibilities, and provide a pathway for what could be.

Miller et al. (this issue) outline the important role of visioning as a tool to orient literacy practices focused on teaching-beyond-the-test and using vision to promote student agency. This article drives our understanding of how visioning can directly inform instructional practice and sets a compelling tone for the issue about the impact of visioning as a reform mechanism to shift policy and practice.

Tan et al. (this issue) describe the ways in which middle school teachers, through visioning, enacted a curriculum in their classrooms focused on students’ onto-epistemological developments. Attention is paid to teachers’ own sense-making and developing visions of engineering practices and their emerging identities as “engineering teachers.” This article also provides insight into the ways in which practices can be embedded to support critically oriented visions.

Daoud and Parsons (this issue) explore the relationship of hope and teacher visioning across two teacher candidates into their first years of teaching. The authors weave the theoretical lens of hopefulness, or “the feeling of possibility and attainability,” and suggest that this rich orientation is needed to successfully implement one’s vision. Tracing the progression of candidates’ visions from teacher preparation into their first years of teaching offers insight into how visioning can guide teachers throughout the profession.

Deng and Hayden (this issue) explore the ways in which pre-service teachers developed equitable learning contexts that supported students’ linguistic and instructional needs using teacher visioning. This article focuses on the need to develop metacognitive awareness of beliefs about multilingualism and multilingual learners in the classroom when cultivating visions with pre-service teachers.

Scales (this issue) examines a cross-section of visions from teacher educators in different contexts, including pre-service teachers and in-service teachers. A specific emphasis in this piece is the role of visioning as a means to document growth and enactment of visionary practices across contexts. Understanding how visioning can be used across contexts offers much promise in ways to translate theories of visioning to policy and practice.

Wall (this issue) explores how beginning middle school teacher candidates possessed a vision inclusive of the developmental needs of middle school students. Given that young adolescence is a unique developmental time for students, understanding the essential dimensions of visions inclusive of socioemotional needs is paramount. A central focus in this piece is how visions must move beyond developing skills and also focus on social goals.

Sotirovska and Elhess (this issue) explore their visions as two international doctoral students from North Africa and Southeast Europe. Though a collaborative self-study approach, the authors focus on a critical discussion on visioning and the need for self-study when teaching and reflecting on one’s vision when teaching teacher candidates in a teacher education program.

Rodela and Bertrand (this issue) discuss the important role of schoolwide visioning processes with youth, families, and community members, particularly from communities of color and low-income backgrounds. The authors emphasize that through discussion of visioning, powerful spaces result in which collective visioning occurs.

Vaughn (this issue), in this final article to the themed issue, provides a critical discussion of the role of visioning through a careful examination of the articles presented. Future implications for theory, practice, and knowledge are discussed as a way to conceptualize future research.

In this themed issue, “Visioning: A Navigational Tool in Schools,” various dimensions of visioning in today’s educational landscape from a variety of perspectives and voices are discussed. Articles in this themed issue come from early career and veteran researchers from institutions across the US. A central aim of this themed issue is to provide a discussion of the compelling nature of visioning: how to use visioning as a tool in schools today as well as a navigational compass in teacher preparation, higher education, educational leadership programs, and within communities and schools. We need to focus our work on visioning to make visible this essential dimension of effective teaching and equitable opportunities in schools. On behalf of the guest authors and myself, we invite you to enter into conversations about visioning as you read the articles in this issue and to critically examine the role of visioning in your respective context.