It has been a year since we began a socially distanced existence during the Covid pandemic. We are reminded that teachers have been teaching remotely for an entire year now, navigating new terrains, trying to find new and innovative tools to engage students, and holding loving and compassionate spaces for the emotional roller coaster that so many students, teachers, and families are experiencing. We have certainly been on what The Grateful Dead would call “a long strange trip” and we are tired, burned out, and at times hopeless. As Julia Ries’ title in a recent article in the Huff Post states, It’s not just you. A lot of us are hitting a pandemic wall right now (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-pandemic-wall-mental-health_l_601b3c9dc5b6c0af54d09ccb?utm_campaign=share_facebook&ncid=engmodushpmg00000003&fbclid=IwAR2FDa5JinH0aPYuCRNztELZ1I8NNLs_62RhuJZn6kJmsJvAaW3Uy_aVZzQ).
Acknowledging the wall we are pushing up against, we asked ourselves what do we do in our personal and professional lives when we feel stagnant, spent, or done? How do we re-energize and renew ourselves? Where do we usually look for inspiration? What do we do to shake things up when many of our ideas for doing so are unsafe or non-existent? We are reminded that when we feel at a loss, our most powerful tools involve finding ways to see whatever is in front of us differently. That might mean taking a new walking route, listening to a different podcast or radio station, trying a new physical activity or hobby, or reading new research. In fact, Monica remembers that when she was writing her dissertation and would get stuck during her data analysis process, her advisor would tell her to go back to the literature to jumpstart a new way of thinking. In this issue, we ask readers to do the exact same thing. We offer a collection of articles that ask you to think differently about familiar topics, so that you consider new ways of thinking about them. At a time when our ability to change our perspective is limited, when we must sit within the same four walls day after day, we offer another way–of delving into the experiences of another and of changing and trying on a new lens in order to see teaching practices or assessments with fresh eyes. The pieces in this issue help us to make the familiar distant, to create space in our minds, for another way of being and doing.
We begin the issue with pieces by several of our international authors. These global perspectives help us to reexamine, rethink, and renovate the ways in which we think about teaching. The first article by Bara and Fuentes invite us to critical examine the taken for granted conceptions of contemporary educational practice, of those who teach and those who learn and how they work together, using a communitarian lens. They contend that the stage where teaching and learning occurs has become overly focused on the technical tools of teaching—resources, techniques, strategies, and ways of thinking, which seem to distract from the process of teaching and learning. How instead can we quiet the noise and focus on helping students to discover their best selves? Next Vaďurová and Slepičková descriptively share the use of Global Storylines (GSL) in Czech primary schools. The GSL approach is an innovative model of teaching which uses drama and more specifically role play as a vehicle for learners to explore and problematize human dilemmas collaboratively. Their narrative of the use of this method is particularly inspiring as GSL sharply contrasts with the traditional methods of teaching and learning in Czech elementary schools. They studied how GSL promotes global learning in a context where neither multiculturalism or inclusion is valued.
Inviting us to take up a different lens, that of Canadian Indigenous literature, Mullen, in her article, encourages us to rethink our understandings of colonization and accountability, education, and policy in Canada and beyond. Through her analysis, she reveals that the enduring problem of tribal justice is a collective responsibility that everyone must address. Such oppressive strategies of dispossession, conflict, discrimination, and miseducation have contributed to the success of colonization and thus the threat to indigeneity. Decolonization involves a restoration of land and Indigenous rights through a global movement of protest, truth-telling, and agency to defeat systemic racism against tribes. Finally, van Velzen, in his research study, explores whether teaching for understanding, the emphasis of so many mathematical researchers and educators, influences the mathematical learning behaviors of late adolescent students. He discovered that the implicit messages that mathematics teachers send to students often encourages memorization instead of understanding. He suggests that to nurture a mathematical learning behavior focused on understanding students must develop more independent learning strategies which help them to be more self-critical. His article offers readers an opportunity to rethink the established methods of teaching mathematics and examine them from the perspective of the students.
The next group of articles is focused on reimagining the preparation and assessment of preservice and inservice teachers. Garte and Kronen, for example, focus on teacher education at an urban community college that serves students who have lower academic self-efficacy than traditional preservice teachers. Attempting to find practicum experiences that maximize their teacher candidates’ confidence, they incorporated cultural responsiveness and action research into their fieldwork course. They were interested in understanding what the impact these experiences had on the future identity of their students. They concluded that in order to be able to overcome future obstacles as they become teachers, their students “must first experience themselves as mattering.” To matter, it is essential that they have field experiences that connect to their personal socio-cultural contexts of schooling. Shifting the focus to teacher candidate assessments, Jones et al analyzed how edTPA, a national teacher candidate assessment in the United States, influences how teacher education classes are taught and how teacher candidates are learning. Their research highlighted three main tensions that emerged: attention to the edTPA rubrics vs. the student teachers’ real teaching, a focus on Pearson vs. the teacher education program, and candidates’ feelings of being monitored during their preparation rather than mentored. Jaffe-Walters and Fancsali conclude the second section of the issue with an article that complicates the conversation on teacher quality by examining the relationship between the professional context of schools and effective teaching. Drawing on qualitative case study research in four small schools, this article unpacks how the delivery of high-quality instruction is influenced by collaboration focused on improving instruction, professional development and teacher learning opportunities, and how much authority and leadership teachers have in shaping curriculum and school practice. Finally, Kenny provides a review of Christina Groeger’s book, The education trap: Schools and the remaking of inequality in Boston, which focuses on the “pernicious policy trap” that results when education alone becomes the primary means for closing economic gaps and improving people’s life chances. Kenny calls attention to the impressive array of data from a variety of archival sources, census data, and other sources like trade journals, school records, and personal correspondence that Groeger uses to narrate the evolution of the inextricable ties between education, labor, and the economy and the paradox in action.
We acknowledge that the last year has been exhausting, soul crushing, and at times joyless for everyone but especially for teachers, students, and parents. We offer this issue to you as a breath of fresh air, to try on some non-pandemic glasses (they could be rose-colored) for a moment, and refresh, recharge, and reimagine. There are other ways of thinking about what we do as educators and maybe one of these articles, or all of them, will inspire you too.
Notes on Contributors
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.
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.