Becoming a coach: reform, identity, and the pedagogy of negation

Abstract

This article examines one US high school teacher's attempt to become a coach by enacting what I call ‘a pedagogy of negation’. For this teacher, the challenge of becoming a coach is nested within a wider agenda of social and personal transformation. That agenda is symbolized first in words as she constructs ‘a language of coaching’ to inform her interactions with students and content as well her conception of herself as a teacher. Second, talk is transformed into pedagogical action through, as described by Driver, the ‘playful work’ of ritualized negation. I argue that the phenomenon of negation is a logical sense-making strategy for teachers attempting to realise transformed pedagogical identities. Negation also reveals a range of uncertainties involved in enacting the practice of coaching. As this case reveals, the pedagogy of negation is constructed as a corrective to restrictive and oppressive forms of schooling. It serves as a mechanism for ‘becoming’ a different, presumably better, kind of teacher. And though the results are mixed, this portrait of practice in the midst of change illuminates the complex and reciprocal links between identity and practice entailed in becoming a coach.

Notes

Department of Education Policy and Leadership, College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. Email: [email protected]

All names of people and places have been changed to protect the anonymity of the participants in the study.

Although Camille is the subject of this article, I include discussion of Carole's role as Camille's teaching partner, both because Carole was described by Camille as a significant influence and because the organizational ideal of ‘teaming’, exemplified in this case, suggests another dimension of the collaborative, facilitative thrust of the practice of ‘coaching’.

Exhibition refers to the practice of preparing and presenting a culminating performance to an audience of critics. This constructivist‐oriented practice is closely aligned with the CES, which since 1984 has been one of the principal proponents of the ideal of ‘teacher as coach’.

I am grateful to Philbert Aaron, a graduate student in Educational Policy and Curriculum Theory at the University of Maryland, who assisted in the preparation of this article in numerous ways, including penetrating reviews of the literature and perceptive critiques of my argument. This phrase, which he used to describe Camille's incomplete pedagogical metamorphosis, is only his most obvious contribution.