Extending teachers' professional spielraum: co‐participation in different experiential habitats

Abstract

Teachers' professional spielraum, which molds their classroom activities, has been shown to be inherently difficult to change. This paper suggests a process that is aimed towards the extension and diversification of teachers' spielraum. The process rests on co‐participation of teachers in two different experiential habitats, each one being anchored in different underlying pedagogical assumptions and different ways of professional being. One habitat was a classroom setting that enacted ways of teaching associated with the metaphor of the transmission‐acquisition of knowledge, and the other was a habitat that enacted learning as a participative inquiry of social‐technological problems. The simultaneous participation in two habitats with different underlying pedagogical assumptions, sometimes even conflicting, encourage processes of reflection and the enactment of context bound teaching, leading to the emergence of practitioners with a versatile repertoire of ways of being and a broader spielraum.

Notes

* Corresponding author: Department of Education, Ben‐Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel. Email: [email protected]

According to Heidegger, in the absence of ‘problematic’ situations, human engagement with the world is open and transparent. However, disturbance or breakdown in expected conditions requires deliberate attention that brings out thoughtful behavior (for more on modes of disturbance, see Dreyfus, 1991, p. 69). Problematic situations also seem to be the favorable context for reflection in other research fields, as it prompts a Socratic kind of argumentation (Hiebert et al., 1996).

We use the term ‘habitat’ in its ecological sense, denoting the specific interrelationships (natural as well as social) that shape and sustain codes of enduring behavior within specific contexts. It conveys the totality of the elements that make up the school environment which shape teachers' professional identity. We use the concept habitat to refer to the social, cultural environmental aspects of a situation rather than to refer to the emerging Habitus as described by Bourdieu (1977). We chose this approach to avoid entering into critical issues of the pedagogy and restrain ourselves to professional ways of ‘being’ in the classroom. We believe that the promotion of new pedagogies is a possible way to cope with the forces of reproduction.

In Hebrew, SHACHMAT is the acronym for Integrating Society, Science and Technology. This was an interdisciplinary approach of teaching science, our unique version of STS (Science‐Technology‐Society).

Pseudonyms are used when discussing the prospective teachers and their students. Emphases in the quoted excerpts have been added.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Malka Gorodetsky *

* Corresponding author: Department of Education, Ben‐Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel. Email: [email protected]