Havruta¹ Inspired Pedagogy: Fostering An Ecology of Learning for Closely Studying Texts with Others

Abstract

This article presents a pedagogical framework for interpreting and discussing texts with others, “havruta inspired pedagogy.” The framework is comprised of three overlapping domains: structures, stance and practices. We illustrate each domain through teachers' words and classroom practices, depicting how teachers in one context work within these domains to support rich student text-learning. This framework grows out of a year-long program of design research at a Jewish supplementary school and analysis of how teachers implemented their professional development learning in their K–7 classrooms. The pedagogical framework is applicable not only to havruta dyads, but also to small and whole group text discussions.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Helen Featherstone, Fred Hafferty, Alvan Kaunfer, Sharon Feiman-Nemser, and Lisa Schneier for commenting on earlier drafts of this article and our anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We'd also like to thank all of the teachers with whom we worked for participating in this research and opening their classrooms to us. Throughout the year we worked with them, we were inspired by their thoughtfulness as professionals and their dedication to their students and their colleagues. Support for this project was provided by the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education.

Notes

¹The Aramaic term havruta traditionally refers to two people studying Talmud together. In contemporary use, the term havruta often refers to two people studying Jewish text together.

²This is a pseudonym.

³The focus of this article is the pedagogical framework that grew out of the larger study rather than a full description and analysis of the professional development effort and its impact on teachers and students. For further details and analysis of the professional development program and its impact on the teachers and their teaching, see Kent and Cook (2010, 2011).

⁴The term “Beit Midrash” refers to a place where Jews study texts, often in havruta pairs. The Gesher Beit Midrash for Teachers was specifically designed for teachers and therefore included other aspects of study.

⁵The idea of designing a beit midrash specifically meant to meet the needs and learning goals of teachers draws from Orit Kent's collaboration with Elie Holzer and Sharon Feiman Nemser in designing a beit midrash for preservice teachers in the DeLaT/MAT (Day school Leadership through Teaching) program at Bradeis University. In the current context, Orit Kent and Allison Cook designed the Gesser beit midrash for in-service teachers.

⁶We are choosing to focus on two classrooms in order to make the narrative clearer. These elements also arose in other Gesher classrooms.

⁷The quotes are from an essay in a collection of essays written by Patrician Carini and her colleagues. Patricia Carini (1975) has written extensively about her approach, “descriptive inquiry,” in a monograph, Observation and Description: An Alternative Methodology for the Investigation of Human Phenomena.

⁸Our use of stance is not subject specific and is focused on the instructional core of student, teacher, and subject matter. This differs from Holtz (2003) and Levisohn's (2010) use of orientations. For Holtz, orientation has to do specifically with a teacher's knowledge and beliefs about the subject matter (e.g., p. 51). Levisohn explains orientation in a related manner: “a teaching orientation is a conceptual model of teaching that subject. It is a teacher's fundamental stance toward a particular subject that encompasses a conception of purposes (of teaching that subject) and a set of paradigmatic practices” (p. 10). In our use of stance, we are focused on beliefs that teachers bring with regard to Jewish texts broadly, as well as to the beliefs they bring with regard to their students and their own role as teachers.

⁹The teachers' names are pseudonyms.

¹⁰The GBMT was an intentionally designed space. While the GBMT met in a regular school classroom, the room was always rearranged for the GBMT so that teachers could sit in a semi-circle with tables in front of them that had all materials that they might need for the session. The walls of the GBMT were full with teaching frameworks and concepts, the agenda for the particular day, and examples of the teachers' work.

¹¹This is the plural form of the word havruta.

¹²There are significant differences in these kind of groupings, and teachers need to decide what makes most sense in their particular context.

¹³In a sense, havruta time enabled the teachers to see, in Patricia Carini's (2001) words, the “child in motion.” Carini explains this phrase as follows: “I reasoned that it is when a teacher can see this process, the child in motion, the child engaged in activities meaningful to her, that it is possible for the teacher to gain the insights needed to adjust her or his own approaches to the child accordingly” (p. 9).

¹⁴The choice of text is an important design decision. The principal worked closely with teachers to make these choices based on the curricular goals, the age and interests of students, and the strengths and interests of teachers.

¹⁵For more detailed discussion of the process of task design, see Kent and Cook (2011).

¹⁶Robert Fried (1995) and Parker Palmer (1998) eloquently highlight stance as the focus on students and subject matter. They understand stance to be about the “attitude you take that communicates who you think your students are and how much you believe they can produce” (Fried, p. 154), as well as about the attitude you have toward the subject matter. In the context of havruta learning, stance is not simply the general attitude toward the subject matter and its importance but is specifically about the multimeaningfulness of the particular subject matter.

¹⁷This is one of the many examples of how when havruta is thought of in this more expansive way, its introduction can promote, reinforce, or even demand elements of good pedagogy—in this case, the need to attend to each individual student's growth.

¹⁸Here, Diane is referring to watching the video that was taken while she was teaching her class. Diane watched the video with the researchers and then with the full faculty at her school.

¹⁹In this particular sub-category of havruta stance, “Belief in the Text,” it would be interesting to explore Diane's complex orientation to Biblical text according to Holtz's (2003) map of orientations and Galili-Schachter's (2011) pedagogic hermeneutic orientations.

²⁰See Barbara Rogoff and colleagues' (1996) excellent explanation of the similarity between what they call the “adult-run model” (our “telling model”) and the children-run model (our “child centered” model): “We argue that the adult-run and children-run models are closely related, in that both involve a theoretical assumption that learning is a function of one-sided action (by adults or children, respectively, to the exclusion of the other).” (p. 389).

²¹For example, see “Infusion: Integrating Jewish Values into A General Studies Classroom” (http://jewishvalueswebcase.org/) for a look at how a teacher teaches third graders the practice of listening and what it looks like when they do it while studying a text.

²²This raises many implementation questions worthy of further exploration but beyond the scope of this article.