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THE VISION AND THE REALITY: THE DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF A DIFFERENT KIND OF
GENERAL SECONDARY METHODS COURSE

presented by

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THE VISION AND THE REALITY: THE DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF A DIFFERENT KIND OF

GENERAL SECONDARY METHODS COURSE

by

Carol Susan Wolfe

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education

1994

ABSTRACT

THE VISION AND THE REALITY: THE DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF A DIFFERENT KIND OF
GENERAL SECONDARY METHODS COURSE

By

Carol Susan Wolfe

General secondary methods courses best serve preservice
students when they are structured in ways that invite students to
view pedagogy through the lens of their subject matter. This study
examines student and instructor responses to components of a new
general methods course designed to help students see connections
between what they know and what they teach.

This study is framed around inquiry into teacher practice,
grounded in qualitative perspective, and conveyed to the reader
through narrative. Data consist of transcribed conversations with
colleagues and committee members during the design and
implementation phases of the course; a personal teaching journal
where instructor and student responses to course texts, tasks, and
social organization are documented; student content journals; formal
student papers; and instructor-prepared final student course

evaluations.

 

Carol Susan Wolfe

The major findings of the study indicate that teaching a
general secondary methods course with subject specific concerns is a
difficult undertaking for a teacher educator because of limited
subject matter knowledge on the part of the educator. However, it
is possible to craft a general secondary methods course that helps
students think about learning and teaching in less conventional
ways. Many teacher candidates realized, through the Course format,
that they did not know their subject matter in ways to teach it for

student understanding.

DEDICATION

I would like to thank my husband, John,
and my children, Megan and Adam,
for their love, support, and great patience

while I pursued a lifelong dream.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would particularly like to thank Sharon Feiman-Nemser, my
dissertation chairperson, for her many hours of long distance
conversation, incisive questioning, personal support, one-on-one
teaching, reading, and skilled editing throughout this very
difficult process, and most importantly her belief in my ability to
complete this study.

I would like to thank Helen Featherstone for her sensitive,
encouraging, and insightful comments during the implementation and
drafting process of my study and for her extensive reading, editing,
and availability by phone and mail throughout her sabbatical.

I would also like to thank Tom Bird for his willingness to
listen and discuss some of the dilemmas I experienced during the
implementation phase of the course and for his thoughtful reading of
dissertation drafts.

I would like to thank Sandy Wilcox for her support, clarity of
direction, thoughtful questioning, thorough reading and editing of
dissertation drafts, and availability for conversation whenever I

asked.

ii

I would like to thank my friends and long distance colleagues
for the unconditional support. I would particularly like to thank
Kathy Sernak for always being there, sometimes just to listen, other
times to pull me back to reality and the task at hand, and always to
encourage me to press on. I would like to thank Anita Lapp who
listened for many hours about the "course" I wanted to teach and
encouraged me to do it. I would also like to thank Jeannie Chipman
for her unwavering belief that I would finish and for having time to
listen when I needed to talk about the course.

Finally, I would also like to thank Barbara Reeves for her
expertise, kindness, and encouragement during the final stages of

this study.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

911m

I THE VISION AND THE REALITY: THE DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF A DIFFERENT KIND OF
GENERAL SECONDARY METHODS COURSE .

Second Chances .
The Problem . . . . . . . . .
Teacher Candidates' Entering Beliefs
Were Ignored . . .
Methods, Strategies, Techniques as Ends
in Themselves

Assumption That Secondary Teacher Candidates

Already Have Adequate Subject
Matter Knowledge for Teaching
A Flawed View of Learning to Teach
This Study: My Research Question .
Conceptualization . .
Design .
Implementation .
Overview of the Course
Organization .

II METHODOLOGY

The Setting .
The Students . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Method Choice: Genre of Research My Study
Fits Best . . . . . . .
How I Carried Out My Study .
Sources of Data Generated by Me .
Comprehensives committee project .
Syllabus .
Lesson plans .
Personal teaching journal

iv

NH

10
15
16
17
18
19
20
23

24

24
25

27
29
3O
30
31
31
32

Data Generated by Students
Student ”fastwrites"
Content group journals .
Final course evaluations .
Data Generated by Committee Members and Peer
Colleagues .
Pivotal conversations
Data Analysis . .
Analysis of student data .

III EVOLUTION OF MY EARLY THINKING ABOUT PLANNING
A NEW KIND OF METHODS COURSE .

Overview of the Chapter
The "Old" Methods Course .
Social Organization .
Tasks .
Text . .
Course Purposes . . .
My Experience Teaching the 01d Course .
My History as a Graduate Student at Michigan
State University .
Early Movement Toward Change
Placing My Practice in a Broader Context
Learning from Teaching an Introductory
TE Course
My first brush with ”good teaching"
Becoming a Constructor of Knowledge . . . .
A New tool for Thinking: Dialogic Journals .
Comprehensives Committee Project
Content Area Groups .
Identifying and Addressing Problems of the
Old Course and Looking Forward
to the New . . . . . . .

IV THE ACTUAL PLANNING

Overview of the Chapter

Elements of the Course .
Content Area Groups .
Organizing Questions
Texts . .

33
33
34
34

35
35
35
37

4O

4O
41
41
41
42
43
44

50
51
53

55
57
6O
61
62
63

66

68

68
71
71
73
75

VI

Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Accomplishing course work through
reflective writing .
Dialogic journals
Content journals . . .
Thinking about dialogic journals and
content journals . .
Fieldwork and the unit plan
Field reflection paper . . .
Thinking through the mini- -teaching
assignment .
Thinking through the personal narrative
Course Structure and Syllabus .
Ready for the Adventure .

GETTING THE COURSE STARTED .

Overview of the Chapter .
The Importance of the First Day .

What My Students and I Brought to the First Day .

Organizational Tasks .
Explaining My Study .
Introducing the Syllabus
Fastwrite #1
Forming Content Groups . .
Goodlad's Goals for Schools .
Student Responses to the Task . .
My Thinking about the First Day .

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TEACH IN A SECONDARY SETTING? .

Overview . .

Main Texts for First Course Question .
The Daily Grind . . .
The Out of School Curriculum .
I, Thou, It . .

How Students Responded to Main Texts . .
Main Tasks to Explore First Course Question
Content group journals .

Dialogic journals
Personal narratives
Mini-teaching lesson #1

vi

79

79
8O
81

81
82
83

84
85
88
89

92

92
92
93
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94
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97
98
102
103
109

112

112
114
117
117
118
119
126
126
127
129
130

VII

Student Responses to Tasks . .
What I Thought about How Things Were Going at
the Time . .

My Entering Beliefs about My Students .
Student Silence . .
Content Groups and Content Journals .
My Role as Facilitator
Texts . .
Theory and Practice . .
Managing the Work of the Course .

What I Think Now about This Part of the Course :

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO KNOW ONE'S CONTENT? .

Overview .
Texts .
How Students Responded to Texts . . .
Student response to "Pitfalls" text
Students connecting with "150 Ways .
Texts . .
Mini- -teaching #1 Using the Moon as a Context .
Dialogic Journals .
Content Journals

How Students Responded to Tasks for Question #2

Preparing for miniteaching #1
Dialogic journals . .
Content journals .

My Thinking at the Time

Miniteaching
Fieldwork Concerns . .
”150 Ways . . .” Catches On .

Grossman' 3 Model of Teacher Knowledge .
Managing the Course .

What I Think Now . .
Miniteaching and the Moon .
Group Teaching . .
Managing the Work of the Course .
Fieldwork Again . . . . .

vii

132

133
133
135
136
139
140
144
145
147

150

150
152
155
155
157
159
159
163
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164
171
173
173
173
178
180
181
181
184
184
186
187
188

VIII

IX

WHAT DOES KNOWING ONE'S CONTENT HAVE TO DO
WITH TEACHING IT?

Overview .

What

What

REVISITING THE OLD VISION AND LOOKING TOWARD THE NEW .

Texts . .

Student Responses to Texts

Tasks . . . .
Mini-teaching project #2 .
Content group journals .
Fieldwork . . .
Personal narratives

Student Responses to Tasks . . .
Trying to figure out ”representation"

Content Group Journals

Fieldwork Lessons . . .
Adam' s 1esson-physica1 education .
Abby' s lesson- earth science

Field Reflection Papers .

Personal Narratives .
Megan' s narrative
Kate' 3 narrative .

I Thought about How Things Were Going at
the Time . . .

Modeling Representations of Knowledge: A
Dilemma . .

Limited Feedback for My Students

Content Specific Texts . .

Content Group Journals

Field Lessons . .

Personal Narratives . . . .

I Think Now about This Part of the Course .

Introduction .

Revising My Main Dissertation Question

Teaching a General Secondary Methods Course in

This Manner: What I Learned .
Content Groups .
My role definition . .
How students were affected .
How the course changed . .
What Does the Future Course Look Like?

viii

191

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196
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199
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245

Livin

APPENDIX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

g Inside the Course While Studying It:
Implications for Teacher
Research .

Significance of the Study .

ix

248
250

252

266

CHAPTER I

THE VISION AND THE REALITY: THE DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF A DIFFERENT KIND OF
GENERAL SECONDARY METHODS COURSE

This is a story about a novice teacher educator's attempt to
rethink a general secondary methods course that is part of a
university teacher preparation program. The story chronicles the
planning and implementation of a different kind of methods course,
one that is designed and organized around the subject specific
concerns of teaching. The story provides a view into the novice
teacher educator's learning and change through her actions and
reflections as she attempts to make sense of the ensuing

challenges, dilemmas and hurrahs of her experience.

Second Chances

Often, with time to reflect on past experiences, aided by new
information and new insight, many of us have uttered the phrase, "If
I'd known then what I know now, I would have done things
differently.” Rarely, however, are we presented with a second
chance, particularly armed with new understandings and the
motivation to change what we perceived to be problematic in our

first experience.

I was offered such a second chance when I was invited to teach
a general secondary methods course at a small midwestern university.
I had taught the same methods course in this university, as an
adjunct faculty member before entering the doctoral program at
Michigan State University. My past teaching experiences, my study
of teaching and learning and my teaching experiences in an
innovative introduction to teaching course, led me to rethink this
general secondary methods course. Because I had begun to think
about teaching in a different way, I inevitably was led to think
differently about learning to teach and about the contribution of

teacher education to that process.

The Problem

The premise of my study is that there were clear problems
inherent in the general secondary methods course that I had taught
before during a one year appointment. I will examine this larger
premise in relation to four areas of neglect that I perceived in
this particular general methods curriculum: (1) this general methods
course ignored teacher candidates' entering beliefs about teaching
and learning; (2) methods, techniques, strategies that were promoted
as ends in themselves, disconnected from purpose, content, and
learners; (3) it assumed that secondary teacher candidates entered
the methods classroom with adequate subject matter knowledge for
teaching; (4) finally, it was an ingredient of‘a flawed recipe for
learning to teach: start with presumed knowledge and understanding

of content, add some generic methods, some practice in the field,

and students know how to teach. Research tells us that preservice
secondary teachers think they will "learn how to teach" in their
methods courses, but in the end students give these courses low
marks for content and carry over (Goodlad, 1990, Lortie, 1975) and
students leave, in many cases, with a view of teaching that is
congruent with the naive conception with which they entered the
methods course. It became clear that this was true of the students
I taught when I encountered them later in student teaching. Many
were using the same conventional methods their own high school
teachers had used.

My review of the literature, including the history of teacher
education with an emphasis on general methods courses, preservice
and beginning teaching, and research on teacher knowledge,
suggested to me that the problems that I identified might not be

unique to the course I taught.

Teacher Qandidates' Entering

e ored

In the general methods course I taught before coming to
Michigan State, students were not recognized as individuals who
knew something about teaching and learning. They were considered to
be ”raw recruits" in need of training to develop skills that would
enable them to perform as competent classroom managers. The
training was quick, intense, and targeted teacher behaviors deemed
appropriate for effective classroom management. Thinking about
teaching in this manner does not call for the teacher educator to

recognize and examine teacher candidates' entering beliefs. This

approach to preparing teachers places learning to teach outside of
the student as information to be acquired, not information to be
examined in relation to their beliefs already held about teaching
and learning. A different approach to preparation of teacher
candidates which considers learning to teach as self-examination,
discovery and conceptual change, and teachers as learners,
necessitates that candidates surface and examine existing beliefs
about teaching and learning.

Preservice teachers carry many tacit beliefs about teaching and
learning into their teacher preparation courses informed by a long
”apprenticeship of observation" in schools (Lortie, 1975). These
ideas, based on observation of their teachers, are unexamined and
carry little understanding of the actual work of teaching. Many
methods courses do not consider these privately held notions as they
introduce ideas, methods and strategies for preservice students to
use. Teacher candidates' beliefs that teaching is telling,
assigning tasks, assessing task performance, and that learning is
basically a singular event consisting of accruing facts (Tharp and
Gallimore, 1989), are not recognized as an important context to
explore in teacher preparation. This view contradicts what
researchers know about new learning and efforts to effect conceptual
change in preservice students. McDiarmid (1989) posits that,
learning is "relational” (p. 7) and that students learn by
connecting new ideas to preexisting experiences and beliefs that
define their knowledge base. The "new" ideas offered by the methods

course I taught before fit comfortably into preservice students'

existing schema about teaching and learning because they were
familiar fare students could connect to their experiences in high
school. To become a more effective teacher, one did not have to
give up lecture, simply become a more interesting dispenser of
knowledge, or one might enhance a lesson and address different pupil
learning approaches by using overheads, bulletin boards and other
media. Group work was also offered as an approach to help students
learn but it was isolated from a knowledge base. Preservice
students were mainly caught up in managing the logistics of group
work, not in learning how and why heterogeneous grouping might
engage pupils in learning about a particular concept. This manner
of teacher preparation rarely, if at all, gets beneath the surface
to look at students' entrenched beliefs about what teaching is,
rather it soundly reinforces those beliefs.

In order to move toward change prospective teachers must
become dissatisfied with their existing beliefs through experiences
that offer alternative ways to view their thinking. The methods
course that reinforces comfort in existing beliefs becomes the
adversary of change. Creating experiences that help preservice
students uncover their tacit knowledge about teaching and learning,
in order to view it in light of new ideas, becomes necessary if
teacher educators want teachers to begin thinking about teaching and
learning in a different way

The powerful influence of students' entering beliefs about
teaching and learning and their effect on new learning is

highlighted by the following selection of authors. Kagan (1992)

 

writes about the centrality of teacher candidates' preconceptions
about teaching and learning fostered by their experiences as
students ”. . . in filtering the content of education course
work (p. 140)." Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann (1985) recognize
teacher candidates' entering beliefs as part of a "continuum that
includes powerful early experiences with parents and teachers (p.
53). . . ." Feiman-Nemser and Melnick (1992) point out the
necessity of examining preservice students' extant beliefs about
teaching and learning as a crucial step in effective teacher
preparation. ”[T]eacher preparation if it is to open possibilities
and promote greater responsiveness to the challenge of teaching,
cannot simply add new knowledge and experience to existing stores.
It must also help prospective teachers to transform initial beliefs
so they can envision richer possibilities for teaching and learning
than those derived from their own schooling (p. 5)."

Professional courses such as methods courses, need to consider
the goal of conceptual change as a precondition to exploring
pedagogy, and this necessitates that teacher educators recognize the
existence and power of student beliefs that compete with any efforts
to change conventional teaching. Buchmann (1987) does not see that
college teaching, by example, challenges entering beliefs about
teaching, and teacher preparation courses ". . . tend to confirm
these notions by being either of a commonsense nature themselves
('too easy') or by not being or seeming to be about teaching at all
('too theoretical')" (p. 13). Unless teacher educators recognize

the power and presence of their students' everyday understandings of

teaching, new ways of thinking about teaching will most likely be
rejected for those which have already been experienced.

The course that I designed begins by eliciting secondary
students' beliefs about teaching and learning and the format of the
course continues to provide opportunities for students to examine
their beliefs through texts and tasks that elicit reflection on and

analysis of beliefs.

WM
55 Enflfi in Themselves

Preparation for teaching one's subject matter capably has been
interpreted by many teacher educators as ”training,” in allegedly
generic methods, taught without reasoning about purpose, or student
learning and out of context with any particular content. This
training is about fostering certain behaviors in teacher candidates
that would enable them to become effective classroom managers
(Lortie, 1975; Gage, 1978). This was the focus in the general
methods course I taught. This technical penchant is displayed in
much of general methods preparation and has promoted the view that
preparation for teaching consists of practical tips, prescriptive
lists and steps that reveal to teacher candidates the ”how-to" of
teaching (Veenman, 1984; Goodlad, 1990). Many general methods
courses portray pedagogy as a separate content to be learned and
applied to the candidate's content area at another time. Students
in these general methods courses are exposed to a melange of
techniques and strategies with little concern about encouraging them

to reason from the lens of their content as they select an

appropriate method to teach a content concept. Connections between
subject matter knowledge and pedagogy are not clearly drawn.
Grossman (1990) sees methods courses as a forum to explore what
it means to teach a particular content area as well as how to reason
about such teaching from a subject matter perspective. Even though
Grossman writes about subject specific methods courses, much of what
she posits connects with my thinking about the aims of general
methods courses. "Methods courses may offer prospective teachers
the opportunity to acquire both knowledge about the overarching
purposes for teaching a particular subject and knowledge of specific
strategies and techniques with which to achieve these larger
purposes. Through integration of theory and practice, methods
courses can encourage students to engage in the ends-means thinking
that may be absent from more purely experiential learning (p. 16).”
Some methods instructors define their role as teachers of
practical skills and strategies such as writing lesson plans and
framing objectives while structuring field experiences for the
practice of those skills and strategies (Lanier and Little, 1986).
I thought of my role in this manner while teaching a general
secondary methods course before my graduate study. The practice of
methods instructors has remained fairly static, as Dewey (1916)
observed: "Nothing has brought pedagogical theory into greater
disrepute that the belief that is identified with handing out to
teachers recipes and models to be followed in teaching (p. 172)."
Goodlad (1990) referred to the process of teacher education students

picking up and collecting colorful strategies, when he called them

 

”pedagogical bag-ladies and bag-men" (p. 225), as they wandered
through general and "special" methods courses learning how to
"perform" as a teacher. My study challenges this view of preservice
teachers arbitrarily selecting and collecting pedagogies for later
use without thoughtful consideration for the subject matter and its
connections within and outside of the discipline, and its connection
to the students to be taught.

The organization of the general methods course that I initially
taught, stressed decontextualized objectives, lesson plans, and
generic teacher actions. It strengthened the notion for students
that content and pedagogy are independent of one another and that
methods are ends in themselves. Such courses are likely to produce
teachers who do not reason about their practice in ways that assess
what they know, what their students know and why their decisions are
sound or unsound. Dewey (1904/1971) writes about training students
to imitate teacher behaviors that allow them to appear competent in
the classroom setting but without understanding why their actions
are effective or ineffective, and with little attention to the
characteristics of the students who populate their classes. He
writes about these ”craftspersons," who are technically prepared
without considerations of content or learners. Training alone
infers a separation of content and pedagogy and ignores the subject
specific nature of teaching (McDiarmid, Ball, and Anderson, 1989).
Teachers must consider the substantive as well as the conceptual
understanding of their content in creating particular objectives and

plans (Grossman, 1990; McDiarmid, 1989).

10

The new course I designed focuses on helping students view
teaching as complex work. The work of the course required them to
examine their subject matter knowledge and how to draw meaningful
connections from subject matter to diverse pupils, as they thought
about learning to teach from looking at teaching and learning in the
context of their content. Recipes for teaching were not provided,
rather students were asked to discover ways to teach their content
based on new knowledge of content, students, and learning fostered

through course texts and tasks.

W
es H v de a
w ed Tea n

Secondary teacher candidates enter their methods courses most
typically after completing or nearly completing their major and
minor content requirements. Therefore many teacher educators assume
that teacher candidates have adequate subject matter knowledge for
teaching. The course that I initially taught was structured around
this assumption. While it may be true that preservice students have
spent many hours memorizing and accruing information about their
content, it cannot be assumed that they know their content in ways
that allow them to teach for understanding. Further, the view of
learning to teach that separates content and pedagogy does not
encourage preservice teachers to question their knowledge of
content. Shulman (1987) conceptualizes teaching in terms of core
intellectual processes--"comprehension and reasoning, transformation

and reflection” (pg. 13). Instead of making arbitrary decisions

11

about how and what to teach, "teachers must learn to use their
knowledge base to provide the grounds for choices and actions.
Therefore, teacher education must work with the beliefs that guide
teacher actions, with the principles and evidence that underlie the
choices teachers make" (p. 13). Shulman's statement suggests that
teachers may not know how to think from their knowledge base to
make decisions about practice. It may also imply that the beliefs
guiding teachers' actions may not direct their attention to the
understanding of content concepts. Unless beliefs about content are
examined in relation to teaching, teacher candidates will continue
to teach their content as they were taught.

Most students of education and most teachers do not understand
their content in ways that enable them to teach for understanding
(Shulman, 1987). For example, they are not likely to appreciate
that the knowledge in their discipline is continually examined and
revised because of ongoing discoveries made by researchers, nor are
they inclined to consider making connections from their content area
to the learner and his or her prior knowledge and beliefs about the
content. McDiarmid (1989) addresses the idea that learners'
conceptions within a discipline have been constructed from informal
and formal learning experiences and those conceptions must be dealt
with if the university educator's aim is that students understand
their content. Too often undergraduate content courses do not
consider students' prior knowledge, promoting the idea that one
need not think about student conceptions to teach content. "For

prospective teachers, the lack of attention

12

to learners' background and initial understandings they encounter in
many of their liberal arts classes communicates that knowledge of
subject matter alone is sufficient for teaching” (p. 7).

Shulman (1987) identifies subject matter knowledge as a
category of teacher knowledge. To possess subject matter knowledge
is to be aware of the key ideas and facts in one's field and to
understand the relationship between those ideas and facts. It is
also knowledge about how new ideas are added or withdrawn as new
understandings evolve in the field. Developing subject matter in
ways to teach it for understanding requires not only an
understanding of how key concepts and facts in the field are related
but the added ability to make connections across disciplines and to
the learner's context. McDiarmid, Ball, and Anderson (1989) refer
to this as "flexible subject matter understanding" and point out
that most students in school do not develop this flexible
understanding because of the conventional teaching-learning belief
that omits making meaningful connections between the content and
learners' prior knowledge (p. 194). It would seem that this
flexible understanding might also have roots of development in the
university content classroom as well as the teacher education
classroom. While it is true that preservice students enter the
methods classroom with knowledge about their content, it cannot be
assumed that they know enough content, or know it in a way that will

help them to teach it.

13

Undergraduate content courses have not been aimed at helping
teachers to understand the content in ways to teach it and many
promote the view that the knowledge base exists in the text.

Teaching content in ways for students to understand, requires
pedagogical content knowledge. Pedagogical content knowledge is
developed over time and is described as "knowledge of the learner,
knowledge of the curriculum, knowledge of the context, [and]
knowledge of pedagogy" (Wilson et al., 1987, p. 114; Grossman, 1990,
pp. 3-9). Teachers transform what they know about these four
categories into a repertoire of metaphors, clear explanations,
helpful models and analogies that ”represent” their content to
students. McDiarmid, Ball and Anderson (1989) write that the
concept of representation “tightens the connection between subject
matter and method, and between what teachers know and what they do”
(p. 197). Preservice students in many general methods courses as
well as the one I initially taught, thought about knowing as using
strategies to teach. These strategies were defined in a methods
text book and in lecture in the methods classroom. In the new
course, students would be looking at teaching and learning from
their content areas and in this small university with scant content
methods courses, I hoped this course format would help my students
become engaged with the concept of pedagogical content knowledge.
Smith and Neale (1989) write about the importance of focusing their
science teachers on ”particular content and the ways in which that
content is translated in teaching. In this way teaching principles

are embedded in teaching practice (p. 17).” Skills and strategies

l4

taught out of context will not promote pedagogical content
knowledge.

Teachers who are able to discover a method of effectively
teaching a concept through their understanding of content are
reasoning through a knowledge base of teaching. In Wilson et a1.
(1987) the authors discuss a pedagogical reasoning model that
displays and explains the steps taken by a teacher reasoning through
a teaching event (p. 119). Shulman (1987) writes about what this
reasoning process looks like; ”[R]easoning one's way through an act
of teaching . . . is to think one's way from the subject matter as
understood by the teacher into the minds and motivations of the
learners" (p. 16). He helps us see further into the student and
teacher interaction that occurs when one reasons through an act of
teaching, "This image of teaching involves the exchange of ideas.
The idea is grasped, probed, and comprehended by a teacher, who then
must turn it about in his or her mind, seeing many sides of it.

Then the idea is shaped or tailored until it can in turn be grasped
by students. Students must then interact with the ideas as well"
(p. 13). In addition, the pedagogical reasoning model can be useful
in helping teacher candidates and teachers become aware of their
content knowledge limitations and the implications of those
limitations for teaching.

My course attempts to help students begin to develop a view
that they need to know their content in a different way to teach it
as a secondary teacher. Students become aware that they do not know

their content in ways to teach it as they read some of the same

15

texts referred to previously, and as they involve themselves in
tasks that require them to make teaching decisions based on their

entering content knowledge.

A w d View of Learnin to Teach

Students who enter general methods courses like the one I
initially taught are encouraged in their view that learning to teach
consists of learning skills and strategies and then practicing those
skills in a fieldwork setting (Lortie, 1975) (Goodlad, 1990). The
skills and strategies in the methods course I initially taught were
considered by my students and me to be generic, therefore applicable
to any content represented in the class. We did not examine subject
matter closely in ways to teach it and strategies practiced in the
field component through lessons were assessed as strategies not
content. Learning about teaching in this manner promoted the view
that teaching was a technical skill to be mastered and once mastered
the learning was complete. Veenman (1984) compares the preparation
that teachers receive in relation to other professions, ”[T]he
educational program, compared with other professions, is not very
complex with regard to intellectual demands and organizational
features” (p. 167). This highlights an extended view reinforced by
the methods course format that I initially taught, that learning to
teach is not a complex process. Goodlad (1990) writes about the
simplicity of the learning to teach preparation as well and the view
of teacher candidates in relation to how they perceive their role

upon exiting educational preparation sequences. "The perception of

16

teaching that candidates near completion were developing called for
them simply to fit into existing circumstances. Thus . . . the
transition was not a deeply intellectual one-from reflective student
to reflective practitioner. . . . Rather, students saw themselves as
observing what teaching requires and then taking on the mantle of
teachers observed” (p. 219).

The most powerful belief that teacher candidates carry is that
they will learn to teach in their field component and in the
previous methods course all of the substance of the course was
focused on what would happen in the field. Once students taught a
"successful" lesson in the field they believed they could teach and
many applied for substitute teaching jobs to "get more experience."
Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann (1985) write about the power of field
experience in the development of the teacher candidate.
Feiman-Nemser (1983) writes about a view of learning to teach and
teaching that promotes the belief that once the teacher preparation
courses are completed so is the learning. She attributes this in
part to preparation in professional courses (p. 150).

The course explained below does not promote a learning to teach
experience that considers teaching as simplistic or generic. I
attempt to project a realistic view of what my students will need to

know and to learn in order to move toward effective teaching.

ea est 0
The problems identified above were evidenced in the general

secondary methods course I taught. They may also be more

 

l7

widespread. I tried to address these problems in redesigning the
course. This dissertation research is a study of that effort. I
framed my research around the following question:

How does a beginning teacher educator conceptualize,

design, and implement a general secondary methods

course grounded in considerations of subject matter?
To pursue this question, 1 generated three sets of research

questions regarding the conceptualization, design and implementation

of the course.

Conceptualization, In order to begin to conceptualize what a
different kind of methods course might look like I had to think
through existing general secondary methods courses, to identify
some of the important problems and issues they raise and consider
how I might address these problems and issues. Identifying the
problems and crafting responses through a new kind of course were
informed by my experience as a novice teacher educator before
entering the doctoral program at Michigan State University and by my
experiences in the doctoral program. So I also framed questions to
help me explore these influences. Finally I needed to consider
how my new approach might affect my perceived limitations in the
present typical general methods format. The following questions
guided my thinking during the early conceptualizing phase:

I. What is my initial vision of a new kind of general

methods course that is both university and field
based?

A. What is my initial analysis of the problems
inherent in general methods courses?

 

18

B. What formative ideas do I have about how to
address these problems through a different
kind of general methods course?

C. What are some of the key influences in
formulating these ideas for a new kind of
general methods course?

D. How and in what ways do I believe these ideas
will address some of the major limitations of
generic approach to teaching secondary
methods?

Deeign. I wanted to remain true to a vision, informed by my

past teaching experiences and formed during my doctoral experiences.

The design questions reflect this intent. My beliefs about
effective teaching and learning to teach, my view that teachers
need to have something to teach and powerful ways to teach it, and
my concern with helping all students to realize that they must
understand their content in particular ways to teach it, informed
my design decisions. I did not want to leave anything out of the
practical crafting of the vision. Initially, with the guidance of
my committee chair, I came to see that the goals I developed for
the course were actually goals for myself, rather than my students.
I had jumped ahead to the implementation phase and my role. This
emerged as an important concern in my study and one that I continue
to try to understand. I spent a lot of time developing and
exploring the design questions, imagining and organizing the
components of the course (the texts, tasks, and social

organization). Here are the questions I framed:

19

II. How in the design of the course did I attempt to
make my vision real?

A. What goals did I frame for the new course?
1. How did my beliefs about teaching,
learning to teach, and subject matter
concerns shape the framing of these
goals?

2. What other influences contributed to my
thinking about the goals for the course?

3. What difficulties did I encounter in
trying to frame goals for the course and
what help did I receive?

4. What dilemmas still remain?

B. How did I think about the social organization
of the course. Why was this an important
piece for me?

1. Why are the content groups an important
vehicle for getting work done in a
general methods course with subject
matter concerns?

2. How can collaboration and group
reflection about subject matter concerns
move group members toward an awareness
of how they know their content?

C. What texts were selected for the course and
why were they considered important to the
work of the methods course?

D. What tasks did I design and why were they
considered important to the substance of the
course? How would the tasks help students in
thinking and preparing for the field
component?

E. What uncertainties did I face in the design
of the course and what issues still remain

unresolved? What new issues have surfaced
that affect the course design?

Implemeneeeien. During the implementation phase, I wanted to

focus on my role and what I did to assist students in understanding

20

the format and carrying out the work of the course. In this part of
the study, my questions were designed to help me examine what I
intended and what I did to elucidate the texts, tasks, and social
organization of the course. I wanted to explore and reflect on the
strengths and limitations of the course and how they affected my
ability to "pull it off,” and how they affected students' abilities

to do the work of the course.

III. To what extent am I, as the teacher, able to
implement this course as I intended, and what
shapes my ability to do so?

A. What guidance do I provide in relation to the
discussion of course texts, and the
performance of group tasks? What is my role
in relation to the content area groups?

B. What difficulties do I encounter in
implementing this curriculum?

1. What are the factors that constrain my
ability to implement this course? How
do I manage these factors?

2. What enables me to accomplish some
aspects of the course? What do I do?

What might I do differently in the
future?

W

I thought about this study from a social-constructivist
perspective. The social constructivist view sees learning as a
social and cultural endeavor not solely an individualistic one
(Tharp and Gallimore, 1989). My students and what they brought to
the classroom as far as beliefs about teaching, learning, and.

subject matter knowledge, formed a beginning context. From this

21

starting point we worked together through texts and tasks in a
collaborative format to attempt to build new understandings about
teaching and learning. It was my intent that the collaborative
format of the content groups and my assistance would allow the
students to move further in their understandings of teaching and
learning concepts. They would accomplish with my assistance and
more capable peers' assistance, understandings they could not arrive
at on their own (Rogoff, 1990; Tharp and Gallimore, 1989). The
students' efforts to create these understandings were the central
part of the course, and my attempts to assist them in their
understanding informed my role as instructor and researcher.

The beginning methods course I designed and taught involved the
establishment of representative content area groups to implement the
work of the course. These groups provided a subject specific focus
for students, as they worked through the four organizing questions:
(1) What does it mean to teach in a secondary school? (2) What does
it mean to know one's content? (3) What does knowing one's content
have to do with teaching it? (4) What does it mean to teach
[content] for understanding? We spent about four weeks examining
each question. Content groups read particular texts selected to
help them think about each course question and they worked through
tasks together as they focused on exploring what a content teacher
must consider in planning and decision making for effective teaching
and learning. Texts were discussed in the format of whole group
sharing and questioning while maintaining the focus of the content

group perspective. Tasks were implemented by both content groups

22

and individuals. My role was to assist learning by questioning and
by providing relevant experiences and information when needed.

My dissertation study is framed around the planning and
implementation of the course described above and how it was informed
by my learning. In the study I explore my decision making in
relation to the initial plan and how the actions and reactions of my
students, as they worked through the course, affected those
decisions. The original motive of my study was to examine, through
reflective inquiry, my conceptualization, design, and implementation
of a new kind of secondary methods course grounded in the context of
disciplinary content. I wanted to focus particularly on the texts,
tasks, and social organization of the course to see how these
factors impeded or facilitated the development of a preservice view
that content and pedagogy were interwoven. Although the questions
I developed did not change, I found my concerns focused primarily
on one of the questions developed for the implementation phase of my
inquiry: To what extent am I, as the teacher, able to implement
this course as I intended, and what shapes or impedes my ability to
do so? This question directed my thinking throughout the study.
Even though this became my major concern over the course of the
study, I grappled with weaknesses in the conceptualization and
design phases of the course trying to understand their influence on
the implementation phase. A problematic design made the

implementation of the course difficult.

23

Qgganization. This dissertation chronicles my movement through
and reflection on the design and implementation of the course.
Chapter two delineates how I conducted my study considering
methodology, data sources and analysis. Chapter three discusses
what I brought to the planning of the course as I consider my own
conceptual change through my graduate preparation at Michigan State.
Chapter four details the actual planning of the course, looking at
pivotal conversations and personal decisions that led me to the
present form of the course. Chapter five describes the first day of
the new course, and six, seven and eight each explore how my
students and I investigated one of the core questions. In each of
these three data-based chapters, I discuss the main texts and tasks
I assigned to help students explore each of the organizing
questions, and what I hoped they would gain from these tasks and
readings. I describe how I introduced and monitored main tasks, and
how we discussed main texts. Student responses to the texts and
tasks are discussed in relation to their congruence with my
intentions. Finally, I explain what issues were foremost in my
thinking at the time, and how I am currently thinking about those
issues with some time for reflection. Chapter nine highlights
important issues surfaced by the study, along with some personal
insights and comments on the challenges of living inside of my

study.

 

CHAPTER II

METHODOLOGY

The e ti

The university I returned to in the Fall of 1992 is situated
within an agrarian setting of corn, dry beans, and sugar beets. It
rises from the flatlands just as the crops rise in the spring, and
the sounds of farm machinery intermingle in an unlikely symphony
with the university crowd's cheers for baseball and football
competitions during the planting and harvesting seasons. It is a
small campus, founded in 1963, with four major wings that house
separate colleges within the university. There is a large three
story administrative complex, a fine arts gallery, a theatre and a
sprawling new physical education complex. Some classes used to be
held in "out-buildings" or trailers and at the time I left, four
years ago, the student teaching department and some faculty were
housed in such an out-building. This is no longer true. The
student teaching department and all teacher education faculty are
now housed in the main buildings of central campus. The campus has
a few dormitories and some university apartments. A small cafeteria

and student union sit close to a small dorm aggregate.

24

25

The university serves a student population of approximately six
thousand with campus housing for only four hundred. This campus
could be best described as a commuter campus. There seems to be a
different feeling for learning on a commuter campus as compared to a
residential campus. There is a drifting in and out of learning, as
students attend to their lives and work outside of the university
each day, instead of the immersion or preoccupation with learning I
observed on Michigan State's campus. I once complained about the
lack of meeting places for students here to spend time discussing
their academic discoveries and challenges. I was told that students
would not have time to gather in such places. Access between
students and professors seems limited on this campus because of

complex student schedules.

We

Many of the students who attend this university travel from
northern and southern locations one to two hours away, and there are
also quite a number from local areas surrounding the campus. More
than half the student population is twenty-five years or older.
Many of them enter this university to begin a second career, because
of the economic instability inherent in farming and massive layoffs
that have resulted from automotive plant closings. Some of the
students here have come from factories where some of them enjoyed
the power and limited autonomy of being in charge of others, while
other students come from the farms that paint the landscape for this

university setting. A smaller number of students have decided for

26

one reason or another to change careers in mid-life. Most of our
students are the first in their families to attend college and they
are proud of their efforts. It is difficult for these students to
negotiate the ”system" and peer support networks are difficult to
develop on a commuter campus. Our minority population is extremely
small, even though the area that the university services has a fair
number of African-Americans and Hispanics. The numbers will
hopefully grow because of an aggressive recruitment program that is
now in place.

Many of our non-traditional students decide to become teachers
and they believe they have considerable knowledge and understanding
about what teaching is and what teachers do. These beliefs appear
partially to come from having large families and being involved at
some level as a parent in the school system, as well as from their
”apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 1975) as a student. When
these students talk about education they have a lot to say about
teaching, but they do not naturally offer comments about learning in
the classroom or in general. There seems to be an attitude about
teaching that I have noticed as I have interacted with many of these
students that is similar to the more traditional students I taught
at Michigan State. The students in the two sections of the general
methods course I taught during the Fall of 1992 were more diverse in
their backgrounds than the groups of students I had taught three
years before. Some already had completed an undergraduate degree
and were returning for secondary teacher certification. Some

explained to the larger group, as they introduced themselves at our

27

first meeting, that they were changing professions because they had
grown tired of working alone, or they had become overwhelmed with
the monotony and the lack of renewal and challenge in their work.
Others had been victims of downsizing in business, manufacturing,
and health care. A few students had just received degrees in
marketing from other colleges and universities and had been unable
to find jobs in their field. The age of my students ranged from 23
to 51. Individuals within the group defined themselves as
geologist, chemical engineer, parent, electrician, artist, social
worker, music therapist, art therapist, construction worker,
chemist, dancer, computer analyst, and Department of Natural

Resources naturalist. One student was African American.

a h M t d ts Best

My study is best characterized as a novice teacher educator
studying her practice, the intellectual and the practical, and what
she learns. It is carried out in the spirit of both accomplished
and novice teacher educators such as Lampert, 1985; Wilson, 1989;
Reid, 1993; Cochran-Smith, 1990, and Heaton, 1993. This is a new
genre that is most like teachers studying their practice.
Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1990) consider teacher research "as its own
genre, not entirely different from other types of systematic inquiry
into teaching, yet with some quite distinctive features” (pg. 4).
They view teacher research as a means to teacher change with
implications for both public school and university classrooms. My

role is of "an unusually observant participant who deliberates

 

28

within the scene of action" (Erickson, 1986, pg. 157). Studying
one's practice is grounded in a qualitative perspective with a
heavy emphasis on reflection, and interpretation of personal
decisions and actions as well as students' responses to those
decisions and actions (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982; Schon, 1987). It is
a "systematic and intentional inquiry" (Cochran-Smith and Lytle,
1993) based on my hypothesis that general secondary methods courses
best serve preservice students when they are structured in ways that
invite students to view pedagogy through the lens of their content.
Connecting content and method is a less conventional view that I
tried to promote as I taught and studied the components of a new
methods course designed to help students see connections between
what they know and how they teach. Framing my research around
inquiry into my practice provided me with a vantage point to
observe, record and reflect on what was happening in the course as
my students responded through writing and discussion about the texts
and tasks of the course. I also was able to reflect on and record
my own thoughts as the designer and implementer of the course as I
worked inside the course.

The challenges, dilemmas and celebrations of the investigation
are conveyed to the reader through narrative. Narrative, a process
of reflection and learning based on one's experiences, is
internalized by teachers as they live their professional and
personal lives. Little is written down for others to learn from.
Experientially based learning is not reported and valued in the same

way that inquiry based research is (Hollingsworth, 1990; Connelly

29

and Clandinin, 1988; Carter, 1993). Relating the experience of my
inquiry through narrative will make it accessible to teacher
educators. A thoughtful retelling of my decisions, experiences,
and my learning as I attempted to understand student responses to
the substance and intent of a new kind of methods course, and my
actions informed by student responses, will provide an insider
perspective not often available to an observer. I also extend the
insider perspective and how it changes over time as I analyze how I
thought about the course as I was living it with my students, and
later, how I thought about the course as I wrote about my research.
Woven into my larger inquiry is my personal story as I interacted,
with difficulty, inside of the study as a novice teacher educator,
novice researcher, and a learning teacher educator (Feiman-Nemser,

1983).

Hey I gerried 93; My §§edy

My data were generated by my colleagues, myself, and my
students. I studied my comprehensives project prepared for my
doctoral committee in the Fall of 1991 as I started conceptualizing
the course I would study. I tape recorded and transcribed formal
and informal conversations with colleagues and committee members as
I designed and implemented my course. I documented personal
thoughts and student comments in the margins of my course lesson
plans as well as in my syllabus prepared as a course guide for me
and for my students. I also recorded student responses to texts,

tasks, and the social organization of the course and my subsequent

3O

reflections about their responses in a personal teaching journal. I
developed a "fastwrite" task to begin to identify students’ entering
beliefs about teaching and learning in their content and their
exiting beliefs after the course and instructor intervention.
Student generated content group journals were used for my reflection
during and after the semester. Final course evaluations designed
for student response helped me reflect on the influence of course

texts, tasks, and social organization.

Seggeee ef Daea Generaged by Me
Qempgeheneivee eoggittee project. This project was the final

step in my written comprehensives examination upon completion of my
graduate coursework. I had been asked to return to the university
where I held a temporary full time faculty position before I started
my graduate work. I would return as adjunct faculty to teach the
same methods course I had taught before. I approached my committee
with the idea of rethinking this course as a final project and they
agreed. This project crystallized for me that I wanted to implement
a change when I returned to teach this secondary methods course. It
helped me to think about the secondary methods course I had taught
and what problem(s) the new course was a response to. This
documented my first formal thinking about what the course might
become. Even though the vision seemed idealistic, it was very much

like the course I continued on to develop.

31

Syllabus. My "Methods of Teaching in the Middle and Secondary
Schools" syllabus represented a history of my thinking about what
the methods course should look like at the time I developed it. It
is a document that was constructed with the framework and substance
of an ”Introduction To Teaching (101)" syllabus that I taught from
during my teaching assistantship at Michigan State University. It
is also a document in which I incorporated experiences I had as a
student in the doctoral program to formulate texts and tasks for the
new methods course. In many ways, it was a history of my learning
about teaching and learning to teach in the doctoral program and my
colleagues' learning as well. It was a collective effort built upon
an idea of teaching a secondary methods course with content specific
aims, accomplished through content area groups as focused learning
vehicles. My syllabus is also a statement of expectations for my
students and myself. My role expectations are tacit but with every
text or task documented, my work as facilitator seems clear. My
beliefs about teaching and learning and what I considered to be
effective teaching undergird the selection of texts and tasks and

how the work would be accomplished in the methods course.

Leeeen_plenee I developed fifteen lesson plans, some of which
I annotated during the lesson taught or after the class ended. Some
of my thoughts were recorded so that I could teach or think about
something in a different way when I taught the second section of
methods later in the week. A few notations designated readings

students favored at the time or did not favor. Some chronicled

32

student responses from class discussion. Other notations were
directed toward what I needed to do to clarify lessons that were not
particularly effective because my understanding was incomplete at
the time. My plans documented my ongoing revision and thinking

about useful and not so useful texts and tasks.

0 e n ou nal. My personal teaching journal was a
record of my reflections about the texts, tasks, and social
organization of my course. It chronicled most of the days that my
methods students and I met for the sixteen weeks of the Fall '92
semester. I initially started out hand writing each of my entries,
but very quickly I became overwhelmed with the magnitude of the work
of managing a new course and the work carefully studying it. At
that time I started using a tape recorder that I carried with me at
all times. I virtually ”talked” my teaching journal and had someone
transcribe my narrative. I recorded the summaries of the lessons
and how they were accomplished and various student responses to the
lessons. I was particularly interested in recording what I did to
manage the lesson. Comments were recorded for my teaching journal
in reaction to student comments in their dialogic journals used for
analysis and interaction with the texts of the course, content
journals, fast writes, field work lessons, personal narratives,
field reflection papers, unit plans, and content group discussions.
I would try to incorporate some analysis as I spoke about student
responses. Often, because of the complexity of the course and my

full course load I was only able to record responses, with the

33

thought that I would revisit them at a later time. After the
transcription I would read the words I had spoken and sometimes
extend my comments with written notations. Included in my teaching
journal are all of my conversations with graduate colleagues and
committee members, formal and informal, and my thoughts about our
conversations. My journal was also the place where I wrestled
repeatedly with my uncertainties about the course and my emerging

identity as a teacher educator and researcher.

en at S e ts

SEUdQDE "feetwrltes," These spontaneous pieces of student
thinking in written text, solicited on the first and last days of
class, gave me information about how students were thinking about
teaching their content and what feelings or descriptions of actions
might describe their beliefs about teaching their content. These
artifacts also gave me evidence for claims about students' entering
beliefs and how they seemed to change over the semester. As a
teacher and a researcher, I was looking for signs of movement toward
change, revision or readjustment of entering beliefs as students
wrote their first and last fastwrite. I was also looking for new
realizations about teaching and learning and whether students were
making connections between knowledge of content and pedagogical

decisions that must be made.

34

Qen§en§ greup joureals. Content groups were to write an entry

in their content journal every week. Journals were turned in for my
response. Content journals were one more avenue for instructor
assessment of student understanding. Each content journal, written
by various members on a rotating basis from all of the content
areas, contained approximately twelve entries. These entries
discussed articles we read and discussed in content groups and
whole groups and recorded content group reactions to those articles.
These journals also chronicled the two mini-teaching lessons that
students were required to accomplish for the semester; teaching a
content concept using the context of the moon, and teaching a
content concept and representing it in more than one way for student
understanding (Wilson, Shulman, Richert, 1989). My students, in
their final entries, wrote about the concept of the content group

and whether it was a valued and educative experience for them.

Elnel eegree evaluaeiene. I developed the final course

evaluation to ask some particular questions about the texts, tasks,
and social organization of the course. I asked students to respond
in writing to five questions: (1) What texts in the course seemed
most powerful for you? Why? (2) What tasks in the course seemed
most helpful for you in relation to planning and thinking about
teaching and learning in your content area? (3) Comment on the idea
of working through the texts and tasks of the course within content
groups . . . was it helpful? not helpful? (4) Write about what

helped or did not help you access your subject matter in the course?

35

and (5) A course is more than texts and tasks. Write about another
aspect of the course (See course evaluation and results in
Appendix.) More than one response from each student was possible
for each question. I thought of this evaluation as a place to begin
to think about what I needed to do differently or rethink in

relation to the course organization.

te

MW
Membeze end Beer Colleaguee
Pivetal eenversatione, Conversations with peers and committee

members helped me to clarify and extend my thinking about the course
as a whole and the components that defined it. The conversations
were recorded in field notes. Early discussions helped me get
clearer about my initial vision of a different kind of secondary
methods course, as I thought about the problems inherent in existing
generic methods courses. These conversations naturally evolved as I
started to seriously think about the course.

Other conversations that I engaged in from the summer of '92
until the fall and winter of '93-94 were with my committee members.
These were scheduled and were audio-taped and transcribed. These
conversations were important in the implementation phase of the new

methods course and in the concomitant inquiry into my practice.

Minis

Initially I read my reflection journal and chunked the various
entries into the categories of conceptualization, design, and

implementation with a color code. This also provided me with a time

36

frame to think about each phase within and in the case of the first
category and some of the second, conceptualization and design, a
location to situate the work within as well. Conceptualization had
taken place at Michigan State University throughout the early spring
and summer of 1992. The design phase took place in the summer, a
smaller time frame than conceptualization and implementation, and it
took place in my home without a lot of discussion with others. The
implementation phase was the longest and most difficult of the three
and took place at the small university where I taught the new
course. It is clear that the difficulty in the implementation
phase, an unrealistic amount of work for my students and myself,
had a lot to do with the small amount of time spent on the design.
I divided conceptualization, design and implementation categories
further into concerns with texts, tasks, and content groups. I
letter coded these, A, B, C . . . I broke these divisions down
further into particular texts, particular tasks, and content group
management and identified them with post-it notes affixed to the
pages. I

I took each of the categorized sections of my teaching journal
and wrote about my statements in a clear summary. After the summary
I identified any questions I had about the entry, or anything I
wanted to explore or think about further. Some of those
explorations or questions I addressed in analytic memos. I then
wrote a section about "where I was in my thinking at the time“ as I
reflected on each particular summary I had written. I identified
which research question(s) each particular entry would help me

answer or think about.

 

37

My study was organized around a specific analytic framework of
texts, tasks, and course social organization which grew out of the
more general framework of the course organizing questions. This is

the framework I will use in my data chapters.

Anelyele of student gata. As I reread, summarized, and

reflected about my entries, I looked for evidence that I was seeing
students' thinking about teaching and learning in ways different
from their entering conceptions of teaching and learning; connecting
teaching and learning to an engagement between the teacher and
student with content (Hawkins, 1975), learning content through
collaboration, representing content concepts in a multiplicity of
ways for student understanding (Wilson, Shulman, Richert, 1987), and
becoming "learning teachers” (Feiman-Nemser, 1983). I also looked
for evidence that students were beginning to consider content and
method as connected (Dewey, 1904). In addition I looked at counter
evidence-no change or only partial change in student ideas and
beliefs. This sort of evidence would give me information about the
course I had designed and its effectiveness in fostering the kinds
of dispositions I mention above, and it would also give me
information about how I was managing the course and how I might need
to rethink my approach and manage in a different way. As I read my
reflective journal over and over I began to hear the voices of my
students guiding me to think in certain ways and my responses to

them, sometimes from the stance of teacher and other times from the

 

38

stance of researcher . . . a few times from the stance of a human
being, overjoyed, shocked, or bewildered.

I read and categorized the student fastwrites to identify any
evidence of change. I read the initial fastwrites and collected
some fairly conventional beliefs about teaching: "fun,”
”fulfilling," and so on. These gave me a place to begin to
understand my students' thinking. The final fastwrites were
examined for beliefs about teaching and learning and whether initial
beliefs had changed in any way. I looked for commonalities across
the papers. I looked particularly for a more realistic view of what
teaching in a content might entail after the course intervention.
These views are discussed in chapter five.

As I carefully read the content group journals I also looked
for evidence that students were thinking about teaching and learning
in a different way. I looked for statements that displayed an
understanding of a relationship between the teacher, student and
content, and also statements that indicated collaborative thinking
about a particular article discussed or task accomplished. This was
also a vehicle for information about the way the course was
influencing students. Important information about student
understanding or lack of understanding was often conveyed through
students' writing.

The final course evaluations were a direct appeal for student
input about the texts, tasks and content group organization. I was
looking for articles and essays that all or most students found to

be helpful in thinking about teaching and learning, in a general

39

sense and in a content specific sense. I was also looking for
answers about the social organization of the course and whether
students felt it had helped or hindered them in thinking about ways
to understand and teach their content. This was also true of the
required tasks. Students were also asked to identify anything else
about the course that had helped in their learning about teaching
and learning. This provided positive and negative information for
me that I may never have connected with.

The following chapter explores my beliefs about teaching and
learning, past teaching experiences, graduate preparation and
current thinking about what I brought to the process of planning,

as I tried to make clear my vision of a new methods course.

CHAPTER III

EVOLUTION OF MY EARLY THINKING ABOUT
PLANNING A NEW KIND OF METHODS COURSE

Ov w o e

In this chapter I explore where my ideas for a new kind of
methods course originated. It is a personal reflection about
significant learning experiences that prompted me to reevaluate and
begin to craft anew the content and format of a secondary methods
course I had previously taught.

Chapter III begins with a description of the old technically
oriented methods course, what I brought to teaching the old course,
my experience teaching it and my growing dissatisfaction with its
impact on secondary students. From there I move to a discussion of
my learning as a graduate student, focusing on key experiences that
provided me with new learnings and understandings. These
experiences not only compelled me to evaluate the ”old" methods
course but ultimately led me to a clearer and sometimes painful
reassessment of my prior conceptions of teaching and learning and my
history as a novice teacher educator and a secondary teacher.
Throughout my graduate training, problems with the previous methods
course became clearer to me, enabling me to begin thinking about

teaching the course in a different way.

40

41

The "Old" Methods Course

This beginning general secondary methods course depended upon a
lecture format to transfer information about general teaching
methods and accepted teacher actions. Students practiced instructor
selected methods through a thirty-hour field component consisting of
observation, tutoring, and actual teaching with a cooperating
teacher. The course met once a week for three hours of lecture with
some time to practice various methods and write behavioral

objectives. Students completed the fieldwork on their own time.

W

Students sat in rows, facing the instructor who stood in the
front of the room. Students "received” information that the
professor disseminated. They had no opportunity to get to know one
another; nor were they encouraged to exchange information or study
together in preparation for writing papers or taking the mid-term
or final examinations. Occasionally students were grouped to

practice the methods they were supposed to implement in the field.

leaks

The preservice students performed various tasks in this course.
For example they practiced writing instructional objectives,
developed lesson plans, made classroom observations, wrote reaction
papers on classroom management systems, learning styles research,
and current educational issues, completed two micro-teaching

lessons, taught three prescribed lessons in the field (one was to be

42

video taped and analyzed by the student and instructor), prepared a
fieldwork log, and developed a unit plan.

When I observed students in the field, I found they often
failed to integrate the information disseminated and memorized in
the university classroom with the practice of the high school
classroom where they did their fieldwork. When I saw these students
again, during student teaching, I watched them grope to convey
concepts to their students. Because they had not drawn important
connections between pedagogy and content, they could not devise
ways to represent content concepts for their students to understand.
They appeared to be very involved in getting the method or strategy

"right" while the student and the content occupied a back seat.

Ten;

The single text required for the course, Joseph Callahan and
Leonard Clark's (1988) WWW
Elennlng_fe;_gnnnenenee, is behavioristic in orientation and

promotes the view that teaching is ”training." Each learning module
is followed by a post test composed of true-false, short answer, and
multiple choice questions asking students to reproduce information
from the chapter. While information in the text was found on the
multiple choice mid-term and final exams, the modules were not
formally discussed in lecture. Students were expected to read and

process assigned modules individually.

43

ur oses
The methods course was built on a competency-based approach to
teaching teachers in order to prepare effective classroom managers
who would be accepted and "successful” in surrounding schools. The
stated goals in the course description explicitly defined this
intent.
This course is designed to provide secondary
students with the basic planning, organizational and
instructional skills needed to function effectively in
the secondary schools. Course participants will
practice these skills through on campus classroom
experiences and through field experiences in the area
schools (course syllabus, 1988, general secondary
methods instruction).
The goals and objectives, also delineated in the syllabus, speak to
the belief that preservice students can be trained through a body of
scientific knowledge.
After this course participants will be able to:
-- generate appropriate lesson and unit plans,

-- explain the ITIP model,

-- discuss the 4MAT system and learning styles
theory,

-- explain four different classroom management
systems,

-- know the purposes for formative and summative
evaluation, and

-- explain at least three teaching strategies in
addition to lecture (course syllabus, 1988,
general methods instruction).
The voices of the preservice students and what they brought to

the course were not recognized as important to discuss. Subject

matter knowledge, knowledge of curriculum, content, and pedagogical

44

content knowledge (Wilson et al., 1987) were also not considered.
This implied that method and subject matter can be considered
separately when thinking about teaching and learning. The course
purposes were for students to accrue a repertoire of skills and
management systems that would enhance their effectiveness as
teachers. Students were expected to recall and explain the above
goals for assessment. They were not expected to practice these in
the field, with the exception of the lesson plan selected by the
student from a variety of formats presented in the course text, or

provided by the cooperating teacher in the field.

e e he 0 d r e

As an adjunct instructor, I believed that I was expected to
implement this course as it had been designed by someone else. I
saw little room for personal interpretation. Moreover, I did not
know enough, at the time, to design and implement a different
secondary methods course, even if given the chance. My "training"
as an adjunct instructor of secondary methods consisted of
observation and minimal participation in the course I would be
teaching the semester before I actually taught it. As I observed, I
was struck that a methods course that professed to help preservice
teachers understand ways to teach middle school and high school
students was seriously lacking in information about how one might
come to know and understand those students, with the ultimate intent
of becoming engaged with one another around subject matter. My

history as a secondary teacher first brings to mind the faces of my

45

past students and many of their names. I vividly remember how they
spoke about and dealt with life, in school and out, and how they
reacted to one another, me, and to learning in school.

I also kept waiting for subject matter considerations to
surface in the lecture format of the course. They never did.
"Methods" were the substance of this course. They were isolated
from subject matter and therefore given an inappropriate
significance as preservice students learned how to "do” methods.
The inference was that any method would do, just try them out and
pick the most effective. This methods course seemed very much like
the "methods of teaching" course I had taken as an undergraduate
student many years before.

There were some new approaches however, that I observed and
subsequently taught. Microteaching, a reform introduced in the
methods course, seemed to be an interesting way to get preservice
students to practice parts of a lesson and become familiar and
comfortable with those parts before actually teaching a full lesson.
And I read research that indicated that students tended to imitate
the behaviors they practiced in their "scaled-down teaching” (Gage,
1978) long after their methods classroom experience.

The microteaching sessions I observed and later taught were
uncomfortable and anxiety provoking for students and did not follow
the recommendations of teaching parts of a lesson until the students
felt comfortable with their practice. I remember, however, that
some students found it was helpful to teach in front of the methods

class before teaching in their field assignments. In their ten

46

minute mini-lesson students were evaluated on introduction,
organization, clarity of concept, dress, grammar, closure and
timing. It was an extremely rigid, lock step experience and I was
never comfortable doing it. It seemed a part of the ”training"
emphasis that I sensed in the format of the course. I taught this
component of the course as I had observed it even though the form
seemed different from the reform intent. I thought there must have
been a good reason for this difference.

As a novice teacher educator, I taught this methods course
according to the syllabus that had been developed by the instructor
I had observed. I remember spending hours viewing the Madeline
Hunter ”Instructional Theory Into Practice" tapes and thinking about
the effectiveness of many of the components of ”good” teaching that
Hunter identifies. I also remember being excited that some of the
components fit with elements of my own practice. Hunter's model of
"effective teaching” seemed like an effective way to pull my
students into the content and help them learn it. It offered a way
to think about organizing a lesson for the most impact and
understanding. Starting a lesson with a particularly engaging
activity to focus students' thinking, tapping into students' prior
knowledge and histories, having students practice their new
learnings through writing, simulations, panel discussions were ideas
I had used as a secondary teacher to make my lessons interesting for
my students.

ITIP as a formal "way" of teaching was new to me and new to the

fieldwork sites where the beginning methods students would teach

47

four lessons. Since these sites wanted the preservice students to
have knowledge about ITIP, it was taught, within the methods course
as a ”way” to teach. I remember outlining ITIP on a set of overheads
and lecturing about it. I modeled my own teaching in the methods
classroom after a modified Hunter format with anticipatory set,
directed teaching, guided practice, and checking for learning. I
was vaguely bothered by the prescriptive nature of the Hunter format
and by the fact that my students did not appear to do a lot of
thinking about what they plugged into each of the categories. It
did accomplish one thing; however, preservice teachers appeared to
know what to do in the classroom. Their lessons were organized and
they were fairly certain about what they would do in front of the
class. This format also provided the preservice student with a
means to include the classroom student, in a more active way, in the
lesson. ITIP provided preservice students with answers and told
them what to do next.

My students thought of ITIP as a strategy to use to increase
the effectiveness of their teaching because that is how I presented
it to them. Their classroom performance was enhanced by the
positive evaluations they received from their field teachers and
school administrators who also watched. Even though the practices
of microteaching and Instructional Theory into Practice were
considered reforms, they did not feel educative to me. They were
ways to train and create what Dewey (1964) referred to as

"craftspersons," those slight-of-hand smooth individuals whose

48

”. . . later 'progress' may . . . consist only in perfecting and
refining skill already possessed" (p. 320).

ITIP, microteaching and the traditional format of this methods
classroom did not interfere with my placing all of the
responsibility for knowing and teaching in the secondary classroom
on the teacher. I modeled this effectively in my university
teaching. Even though I encouraged student involvement by inviting
questions, initiated conversations about the course content and my
teaching experiences, and used infrequent collaborative groups, I
taught with the idea that teaching was telling, advising and
encouraging just as I had taught as a secondary teacher. I
communicated that there were prescriptive approaches that one could
utilize to teach well.

When I supervised student teachers and field students who used
the methods I taught them and they experienced an unsuccessful
experience, I started to wonder what was wrong in my teaching of the
methods course. However, when I talked to students about what
didn't work, I initially focused on ”the method didn't work .
could they think of another method to use?"

I didn't question students about their content knowledge. I
was a teacher of methods, content was not my concern. At this
point, I really thought of methods and content as disconnected. I
was a practitioner who "managed” a classroom by teaching my content
in an interesting and organized fashion. I knew also that I needed
to know my students in a particular way in order to teach them, but

I didn't know how to discuss that in a methods course.

49

At the same time, I knew nothing of the theory behind my
practice. Nor could I give any reasons as to why a particular
approach worked. It just did. As a practitioner, I had never been
encouraged to take time to think about my reasons, nor had I
consciously challenged myself to think about them. My knowledge was
experientially based. My view of teaching and learning was never
challenged as I worked toward and earned the degree of masters in
teaching with a major in reading at a small midwestern university.

I maintained and perhaps even strengthened my vision as a
conventional practitioner, and my practitioner view had limitations
for me as a teacher educator.

My experience as a novice teacher educator caused me to begin
questioning the difficulties I had with my student teachers and
field students who were prepared through the course I was teaching.
They selected lecture most often as their method of choice. It most
fit their dependence on the text book and matched the models they
experienced in high school and university classrooms including their
methods course. As I consider their approach it makes sense. I
taught them mostly from a text and lecture driven approach, much
like the approach I has used as a practitioner. As a secondary
teacher, my content knowledge was limited to what I had learned in
my university content classes and what was contained in the textbook
and teacher's manual I was issued as a teacher of English or
science. I had not been challenged to think about teaching my
content in ways to foster student understanding. I had no knowledge

of pedagogical reasoning skills. I was well schooled in the

50

pedagogy of lecture and teacher performance which is what I
practiced still. This was also modeled by the professor I observed
before I taught the course.

Student attempts, in the field component, at group work,
demonstration, and questioning were still couched in a lecture
format. They were not receiving preparation that enabled them to
grow beyond their university "training" or their own school
experiences.

While I was teaching this methods course, I became dissatisfied
with this kind of preparation. While I did not understand exactly
what was wrong, I knew many of my students had problems teaching
their content when they moved into their student teaching and into
their first year of teaching. My concerns for them and their
students moved me to look for more depth in my own preparation. I
started an intensive search for answers through further graduate
work at Michigan State University. I entered the doctoral program
at Michigan State believing that I would learn how to teach
teachers. I did not imagine that I would undergo fundamental

conceptual changes in my thinking about teaching and learning.

MW;

e e v
When I entered the doctoral program I was looking for knowledge
about how to prepare teachers more effectively. Through my
coursework and teaching assistantship, I began a process of
conceptual change that led me to a new level of understanding about

my past teaching experiences. This helped me to think differently

51

about teaching and learning as I prepared to teach preservice

teacher education students.

Engly Movement Toward Change

”Teacher as Learner," one of my first classes in the doctoral
program at Michigan State University, challenged my belief in ready
answers for teachers. The instructor, Dr. Feiman-Nemser, pushed me
to think about the connection of content and pedagogy through
reading "The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education" (Dewey,
1904/1965). Dewey wrote about the need for teachers to acquire
particular mental habits that would allow them to teach effectively.
He postulated that students of education could not make the kinds of
decisions about teaching subject matter that fostered understanding
if they were simply schooled in "practical" ways of operating in a
classroom. Supplying education students with only ”practical tools”
would allow them to achieve technical expertness but that would not
enable them to reach their students in a meaningful manner. Dewey
believed that experiences for education students based on inquiry
and reflection into and about subject matter also provided a way of
thinking about practice. This step beyond nnly using "commonsense
and practical knowledge” moved students from a superficial treatment
of a content concept into a thoughtful realm of developing pedagogy
for teaching a concept derived from deep knowledge of education
theory and content (Wilson, Shulman, Richert, 1987).

I remember tripping over the word "pedagogy" and feeling very

foolish because others in the class seemed to be using it quite

52

naturally. I felt that I lacked some high status knowledge that
many others seemed to have. I attributed this to the fact that I
was taking this course out of sequence, before the pro-seminar which
was designed to provide a common knowledge base for all of the
doctoral students in the department of teacher education. I
struggled with the texts and discussions and did not feel like I
belonged in this graduate program.

I remember one of the students stating that ". . . the
pedagogy would be revealed by the content.” I didn't connect with
what my fellow graduate student had said, but I did not feel
confident enough to ask what it meant. Everyone else seemed to
accept the statement which implied a different way of thinking
about teaching and learning that I had never encountered before.
During the following months I spent a lot of time trying to
understand the meaning behind this statement which left me so
puzzled. I thought about it almost continuously. Gradually, I
realized that I needed to think about my content first as I
considered ways to teach it. I needed to know the concept I would
teach in ways that would help me develop important questions and
experiences tailored to enable my students to discover their own
understandings about the concept being explored. Knowing my content
in this way meant studying, researching, and collaborating with more
knowledgeable others in exploring the concepts I would teach, in
order to enhance and extend my understanding. At this point, my

understanding of the content would help me select the pedagogy. In

53

the past I had always started with the "method," and then I figured

out how I could make the content fit.

P i M actice in a Broader Context

Other graduate courses helped me to gain a social-historical
perspective on American education, which shed light on the dilemmas
and problems of schooling and the tensions and obstacles that had
directly affected me as a secondary teacher. I had never had a
knowledge base to think through these problems of practice. I had
also never understood why I didn't seem to making a difference for
my secondary urban students. Their attitudes and beliefs that they
could not succeed were not changing even though we explored many
things together--prejudice and its consequences, important African
American leaders, classic literature, young adult literature, and
scientific adventures inside and outside of school.

As I moved through the various graduate courses at MSU, I
eventually came to view myself as a caring but fairly ineffective
teacher. This realization was pretty sobering because I had thought
of myself as a "good” teacher who could take care of her students.
"Taking care” meant many things, from teaching careful dissection
technique in the biology labs I conducted, to engaging my English
students with the Romantic Poets. It also meant finding articles of
clothing and hygiene products for my students when their families
could not or would not supply them, protecting them from rioting
factions in their community, working with home-school coordinators

to remove students from dangerous living conditions,

54

and trying to understand student histories and how they defined the
culture of the classroom. I was confronted often in my urban
teaching experience with the realization that all of my knowledge
would not help my students until I understood their daily life
situations. The ”curriculum” here was very different from the fare I
had sampled in my secondary methods courses and in my student
teaching. I was dealing with the "out-of-school-curriculum”
(Melnick, C., 1992) that tacitly shaped my students' lives in school
as well as out.

My ideas of good teaching were in an undeveloped stage, but I
do not think that I was very different from other teachers I taught
with. In the graduate program, I began to realize that good
teaching wasn't about taking on drug companies for grants or drug
dealers or gangs. I came to see that I couldn't make a difference
for my middle school or high school students in a lasting way,
because I didn't know what I was fighting. I was not simply
fighting the hopelessness of my students and the ignorance of many
of their parents, who entered my classroom with hostile ideas about
getting along in their neighborhoods. I was, in reality, trying to
fight dominant social views of what certain kids should know and
others should not. I was dealing with the issue of denial of access
to high status knowledge through the absence of materials and
resources, the bureaucratic sorting of lives, and inadequacies in
teacher preparation.

Graduate school helped me develop a larger picture of what it

means to be a teacher. Teaching wasn't about taking care of

55

students, it was about teaching in ways that would imbue students
with the power to take care of themselves. It was about helping
students construct knowledge and providing access to dominant
culture knowledge. And, it was about teaching preservice students
in ways that would allow them to construct and understand a vision
of "good teaching" that I had not been able to do on my own. It was
about creating a community of learners who explored and attempted to
understand the diverse students they would_teach, the content they
would teach and how they knew it, the bureaucratic institutions they
would teach it in, and the whys and ways in which they would decide

to teach it.

t u se

Besides my graduate course work, teaching in an "Introduction
to Teaching” course infused my study with new insights about
teaching and learning and helped me figure out my existing ideas
and where they might have come from. This really was a time for
questioning, reflection and change. Good teaching was even more
complex than I had imagined. (I sound like my students) I remember
watching Dr. Feiman-Nemser teach this introductory course and being
puzzled by her approach. The articles she assigned were so powerful
and the students could learn so much if she would only "tell" them
more about it. I watched students leave the classroom angry and
confused after a session about one of these readings, where all Dr.
Feiman-Nemser had done was ask questions. When a student answered

the question she did not indicate whether or not

56

the student was correct. Rather, she continued to probe for further
understanding and clarification. I couldn't figure out what was
going on here. Where were the overheads with the outlines of key
points in the reading? Where were students who felt confident about
their understanding of a reading or concept? I was also learning
because I had not encountered these articles or issues before. I
was leaving without getting answers to questions as well. I really
never asked questions of Dr. Feiman-Nemser either because I felt as
though I already should know these things.

As the quarter progressed, I realized that she was artfully
challenging student beliefs about teaching and learning through her
questioning. This realization developed through listening to other
instructors of the same introductory course at the weekly staff
meetings. They were doing the same things in their class sessions.

I really could do little more than listen and learn. While I
recognized some of the issues these instructors were grappling with,
I was also coming to grips with the fact that what I had done as a
teacher had been ineffective according to the standards of ”good
teaching" promoted by the course. I isolated myself within this
very open and supportive group. Even though I had been a teacher, I
had not been the kind of teacher this group seemed to value. As I
listened to the instructors searching for insights and ways to make
sense of their students' beliefs, I was trying hard to understand
why I had taught in the ways I had, and how I could begin to teach

in ways that enabled students to find their own answers.

57

I tried so hard to change my way of looking at teaching and
learning. I remember my first quarter teaching this course, I
spent most of the time feeling paralyzed, unable to think of
questions that would require students to look at their beliefs and
eventually challenge them. Because I had never taught this way, it
was slow going. It was difficult to fashion questions that would
not dead end student thinking or mine and to come up with follow-up
questions.

The only thing that I could rely on was my masters training in
guidance and counseling where we learned to question and rephrase
what clients had said, to test our own understanding and theirs. I
really had a difficult time trying not to praise students for every
response they made and to probe for further understanding. It was
also difficult each time students became frustrated and angry
because I would not supply answers. I was beginning to see,
however, that there were not codified answers here.

This course was about inquiry and understanding students,
subject matter knowledge, societal norms, and the institution that
promoted those norms. It was not about ready answers. It was about
getting smarter about the complexities of teaching and learning, and

thinking about how to manage those complexities.

My flgst bgnen wlen ”gene geaening," During the first quarter

I taught TE 101, my students and I had looked at two classroom video
tapes that offered very different views of teaching. Marva Collins'

traditional classroom was academic, teacher-driven, authoritarian;

58

Leslie Stein's "open classroom" was flexible and student centered,
with a thematic approach to learning, assisted by the teacher.

Marva and Leslie provided contrasting examples in our search
for the characteristics of "good teaching.” We were also looking
for classrooms that promoted student understanding. All of my
students had definite reasons to like or dislike Marva or Leslie's
style and discussed these reasons extensively. While some
questioned Marva's curriculum, few questioned her commitment to the
students, and few questioned her role as teacher. On the other
hand, many students were uncertain about whether Leslie was teaching
and whether kids were really learning.

We had also discussed the "hidden curriculum,” as defined by
Philip Jackson (1968), and the ”code” that a child needed to
understand to be successful in school. My students were fascinated
by the notion of a "hidden curriculum.” They felt they had
experienced it, but lacked a language to talk and think about it.

I asked my students to describe the hidden curriculum in Marva
and Leslie's classrooms, using Jackson's framework. How did the
students handle the "crowds”? What sort of ”praise” did the
students in each class receive and how did they value it? Who held
the ”power” in each of the classrooms? I also wanted my students to
think about how this helped them think about teaching and learning
in new ways. I had observed Dr. Feiman-Nemser doing this exercise
the previous term when she had students fill out a grid comparing
the two classrooms. I decided to have my students discuss the task

as a group.

59

As soon as I had the request out of my mouth the class grew
wings and flew with it. I happened to be sitting in the middle of
the classroom and I became invisible to the students. They took up
the categories of crowds, praise and power Jackson had posited and
started to identify Marva and Leslie's classrooms in certain ways.
They argued and submitted, discussed and compromised for nearly
twenty minutes. I listened and took notes for later questioning. I
left my class that day with a feeling of exhilaration and
wonderment.

Driving home that night I thought, so this is teaching and
learning? I had never experienced this before, and I might add, I
have not experienced anything quite like it since. I guess I keep
aiming for that as I continue this inquiry into my practice. I had
so many questions as I thought about my students that evening: What
was it that happened in that class that caused such passionate
student discussion? What did I do? What did they do? What did the
reading contribute? How did the make-up of the group affect what
happened? I could not wait to meet with my students again later in
the week.

The learning that took place for me in TE 101 was profound. I
could no longer be the educator I had been. Having experienced
good teaching, I was running with the memory. I wanted to know
more about teaching and learning and I wanted to experience it
through my students' eyes, ears and minds.

In TE 101 I started to redefine my identity as a teacher.

Within the framework of this course, discussions with other

6O

instructors and my own teaching, I got back in touch with a long ago
lost part of myself that sensed there was more to teaching than
providing answers. I also faced the realization that my need to
"take care" of my students was misconceived. Rather, I needed to
provide opportunities for my students to become powerful in their
own right, through inquiry, collaborative learning, and questioning

of their beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning.

Beeenlng e gonetnnctor of Knowledge

Another important awakening happened for me through a course
taught by Dr. Magdalene Lampert. Until that point I believed that
I would continue to attend school where I would keep learning about
teaching. I always assumed that I would just continue to read books
and articles by the "experts" who were recognized in the field of
teacher research, and, of course, I did throughout the program and
I'm still doing so.

Dr. Lampert turned my thinking around one night when she
answered a question I had asked, out of frustration, while our small
group attempted to develop and publish assertions about teaching
and learning. We had worked and argued and refashioned so many of
our thoughts. I finally asked Dr. Lampert that night, wondering if
I would sound too simplistic in my query, ”Why is this so hard .

I don't understand.”

She asked me if I was serious about wanting to know and I said

that I was. Dr. Lampert explained that throughout our education

most of us had studied someone else's knowledge about various

61

subjects. We were now trying to create new knowledge as we grappled
with our own beliefs and that was probably something we had not been
asked to do before.

At that point I realized that I would, at some point in the
future, be joining and contributing to a group of individuals who
set the pace and through their research efforts added to the body of
knowledge in teacher research. This realization affected me deeply
then and it continues to move me as I write about this new kind of

methods course.

w 01 k n ‘ ia o ic Jou a

I encountered the dialogic journal in two courses taught by Dr.
Jim Gavelek. Dr. Gavelek required that we deal with some very
difficult, yet exciting, texts. In order to interact with those
texts and with him at a personal level, he asked us to keep a
dialogic journal. He described it as a vehicle for the authors(s)
of the text, the reader, and the professor to have a conversation
about the text. We handed our journal entries in each week, and he
read and conversed with us about our thinking through his responses
in each entry.

Writing and reflecting on the articles I read and conversing
with Dr. Gavelek in the journals brought me to a level of
understanding that I could never have reached in a different format.
I mentioned in class one day, after reflecting and writing about a
particularly difficult series of articles, that I had reread my

journal response and I was convinced that someone else had written

62

it. Others agreed they had felt the same way at various times in
the course. We decided that through our writing we had worked hard
at developing new understandings and perhaps fragile new learning.
We often talked about the times when ”someone else" did not arrive
to write our responses. I have lived since then with the memory of
the power of understanding "beyond myself" through the dialogic

journal.

ehe siv s ittee o ect

I first started working on a new version of secondary methods
when I took my comprehensive exams. My doctoral committee and I
agreed that I could use part of the exam as an occasion to rethink
the teaching methods course I had taught three years before. Since
I knew I would be returning to teach the course in the Fall of 1992,
this seemed especially timely. I viewed it as a chance to draw on
all that I had been learning in my doctoral program.

As I thought about the planning of a new kind of methods
course, I was struck by how long I had been working on this idea
without my conscious knowledge. The notion of the need to better
prepare preservice teachers probably had its inception in the
difficulties I experienced for seven years as a secondary teacher
and years beyond that as a secondary substitute teacher. Certainly,
as an adjunct novice teacher educator and clinical supervisor of
student teaching, I found myself dealing with many of the same
”uncertainties" and dilemmas I had lived with as a secondary

teacher, such as how to help my students understand the

63

concepts I presented, how to find ways to make the concepts
important to them, and how to realistically understand and accept my
students' histories and how they affected my teaching and their
learning.

In the process of imagining and planning for my committee
project, I examined my personal assumptions and beliefs about
teaching and learning and how they had changed during my graduate
program. I thought hard about how my new knowledge would inform the
design of a new methods course and how I would manage constraints
such as the university course and fieldwork requirements for
certification, as well as cooperating school expectations for
teacher education students' classroom performance.

The vision I wrote about in my comprehensives "project” was
very nearly the same vision I attempted to implement.
Subconsciously, this first conceptualization, a symbol of my own
learning and evolving conceptual change, became my guide as I

planned the course.

W

In my comprehensives project I first talked about the idea of
content groups as a way of addressing content specific concerns in a
general methods course:

. it is my intent to form permanent content
area groups to push their (preservice teachers)
thinking about their content at all times, and,
further, to invite their responses to come from the
context of their particular content area. . . . I want
my students to begin to think as subject matter

64

specialists within the framework of teaching and

learning." [Comprehensives project for guidance

committee, Fall 1991, pg. 18]
Later, I defined the role of the content groups in my syllabus.
These groups would serve as the vehicles for discovery, inquiry, and
perhaps even the beginnings of conceptual change. They represented

the key social organization in my new approach to a general

secondary methods course.

Content ezee ggonns; It is important that we not
separate teaching strategies and the work of secondary

teachers from the content areas they have chosen to
teach. Working in content area groups will provide
opportunities for individuals to think about planning
for instruction through the lens of their individual
subject matters. Together, math majors, physical
education majors, music majors, biology majors etc.,
can help each other to become smarter about why certain
methods and planning work, or do not work with their
particular content. The work of content area groups in
TE 204 will take on the form of group inquiry as they
read, write, question, plan and initiate discourse from
the focus of their content areas. . . . [syllabus, Fall
'92, pg. 3-4]

I also thought about content area groups as subject matter lenses
for looking at the work of the course. The members of the groups
would provide many voices from various levels of knowing and
understanding subject matter for my methods students to consider and
challenge as they thought about what it might be like to address
important issues of teaching as a content area teacher.

I wanted my students to recognize that they needed to know
their content in a particular manner. They needed a kind of knowing
that would enable them to think of a multiplicity of ways to

represent their knowledge to their students for understanding.

65

I wanted my students to realize that they needed to develop a
depth of knowledge and pedagogical reasoning skills as they entered
the profession of teaching, and that it would be hard to do anything
beyond packaged textbook thinking without these skills and
understandings.

I decided that content groups would be the vehicles to do the
inquiry work of the course; here I hoped that students would begin
to see together that as content teachers they embodied their
contents in the ways in which they thought about them. The
powerful texts and related tasks they would explore together would
begin to bring about the realization that they were indeed
representations of their content areas.

The texts and tasks, explored and implemented by the content
groups would also help my students examine the students they would
be teaching and the kinds of teacher-student-content
interrelationships that need to happen for meaningful learning to
occur (Hawkins, 1978).

The course I conceptualized in my committee project was a
colossal attempt to address the weaknesses of the generic secondary
methods courses I had taken and taught, as well as the personal
weaknesses I had displayed as a secondary teacher and novice
teacher educator. The experiences and new knowledge I garnered as a
graduate student and graduate assistant provided substantive tools
for addressing these weaknesses and suggested new content and goals
for the course. I had started to think about teaching and learning

as a deeper process, one that was defined by reason and thoughtful

66

decision-making on the part of the teacher. This decision-making
had to be informed by content knowledge, knowledge of students'
lives outside of school, and connections of one's content inside and
outside of the discipline. The context and curriculum of the
classroom called for much more flexibility than a textbook and
lecture driven approach would provide. I wanted my students to
construct a vision of effective teaching. To accomplish this, I
wanted them to focus on teaching and learning in a more specific
sense of thinking about learning to teach their content. It was
with this conceptualization, developed through my comprehensives
project, that I started to think about the actual planning of my

course .

WWW
Prebleme of the Old Counse ang
Wm

As I planned and wrote my comprehensives project in the Fall of
1991 I was beginning to analyze the methods course I had taught
before I entered the graduate program. My analysis and personal
reflection about this course continued through planning the design
and implementation phases of the new course. My thinking about the
old course, informed by my graduate experiences and preparation,
helped me to begin to articulate problems I had only sensed in the
old course. The four problems discussed in chapter one stood out to
me: (1) It ignored teacher candidates' entering beliefs about
teaching and learning, (2) methods, techniques, strategies were

promoted as ends in themselves, disconnected from purpose, content

67

and learners, (3) adequate subject matter knowledge for teaching
particular content areas was assumed, (4) the idea that generic
methods added to unexamined subject matter, practiced in a
disconnected and unreflective manner equalled effective teaching,
promoted a flawed view of learning to teach. My new course would be

designed to address these problems.

CHAPTER IV

THE ACTUAL PLANNING

Overview of the Chapter

In this chapter I describe how I gathered materials and
information that helped me design the course I envisioned in my
comprehensives project. I relate important conversations with
fellow graduate students as I think through the main components of
the new course: organizing questions, social organization, texts and
tasks. In describing each component of the course I include these
pivotal conversations, as they occurred, as historical evidence in
the planning phase. I also explain the main elements of the new
course: how I formulated the idea, influences on my thinking, and
how I imagined the course elements working.

My graduate preparation directed my planning of the new course.
The course became the embodiment of all of the program experiences
that were important to me. I valued what I had learned as a
doctoral student and wanted my students to begin their exploration
of the complexities of teaching and learning early, without blindly
accepting someone else's answers as I had in my own teaching

experience.

68

69

The course I designed was influenced by my comprehensives
project discussed in chapter three, problems with the old methods
course that were becoming clearer as I thought about my analysis in
that project, the conversations I had in the spring and summer of
'92 with fellow graduate students about my new course, the syllabi I
collected from my colleagues who had taught graduate courses in the
college of education, my TE lOl syllabus, and texts and tasks I
knew about from my experiences as a graduate student and teaching
assistant.

My conversations with my graduate peers helped me to further
clarify and extend my initial thinking about the course as a whole
and the components that I wanted to define the course. I gravitated
to individuals with similar interests in teacher education. The
conversations that occurred in the thinking stages of my inquiry
tended to be informal. I would stop by one of my graduate
colleague's desks or offices with the hope of discussing an
important idea with them. I only had a piece of the
conceptualization at this point—- the idea of content groups as
vehicles to help methods students think about the issues and
complexities of teaching within their particular content areas. I
recorded these conversations in field notes. These informal, yet
important conversations provided me with opportunities to try out my
thinking about a new kind of methods course and they were integral
to the development of the course components.

The components of my course design (organizing questions,

texts, tasks and social organization) would provide a framework

70

through which the work of the course would be accomplished and
studied.

The organizing questions provided direction and focus for me as
I sequenced the new course and later for my students and me as we
explored how to plan to teach content for understanding in a
secondary setting to diverse students. These questions provided a
map for the planned direction of the course.

Texts were selected to help students study the organizing
questions. I chose texts for my students that offered alternative
ways to think about the pupils they would teach, the context they
would teach in, how they knew their content areas, and how they
could think about their content in ways to teach it.

Tasks were crafted and selected to examine the organizing
questions as well, working in concert with the texts. The tasks
required students to reflect on their beliefs about teaching and
learning, helping them view their beliefs from a different place.

I selected content groups as the social organization of the
course. I believed that forming content groups would create subject
specific environments in which students could consider the work of
teaching and learning. Each group, I hoped, would provide various
views and levels of content knowledge to consider while they
explored learning to teach content concepts for our university

classroom as well as the field classroom.

71

Elemente:9f the Couree

 

Conten; Area Groups

I carried the idea of content area groups as a social
organization and a way of getting work done into many conversations
with my fellow graduate students and mentors during the spring and
summer of '92. I had spontaneously separated my methods students
into content groups the first time I taught the previous version of
a general methods course. It seemed a logical way to help students
think about developing curriculum, writing lesson plans and
objectives, and it was well received. Now I wanted to extend this
idea as a way to organize student learning in a new methods course
with subject specific aims. I thought that each content group would
become a community of learners working through the larger issues of
teaching and learning in the secondary environment. I was worried
yet excited about this key idea. I was worried that I was
departmentalizing and perhaps reinforcing incomplete or incorrect
knowledge through a subject specific focus within content groups. I
was excited because I saw these groups working to uncover and
correct incomplete and misconceived knowledge of content. I also
saw the groups working to understand connections between their
content and appropriate pedagogy for teaching, the evolution of
effective teaching in their content, the power of collaboration in
learning and planning to teach, and how disciplines fit into a
larger integrated collage of teaching and learning.

My graduate colleagues were thoughtful about what I was

proposing. We discussed the “Mickey Mouse” general methods courses

72

we had taken as undergraduates. We also discussed the reality that
small universities with teacher education programs would continue to
have generic methods courses for secondary teachers for economic
reasons. We also felt that conventional philosophical beliefs that
secondary students are prepared to teach through their immersion in
content would continue in many of the smaller universities. The
conversations encouraged me. My graduate colleagues felt the idea
of content groups was interesting, but hard to pull off because I
only had knowledge of two content areas, English and biology. I
agreed with their cautions, however, I reminded them that it was not
my intent to teach content, but to push my students to consider how
they might choose appropriate pedagogy through their knowledge and
understanding of their content. They pushed me to think more deeply
about the idea and the practical logistics of it:

When I shared my ideas about using content area

groups to approach the content areas represented in a

generic methods course they (my colleagues) had a lot

of questions . . . would this be all year? [same

groups]. What if I had only one person in a major

field? What readings would I use? Would groups share

common readings? Which ones? How would I decide? [j

#2, 7-'92, p. 3]

My colleagues were intrigued by the idea of content groups as a
social organization of the course and a way of getting work done in
a general methods course, but they anticipated a lot of
difficulties. Like me, they were concerned about whether I would be
able to supply texts for my content groups; they also expressed
concerns about the feasibility of addressing all of the contents

represented in my course. Would I be able to help students access

their content when I didn't have a deep knowledge of their content?

73

These were valid concerns and proved problematic for my students and
me at some key places in the course.
My colleagues felt the idea of content groups was

a good one, especially since [few] content methodology

courses existed at the university at which I taught.

Even if I could not address each one in depth, at least

they would be addressed through collaborative efforts

and projects guided by sound texts. The prospect for

reflection on beliefs [about teaching that content] was

also very high in content groups where somewhat

different takes would be put forth about content

[substance]. { j #2, 7-'92, p. 3}

Even though I felt disconcerted by my colleagues' concerns
about the reasonableness of implementing a methods course with
subject specific concerns, I felt that powerful content specific
texts would help me manage the various contents. Further, a careful
selection of texts that cut across contents and looked at effective
ways to think about teaching and learning would bring expert content

voices and teacher education researcher voices into the course.

These voices would be heard in concert with mine.

a n s
I encountered the idea of organizing a course around a set of

questions in an "Introduction to Teaching” (101) course during my
assistantship. I remember thinking that was an excellent way to
focus learning and teaching. My graduate colleagues had also taught
courses developed around important questions and asked about
questions for my new course in our early informal conversations. I
framed the course around four organizing questions: (1) What does
it mean to teach in a secondary setting? (2) What does it mean to

know one's content? (3) What does knowing one's content have to do

74

with teaching it? (4) What does it mean to teachlcontent] for
student understanding? These questions developed from key ideas I
identified as I actually planned the course and my syllabus. In
addition, the questions grown from these important ideas addressed
many of the problematic areas in the old methods course.

An awareness of equity and access to knowledge in the
secondary school, the diversity of the student population and the
constraints of the secondary setting could be developed through
exploring the question, What does it mean to teach in a secondary
setting? Student beliefs about teaching, learning and knowing their
content and a vision of the kind of relationship that might be
developed between the teacher, learner and the content could be
surfaced through the question, What does it mean to know one's
content? The ideas of reflection, representation of knowledge, and
informed pedagogical decision making could be examined through the
question, What does knowing one's content have to do with teaching
it? Thinking about how teachers understand and teach content
effectively and ineffectively, and how students understand content
so they can build new connections to their current knowledge base,
could help preservice students examine the question, What does it
mean to teach [content] for student understanding?

The organizing questions also provided a basis for
identifying specific texts and related tasks that provided a
window into each course question. As I developed my syllabus and

course calendar certain texts seemed appropriate for each question,

75

and tasks developed naturally under specific questions as well [see

figure 1, appendix].

Texes

In helping the content groups think about teaching their
content, I believed I needed texts related to each subject area. I
believed that with powerful readings specific to teaching and
learning in the various contents, I could help my students begin to
think about how their knowledge of content directed them toward
appropriate method.

My course texts, subject specific and specific to teaching and
learning, emerged out of early conversations during the spring and
summer of '92 and my own memories of key texts I had taught in TE
101 as a graduate teaching assistant. These texts would help
students make the kind of connections within their content that I
could not, given the limits in my own subject matter knowledge in
many fields.

Many of the content specific texts came from suggestions of
colleagues who had taught sections of two other courses, ”Learning
of School Subjects" and "Curriculum for Academic Learning," and
others who had worked with specific texts and authors through
research in some of the Professional Development School sites. Many
of the texts that cut across contents to talk about good teaching
and the issues, reforms, and constraints of the institution of
school, came from teaching "Introduction to Teaching" (101). Others

surfaced through listening to others who also taught TE 101 as

76

they met to try to make sense of how entering preservice teacher
beliefs could be surfaced and examined through the texts and tasks
they were reading and implementing.
T gave me one of his papers which looked at
understanding the student and how students perceive
content. R gave me the NSF guidelines and "Real

Students Take Chemistry and Physics: Gender Issues in
the Classroom," a chapter from Kahle's Lnoklng in

Science gleeegeons (I've ordered the book] and
”Teaching Science" by Anderson and Smith, a piece that

looks at conceptual change teaching, and also the

video, ”Private Universe." This looks at scientific

misconceptions and how to intervene as a teacher to

help students correct their misconceptions. [j#2,

7-'92, p. 3]

I decided to use the above texts for the science content
groups, I thought at the time that the Kahle chapter would also be a
good choice to use across content as we looked at gender issues in
the secondary classrooms. It would help me question students'
thinking as they thought about the responses given to males and
females in each content area.

Using common texts that all content groups would read was a
necessary part of this idea of collaboration within and among
content groups. The big ideas explored in these texts would help
students learn about teaching in general as well as teaching content
areas.

The possibility of putting together a packet of excellent
materials that were also content specific in a short time did not
make sense and probably would prove miseducative. I needed time to

pull together content specific articles. While I had a few good

ones suggested by colleagues I respected, I did not have time to go

77

in search of more. That search would be ongoing as I developed this
methods course further, over time.

Because of this constraint my colleagues and I felt I would
need to become skilled in trying to help my students make
connections to many contents with common readings.

We also talked about how difficult it would be to

find [good] readings that would address each content

area, so I would have to make connections from other

readings to content groups that might not have a

specific packet of texts. [j#2, 7-'92, p. 3]

As we talked about the difficulty of finding subject specific
texts, a graduate colleague mentioned her experience in the course
”Teacher as Learner" and how the instructor, Dr. Feiman-Nemser,
had asked them to write pedagogical autobiographies, and how
personally helpful and powerful the experience had been. These
pedagogical autobiographies could certainly represent and provide
texts for different disciplines. My fellow graduate student
offered me hers as a science educator and suggested another doctoral
student as a math educator. I really became excited thinking about
the possibility of having papers for each discipline, and I was
also excited about how this might help my students as they wrote
their own personal narratives, an idea I had started to think about
as a task for my students. I thought at the time that it would be
something they could read after they had gone through the process of
writing their narratives to help them think more deeply about their

experience as they compared it with a content teacher who had done a

much more detailed ”looking back."

78

I asked a number of people if they would share their
pedagogical autobiographies with me and many were not willing to do
so. Some who were willing had backgrounds in elementary education
and I did not think these would be appropriate for secondary content
groups. However they might be appropriate for an introductory
teaching course at some point in time.

I became really excited thinking about using these
autobiographies because of the [personal] 'story' of
beginning to think about a discipline in a different
way and the process of getting there and beyond. I
envisioned one for each content group to use for
information and for a model about how they needed to be
thinking about their content. I was also excited about
using these autobiographies as a sort of model to help
students look at their own personal narratives as they
developed them over the semester. [j#2 (added as I
reread early entry) pp. 8-‘92, 50-51]

My science education colleagues and I met again for a brief
time in the Spring of '92. I was still trying to think about and
collect texts that might help students think about their content
areas, how they knew them and how they could translate their
thinking and knowing into ways to teach for student understanding.
They suggested that I talk to another mutual colleague about other
texts because she had taught, as part of the science group, two
courses--Curriculum for Academic Learning and Learning of School
Subjects--in a thematic teacher education program at Michigan State
University called ”Academic Learning.”

Cindy seemed interested in my ideas for the revision of a
general secondary methods course. I explained that a lot of what I

had been thinking about, as far as format and intent, was based on

my experience teaching TE 101.

79

Cindy was interested in the idea of content groups in a
general methods course and the content specific texts I was seeking,
but like my other colleagues she expressed doubt that I would be
able to manage it with knowledge of only a few of the content areas.

C thought that the content groups sounded like an
interesting idea but she wondered how I would pull it

off since I did not have knowledge of more than two

contents. I told her I was worried about the same

thing but with readings specific to teaching and

learning in various contents I felt I could help them

to begin to think about how [their knowledge of]

content directed them toward appropriate method. [j #2,

7-'92, p. 5]

By this time my doubts had dimmed, pushed to the background by
my excitement and my conviction that if I could get the right texts,
create effective projects, and question effectively, the contents
would become the lenses through which we would view all that we
thought, talked and wrote about good teaching and learning. Cindy
suggested Wilson's article "Peering at History Through Different
Lenses” (Wilson and Wineburg, 1989), and "The English Teacher as
Respondent to the High School Writer” (Dunn, Florio-Ruane and Clark,

1989), as well as ”Understanding Understanding” (Nickerson, 1985).

o w e t ve . I
decided that most of the work the students would do in the course
would be through reflective writing. They would keep a dialogic
journal where they would discuss and react to their assigned
readings; a content group journal where they would write about the

discussions of their content groups and any insights/discoveries

80

they made connecting discussions and readings to teaching their
content; a personal narrative where they would analyze an instance
of content teaching in which they were the learner with the help of
class readings and discussions; and a field reflection paper in
which they would report, reflect on and analyze their field
experiences in relation to new information they were exploring in TE
204. I hoped that my students would develop new understandings of
old experiences and beliefs as they wrote about and examined new

conceptions of teaching and learning.

Dielegie_jnnznel§. My students would be required to keep a

dialogic journal for the entire semester to examine their reactions
to the texts and tasks of the course and new understandings they
would hopefully reach. I hoped this journal would be a place where
my students and I could discuss their questions and entering beliefs
about teaching and learning, and begin to develop new questions and
realizations about teaching and learning. Here is how I introduced
the dialogic journal in the syllabus.

Much of the material we will encounter together
will be difficult and not easily integrated into any
existing framework of knowledge about teaching and
learning you may already possess. We will be exploring
and, perhaps, building new frameworks together and
adjusting some existing ones. Writing about the issues
and concepts we encounter in the texts, class
conversations, and content group interaction will help
to develop and clarify your understandings. Dialogic
journal writing will initiate a conversation with the
authors of course texts and your TE 204 instructor that
will continue throughout the semester. This
conversation will be focused on assigned readings,
class discussion, group work field experience, and
related questions posed in response to your journal
entries. Journals may also be shared with your peers

81

in 204. Journals will be collected on a rotating
basis. [syllabus, Fall '92, p. 3]

Qontent jounnals. I also decided that my students would keep
another reflective journal, the content group journal. Each content
group would be responsible for one journal, and the members would
share the responsibility of writing in this journal each week for
the duration of the semester.

Each group will be expected to keep a group

journal. You will be given time in class to write

about the activities, discoveries, conversations, new

ways of thinking about the work of teaching, etc. Each

week a different member will be responsible for

recording the journal, however, all members are asked

to contribute ideas and information to the recorder.

[syllabus, Fall '92, p. 4]

I believed this journal would provide great insights into the

content group process for me, and into students' thinking about

their content in relation to the texts and tasks of the course.

Thinking abeue glaleglc jeunnels end eoneene jengnele, I told
Cindy about my intent to use dialogic journals. I also shared the
idea of a content group journal for each content, that individual
members would take responsibility for each week. She was skeptical
about the amount of work I had planned for myself and whether I
could do all that I planned. She suggested that I collect both
journals on an alternating basis.

I told C that I wanted my students to keep a

journal in which they responded to the readings in

detail each week. I also wanted them to keep a content

group journal in which they would write about their

discussions, thinking, decisions, they would perform
within the content group, taking turns after each

82

week's class meeting. We talked about the reality of
my being able to correct [respond to] all of these
journals each week/close to 70 [dialogic and content
group] between the two methods groups. With the
graduate course I would also be teaching as part of my
load, this sounded impossible. C's suggestion was that
I collect journals on a rotating basis so I would see
each journal 4-5 times per semester. This was her
approach in TE 205 . . . sounded much more manageable.

[ J #2. 7-'92. P- 5]

Fieldwogk ang tne unit plan. I also discussed my concern about

changing the field component with Cindy, especially the observation
portion. The secondary department and the teacher education
department required fieldwork for each methods course. For this
course, twenty seven hours of field experience, divided between
observation, tutoring, and actual teaching in a secondary content
classroom, was required. I wanted the ten hours of required
observation to be structured, so that students were looking for
specific things, discussed by the texts we were reading, not just
what the classroom teacher was ”doing.”

Cindy gave me copies of her syllabi (from TE 205C and TE 200C)
as well as information on unit planning and field observation from
these courses, to help me in my thinking about these tasks for my
students. I wanted the unit plan to be more than just a list of
materials and resources that my secondary students would check off
as they added them to their plan. I wanted the plan to be a
collaborative effort within the content groups, and I wanted the
unit plan to be developed through their knowledge of content as it

evolved through the semester.

83

I wanted each of them to take away a unit plan that they could
indeed teach, and that embodied the depth of thought that can happen
through the contributions of many. This unit plan and the steps
they would follow in conceptualizing and planning it would be not
only a product they could be proud of but a model to approach
planning a unit. They would not have any sense of the
implementation because they would not be required to teach it.

The old methods course seemed like an ideal beginning to think
about structured observation, tutoring and lesson planning, and the
actual implementation of some of those lessons, designed by content
groups. I thought the unit plan would have been more appropriate
in the advanced methods course, taught right before student
teaching with much more field teaching. At this juncture, however,
the unit plan was required by the department and had to be

implemented.

£1el§_:e£lee§len_nene;. I asked my students to describe, in a

narrative, what they observed and did during their twenty-seven
required hours of field, based in rural, suburban, and urban sites
with regular and special education students. Then they were asked
to analyze their narrative according to realizations they had
reached through course texts, tasks and conversations.

Requiring the paper instead of the standard field log was an
important decision. My students would be able to tell the story of
field and then proceed to interpret it according to the

understandings they had achieved during the course, at many

84

different levels. I hoped this would help them make connections to
the course instead of looking at the field experience as isolated

from their content and the content of our methods course.

Inlnklng throngh ehe mini-teaching assignnent, Because my

course was heavily field based as part of the larger program, my
students would need to teach three lessons in assigned secondary
classroom as part of their requirement. I believed that they would
need to practice teaching lessons using the new knowledge about
teaching and learning they would discover in class through readings,
discussions, and reflective writing. Toward that goal, I decided
to have students teach two lessons as content groups to the rest of
their peers. Each lesson would be a collaborative effort in
planning and implementation. I wanted their first mini-teaching
lesson to occur early in the semester to assess what they thought
they already knew about teaching a lesson.

Their first mini-lesson would be based on a ”teaching about the
moon” project I knew from my involvement in the Introduction to
Teaching course (Feiman-Nemser and Featherstone, 1992). In this
project students looked at their own learning and developing subject
matter knowledge in ways to teach it. I wanted to take a different
slice at the TE 101 project, however, and ask my students to teach a
concept from their content area using information about the moon as
a context for their teaching. I thought this assignment would help
them begin to see how they could connect their content concepts to

interesting ideas outside of their field. My students would also

85

use observation and moon journals to think about the moon as a
context to teach their content concept.

I wanted their second mini-lesson to occur later in the
semester right before they had to teach in the field. This
mini-lesson would be an attempt to teach about a content concept in
more than one way, based on the article "'150 Different Ways' of
Knowing: Representations of Knowledge in Teaching" (Wilson,
Shulman, Richert, 1987). The concept of ”representing knowledge" is
a difficult one and my students would need lots of exposure to the
idea and to practicing the idea in a teaching situation. I thought
that these mini-teaching lessons would help my students collaborate
in conceptualizing the work that goes into teaching a lesson and in
actually teaching the lesson. They could also teach these lessons

again in their field placements.

Thinking thzengh tne nereonal narzeglve. I spent an afternoon

in late July with Laura, discussing narrative as a vehicle for
surfacing student beliefs. Another colleague had told me that Laura
was basing her dissertation study around teacher narratives and I
was very interested. Laura thought my idea about using the personal
narrative was a good one but she gave me some advice that I didn't
want to hear. Laura thought it sounded viable, but as the major
vehicle, not combined with all of the other things I was talking

about--dialogic journals, content journals, unit plans [j#2, 7-92,

p. 7].

86

I really was not expecting Laura's counsel to take this tone.

I perceived her words as negative even though, looking back, they
were reasonable. I felt pretty insecure at this point and it took
me a while to pull myself back to a point where I could begin to put
this methods course together as it existed in my original vision. I
had lots of excellent advice, but I tenaciously held onto my
original conceptualization of keeping all of the parts of the course
intact as I had imagined them, and that included the personal
narrative.

I had been interested in the personal narrative as a vehicle
for preservice students to surface beliefs about teaching and
learning since I had listened to Dr. Diane Holt-Reynolds relate how
she had used the personal narrative format in the Introduction to
Teaching course (101). I had also found it to be revealing for my
101 students as they looked at their beliefs about teaching and
learning. I had taken a little different turn on the idea for my
methods course.

I conceptualized the personal narrative as a

context for students to view teaching and

1earning[through] as they progressed through the

course. I thought it would be a place that I could

look for change in beliefs/confronting

beliefs/identification of beliefs/understanding where

some[their] beliefs about teaching and learning had

come from . . . [j#2, 7-'92, p. 7]

I planned to use the writing process approach with my students as
they started with a significant learning episode in their content
area as a student. This task would provide another window through

which students could view their beliefs about teaching and learning

as they examined their own learning. It was also a place where I

87

could intervene and direct their thinking toward certain concepts
explored through the texts of the course. Revisions of the personal
narrative were scheduled after students read and discussed key
texts in the course (Hawkins; Wilson, Shulman and Richert; and
Anderson and Smith). I hoped these revisions would show me how they
were thinking about their learning and teaching episode in light of
new information about effective teaching and meaningful learning.
You will be required to write a personal narrative

about teaching and learning in your content area. Your

narrative will concentrate on an episode of teaching

and learning, in your secondary content area, in which

you were the learner. You will begin writing your

narrative on the first day of class and you will

continue to revise and extend it as the semester

continues. Your narrative will look somewhat different

as you expand your knowledge base about teaching and

learning through your experiences in TE 204. You will

do three revisions and a final analysis of your
narrative. [syllabus, Fall '92, p. 5]

Laura suggested two books. WW
Experience, Shubert and Ayers (ed.), and Staples Lives Tell;

Nazreplve eng Qialogne in Edueatien, Witherell and Noddings (ed.),

and an article " Retrospective: autobiography and the analysis of
educational experience” (Grumet, 1990), that I might read as I
thought this task through.

Conversations with my peers highlighted problematic areas
again and again and forced me to think about the realities of the
course again and again. I remember listening and feeling that they
were right; however, I was unable to bring the objectivity they
possessed to the task. My colleagues were looking at a "course";
I was looking at a symbol of what I had learned and who I was

becoming as a teacher educator and an individual. My vantage point

88

prevented me from seeing the problematic areas of the course in the

same ways my colleagues did.

geeree fitzueture end Syllabes

My syllabus was very detailed because I attempted to explain
for my students the ideas behind the course, the organization
through the focused course questions addressed earlier in this
chapter, and the purpose of the course projects (tasks) and readings
(texts).

I organized the course around some important ideas that spoke
to the essence of what I wanted to happen in this course. I wanted
my students to walk away from this course with an awareness of the
profundity of teaching in relation to who they were, in relation to
their content and their interaction with their students. I wanted
to foster the beginnings of a new understanding of the work of
teaching. I wrote about this in my introduction in my syllabus.

TE 204 is designed around classroom and field

experiences that challenge you to examine your beliefs

about subject matter knowledge and what it means to

teach for student understanding in the context of a

secondary school. You will be asked to consider how

ghee you know and how you know it informs your choice

of ghee to teach and he! to teach it. [syllabus, Course

Description, Fall 1992, p. l]

I wanted my preservice students to grapple with certain key
ideas through the content and experiences of the course. I felt
that they needed to become aware of issues of equity and access to
knowledge in the secondary schools they would teach in; the

diversity of the adolescent population they would teach their

content to; and the myriad constraints of the secondary setting. I

89

also wanted my students to examine their beliefs about teaching,
learning and knowing their content, and to compare their beliefs
with those of other content teachers introduced through the texts of
the course. I wanted my students to realize that teaching and
learning presupposed a relationship between students and content,
fostered by the teacher.

My students needed to recognize that they could be limited in
their teaching by the level of their content knowledge. I wanted
them to recognize the importance of pedagogical reasoning and
informed decision making. I hOped they would come to see how one
content area links to another content area.

Finally, I invited my students to participate, as a members
of content groups, in a collaborative learning experience. I hoped
that they would carry this idea into the professional setting of
teaching.

The design of TB 204 will also provide

opportunities for extensive peer collaboration, as you

wrestle with the work involved in planning for

instruction in your particular content, as well as

personal and group reflection on issues that arise from

course texts, individual writings, experiences in the

field, and course conversations. [syllabus, Course
Description, Fall 1992, p. 1]

ve e

The decisions that I made during the planning of the course had
a lot to do with the conversations I had during the spring and
summer of '92, the experiences I had as a secondary teacher, a
novice teacher educator, an Introduction to Teaching (101)

instructor, and a graduate student for three years at Michigan

90

State. Most of the texts I selected I had encountered as a graduate
student or instructor of TE 101. I wanted my methods students to
begin thinking about teaching in the secondary schools differently.
I wanted them to surface and think about their beliefs about
teaching their content to diverse student populations so they could
clarify and define those beliefs and defend them in the face of
current research on teaching and learning. I also wanted them to
think about their content and how they needed to understand it in a
multiplicity of ways to teach it effectively.

The decisions concerning the texts, tasks, and social
(organization for the course were made to facilitate student
identification of and reflection on personal beliefs, and to
provide a good measure of dissonance to mix into their firmly held
beliefs. This plan seemed possible and even powerful. As I thought
about my hopes for my students and myself, I pictured us a learners
and researchers involved in the study of teaching. I was very
excited to see how the idea of content groups as focused communities
of inquiry would work to surface or clarify misconceptions about
teaching in secondary schools. I was also interested to see how
small collaborative learning communities might help all students
have greater access to the content of the methods course, and
whether these groups would help one another deepen their knowledge
of content in some way.

I was gently cautioned during my early conversations about the
scope of the course I wanted to implement. I sensed that my

colleagues were correct in their counsel, but I chose to ignore them

91

at the time. An inner struggle, however, ensued and continued
throughout my inquiry, as I replayed their warnings. Was I somehow
misrepresenting myself as someone who could teach this course? Was
I being dishonest with myself and ultimately with my students?
Would my lack of knowledge in some content areas cause some students
to benefit more than others? In attempting to make my vision of a
new secondary methods course real would I compromise my students'
learning?

I knew that I had planned a complex course and recognized, at
some level, that the amount of work for the students would be great,
but they would not be doing the work of the course alone. They
would have the support of their content groups and I would be
working with them and learning right along with them. I had my
syllabus, thought provoking texts, and interesting tasks for my
students and me to interact around. I was buoyed by my excitement
and the unknown things we would discover together and separately. I
was nervous, expectant, and ready to begin an adventure with my

students.

CHAPTER V

GETTING THE COURSE STARTED

Overv w e a er

In this chapter I describe my first meeting with my students
and what I brought to our opening encounter-my beliefs, anxieties,
uncertainties and excitement. What my students brought is
considered as well. I describe initial organizational tasks
necessary to begin the course and the students' responses to those
first tasks. Finally, I discuss what I took away from our first
class--my thoughts, continued uncertainties and new questions. This

is a chapter about the importance and impact of beginnings.

The Importence 9f the First Day

The first day of any course I teach is very significant to me
for a number of reasons. It is the time when lasting impressions
are sometimes formed about the instructor and the work of the
course. It is also the time when students begin to develop notions
about their role in the course. In this instance, the first three
hours my students spent together were given over to getting to know
one another in relation to closely held beliefs about teaching a

content, and teaching and learning in a broader sense.

92

93

At this first meeting my students and I prepared for a journey
together and began to build an atmosphere of trust as we shared
beliefs about teaching and learning we brought to the classroom. It
was also the time that I explained and began to model my teacher

role as facilitator and learner.

Wh tude s nd I
W

My students came to our first meeting with preconceptions about
the methods course. They had knowledge of the other beginning
secondary methods course that had been taught before, as well as
information about how the previous instructor taught, passed along
by peers who had taken it before them. So they brought preconceived
ideas and expectations about what a secondary methods course would
be like.

On the first day of class I asked students: "What do you hope
to take away from this course?” They said that their methods course
would be where they would find out all they would need to know about
how to teach, especially since this methods course contained a field
component. For example students expected to learn about components
of the teaching process that they would then apply to their content
in some manner in the field [j#l, 9-l&3 '92, p. 5].

I also expected students to measure the information in the
course against what they already knew about teaching from years of
observing it (Lortie, 1975). I sensed that they would think of me

as a new instructor teaching the same things that were

94

conventionally contained in a fairly typical secondary methods
course.

I did not do a very good job of containing my excitement about
our working together, but I was more successful in covering up my
uncertainties generated by the advice given by my graduate
colleagues, momentarily pushed aside by my construction of this
complex course and my vision of what could be.

The mood at our first meeting together was one of reservation
on the part of the students, indicated by sighs, incredulous facial
expressions and initial quietness, along with a measured
willingness to "go along" with a plan that seemed to be different
than the conventional fare of typical secondary methods courses.
Students indicated this by unsolicited positive comments such as
"sounds like fun," ”sounds like hard work but interesting" or "wow,
I never knew there was this much to think about" [marginal notes,

lesson plan 1, 9-1, '92].

0 iz tiona sks

W

I knew I had a lot of ground work to lay before we could begin
to think about planning and instruction, which secondary methods
students believe should be the entire focus of the course. I
suspected that the students would not be receptive to this
foundational preparation. They would expect answers and packaged
steps to insure their success in the field, historically considered

the most important part of the methods course.

95

It seemed necessary to me to help these students

build a foundation of knowledge of teaching and

learning [based on current educational research]

because they have only had an introductory course at

this point, that consists primarily of a field

observation (80 hours) . . . while the observation is

helpful because of conversations with teachers and

students they teach, it is not particularly structured

or designed for preservice students to come away with

new knowledge of teaching pedagogy, rather it seems to

add to the hours of Lortie's apprenticeship of

observation [j#l, 8-92, p. l]

I spoke to my first section about my work as a graduate
student at Michigan State University and about my belief that the
"method" in teaching grew out of one's knowledge of content and
context. I explained that this course was my response to those
general secondary methods courses that separated content from
methods and proposed a list of strategies to be utilized in any
content area. I also explained that this course had never been
taught in this way before. Their response and mine, as I watched
all of us approach this course in secondary methods with content
specific concerns, would define my dissertation study.

I explained my intent that our early meetings would be given
over to interpreting the plan for the course, given to the students
orally and formally through the syllabus. It would also be the
beginning, I hoped, of a co-construction of some shared
understandings of issues and concepts in teaching secondary students
content, and teaching in a secondary setting. I also intended that
these early meetings would help us to begin to know one another

through our beliefs about teaching and learning, surfaced by the

early texts we would read and related tasks we would work through.

96

A common "text" we would share through the semester was the

syllabus.

I t c n e abus

As I invited my students to look over the syllabus, a silence
settled over the group. They read the syllabus along with me and
made notations on it, rarely lifting their heads as they read. I
commented a few times on their silence and attempted to persuade
them to think of the course in chunks instead of in its entirety.
Some stated that they had never had a syllabus this long before and
that it was difficult to comprehend it all at once [journal #1, 9-1,
p. 7]. I explained that the syllabus would be a constant reference
for them as the semester progressed, through the indepth
explanations of the course components and tasks and the focused
calendar listing due dates for course texts and tasks.

The silence was daunting and my excitement was tempered by the
air of anxiety created by the exploration of my syllabus. I thought
a thorough explanation of each course element would relieve student
anxiety. This was the first time I doubted, if only momentarily,
whether I could teach this course in this form. I mentally noted
how difficult the course sounded and the enormous amount of
reflective work, all designed to help my students connect their
content to learning to teach. They were not expecting this and did

not yet know how to think about it [j#l, 9-'92, p. 6].

97

M

For a first step toward getting to know one another through our
content, I asked my students to perform a fast-write (free-write),
"Teaching [their content area] is . . . .” This would provide
interview information as my students took time to know something
about a fellow student and their content area, and would provide me
with information about entering student beliefs about teaching in
their content areas and teaching in general.

When they exchanged fast-writes I asked them to interview one
another. They were asked to pose, and, in turn, answer the
question. . . . Where do you think these beliefs originated?

After completing their fastwrites, exchanging them and
interviewing one other based on the fastwrite, students introduced
one another as content majors and relayed the beliefs their fellow
student held about that content, sometimes agreeing with their
content peer's views.

Many of the responses were predictable, and echoed typical
preservice teacher beliefs, and tended to define the majority of
preservice beliefs of both sections of TE 204, across the boundaries
of all contents represented. Even though they spoke about teaching
a content, many still connected familiar characteristics to
teaching a content well (e.g. making it fun, interesting) and
attributed to good teachers' patience and understanding. A student
of mathematics based effectiveness on personal characteristics
rather than knowledge of content, while a music student stated that

she already knew all she needed to know to teach:

98

". . . secondary math teachers are successful only if
they are patient and understanding . . ." [fw #1,
9-'92]

"Teaching art is fun and interesting." [fw #3, 9-'92]
"Teaching in music is anything and everything but a
challenge to me in terms of working . . . with high
school students." [fw #11, 9-'92]

”Teaching English is fun for both the student and

teacher. . . . English is used everyday so it's easier
to explain "why” it's needed, unlike math . . . {fw
#23, 9-'92}

A few student responses did not fit with typical preservice student
beliefs and represented a minority of students in the two sections.
These individuals tended to be older, non-traditional students, who
had worked for a number of years in other professions.

"Teaching art is experiencing life . . . I see my world

as an artist . . . communicating political, worldly

visions through the creation of artwork . . .” [fw #8]

". . . teaching music must be done at the student's

level, must have elements they can relate with . . . an

openness on the part of the teacher to be sensitive to

the students' attitudes, belief systems, and build on

what they already possess [fw #5]

These fastwrites gave me information about how students were
thinking about teaching in their content, what beliefs about

teaching their content they brought with them and where they might

have come from.

W
The social organization of the course was a key component of
the larger plan. All of the work of the course flowed through and

out of the content groups. Because of their importance to the

”plan,” early formation and tasks were critical in setting the stage

99

for further work in the course. During our first meeting, I asked
students to write their majors and minors on a 3x5 card. During the
break I grouped the cards and formed tentative content area groups.
In a few cases I had singular majors who did not have others to form
a group with. These students were encouraged to join groups which
represented their minors. In the teacher education program, they
would be required to teach, observe, and tutor in their minors and
majors at some point in time.

I tried to match groups for interrelatedness; a drama major
became a member of the art content group and an art major, English
minor became a member of the English group. These groups were
encouraged to incorporate these majors into their thinking and
planning.

Since the content area groups would be the locus of the texts
and tasks in the course, I spent a long time explaining the
expectations, focus and role of the content groups in this methods
course.

When I spoke to students about expectations for

content groups, I told them that I expected them to

share all of their thinking with one another even if

there happened to be conflict in agreement . . . I

wanted to know what they found hard or helpful about

thinking about the "substance" of the course, texts,

planning, discussions, analysis of articles [and

essays], and [other] group tasks through the lens of

their subject matter. [j #1, 9-'92, p. 9)

I again expressed my belief that content and pedagogy cannot be
separated. I explained that it was critical to make knowledgeable

decisions about how one might teach a particular concept within a

content area, and that all methods would not accomplish an effective

100

connection/bridge for students to understand the concept being
considered.

I told my students that the formation of the content groups
would allow them to have a particular context from which to view and
co-construct elements of good teaching from texts and tasks we would
involve ourselves in during the tenure of our course. I repeated
the importance of this organization often throughout the first weeks
of the course.

I posited notions about group endeavor and what might happen.

I gave examples of group members who were not verbal or giving of
thoughts and ideas during discussions, members who did not show up
for meetings outside of class, if they were needed, or did not come
prepared to discuss texts or perform tasks in their content area
groups. I described members who had accepted a job or role but did
not perform it wholeheartedly, or at all, and equality of
commitment.

I used examples from my own participation in groups and brought
home the idea that all participants needed to contribute their
strengths to the group in ways that would carry the group forward
with their teaching and learning inquiry, in the course. I shared
a personal experience as a member of a group during my graduate
course work. I was faced with the uncomfortable fact that many
members in my group, and I, were silenced by two dominant voices
in the group. This went on for a time and I became more distressed
by these events as did others. I told my students that I finally

decided that I needed to approach these individuals separately and

lOl

let them know what they were doing. I really did not believe their
actions were deliberate, so they needed to know how they were
affecting the dynamics of the group. Because of my communication
with these members things changed and other voices then had a
chance to be heard.

I questioned my students about the choices I had as a group
member and asked them what might have happened had I chosen to do
nothing, or to confront within the group. Most students were
against confronting in the group. Some students offered a ”wait and
see” solution, writing a letter to the offender, or ignoring the
situation and getting the work done. I was surprised at their
responses. I thought they would have been in favor of confronting,
negotiating, in some way making their voices heard. These were
individuals who said they had not been asked to collaborate,
especially in instances of learning. I found, however, in the
course of the study that this notion of collaboration was easy for
most to implement.

The basic investment here, with a content area group, was
commitment to the idea of collaboration and then taking the
responsibility to be a fully functioning member of the group,
therefore supporting the other members and approaching problems that
might occur within the dynamics of getting work done.

My students appeared to be initially intrigued by the concept
of content groups as a social organization for the course and by the
notion of thinking and talking about teaching and learning through

the context of their content. Students were talking to one another

102

about who would be in their content group as they returned from
break. I heard a few students commenting that the course sounded
like it might be interesting. I did not hear any negative comments

about the idea of content groups at this time.

Goo d's G als Schools

Our first task together within the social organization of
content area groups was to work with "Goals For Schooling In The
U.S.” framed by John Goodlad (1984, pp. 51-56). These pages from
”We Want It All" in A Elace Celleg Sehoel, list the most commonly
identified goals for schooling gleaned from a historical search and
review of multiple school documents, state and local, as part of his
study of U.S. schools. Goodlad presents these goals as a ”guide”
for those involved in the work of school and as a ”beginning point
in the dialogue about education" (p. 51). Goodlad groups his goals
under the headings; Academic, Vocational, Social, Civic, and
Cultural, and Personal. I thought this would be a good piece of
text to get my students working together in their content groups, as
they considered some identified concerns for schooling. I also
thought that initially dealing with nationally perceived goals for
schools from the perspective of students who wished to be secondary
content teachers, would move us nicely into my first organizing

question What does it mean to teach in a secondary setting?

103

Student Responses to the Task

In this early part of the course the students took on the idea
of content groups with enthusiasm. As I visited each group on the
first day, I observed them exploring their first group task, reading
and responding as content teachers to Goodlad's Goals, in relation
to the following questions: How do these goals concern you as a
teacher of content? How do they concern you as a teacher in a
secondary school? Are they realistic? comprehensive? What do they
imply for teaching and learning? Do you see any problems in
carrying out these goals? Students' voices were animated, excited
and everyone, without exception, contributed to the content group
discussions. As I walked around, pausing at each group, I found my
own excitement growing. Students were interacting with one another
and sharing their ideas and views freely. I had assigned particular
groups to particular headings: science, physical education and
mathematics to academic and vocational goals; history to
citizenship participation and enculturation under social, civic, and
cultural goals; English to interpersonal understanding and moral
and ethical character under social, civic, and cultural goals; art,
drama and music to emotional and physical well being and creative
and aesthetic expression under personal goals. Each group attempted.
to decide how these goals would affect them as secondary teachers of
content, what their responsibility might be to promote these goals
as a secondary content teacher, whether they were comprehensive, and

what they might imply for teaching and learning. I also heard my

104

English group struggling to think about how they might deal with the
moral and ethical goals Goodlad sets out.

I gathered the following statements from the various groups I
visited as they discussed their assignment. The mathematics group
thought that goals were "the things that school board meetings
addressed” and made sure the community knew that the goals were
being addressed. They saw teaching and Goodlad's goals at odds and
appeared to want to take no responsibility for working toward goals;
"There is no time to teach and cover goals. There is only time to
focus on content areas and curriculum. I wouldn't even read these
goals . . . a teacher needs to accept responsibility for his own
decisions” [j#l, 9-‘92, p. 14, grp. 2) This group seemed to see
teaching, curriculum design and content decision making as a
solitary endeavors. The history group considered Goodlad's goals
”outdated but noble” and questioned the relevancy and the
possibility of working toward them. They did agree that
understanding one's teaching environment is important in presenting
the content and must be considered if teachers intend to be
effective with students. They spoke of the environment as "relative
and relevant” and they believed that events in history needed to be
presented in ways that ”do not sacrifice important pieces of
content” [j#l, 9-'92, p. 13, grp. 2] They spoke of utilizing many
sources to create a true rendition of a historical event. This
group projected an interpretive view of history that seemed to

embrace the goals they referred to as "outdated but noble.”

105

One English content group struggled with the moral and ethical
goals and how they might apply these goals to their classroom. They
tried to connect some part of Goodlad's goals to what was happening
now by connecting them to the teaching of The Scarlet Leeter. They
thought, together, how they might connect the novel to a
contemporary moral issue their students might be dealing with, that
might have the same or similar social impact that adultery had
during Hester Prinn's era. They linked this Puritan view to current
societal beliefs about AIDS victims today, and tried to make some
connections for their students. I asked them whether their students
could understand the implications of adultery from their vantage
point in 1992. I asked them what they would need to do as teachers
to provide a background for their students in order to bring the
issue of adultery into focus [j#l, CSW, p. 16, 9-15-92].

Some students talked about time constraints preventing them
from thinking about broader goals for schools. I got a sense that
some students thought they alone should be the ones to decide what
goals needed to guide their teaching.

A history student expressed a belief that teachers in urban
areas are unable to teach because of the environment, so the
”ideals” that Goodlad compiled would not apply there. He stated
further that these goals might work in a suburban area, but "never
in an urban area.” I was intrigued by his statement and his group
members' seeming acceptance of it so I probed further as I took on
the role that I wanted to play with the content groups. His view of

the urban area schools was a stereotypical one. He didn't think the

106

urban teachers taught much, "they just basically survive.” I said,
"It sounds like you are saying that urban students cannot be
expected to learn anything and the teachers cannot be expected to
teach anything because of the constraints of their environment.” I
asked him further if he was giving the teachers an excuse not to
teach and the students an excuse not to learn, and further, if he
believed that teachers did not teach in urban schools. He stated
that "urban schools are war zones" and students are equipped with
”guns and knives” so teachers were afraid of their students and that
he was "just stating reality.” I asked this student if he had ever
attended or been inside of an urban school and he responded that he
had not. When I asked him what he was basing his belief on his
reply was ”the media” [j#l, 9-'92, pg 11, grp. 1]. Other students
said the goals were too perfect and did not apply to the reality of
any of the schools.

One student was upset by the task and told me, in class, he
didn't need this ”theory," what he needed was ”real” information to
help him in the classroom. When I asked him what he meant by "real"
information he stated that he needed to know what to do when a kid
wouldn't do his homework or come to class. He didn't want to know
what the ideals were. They would not help him become a good
teacher. I told him that I understood that many individuals did not
think that theory was important in the profession of teaching.

These individuals believed that teaching consisted of codified rules
of behavior to follow, quick tricks, and easy solutions. I told him

that I believed there was more to learning to teach effectively and

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asked him to stick with our course plan and write about his feelings
in his dialogic journal. He agreed [annotated lesson plans, p. 2
9-3, '92].

Some student responses were predictable, such as placing the
responsibility for learning with the teacher” . . . the goals must
not be being met if students are graduating with a third grade
reading level . . . in order for the teacher to get the student
motivated to learn the teacher must be motivated to teach. . . .”
[English, group #1, p. 2].

Others were surprising, reflecting views that students had
about their content, its role in the secondary setting, and the
students they might be teaching; ”Our second set of 'goals' related
to social and civic goals. It was unanimous that although the
science disciplines will not actively teach these goals . . . we, as
teachers, must understand them in order to successfully negotiate
the classroom dynamics. We will reinforce and influence, not
instruct. We must present the positive values by demonstration"
[Science group #1, p. 3]. This group of individuals seemed to think
of the goals as almost foundational to understanding their role in
the classroom. They also stated that they will "live” the goals
and teach them by example. As a group of potential science
teachers, they did not see ”their goals” as limited only to
Goodlad's academic goals.

During our first meeting I explained that we would routinely
bring closure to our small group discussions each class session by

debriefing in the larger group. Content area groups would discuss

108

and carry out tasks in their focus areas and then bring their ideas
and conclusions to the whole group for consideration. My students,
in their first group experience, took this debriefing to a level I
had not even considered. I envisioned that my content area groups
would stay focused within their own group. As they were debriefing
in the larger group after the Goodlad task, I was surprised to hear
one of my "academic goals” groups advising the physical education
group about how they might think about connecting the academic goals
that Goodlad had listed to their content. The physical education
students stated that they had found it hard to connect their content
to these goals. The advice was spontaneous and positively accepted.
The English group suggested that they could have their students
”write about the experience of running a mile, climbing a rope,
scoring a goal, or what it felt like to be part of a team." The
science group responded that physical education could "certainly be
connected with physics, biology, running and figuring velocity,
wind resistance, blood pressure, blood levels at different
altitudes, respiration, flight of a ball when thrown, hit or kicked

.” [j#l, 9-'92, pp. 16-17].

This phenomenon of thinking across content occurred many times
as the semester progressed. The members of one group would help
members of another think about how they might teach something,
interpret something from another focus. The groups did not become
isolated communities, they always retained their membership in the

larger group of members of TE 204.

109

M i k about the irst a

I remember sitting in my office after my first meeting with
each section and replaying my introduction of the course syllabus.
I had not looked at it all together until our first meeting and the
magnitude of the course was just then settling in. Would I be able
to do this? What if I couldn't? What if the students couldn't?
What would happen if we couldn't? What would happen to my study?

I also remember reading the fast-writes and highlighting with
marker the common beliefs about teaching content that many students
had and a few uncommon ones. The general terms ”fun," ”patience,”
"easy," ”challenging," "understanding" applied to teaching and
content teachers were expected, but ”experiencing," ”openness,”
”sensitivity," "building," ”communicating" were not. I was excited
about the uncommon responses and the interdisciplinary thinking that
had spontaneously occurred.

Responses to the first content group task helped me to begin
to know my students in relation to their beliefs about their
content, who they would teach it to, what they would teach, and
perhaps how they would think about teaching it. Listening to the
content discussions and probing students' statements provided a
window into their personal views, views that would influence their
professional focus. This kind of important information provided me
access to sensitive issues that needed further exploration. Some
of my students thought of their content in interpretive and creative

ways in relation to teaching and learning it, while others held more

110

conventional views. Some of my students had inaccurate ideas about
the schools they would teach in and the students they would teach.

From the representative statements documented in my reflective
journal, I gained insight into what my students thought about the
whole business of developing goals that secondary schools would be
expected to carry out. I also learned about student beliefs about
the role of the teacher, what they were willing to do and what they
thought they would be able to do.

These first tasks also helped to bring my students together
through conversations about personal beliefs about content teaching
as well as broader issues of schooling. Their beliefs about
teaching were not very different from the students I had taught at
Michigan State University. I was surprised at the strength of the
beliefs that surfaced about teaching and learning in urban settings,
however, it confirmed my suspicion that my students needed to learn
about the differences they would encounter when they taught in
diverse settings. I had already planned for this through the texts
that I selected for discussion during the first course question
explored in the following chapter, What does it mean to teach in a
secondary setting?

The initial meeting with each section set the tone for the
remaining classes, acquainted students with one another and the
social organization of content groups, provided students with a long

glimpse of the content of the course, and allowed me to ”try on” my

lll

complex role as facilitator, learner and researcher. I moved
forward from the experience of the first day with high expectations

for the semester.

CHAPTER VI

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TEACH
IN A SECONDARY SETTING?

e ew

When I thought about where to begin, it seemed logical to start
with an exploration of the place my students would teach and the
pupils they would teach. This was a missing piece in my own
preservice education and in the previous secondary methods course I
had taught. While field observation, tutoring, and limited
classroom teaching experience provides contact with secondary
schools and students, contact should not imply understanding.

I designed this organizing question to initiate a challenge to
my students' entering beliefs about secondary teaching. Their
attempts to answer the course question, ”What does it mean to teach
in a secondary setting?” would require them to examine closely the
context of the high school setting that they had spent so much time
in. I wanted students to approach this question as though they were
unpacking an old trunk in the attic filled with high school
memorabilia, once powerfully defined by emotions garnered from
experiential knowledge and now, artifacts of learning and
schooling. I would ask them to carefully lift and slowly examine

these artifacts in light of new information about learning,

“2

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teaching, and learning to teach, gleaned from the texts and tasks of
this beginning secondary methods course.

Students explored through instructor selected, commonly shared
texts about how schools are structured for some students to succeed
while others do not. Through these texts students examined the
institutional aspects of schooling, issues of fairness and
differential access to knowledge in secondary schools, the diversity
of the adolescents they will teach, and what exactly is involved in
developing a teaching-learning relationship. Students developed a
more realistic, objective picture of the secondary school through
selected texts, and begin to look differently at the context of
their work. Involvement in learning tasks built around the texts
and the course question help students begin to look critically at
their own secondary experiences and beliefs about teaching based on
their experiences.

Our exploration of the question ”What does it mean to teach in
a secondary setting?” began with students reading important texts to
create a common context for content group and whole group discussion
and their responses to those texts. Students worked through
learning tasks centered around reflective writing about course texts
and personal experiences as learners. In this chapter I report on
student responses to these learning tasks.

I also discuss my thinking about the work of the course at the
time, including some important conversations I had with committee
members as I worked through some difficulties in implementing

elements of the course. These conversations were formal in that

114

they were scheduled, taped and transcribed. Finally I report on
what I think about the work of the course now with more experience

and distance.

a n e ts r F 5 Co se tio
Sheppihg Mall high School and "Brookline High School.” It was
important to me that my students first take a realistic look at the
complexities of the secondary setting and the pupils they would be

teaching there. Cohen, Farrar, and Powell's first chapter in

Sheppihg hall high Scheol and Lightfoot's chapter ”Brookline High
School,“ from The Good high School (1983), provided a common frame

of reference for our discussions. I used these two pieces to begin
to look at the issue of the different kinds of knowledge pupils in
high school are exposed to and the assumptions that drive choices of
what to teach and how to teach it.

These two writings portray large urban and suburban schools,
providing an arena for talking about teaching and learning and
teachers and pupils in diverse secondary settings. I wanted my
students to become informed about urban schools since future
teaching jobs will be available in the urban areas. Most of my
students had never entered an urban high school or a large suburban
high school. Their experiences were in small rural settings and
culturally homogeneous communities. I tried to assess what they
knew about urban schools through the questions ”Can you describe the
inside of an urban high school?" "What's going on there?" ”Have

you ever seen the inside of an urban classroom?” ”What was going on

115

there?.” Typically, their answers consisted of misinformation in
relation to the urban secondary schools here. Answers ranged from
inner city schools are "dirty," doors are "chained" to keep the
students from "cutting class," to schools are "chaotic." [annotated
lesson plans, 10-6, p. 7] Through further questioning, (”Where are
your statements coming from-what has happened to make you say
this?"), I learned that students' knowledge about urban schools and
neighborhoods came from media reporting, "It's all over the
newspapers and television." Personal cultural bias seemed to be
implied because most students denied ever being inside of any urban
school unless they were competitors in sports or sports spectators
in the local university area. One student stated that when he went
to basketball games there were "always fights and coach got us out
of there fast.” [annotated lesson plans, 10-6, p. 7] When I asked
the students who had been involved in sports competitions in the
urban setting whether they had ever seen a fight or been involved in
one, all but one individual denied involvement, and most had
observed only small altercations involving two or three individuals.
The readings raised questions about issues of fairness, access
to knowledge, tensions and constraints of an urban high school, and
the diverse student populations found in large urban and suburban
high schools. Many of my students were not aware of these ideas;
nor had they questioned them in relation to their own secondary
experience, something I hoped they would do. I handed out the two
excerpts from Lightfoot (1983), and Powell, Farrar and Cohen

(1985), and asked students to read them for the following week,

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commenting that they would find these high school settings very
different from their own, yet they might find similarities as well.
Students picked up study questions at the beginning of our next
class and began discussing them in their content groups for thirty
to forty minutes. I sat in with each group and joined the
conversation by asking for a clarification of a statement, or by
asking a question about something I felt the group had not covered
in depth. Groups became very comfortable with this procedure and
over time I sensed it became expected and welcomed. Early in the
course the students would stop talking about the text and/or
discussion questions as I joined their groups to listen and
question. As they became used to the idea of my listening to what
they said and my questioning to challenge them to think more deeply
about a text concept, they would ”make a place” for me by putting an
extra chair (I had brought my own earlier) in the midst of their
group. Often they would greet me with a question or a statement
beginning something like, ”We were just discussing . . . and we were
surprised that we had different opinions about what it meant....”
Many times I would become engrossed in a content group's discussion
and my own questioning to understand their statements, and spend
too much time. Members of other groups would approach me and ask me
if I would spend some time with them. Many times "spending time"
just meant listening to what they were saying and probing now and

again to clarify what they meant.

117

The Deily Grind, I thought that Jackson's (1968) chapter, "The
Daily Grind,” would provide an opportunity to view a part of school
that is sensed yet rarely discussed, the unpublished curriculum. I
wanted my students to reflect on their own school experience in
light of this idea. In their content group discussions, I asked my
students to look closely at what learners are asked to endure as
they enter school. I asked them to get in touch with memories or
feelings they might have had about the hidden curricula in their
own school experiences. I suggested that it was probable that they
had learned to deal successfully with the unpublished curriculum and
that they probably knew others who had not been successful. This
text was important in exploring the first course question because my
students would be promoting unpublished curricula driven by their
beliefs and expectations of the community their school was a part

of.

The egg 9f Sehool Cezriculhh, Melnick's (1992) chapter, "The

Out of School Curriculum," further developed the context of the
secondary setting by introducing my students to the whole student
they would be teaching. Melnick helped my students think about how
to utilize their students' lives outside of school to enhance their
teaching. The article discussed teachers' out of school curriculum
as well, and how it affects their teaching and interactions with
their students. It highlighted the students' realities outside of
school and how that entered the classroom each day. I thought

reading this piece would help my students understand better the

118

students and teachers they encountered in Shopping Meli high School

Powell, Farrar and Cohen (1985) and Lightfoot's "Brookline High
School” (1983).

I, Thee, it. Hawkins' essay, "I, Thou, It," was particularly
important for my students to read because I felt it coalesced all of
the important components of teaching and learning that I wanted my
students to know and think about. The article articulates a role
for teacher and students in the "plan" of teaching and learning. It
also identifies ongoing processes that need to be mastered to teach
well to a diverse student population. Hawkins does not depict
teaching as a singular act or attempt. Students are ever present
defining the act of teaching and learning. The teacher is also ever
present, but in a far different role than the one internalized by
preservice students. Hawkins' teacher is always listening,
observing, diagnosing, providing students with myriad resources to
learn from and with, yet not always in the foreground.

I introduced the essay by modeling the reading of an early
passage on "love and respect." I read a sentence and then stopped
and asked myself aloud what I thought this meant in everyday
thinking and then in relation to teaching and learning. For
example, the sentence: "An environment of 'loving' adults who are
themselves alienated from the world around them is an educational
vacuum” (p. 48), caused me to ask my students, ”How does one become
alienated from the world? Why would this alienation create an
educational vacuum? What is an educational vacuum? Where does one

find an environment of "loving” adults? Why does Hawkins mark the

119

word "loving" with quotation marks? How can I relate this statement
to teaching and learning?" and so on. When I encountered a word I
did not understand, I tried to figure it out from the context or I
looked it up and tried to connect it with my own knowledge.

The other important aspect of this essay for me was to try to
help students begin to understand the relationship that must exist
in a classroom between the teacher, student, and content and how
that could look in the secondary setting. This relationship
(Hawkins' I, thou, it triangle) contained the substance of effective
teaching and learning at any level. I asked groups to select a
teacher from the chapter assigned from The_Shpppihg_flell_fligh
Seheel and describe the ”triangle" of ”I, thou, it” in that
teacher's class and describe whether or not they saw a balanced
relationship in the classroom. Hawkins' essay provided a window for,

viewing the interrelationship of student, teacher and content.

w t t o ded t

Students found the excerpt from Cohen, Farrar and Powell's
Shpppihg_he11_fligh_SeheeT intriguing. They expressed their
amazement at the size and selection of courses in a large urban high
school, since many had come from schools where the graduating class
may have been twenty or thirty. They found the issue of access to
high status knowledge for some students and not others disturbing,
and the idea of teachers teaching in ways that did not facilitate
student learning startling. They also discovered that they had

different ideas about what good teaching of content was. Some

120

students had a problem with Mr. Lynch, who taught the elements of
the short story through comic book form, while others thought his
approach was wonderful and that the students learned a great deal
about writing and illustrating a short story. It was difficult for
me to present a neutral ”face" as I queried students about their
belief that Mr. Lynch was doing a good job with his students because
”these students didn't want to be in school anyway and they probably
couldn't read very well" [annotated lesson plans, 9-15, p. 4].

My students liked the idea of comparing a high school to a
shopping mall and it introduced them to the issue of equal access.
Most content groups recognized that students were offered different
preparation in school. While some attributed the difference in
preparation to school and teacher expectations, "lower class (SES)
kids never get the chance to excel because schools are set up for
the middle class students . . . teachers have low expectations for
these students and will not push them to succeed [cgj, math. #7, p.
7], others blamed the students, "what you put forth determines what
you get, things like enthusiasm, willingness, a good attitude”
[cgj.#5, math, p. 5], ”students who succeed are committed and in
search of an education while others are not interested in learning

. they lack the motivation of the committed student [cgj#4,
Eng., p. 3].] Students found themselves referring back to this
particular reading and the teachers in the first chapter, (Mr.
Lynch, Mrs. Fish, Dr. McBride, Mrs. Jefferson) as they read other

articles about teaching and learning.

121

Students used the characters of Mr. Lynch, Mrs. Austin and Ms.
Fish as they thought about Hawkins' essay and the engagement of
student and teacher with the content. They drew triangles for these
teachers' classrooms and designated with arrows the interaction of
student, teacher and content. This was helpful to clarify quality
and equality of engagement between the student, teacher, and the
subject matter as students thought about the kind of knowledge each
teacher offered his or her students.

My students also liked Melnick's "Out of School Curriculum”
and found it to be helpful in their inquiry into the students they
would be teaching. They realized as they read this article that
they would have to deal with what the students brought to school
from their lives outside of school. This reading also helped some
students in looking at their own lives outside of school and how
that life will influence their role as a teacher in school. One
student reflected on the students he will have in a fairly realistic
manner: ”In the out-of-school-curriculum article the discussion
regarding the problems that face kids out of school opened my eyes
to the fact that these problems are brought into the classroom, they
are not left on the doorstep of the school" [#44]. Another student
perceived that problems could exist for students and teachers,
”Teachers and students often carry so much baggage with them to the
classroom, learning becomes secondary” [#45]. One student believed
he would be able to meet student needs because of his own out of
school experiences, "I've been through a lot outside of school and I

believe it will help me deal effectively with at risk students"

122

[#22]. [Course evaluations #'s 22, 44, 45] These statements
display a particular insight into students and teachers as human
beings with a history.

Melnick's article seemed to have a profound impact on many of
my students as they thought about their future students' experiences
outside of school and how those lived experiences shaped students'
views of school. As the content groups discussed this particular
article, with prepared study questions, they found value in the
substance of the article:

Math group-Section one: Our group agreed that the
teaching life is made easier if the child's background

is known. Every child brings a different family life,

friends, outside activities and interests into the

classroom. The out-of-school curriculum must be

considered before one can teach. A good teacher does

not ignore what the child brings to school [cgj #7, p.

8]

Art and Drama Group-Section one: We agreed that

teachers as human beings need to be sensitive to the

child's background without being prejudiced by it.

Care must be taken to exercise fairness. Teachers have

been known to lower their expectations for children

from lower SES backgrounds [cgj #6, p. 13]

Many students tended not to focus on the teacher's out of
school curriculum. When I questioned them about the section of the
article that talked about teacher beliefs and how those beliefs were
connected to the teacher's out-of—school curriculum, they were
unable to make any connections to their own beliefs about teaching
and where they might have developed. Many of the beliefs they
talked about were more general beliefs they had as observers of

teaching: ”teaching is fun,” ”teaching requires a lot of patience,"

"teaching means being a strong disciplinarian” [annotated lesson

123

plans, p. 3]. Perhaps this was a difficult question for them
because they have not lived inside the role of teacher, they have
only observed what appears to be the role and they view the teacher
only in the context of school.

A similar problem occurred when I asked my students ”Where do
you think your beliefs about teaching your content come from?“ in
relation to their fastwrites in the beginning of the course. Many
were not able to identify where the beliefs they expressed in their
fastwrites had come from.

David Hawkins' ”I, Thou, It," was an essay that my students
found difficult to understand on their own. They came back to class
after the assignment with some pretty negative comments about the
writing and the language that Hawkins had used.

Students found the essay laborious to work through even after a
modeling of reading and thinking aloud by the instructor in the
introduction of the essay. They were impatient with his language
and said such things as, "We wondered why Hawkins wrote the article
in the way that he did. Why didn't he just say what he was trying
to tell us?” [cgj. #5 Science, p. 10]. Students were also convinced
that his educational essay was all theory and they railed against
having to study theory in a methods course. A few said it was the
hardest thing they had ever read [annotated lesson plans, 9-15, p.
4].

After looking at the study questions in their content groups
and having a whole group discussion about their findings in regard

to the questions, many students came away from the Hawkins essay

124

with new understandings about teaching and learning. One student
talked about his understanding: "I feel very strongly about ”I,
Thou, It;" I reread it after we talked about it in class, and I felt
the importance of the relationship between the teacher, student, and
content. There has to be a strong connection between these three”
[#2]. Another student saw movement in the I, thou, it
relationship.’ "I, Thou, It'" helped me think about teaching in a
more systematic manner. It made me aware of the flow patterns of
knowledge in the classroom” [#18]. A third student thought about
evaluating a lesson's value based on the Hawkins' relationship: "I
doubt that I will specifically aim to create a triangle, but I'll be
able to evaluate a lesson's potential on whether or not the triangle
is present" [#46]. [course evaluations, #'s 2, 18, 46] Students
referred to this essay throughout the semester. The Hawkins'
triangle became a litmus test as they studied teachers and looked at
how the relationship between teacher, student, and content
developed, in their personal narratives, other essays and articles,
and their field observations.

Students still thought they could be the kind of teacher
Hawkins talked about, yet still lecture almost exclusively. They
made themselves fully responsible for "engagement" in subject matter
as they planned their field lessons and mini-teaching lessons, yet
appeared not to notice that Hawkins' classroom was student centered
and not teacher-centered.

Phillip Jackson's "The Daily Grind" was also well received for

its content, but not necessarily for the language and writing style.

125

Students said he was talking down to them in the reading and some
were put off by it. One science student's statement summed the
feeling up nicely. He said that ”Jackson offered some good
information" but he couldn't stand his ”pompous" language [cgj,
sci.#2, p. 14] However, students experienced an awakening of sorts
through their interaction with this article and our content group
and class discussion. They remembered the "hidden curriculum” but
had not had a way to talk about it. It had always been one of those
defining "things” or ”feelings" about elementary school and high
school that students endured but did not necessarily understand.

As we discussed the issue of learning to deal with ”crowds,
praise and power" in school, some felt they were victims of it
positively and negatively. One student talked about leaving high
school with a very high grade point average, yet not being prepared
for the work in college. This student had been questioning his
capability even though he had excelled in high school. After
Jackson's article he believed he might have been one of the kids who
always followed the rules, figuring out how to win praise, manage
crowds, and knowing where the power was. As a result he felt he
might have been rewarded for things not always classified as
academic. Another student who had ”slipped through" felt that he
had known what was required but he had resisted ”playing the game,"
as he put it [ j #1, p. 5, 9'92] Connecting the unpublished
curriculum to their school experiences was a powerful step toward
understanding the first course question. The issues of

victimization and access based on figuring out the dominant group's

126

code became real because of their personal involvement and appeared
to move my students closer to the deeper issues of equity and access
to knowledge.

According to the final course evaluation, students liked the
essays by Jackson, Hawkins, and Melnick. Even though these three
texts did not speak about secondary students, they spoke to the
shared experience of school children. They detailed how schools
measured success, the importance of the substance of the
interrelationship between teacher, student, and content, and what

students and teachers brought to the learning/teaching situation.

s to o F o

In the overview of this chapter I indicated that I wanted
students to examine their entering beliefs about teaching and
learning, much as they would unpack and examine school memorabilia
stored in an old trunk. The tasks designed to explore this first
question promoted that process of examination as my students were
continually required to nudge their own experiences and beliefs up
against the issues explored by the instructional tasks. These
tasks, many which would continue throughout the course, were
crafted to enhance and promote understanding of the issues involved

in teaching and learning highlighted by the texts.

Qpppehp_grepp_1ep;hel§. When I introduced the concept of

content groups, I also introduced the group task of content area

journals and my expectations that content groups would discuss

127

issues, tasks, and their personal experiences as secondary learners,
reflecting on those together, offering their thoughts to one
another. These thoughts would then be recorded in a journal by a
different group member each week. I hoped these content journals
would be a source of many insights, fruits of a collaborative
effort.
Each content group will be expected to keep a

gpoup journal. You will be given time in class to write

about the activities, discoveries, conversations, new

ways of thinking about the work of teaching, etc. of

the group. Each week a different member will be

responsible for recording in the journal, however, all

members are asked to contribute ideas and information

to the recorder. [syllabus, Fall '92, p. 4]
I collected the content journals on a weekly basis. This was

another way of assessing what students were thinking about the texts

and tasks of the course.

u ls. Early in the course, students started to
write in a dialogic journal about the educational research articles
and essays they were reading and discussing. I decided to leave
the journal format open. However, through my comments and questions
I directed to students in their responses, their entries increased
in depth and in length as they approached their texts with an ever
expanding framework to think about the issues written about in the
articles and essays.

My hope, for my students, was that they would begin to get
inside of the authors' thinking and their own as they read our texts
and begin to write about their beliefs in relation to certain

educational issues. For example, for the first question I wanted

128

them to begin to think through their writing about student access to
knowledge, equity, student diversity, and how the school environment
changes students and teachers. My intent was for students to
publish their thinking about these issues, explored in the texts
they read, so that I could have a conversation with them, joining in
and offering alternative ways to think about what they were saying.
For example, if a student wrote that "students were responsible if
they failed, because they had not put enough effort into their
class,” I might respond, "What do you mean when you say a student
is responsible for learning? What is the teacher's responsibility
for student learning? Explain what you mean by "putting effort"
into a class. What might be going on if a student provides a lot of
effort, but still fails? What is the teacher's responsibility
then?”

I collected the journals initially on an alternating basis,
calling for a content group's dialogic journals each week. Entries
were read, responded to and returned the following week. One
student in responding to Hawkins' ”1, Thou, It” wrestled with the
issue of understanding the "it”: "A person cannot teach another
when there is little or no understanding on their part. We need to
get personal with our ”it" before we can try and build a bridge for
others to cross." I wanted to know more about what my student meant
by "getting personal with her 'It'." I probed "What do you mean by
getting personal with your It? Do you mean you want to increase
your personal knowledge? Know more about your content? Know your

content in different ways to teach it? Explain” [d]. #3, 9-92].

129

Over the course of the semester students started to respond in depth
to my questions and to hand in their journals more often in order

to get a written response from me.

Eepeopel papraeives. I introduced the personal narrative as a
process paper that my students would work on throughout the sixteen
weeks of the semester. It would be an occasion for them to get to
know themselves as learners and prospective secondary teachers. It
would also be an opportunity to examine their secondary student
experiences and beliefs about teaching and learning in a different
way.

During this first four or five weeks of the semester, my
students wrote about an instance of teaching and learning in their
content in which they were the learner and handed in the first
draft. I read the drafts and posed questions such as "What did your
teacher need to know to teach this lesson? What did you need to
know and to do to learn this concept? Explain what you learned from
this lesson? What was the "it"? Was there a connection between
you, the content and your teacher? Describe the connection for me."
My purpose was to help them begin to extend and analyze what had
actually happened in this instance of teaching and learning. My
questions were based on the articles, essays, and discussions we
shared as a group of learners. I used the issues and examples from
many of the texts we read to push students further in their thinking
about what the learning episode really looked like. Writing in the

margins of students' drafts, I sometimes asked them if they could

130

make a connection to Hawkins here or there. Other times I asked
them what some other author might have to say about this experience
or that statement. I would often ask whether there was a
relationship between the teacher, student, and content and if there
was to describe it for me.

It was my hope that the personal narrative, over the course of
the semester, would help students begin to see what they had written
about in a different light. Their beliefs about good teaching were
woven into the instances they had recounted, so the narratives were
an excellent vehicle to directly converse with my students
concerning their beliefs about teaching their content, especially
about the methods they recalled, for example, active lecture, lab
demonstrations, working problems on the board and then practicing
them in class with instructor help, games for review, and

simulations in a few cases.

Mini;peeehihg_leeepn_#ip My intent, in this assignment, was to

have students use the moon as a context to teach a concept from
their content area. I thought this would help secondary content
students realize that they could go outside of their discipline to
look for interesting ways to teach their content. The physical
world is not simply the domain of the scientist and the
mathematician, but also of the teacher of languages, literature,
music, art, history and physical education.

I expressed to my students that I wanted them to understand

themselves as learners and knowers of content. I wanted them to

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know what that kind of understanding meant in their individual and
collective experiences. I also wanted students to experience
developing a way to teach a concept from their discipline that was
not textbook centered. In addition, I wanted my students to realize
that new learning could be connected/scaffolded to ”partial
learnings” that their students might already have, and finally, that
effective teachers were learners about and researchers of concepts
and phenomena they did not totally understand.

I began by asking my methods students to observe the moon for
two-three weeks and record in a "moon log” what they saw and thought
about as they carried out their observations. I asked them to
think about and record any past memories from school or life where
they had learned something about the moon, through science,
literature, math, history, family members, friends etc. Once they
had observed for the two-three weeks, I asked them to bring their
logs to class to share and discuss in their content groups. I
looked at their moon logs during this work session and asked
questions about drawings, thoughts and conjectures I saw in the log.

Students were asked to complete an individual and a group task
that would help them look at their content knowledge, what, where
and how they had learned about the moon, and where they could go to
learn more. They also began discussing together, as content groups,
what they might teach based on what they had learned. This
mini-teaching session would also become a common referent for us as
we moved into the second course question, What does it mean to know

one's content?

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Student Responses to Tasks

Students were dealing with a lot of reflective writing in the
tasks in this part of the course. Since this was the beginning of
the course they did not appear to be overwhelmed or disgruntled with
the assigned writing tasks. Rather many seemed to welcome the
opportunity to write about the texts they were reading, in the
dialogic journal, and their personal experiences as a learner in
their personal narrative, while having a one on one conversation
about their ideas and experiences as their instructor read and
responded.

Students appeared to be forthright in their content journal
responses as each member took his or her turn scripting the weekly
entry. I noticed that the entries dealt with the generalities of
the group's work together on their tasks rather than specifics but I
attributed that to unfamiliarity with group journal writing.

Most students took part in the moon observation sequence of
mini-teaching #l. I would hear them talking about seeing the moon
or not seeing the moon before class formally started. I observed
members of the science group instructing members in a mathematics
group about the phases of the moon, with the use of an astronomy
textbook they brought to class to use in their own group's
preparation. A few times as I walked to a meeting I would hear
students conferring about the moon's position or size in a student
lounge near my office. Some students chose not to observe the moon
and depended only on science texts, the newspaper, or their

personal knowledge for information. I heard one student state that

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she did not have time for this kind of thing while I sensed that
others did not see the value of the observation in their preparation

to teach a lesson [j#3, 10'92, p. 25].

at ou ht about How 5
Were Going at the Time

te Be e about Students

As I began to implement this beginning secondary methods course
with the focus of the first organizing question, I anticipated some
of my student's entering beliefs about teaching content in a
secondary setting. I carried with me the realization that all of my
preservice students already had a particular view of teaching in
high school and middle school. Because of their required attendance
and participation in the American high school "experience,” all
students were able to call up similar internalized images of
teaching. These images drew their substance from existing personal
frameworks constructed by students who had operated successfully and
unsuccessfully within the boundaries of typical high school
settings. Further, their every day conceptions of the work of
secondary content teachers were gathered from their personal
observation of teaching as secondary students (Lortie, 1975).

I imagined that, with my help and the help of their peers, many
of whom had had work experience with the content they now wanted to
teach, my students would continually compare new information about
teaching in a secondary setting with their personal remembered
knowledge. As they performed this comparison, they would begin to

reach levels of disagreement with their personal remembered

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knowledge and begin to question the validity of their beliefs. I
also supposed a distance from their experiences as students in
secondary school, because of their age and current life situations.
This was an incorrect supposition. Even though details of instances
of learning or not learning may have blurred over time, the feelings
connected to episodes were still alive.

On the first day of class, as I thought about how I imagined
this methods course, and I became aware that I had given a great
deal of thought to the students I would teach in one manner, but
very little in another. I wanted to provide important experiences
for these preservice students to guide their thoughts about teaching
and learning in different ways. Everything had been fashioned to
create this great experience. I had fleetingly thought about my
students as individuals, and in that brief consideration I
foreshadowed problems they would have in managing the work of the
first part of the course. "I'm not sure I'll have enough time to
build a proper foundation without losing my students by overwhelming
them with this amount of reading” [J #1, p.2, 9-'92].

I was beginning to feel disappointed and sensed I was losing
ground already. The magnitude of the task before us was beginning
to sink in. I also realized that I had not had time or inclination
to look at the course as a whole. I was teaching the course I had
designed before I felt ready to teach it. All of this uncertainty

is apparent in my first journal entry:

135

My first meeting with my methods course begins in
twenty minutes. I am feeling anxious about how my
decisions about the course will be received by these
students. I am unsure about some of the readings I have
chosen, whether they will provide the appropriate
connections to the major questions of the course. It
is very necessary that these first weeks are spent
creating a shared foundation about teaching and
learning in schools. These students are coming to me
with only a foundations course of 80 hours of
observation . . . more apprenticeship . . . they need
to begin to move further from their student selves.

[J #1. P-6. 9 '92]

W
As I moved into the first meeting and the course overview and

looking at the syllabus, I encountered the first episode of
complete silence from my students. I was excited about this
unveiling of the course so I was held up a bit by this silence.
Perhaps the anxiety I suffered on the first day was a symptom of my
own insecurity about how well I had planned the course. There were
pieces of the course that I had not yet completely conceptualized.
I was not sure about the texts I had chosen, the related tasks, and
I was not sure about my ability to keep this very complex course at
a manageable level for myself and my students.

This process of course design (thus far) has felt
humbling and yet exciting. Humbling because it feels
like I don't know enough to do this yet, exciting
because of the possibilities. The readings were
particularly difficult [to select] and I'm sure I will
be changing some and adding new ones. I am attempting
to use some elementary based articles to build a
foundation of knowledge about teaching and
learning-Jackson and Hawkins seem appropriate to me
because the concepts they discuss impact teaching and
learning at any level. Someone here suggested that
”these students" were not ready to look at an
elementary based essay and apply it to a secondary
setting. I disagree and will continue on my original
course of thinking. [j #1, 8-'92, p.l]

136

I was sure, as I thought about this after class, that their
silence flowed from their vision of the whole picture of the course
outlined by the syllabus and annotated by my discussion. They were
looking at the whole picture while I had dealt closely with the
parts. I was committed to the design of my course. My students
were not. They were looking at the amount of work they would be
required to do and it was pretty staggering when viewed all
together, and as it would turn out, taken in increments throughout
the semester as well.

As I moved through the texts and tasks with my students, I
found that silence often indicated anxiety on their part. They
didn't know what I wanted, or they did not understand how to discuss
an article or write a journal response, or they were not sure what
they needed to do in their content group. Silence also indicated

reflection, thought, and worry about issues discussed in articles.

Septepp groups ehd Qopteht Seuphele

I was interested and excited about the idea of organizing the
methods course around content groups. I only imagined positive
outcomes with the groups and their content journals, where they
would write collaborative thoughts about the group process down.

When two of the groups had problems and angrily confronted me,
the experience greatly affected my working at that point and caused
me to question myself. I knew I was handling a lot. Perhaps I had
inadvertently caused a deeper problem when trying to help the

troubled groups.

137

I spoke to two of my committee members, Dr. Helen Featherstone
and Dr. Tom Bird, about my concerns. I suggested that some of the
problems and anxiety might be occurring because of the collective
grades that I was giving to certain collaborative efforts by the
groups (mini-teaching projects, content group journals and unit
plans).

Dr. Featherstone suggested that I check with the groups about
their feelings about the evaluations they would receive, perhaps
through individual writing. Perhaps they could come up with some
ideas about what was happening and we could think about the
situation together. She also suggested that I could collect data on
this.

Dr. Bird introduced the idea of a "deviant teacher,” intriguing
to think about. His take on the hostility that certain group
members had approached me with, was that they felt they could
because I had somehow joined the group in an accessible manner.
Because of my accessible posture within my methods course, students
could tell me anything about the workings of the course and display
their displeasure without a perception of instructor retaliation.
[j#3, 10'92, pp. 32-33]

I had great difficulty in getting my students to understand
what I wanted from their content journals. I had a number of talks
with Drs. Featherstone and Bird about the group journals, as I
tried to figure out why I was not getting what I had envisioned.

Dr. Featherstone suggested that what I wanted might be quite

difficult and perhaps even impossible for some to imagine themselves

138

doing in a group arrangement, or in any format, especially if they
felt uncomfortable with writing. She also spoke to representing the
group authentically.

". . . I think it may be really hard for them to
write down anything interesting as a group, you know,
even though they might have interesting conversations.
I think they have the sense that I might have an idea
but it's not the group's idea . . . often enough people
aren't very comfortable as writers , but that's sort of
the goal we have for them . . . and if they're doing
the writing separately, like afterwards . . . one
person is going to write it up, then I can see that it
might come out as a bunch of things just written down
from the discussion . . . it is a sense of, if you go
beyond that, it's not the group. . . . (Helen: j #3,
10 '92, p. 8, taped and transcribed conversation}

Dr. Bird clarified for me what I was getting from my students
in their content journals and possibly what their thinking might be.
He also pushed me to think more clearly about what it was that I
really wanted from the content journals and how I might go about
getting it.

"What you have is references to the reading.
Descriptions of what she [Jeannie Oakes] said as
distinct from their reaction to what she said .
they're doing what they know how to do. . . . It seems
like you're asking for more than a record on the
conversation, which is a difficult path .

You're more after a description of ”our reaction
to what they said and some kind of a reflection/that
last one's pretty big. I don't know what you're asking
them to do. You want them to have a discussion about
teaching a particular subject and you want them to
leave a record of that conversation . . . you want them
to do more . . . then the student that takes it home .

. a separate task . . . review the record of the
conversation and note anything that strikes [you] about
it. . . . You see agreement or disagreement . . . that
would be a separate task though a new task and a new
record. . . . [Tom: j #3, 10 '92, p. 14, taped and
transcribed conversation]

139

My committee members both suggested that I model what I thought I
wanted in the content journals by sharing with students what I was
reading and how the journal response might take a different form.

I did try to model what I intended for the content journals
with two members of the science group as we discussed the major
points of the chapter by Kahle (1990), ”Real Students Take
Chemistry and Physics: Gender Issues in the Classroom." After our
role play discussion, I wrote an outline of what I could write about
on the board, based on comments we had made; 1. Women's issue; 2.
Peter's ignorance to his problem; 3. Sandra is treating boys in a
sexist manner.

Still, I missed the mark with this assignment. We never
achieved a shared understanding of what the content journals should
be about. Our interpretations of the task were different. They
thought the journals should include what others in the group thought
about what they wrote, whether it honestly portrayed what they had
discussed. I wanted to know what kind of conclusions, conjectures,
questions they had come up with. Attaching group points to the

journal probably added to their difficulty.

W

In order to help my students surface and identify beliefs they
had about teaching and learning, I knew I needed to be skillful in
listening and restating what they said so they could hear it and
reflect on it. I also needed to question my students to push them

to clarify what they meant by what they said. I found that this was

140

difficult for me to do. I was not confident in my approach and I
did not have a clear command of all of the readings, so I was
limited in my ability to question and probe.

I could think of probes that pushed to a point but not beyond.
I think that initially I was afraid that this might be interpreted
as ”coming on too strong” and might shut students' thinking down. I
also know that I did not think of many good questions until after
the fact. I was not knowledgeable enough in many content areas and
not quick enough in my listening and thinking abilities, as I
approached diverse content groups, to attempt to challenge their
thinking.

It was as though I approached these groups thinking that I had
to have ready knowledge and questions that spoke to their
discussions. I knew that I did not have all of the answers, nor
should I, but I found myself replaying some old teacher 'shoulds"
that caused inappropriate teacher actions. "Teachers should lead
the discussion and provide answers when students do not come up with

them.” "Teachers should be experts.”

IQKEE

The texts that I selected for the first part of the course
provided a dilemma that I did not anticipate. They were
particularly good texts from my frame of reference. I thought they
would develop a knowledge base about large diverse urban and
suburban schools for my students. I had attended a large suburban

high school in the sixties and I had taught in large urban high

141

schools in the seventies and early eighties. I had supervised
student teachers in large urban secondary and middle schools in the
late eighties. I thought my own experience should enable me to help
my students understand these settings.

I soon realized that most of my students had a different frame
of reference because they had attended small rural schools, small
private schools, and small colleges. It didn't occur to me that
even with my facilitation and group discussion, they could never
really connect with the texts, Chapter 1 of Sheppihg_fle11_fligh
Sehggl and "Brookline High School,” in any realistic manner. My
students found ”Brookline High School" lengthy and mythical. Such a
place could not exist. They either thought the idea of high school
compared to a shopping mall was wonderful and the teachers were
meeting all student needs, or they hated it because of the size. I
didn't understand why they thought this idea was wonderful until
they told me about their high schools. They talked about their
small rural schools where there was no choice, many times not even a
choice to take a course from a different teacher. They laughed
about their graduating classes of twenty, thirty and sometimes less.
The high school that Powell, Farrar, and Cohen described seemed
appealing to my students.

As I read the student responses to the readings and my probes,
and as I engaged students in conversations in class based on those
readings, I realized that the problem I thought I was addressing was
not being explored at all. Existing beliefs were too powerful for a

few readings and some conversation to affect. I knew that I needed

142

to change my approach, but I was at a loss to do anything other than
what I had planned. I did not have enough formal background
information about how to teach about multicultural issues and how to
interact with students about it to do anything differently. I also
did not have the time to increase my formal knowledge. This was an
important issue in the first part of the course and it did not go
well.

I began to question my choices of texts. My students were
openly resistant to many because they were not ready to hear that
they would be required to look at multiethnic issues and personal
biases as teachers. Some students declared in class that they would
not teach in an urban setting so there was no need for them to read
about or practice teach in an urban site. Diversity was not part
of their apprenticeship of observation as students.

Clearly I had not really considered all that these students
brought to the course. Most had not had experiences with students
or people who were not like themselves and, in some cases, they had
consciously made the choice not to. Their choices went further
still, in that they did not intend to teach in a setting much
different than the one they had been students in. Many students
stated in class that they intended to return to the same schools
they had attended as secondary students. Some already had coaching
positions there to secure a spot when the time came.

I made the mistake of thinking that if I introduced these very
powerful and thought provoking texts, my students would be captured

by them and become uncomfortable with their beliefs and begin to

143

move toward change. This evoked memories of my beliefs as a novice
teacher years ago when I thought my students would love the romantic
poets as much as I did once they read their poems.

I also battled the belief that the practical view is privileged
over the theoretical view. Initially, I was inundated by student
views that they would really learn about teaching when they started
their fieldwork component. The texts and tasks we did as content
groups and whole group were informative and ”required," but the real
information would be gathered from the field. I knew from my
previous experience teaching the methods course that preservice
students felt this way, but I was continually surprised as they
came up with new ways to say the same thing. I did not anticipate
such great resistance to new ideas.

I thought my students were skeptical of me because of my belief
in the importance of sound educational ideas/methods grown from
knowledge of students, content, and learning. They were puzzled
because I kept saying that I was studying my teaching. They found
elements of theory in our classroom and wondered why they were [many
were] having an interesting experience if theory was involved. Some
started to listen and think about Hawkins and Jackson. Some
students would refer orally or in writing to the "Hawkins triangle"
being evident in the classrooms they were observing in, or to being
part of a ”Hawkins triangle" in a tutoring experience. Many others
added little to the conversation and I wondered about them as I
thought about the impact of the course. Did I have a right to

categorize students? I could read the signs of resistance through

144

the impatience, the skimming over or not reading the articles, the
discounting of what was discussed by labeling it as "right-wing,"
”liberal," "feminist.” Most likely they would teach as they had

been taught.

Teaching, in a conventional sense, for those who
decide to become teachers, elementary and secondary, is
learning to retell a familiar story [sometimes] in
greater detail. We listen and interact with the story
of math, English, science, in ways that have also been
experienced by our own content teachers. It is a story
that goes on and on through generations with little
deviation from the original story line . . . [j#2,
10-'92 p. 27]

Was

I am well aware of an attitude which negates new ideas in the
"study" of teaching that methods students carry. Still I am
continually surprised by the force of the beliefs that define this
attitude, and I am often derailed by it:

I'm losing them . . . the Hawkins piece did not
sit well with them and some students continued
throughout the class to openly voice their views that
this ”theory stuff" was not what they needed . . . they
needed the practice [the practical] part of teaching
because that was where they would really learn about
teaching. [j#l, 9-'92, p.18]

I am surprised by the verbal expression of
distaste for theory, even though I know this is fairly
common in TE students . . . I am having trouble dealing
with the [anti-intellectualism] of a few, but I try to

think about it as student history . . . ” [j#l, 9-'92,
p.17]

The attitudes that surfaced, especially the attitude that ”I can't
understand this because it is too difficult to read," particularly
when theoretical pieces such as Hawkins' were considered, brought

forth considerations of the backgrounds of the students that

145

populate my methods courses. It is almost as though some of them
believed the author wrote in such a way to purposely exclude them.
The study questions that the content groups attempted to answer
helped my students explore key pieces of the essay in regard to the
synergistic relationship of the teacher, student and content in the
classroom. It seemed, however, that there was little connection
between what they studied about and what they "really” thought
about teaching and learning. There was a note of unreality embedded
in theory for my students and a stand against intellectual endeavor.
Practicality was the guiding belief.
There also seems to be an attitude that is hard

for me to identify, but I sense it each time I meet

with each section. Is it an attitude of the shop? An

attitude that credentials aren't really important

except for their exchange value? That they [students]

know more about this "stuff" of teaching than I do?

"Theory” is not important but ”practical” is. Someone

else dreams up and designs the car. I'm the one who

makes it. I have the pea; work. It's the "doing" not

the ”knowledge” of how to conceive of an idea. Ideas

are for dreamers not for workers . . . just train me

. show me the methods . . . show me how to write a
lesson plan and then leave me alone with the field

teacher. That is where I will really learn. [j #1,
lO-'92, p. 19]

e f e C u e
I knew that I spent too much time on the first question of the
course, that we read too many texts. But I was still trying to
”cover” all of the material I thought important. I was also still
trying to manage the curriculum. Living inside of the course, I

realized that I had planned far too much for my students to do and

146

far too much for me to do with a full work load and data to collect.

My journal reflects my feelings.

The course seems overwhelming . . . in an attempt
to address the complexities of the work of teaching my
course has become too complex. The course seems to be
running me, I'm no longer running the course.

Everything has been set in motion and it seems like I
am caught in a process that I do not know how to change
. . I'm sure the students are feeling the same. They
are beginning to complain about the amount of work .

. although the quality of their journals [dialogic] and
narratives is exciting. This course takes so much
time, energy, and knowledge. I'm easily spending 30-35
hours per week on journals, narratives, and study
questions. I am finding that I am having trouble
preparing for class because of the amount of paper
work. It does seem that the responses/questions are
valued and reflected on by the students so I am
reluctant to change anything but I'm not sure how much
longer I can do this. . . . [j#l, 10-'92, p. 21]

At the time I was torn between giving up some of the texts and tasks
I had planned, and forging on especially in the beginning, when
everything was set in motion. Many of the early dialogic journal
responses to the texts and tasks were powerful and honest. My
students were talking about how they really felt and they were
answering the questions I wrote in the journals. The discussions
about the texts were good. The narratives were developing and the
content groups were planning mini-teaching lessons. I continually
felt discouraged and then encouraged. I felt insecure about my
course and its outcomes. These feelings persisted throughout the
remainder of the semester without respite. I constantly questioned
the value of what I was doing.

I worried that I would be depriving my students of a proper
preparation for field work. The notion that I was changing the

rules in a way that might be detrimental to my students in the short

147

term became a clear roadblock in my thinking and planning as we
progressed in the course. Deep inside of the worry, however, the
belief that the course design and implementation was helping
students look at teaching in a different way, persisted. I believed
that my students had a more realistic sense of the secondary setting
as we moved into the second course question, What does it mean to

know one's content.

at ink w t s t he u

Looking back I realize that something in the presentation was
missing. I was not able to ask the right questions early in the
course. I did not think about my students' experiences as I tried
to conStruct a common vision of a secondary setting. I thought
about my vision and then expected them to adopt it without question.
I knew the world of teaching to be a certain way and they knew it to
be another way. Even though I knew that I needed to incorporate
student prior experience/knowledge, I did not do this in the
planning stages of the course. I was concerned with the ”course."
I think this had something to do with the fact that it was not just
a course but an embodiment of my changed identity, as well as a
”study.” It became very complicated. I felt as though I had to
stop and purposively view my course as a researcher might, even
though I wasn't sure at times what was important. This sounds like
the stance of a novice researcher. I felt more responsible for the
course because of the students involved, yet I had a responsibility

to myself as well. It was all very difficult to reconcile.

148

I knew that preservice students needed to be informed teachers
and that they needed to grow beyond the parameters of their
comfortable existence and take a sober look at the institution of
school and the world of the students they would eventually be
teaching. 'I am convinced now, because of the final course
evaluation and my observations of my students in their fieldwork,
that this initial section of the course was valuable and did provide
a foundation for my students to build on for the remainder of the
course and sent many of them into field as thoughtful, questioning
individuals. In so many ways it was far more powerful than training
students to act like a teacher and implement flawless lesson
plans.

I remember now thinking during the course, when the work was so
overwhelming and endless, that it really was much easier to lecture
as I had in the past—-easier for me and for the students. I had the
"answers” on the overheads and all the students had to do was copy
the "answers" down. When those answers did not work when they tried
a strategy in the field component, it wasn't the answers that were
called into question, but the student's performance. Initially, the
students looked good in the field because they knew how to act like
teachers. I wondered whether I made the field work more difficult
in the new course by rejecting the ”training" model my students
really seemed to want. I wondered also what this would mean as
they moved on to other methods courses and field experiences.
Thoughts of ”easier” were simply weak moments of fatigue. I knew

that "easier" meant taking a direction that I had rejected. I knew

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that ”easier" would allow my students to go only so far, to follow
in the footsteps of the conventional content teacher learning to

retell the same story.

CHAPTER VII

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO KNOW ONE'S CONTENT?

Overv ew

The second course question positions continued student inquiry
toward closely held beliefs about teaching and learning. In this
chapter students direct their thinking toward their content
knowledge. Most of my students, at this point in their university
preparation, have completed their content courses and are
concentrating wholly on their education courses. They have a notion
that they "know enough" content to teach, because they remember what
they learned in high school and they know quite a bit more now. The
second course question was designed to challenge this student
assumption about "knowing enough.” I selected the question, "What
does it mean to know one's content?” to prod students to examine
their content knowledge base to figure out how they really knew it.
Did they conceive of content knowledge as fixed and outside of
themselves, or did they see it as dynamic and interwoven with who
they were and what they believed? Could they make connections to
the world outside of their content to help their students understand
it? Did they recognize that their personal understanding of the

coursework in their discipline and coursework related to it was not

150

151

enough to teach it? I hoped that the exploration of this course
question would cause my students to face themselves honestly and
begin to figure out that most of them knew their content only in
ways to transfer it exactly as they had learned it.

I wanted my students to approach this second course question as
individuals who did not have all of the answers. I expected them to
begin questioning what they knew and how they knew it. My intent
was that they turn their content knowledge inside out and examine
it, in light of the texts and tasks we would work with in this
part of the course. As they became aware of what they didn't know,
texts and discussion in content groups and whole group would provide
suggestions about how to gain more knowledge as a learner.

In this chapter I describe how students examined what they knew
about their subject matter and how they knew it through common
texts, became acquainted with the categories of teacher knowledge
as explained in Pam Grossman's (1990, p.5) model, and confronted
problematic issues in relation to moving into fieldwork settings.

I highlight two texts read during this section of the course and
explore student responses to them.

Students work on three learning tasks is also described in this
chapter; (mini-teaching #1, dialogic journals and content
journals). I report student responses to their preparation and
implementation of the learning tasks. As in chapter six, I discuss
my thinking about the work of the course at the time. In addition,
I describe how increasingly difficult it became to manage the work

of the course. As I conclude the chapter I discuss my thoughts

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about the course from my current vantage point, three semesters

later.

m

I decided to use the article ”Pitfalls of Experience”
(Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann, 1985) as students moved into their
fieldwork requirement. I felt that this article raised issues
students would deal with in their field experience. I wanted my
students to realize that they had a long and powerful history in
school, and that history would define much of what they did and how
they perceived their role in the setting of the secondary school. I
wanted them also to recognize that the new ideas and information
discussed in our university classroom needed to be used to interpret
what went on in the classrooms they would teach their field lessons
in.

I also used Wilson, Shulman and Richert's (1989) "'150
Different Ways' Of Knowing: Representations of Knowledge in
Teaching" to help students understand the concept of knowing one's
content in ways that allow for transformation of content knowledge
in support of student understanding. Students needed to think and
discuss how they knew their content and whether they could help a
learner understand what they knew. They had to think about how
their content was connected to the world instead of seeing it as
isolated and fixed.

I supplied the groups with study questions to help them

understand "'150 Different Ways' of Knowing. . . .” They discussed

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these questions in their content groups before we talked about them
as a whole group. The discussion questions follow:

1. What would it mean to think about teaching
generically? What might be problematic about this
approach?

2. Why do the authors argue that "practical” or
"commonsense" knowledge does not present a clear
picture of teacher knowledge? What are your
opinions?

3. The authors talk about ”representations” of
concepts. What do they mean? Discuss the
authors' comparisons of the representations of
those teachers who were knowledgeable about their
subject matter with teachers who were not.

4. Explain what Dewey means when he says one has to
“psychologize the subject matter?" Can you connect
this to the second course question?

5. What is pedagogical content knowledge? Explain in
your own words (group effort).

6. Why did the authors entitle this article”'150
Different Ways of Knowing? Why did they also
refer to . . . representations of knowledge in
teaching?”

I used the pedagogical reasoning model discussed in the article
to walk students through the process of planning a lesson and then
had them begin working with the model to develop a lesson. One
student stated in her dialogic journal ” . . . it never hit me how
well I will have to know my subject in order to teach. I must have
been living in a fantasy world or something . . . I guess I thought
that if I can prepare a lesson for my students, that's all I have to
know about it . . . my knowledge does not have to go beyond what I
tell them."

Before I introduced my students to Pamela Grossman's model of

teacher knowledge (1990, p. 5) I thought it would help students see

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the complexities of teacher knowledge as they thought about what it
meant to know their content. I also felt it might add a broader
understanding of the concepts discussed in the article "'150
Different Ways' of Knowing..." as well as providing a "picture" of
the kinds of knowledge an effective teacher draws on to plan and
implement curriculum. My initial run through Grossman's model was
to simply ”tell" about it. My students were so distant; it was
obvious they had little idea what I was talking about when I said
"substantive structures are various frameworks that exist in a
discipline that affect how it[discipline] is organized and directs
the focus of questions that might guide further study of the field.”
My quick preparation and limited understanding did not allow me to
bring students closer to the idea. What seemed like a good idea was
a disaster and I left my students confused. I did some reteaching
the next class meeting that was a bit clearer, but still not my
ideas. I had not yet had time to think about this model in depth
and transform my understanding to represent it to my students.

I enlisted a colleague to help me understand substantive and
syntactic knowledge and get clearer about the meaning with an
example. She led me through the discipline of science and the
various content areas of biology, chemistry and physics using water
as an example of a compound to be explored through each, in the
substantive realm of subject matter knowledge. Different
questions/concerns about water were addressed in each content. For
example, in biology H20 is a need of all cells. How does an

organism use water, what is electrolyte balance and why is it

155

important? In chemistry, water is the universal solvent. It
possesses bi-polar molecules. What are the chemical properties? In
physics, how do we measure and define the force that water moves
with? What are its magnetic properties? conduction properties?
This certainly had meaning for the science group but not for other
groups. What seemed clear when my colleague and I spoke became
fuzzy when I had to talk about it. I didn't $92! the concepts
beyond what my colleague had explained to me. I'm sure that my
students were left with misconceptions and confusion about my

example, as I was.

ow Students es 0 de t e ts

tu e t e se ” a ” tex . "Pitfalls of Experience"
(Feiman-Nemser, Buchmann, 1985) gave students a lot to think about.
They thought about the ”familiarity” pitfall and the difficulty in
viewing a well known setting with new eyes, the "two worlds"
pitfall and the tension of theory and practice, and the ”cross
purposes” pitfall questioning how students are prepared through
student teaching for the realities of the novice years. My students
were surprisingly strong in their beliefs about the value of
experience and what the article had to say. It also surfaced their
beliefs about knowing content and the real value of a secondary
methods course, or most courses relative to the actual field
experience.

As I traveled from content group to content group student

conversations about the three pitfalls was lively and in some cases

156

surprising and thought provoking for me. A few of my students,
English, drama and art majors did not think they would be ensnared
by the familiarity pitfall because they had not found that high
school offered them anything. In essence they had ”dropped out" by
finding what they needed outside of school in local performing arts
groups and community college fine arts programs. They did not think
that they would teach as they had been taught in high school because
their energies had been tapped and expanded by teachers outside of
school, who moved to a different timepiece in relation to teaching
and student learning.

Other students were able to see how easy and sensible it was
that new teachers fell into the familiarity pitfall. They talked
about the comfort and safety of returning to something known while
under stress, as well as wanting to emulate a favorite teacher who
may have had an influence on their decision to become a teacher.
They also talked about how they were coming to see the complexities
of teaching and they could comprehend how it would be easy to put
their time in with a familiar regimen of correct the homework, read
a new section, assign more homework, give time to work. A few other
students defended Karen, the student in the article ensnared by the
familiarity pitfall, and stated that she did not have a problem with
authority; she was simply being a "student.”

We are in classrooms to learn. As far as the

familiarity pitfall, we have nothing else to help us in

the classroom except our preconceptions of the

classroom based on our early years of education. It is

those preconceptions that we build on or alter as we

get new information from our methods classes. [cgj#2
music, p. 15]

157

Content groups sympathized with Tom's two-worlds pitfall and
used some very strong language to bring their points home. I felt
somewhat defensive as I listened to my students and later when I
read their content journals.

Tom's plight is one that is familiar to many
education students. Very often the teachings of the
college classroom conflict with what is being taught in
the elementary and secondary schools. The education
student must decide for him/herself which is more
important, the college grade or learning from the field
observation. . . . the college classroom cannot
possibly address the many types of teaching techniques
and learning styles that are out there. [cgj#2 Eng.,
p. 12]

One of the groups in their content journal had a final thought for
pitfalls: ". . . At least an awareness of these potential problems

now exists" [science group# 2. p. 23].

Sppgente eehheepihg wieh "TSO Weye, , , ," My students felt

that Wilson, Shulman and Richert's piece was one of the most
important articles they read in the course. Above all other texts
it helped them think about what it meant to know their content in
ways to teach it.

It [article] has made me think about what I really
know right now, what I still need to know, and how I'm
going to represent all that stuff in my head to my
students. [cj, music group #1, p. 15]

When we were talking about the model of
pedagogical reasoning in class I was thinking about the
teachers who use the same lesson plans year after year
. . they have left out reflection and new
comprehension. [cj, English group# 2, p.15]

In the Model of Pedagogical reasoning, one major
step to the teaching process is pefieeeieh. We give
serious consideration to what we have accomplished in
the lesson. We think about it during and after so that

158

we can figure out how to make it better . . . develop
new ways to teach the lesson. [cj, English grouP# 4, p.
18]

Pedagogy should not be a set of generic principles
that can be applied to any discipline. It should be
subject specific. We feel it will not just appear in
our mind after taking a methods course, rather it is a
set of principles we will gather over time. [cj, French

group#l, p. 17]

This article seemed to draw a number of things together,
causing students to think about what they knew about their content
and how crucial that knowledge was to their teaching. An English
student thought about herself as a learner in relation to this
article; "I really learned a lot from the '150 Ways . . .' article.
It made so much sense in light of my personal narrative, how I
learn, and what makes a class 'click' for me. It's not always easy
to represent an idea or concept in more than one way . . . but it is
so critical to effective teaching" [#9]. A foreign language student
stated, ”'150 Ways of Knowing" seemed to follow and reinforce the
ideas in ”I, Thou, It" This article got me to think differently
about my subject and how it could be enhanced by other content
areas” [#11]. A math student shared "The most powerful text in this
course was '150 Ways of Knowing. . . .' This text brought to light
all of the personalities my students will bring and how many
learning styles I will encounter. This helped me to begin thinking
about how I will represent math for all students.” [#37][final
course evaluations, #'s 9, ll, 37] Most of my students valued this
article above all others [see course evaluation, question #1,

Appendix]

159

Tasks

The main tasks in the second part of the course were designed
to help students begin to think about what it meant to know their
content as they examined the second course question. They also
challenged students to prepare and "try out" lessons they would
teach in our university classroom and present as a tutor in the
local public schools. Reflective writing in dialogic journals and
discussing study questions in content groups and whole group
extended student thinking about what it meant to "know content" as
they dealt with the texts and their "teaching” experiences at the

university and in the field.

W

The first mini-teaching lesson was scheduled to take place
during the first course question but the format of the course took
more time than I imagined. So, students taught their mini-lessons
just as we moved into course question two. As it happened,
designing and implementing their mini-lessons using the moon as a
context to teach a content concept created a valuable ”context”
through which they could view the second course question and the
selected texts, especially ”'150 Different Ways' of Knowing:
Representations of Knowledge in Teaching” (Wilson, Shulman, Richert,
1987). They had just finished grappling with crafting a lesson
about a content concept that they would teach to their peers, using
an unfamiliar planning approach which required a learning phase

(research outside of a text book and for most groups, their

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discipline) before the teaching phase, based on an unfamiliar
context. This created a lot of discomfort for my students as they
worked through the task. Students started to think about what they
knew as well as what they did not know. They also had to adjust
their thinking about how they might teach it because thinking about
teaching in a ”context" took them away from the familiar text book
dependent lecture model.

I asked my students to observe the moon for several weeks and,
in their content groups, figure out how to use their moon
observations in teaching a concept from their content area. They
were required to plan and teach the lesson as a group to their
classmates. As groups met and discussed their moon observations, I
asked students to answer some prepared questions about how they
had approached learning about the moon and what they had discovered
about the moon that might add an interesting context for their
content lesson. Most students knew that the moon orbited around the
earth and gave off light reflected from the sun but they did not
know why. Students also wrote that their ideas about the moon had
come from prior knowledge from elementary school, encyclopedias, and
an undergraduate astronomy course. One student wrote that during
his observations he noticed that the pattern on the moon (the face)
was always the same. This confirmed for him his prior knowledge
that the same side of the moon was always toward the earth. Another
student wrote that one night he took a walk in the moonlight and
”felt the power of the moon” and this helped him understand how the

moon might have inspired writers, poets and

161

musical composers. Some students had taken astronomy and checked
their course notes as they observed the movement of the moon and the
phases. They found that what they observed corresponded with what
they had written in their notes one to two years before. A few
students had obvious misconceptions. Two students believed that the
moon was a star. They were able to reverse this misconception
through their interaction with their content group members and
through their reading. Another student believed the stars rotated
around the planets [j#3, 9-10 '92, p. 26].

Finally I asked each group to combine their discoveries to
begin to think about a content concept they might teach using
something about the moon as a context. I saw this as an entry into
getting students to think about how they approach learning about a
new concept, and how their approach informs the connections they
make when they think about how to present it.

The moon groups met and planned for a total of three hours in
class over a period of three weeks. I entered their groups
frequently, occasionally posing questions about what they were
saying, but mostly listening. I did not want students to use a
lesson plan format provided by the teacher. I wanted them to figure
out how to teach a lesson by identifying, as a group, a content
concept they wanted to teach, and then examining their content
knowledge base. This task required students to get in touch with
the ideas their content area was organized around and how
connections might be made outside of the discipline as well. Some

were able to move in the intended direction, others could not. One

162

student wrote, in response to the question, "Did ideas about the
moon that connected to your content area come to mind easily?" as he
reflected on his learning before preparing to plan a lesson to teach
with his group.
Yes, right away I thought of Beethoven's

”Moonlight Sonata" and the possibility of integrating

that into an English lesson. Then I got thinking about

how the moon inspires so many types of emotions .

so I thought why not look at the different works in

which the moon has inspired different emotions? This

could be a good way to introduce the concept of tone.

You would have different authors writing about the same

topic in different ways . . . I also thought about how

the experience of seeing the moon is shared by so many

. . I realized it might be interesting to examine

works about the moon from different countries to

emphasize the universality of the moon and human

emotion. [cj#4, Eng., 10'92, p. 24]
While another wrote, including her other group members thinking in
her response, ”No, not at all. My group and I were having a hard
time trying to decide what fell under history (our content) and what
was scientific. Since our content is history we didn't want to
intermingle it with science [cj#3, 10'92, p. 12]. This group saw
disciplines isolated with distinct boundaries. The mathematics
group answered the same question, ”Did ideas about the moon that
connected to your content area come to mind easily?,” in a manner
that suggested they did not get much beyond the shape of the moon
and its distance from the earth. They stated that many mathematical
concepts could be taught in a short mini-lesson, intimating that
they would teach as they probably had been taught, presenting
algorithms for their students to work problems with without

understanding what they were solving for. They answered, ”Yes,

they did (ideas came easily). They (ideas) mostly were about the

163

shape of the moon and its size," "Yes, at first we thought we could
find the area, circumference, distance from the earth, mass, volume,
and radius of the moon . . . then we thought about the phases of the
moon and how they pertain to fractions" [cj#7, math., 10'92, p. 19].
More students reflected the kind of thinking found in the second
series of responses.

I wanted students to let their knowledge of content guide them
toward a plan for teaching a content concept and in the process
begin to discover what ideas, facts and models make up their content
knowledge and further, to explore connections outside of their

discipline.

Dialogic—Mange

Students were continuing to write responses to the texts that
were assigned as part of the work of the course. They were expected
to read the texts and explain their understandings of the concept[s]
the authors explored. They were asked to use and examine their own
beliefs and experiences in relation to the articles and essays they
explored. If they made assertions about what something meant in a
particular reading, they were supposed to justify their assertion
not quote the author's words. Students were also beginning to write
about connections they were making from the ideas explored in the
texts to their field observation and tutoring (e.g., Hawkins'
triangle in the classroom, how teachers and students handled
Jackson's hidden curriculum, how teachers were "representing" their

content to their students). Students were writing about teachers

164

they were observing, using techniques they had experienced as
students--lecture, check the homework problems, learn a new

algorithm, begin the homework for tomorrow.

01.1 as

Students continued to report on the work of their content
groups in a rigid manner. The writing was a description of what
group members had done in relation to the tasks completed or texts
discussed. Much of the writing concerned their preparation for
teaching their mini-lesson, what they had decided to do, who was
doing what, and finally a description of the implementation of the
lesson and their impressions of the experience. Students also
reported on discussion questions for ”150 Different Ways of Knowing:
Representations of Knowledge in Teaching" by writing group responses
for each question. I thought students would discuss and write about
what they had discovered about what they knew and did not know about
their content and advance some ideas together about the second
course question "What does it mean to know one's content?” after
their mini-teaching presentation and reading the Wilson, Shulman,
Richert (1989) article. I found little, if any, analysis in the

content journals.

w u en es 0 d d a 0
WM. Many of my students thought

that I should tell them how to prepare for this task and provide

them with a lesson plan model. During the planning phase, they

165

constantly questioned me about the fact that they did not have a
formal plan to use. I explained that I did not want to give them
a plan. I wanted them to figure out how to teach a lesson by
looking at the content concept they wanted to teach and then
examining their content knowledge base. I wanted them to try to
let their knowledge of content guide them toward a plan for teaching
their content concept for their first mini-lesson. I knew that I
would present and discuss the pedagogical reasoning model (Wilson,
Shulman, Richert 1989) for their second mini-lesson and for their
field lessons. I wanted them to have the experience of trying to
figure out how to teach a lesson from what they thought they knew
about teaching and their content.

All of my students took up the task of teaching a content
concept using the context of the moon. Even though they considered
the task to be confusing at first, they all worked hard at it and
developed some interesting lessons. They also were amazed at how
much they learned through the process.

Many students did not systematically observe the moon and
record what they saw as I had requested. Instead they rather
haphazardly observed and brought what they saw, read or heard to
their group. From that frail point of entry they started to share
”ideas" about what they could teach. They seemed to talk about
”hitting on an idea” a lot.

Physical education group Section 2: "What we have
observed about the moon: rose in the east, set in the

west . . . had a ring around it, why? Full most of the
week . . . sky seemed darker further from the moon.

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What we might teach about . . . biorhythms and how they
relate to athletic performance . . . read scientific
literature on biorhythms and performance. [p. 7]

This content group seemed to have a very interesting slice on how we
might be affected by the moon but they never pursued this line of
thought. Later in their journal, as they wrote about their lesson
in a personal critique they said the following: "Once we hit on the
idea of basic motor skills on earth and moon (with heavy equipment
on), it just suddenly came together" [P.E. cj#2, p. 11]. Other
groups echoed this same pattern of talking about ideas until they
had the "right” one.

English Group-section 2: ”Our idea is to use two
poems and contrast . . . pass out sheets w/ poems and
use a transparency . . . draw a Venn diagram and ask
the class similarities and differences. Night Clouds
vs. Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard. [p. 9]

History groups 1&2-section 2: ”Our ideas ranged
from moon worship, theories of moon formation,
eclipses, to the role of the moon in historical
battles. Group 1 . . . decided to research moon myths
and legends and Group 2 decided to work on the effects
of the first moon landing. [p.7]

French group-section 1: "We finally came up with a
great idea for our mini-teaching project using
vocabulary about the moon, incorporating the (u) sound
and colors, blue, yellow, gold, green. . . ." [p. 6-7]

One group decided that they were specialists in certain aspects of
the moon because of their work experiences.

Science group-section 2: "We decided that each
person would teach a part of the lesson that they were
specialists in . . . Bob, moon formation/geology .
Belinda and I will teach about the orbits
engineering/math. . . .” [p. 7]

167

The math group talked about beginning their thinking about teaching
with a mathematical concept and determining the level they needed to
be teaching at:

Math group-section 1: "Some of the challenges of
teaching math surfaced as our group met to prepare for
the first mini-teaching project using the moon. It
took us a while to decide on a concept, but once we
decided that our level needed to be algebra or
pre-algebra, for our classmates, this narrowed our
choices down.” [p. 16]

Once most groups had "hit on an idea," they proceeded to
research the idea and formulate a plan to teach about it. Many of
the lessons were interesting in their content, but many groups
tried to teach too many concepts. For example, the science group
tried to teach the following concepts; formation of the moon [four
theories], orbit and position of the moon relative to the earth and
sun, demonstration of a lunar and solar eclipse, effects the moon
has upon the earth. In essence they had each member of the group
teach a separate lesson and mostly they lectured, and all was
accomplished in twenty five minutes! This particular group felt
their lack of content knowledge and spoke about it in their content
journal as they talked about their lesson:

. helped us in recognizing that there are

particular areas in which we should study because of

our own lack of knowledge. For example . . . mentioned

that she didn't know the difference between a solar and

lunar eclipse. And it put us in the place of students,

questioning our core of knowledge. We all agreed that

in order to teach well one must know the subject

matter.” This goes back to Hawkins' discussion of "I,

Thou, It.” By knowing the subject matter a teacher can

develop different strategies and techniques in order to

involve a student in meaningful learning of the
subject. We felt that lack of knowledge on the part of

168

the teacher will result in rote learning by the student

because the teaching style will reflect that lack of

knowledge. [cj., sci., p. 11-12]

These group members have had the experience of using the text book
wholly as a resource for learning and teaching. The text along
with the quizzes and tests that are partly based on obscure facts
and decontextualized concepts contained within the pages of that
text book form the knowledge base housed within the walls of a
content area classroom. Dewey's metaphor comes to mind with its
image of boxes on shelves in a warehouse. The student's allusion to
Hawkins shows a clear understanding of the essay because it really
is certainly knowing subject matter; however, it is knowing subject
matter in a peppieple;_gey_that allows teachers to teach in
meaningful ways.

The science group arrived at an understanding that they indeed
needed to know more about their content to represent it for students
to understand. Doing this meant that they needed to identify what
they themselves did not know about what they were teaching, so they
then became learners as well.

The Physical Education group who originally thought about
researching and teaching a lesson on biorhythms and athletic
performance decided to teach a lesson on basic motor skills for a
sixth grade middle school class. They used the concept of gravity
to enhance and extend these skills for their students. They had to
do some teaching about gravity in the beginning and did so with a
helium filled beach ball and a beach ball filled partially with

water. The other preservice students and I stood in a circle and

169

tossed the beach ball to get the feel of gravity-little gravity.
Then we practiced hopping, skipping, jumping and galloping as we
were led by one of the leaders. We practiced first as though we
were simply performing these skills as we had all of our lives. Of
course we were middle schoolers and the leaders watched to see that
we were involving our entire bodies and that we were distributing
our weight properly. Some of us had difficulty remembering how to
skip.

After practicing in an atmosphere of gravity we were instructed
to perform the same skills as though we were on the moon where there
is little gravity. One of the leaders told us that we would have to
imagine putting on eighty pound backpacks and heavy weighted boots
in order to perform these skills on the moon. He told us that if we
did not have the weights we would bounce high into space and come
down far from where we started. Even with the weights we would
still weigh much less than on the earth. We watched him demonstrate
and then repeated the imaginary preparation.

We then practiced the same skills with our interpretations of
light-weight bodies, as though we were on the moon, following the
exaggerated lead of our leaders, through hopping, jumping, and
skipping (even harder to do in slow near weightless motion). Once
we had practiced, we had a relay using the same skills. The leaders
would call out the skill and designate whether we were on the earth
or the moon and they could change any time they wished. They
watched and taught as we performed our skills. They moved among the

learners demonstrating the movement when needed. When we were done

170

they asked us to tell them what we thought we had learned in class
about gravity and motor skills on the earth and the moon.

This lesson was interesting in that the students had gone
outside of their own content knowledge base in their limited inquiry
about gravity, yet they had stayed with a concept/idea they had
some understanding of and felt they could represent to their
students. This is not so easy in all contents and with all
concepts.

Some other groups had great difficulty trying to teach a
content concept using the context of the moon. As a result their
lessons were poorly planned and implemented. Perhaps it is
misleading to say "poorly planned" because each group spent a lot of
time in class and outside of class pulling together what they knew
about their content and what they didn't know, connecting it to what
they had learned about the moon and finally planning their lessons.
Each group seemed to teach as they might have been taught in high
school and more recently in college, although many made the attempt
to ”show" the concept they were teaching through overhead diagrams,
models to represent distance from the earth to the moon, or light
reflection from the sun. These attempts to show the concept only
augmented their telling about the concept. I'm not sure that the
assignment was appropriate. One needs to have a pretty
sophisticated understanding of subject matter inside and outside of
one's content to make interdisciplinary connections. I was asking
them to teach across content and that is difficult even for

experienced teachers.

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The mini-teaching tasks were considered to be extremely
valuable and informative for many students. Their learning was
documented in their written responses to questions asked in the
final course evaluation. One student echoed others' statements in
the evaluation when she wrote, "Not only did I learn about planning
and different perspectives from my own group, I experienced
approaches taken by other groups that I could adapt and learn from."
An art student wrote, "The moon assignment helped me to see my
subject from several different perspectives, not just my own .
when I went into the classroom to do my teaching, I tried to think
about incorporating math, science and architecture into my lessons.
Another student wrote, "The mini-teaching . . . required me to plan,
prepare, organize, practice, implement, evaluate, and reflect upon
my performance of a lesson plan." In the final course evaluation
twenty-six students out of forty-seven total stated that the
miniteaching tasks were helpful to them in planning as well as
thinking about teaching and learning in their content [see final

course evaluation, question #2, Appendix].

Dielegie_1epppele. Students used their dialogic journals as an
arena to compare what they thought about teaching when they entered
this course and what they were thinking. The mini-lesson #1 and
Wilson, Shulman and Richert's (1989) article taken together have
caused students to begin questioning what they know and how they
need to think about their connecting their knowledge and teaching.

Students used this journal to converse with me about how they were

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thinking and feeling, affording me the opportunity to push their
thinking or help them analyze what they are thinking or feeling.
For example one student wrote, "Mrs. Wolfe . . . after reading 150
Different Ways and teaching the moon lesson I really changed my
whole attitude and thinking about teaching. I guess I always
thought I would be able to be a good teacher just by getting up in
front of the class and giving the students good notes and being
really nice so that everyone would like me. Well my eyes have been
opened to what teaching really is and I don't know how to get there

." [dj#51, 10'92]. Another talked about getting inside of her
"intuitive knowing" revealed to her by George, the English teacher,
in ”'150 Different Ways' of Knowing...." ”He talked about knowing
something ”intuitively," but coming up with a precise definition
for what he wanted was difficult. If I were learning to teach
something new I might be more aware of the building blocks as a
student because I know how much I don't know . . . I love almost
every facet connected with teaching English. It's always been easy
for me. Now I need to take apart something that doesn't need fixing
so I know how to do it (teach) for someone else . . . I continue
to try to reconcile this methods class with my content area . "
[dj#53, 10-19 '92].

These are fairly typical of the dialogic responses I received
from my students. My responses dealt, in the first response, with
getting my student to articulate what she meant by ”what teaching

was really like." My hunch was that she had left subject matter

knowledge out of her original vision. In the second dialogic

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journal response, I questioned my student about her resistance to
knowing about the building blocks of her own discipline and what the
idea of "fixing” really meant to her. I suspected that this was
similarly a question of subject matter knowledge understood in ways
to teach it not simply to ”love" and hold it personally.

Students were using the dialogic journals to attempt to
understand the articles, tasks, and discussions they were involved
in through the course. They also examined the second course
question through the dialogic journal as they dealt with the texts

and tasks chosen to develop it.

Co u . Students were writing entries for the group
journal but the entries were short and sparse on analysis.
Sometimes the entries would simply say something like we didn't have
anything important to say or we answered the discussion questions
and here is what we said.... Students were responding negatively to

the content journal task.

WW
mamas
The physical education content group taught an interesting and
informative lesson using gravity to teach particular motor skills
for middle school students. Their lesson was probably the most
successful of any that day. They decided to use a concept that they
understood and could in turn represent for their students to

understand as well. They also taught one lesson, using only the

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idea of gravity, something that we had a basic understanding of
anyway, as would middle schoolers. They also had a number of ways
to represent gravity-little gravity for student understanding, not
the complex scientific representation, but certainly every day
scientific representation at a more concrete level. When I asked
this group whether they had had to research anything, they said that
they had to find out the ”basics" of gravity and for that they had
used an astronomy book and they had asked one of their science
instructors for some help. They had gotten the idea of the beach
balls from this instructor. I thought they had used creativity in
their approach and that their own content concept of large motor
skill development had been understood.

Many of these mini-lessons were not well organized and the
concepts explored were not totally understood by the individuals who
were teaching them. This came out in our whole group discussion as
groups who taught readily admitted their inability to teach their
content for understanding because they did not understand the
content concepts they were teaching and in some cases the moon
context connection. One group in particular had gross
misconceptions about the arrangement of the solar system. They had
the belief that the stars orbited around the moon. It was obvious
that they had not researched their everyday conceptions; they had
accepted them as correct. When this was pointed out to them by some
of their peers, they blamed the environment they had to work in for

the confusion of the game they had created. They had not studied

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the phenomenon to which they were to relate the concept from their
subject matter.

There was a feeling that this lesson would have been easier for
the math group to conceptualize if they had "understood” the concept
of proportion or ratio. They knew it in ways to "tell" it as
teachers. They typified other groups in that they gave the
definition to their peer learners and then provided the algorithm to
solve for it. They walked around and directed students in their
work with the problems. Once the learners had solved the problems
the lesson was considered a success. They used overheads to solve
problems with the learners and the chalk board for students to write
their work on reflecting the methods they were familiar with as
learners in secondary and university based courses. Because they
had learned about mathematics at many levels in conventional ways,
they were limited in their teaching methods, as the science group
stated in their content journal. The assignment limited them even
more because they were trying to develop a context using new
information about the moon while connecting it to a mathematics
concept they felt comfortable teaching.

Most of my students learned something about the complexity and
difficulty of conceptualizing a lesson about a concept in their
content. They also learned what it meant to have a limited
knowledge of content and how that affected their teaching.

The first mini-lesson was, for all but one of them, a first

teaching experience. I suspect I confused the experience by asking

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students to use the context of the moon to teach a concept from
their content.

This first mini-teaching task was very important
to me and to the students. It was their first
opportunity to work together as a content group from
beginning to end on a subject matter project. They
learned a lot about what they knew about their content
and what they did not know. They realized, in some
cases, that their knowledge limited their ability to
teach about a concept. The math group in section 1 was
particularly upset with their performance. Because
they were not understood by the [larger] group, they
.felt they needed to simplify what they had done-I
almost think they were talking about their own
understanding of the concepts/they could tell us about
ratio/ proportion and do problems but they could not
answer student questions. There was also a belief with
this group that they could not do it [teach
effectively] because their only experience in the field
classroom was observation thus far-promoting the belief
that once they got into the c1assroom[field] all of the
”secrets" of teaching math would be revealed to them.

[j#3 . P- 27]
While it made sense for students to search for an answer outside of
themselves, it did not make sense that they would find it in
classrooms similar to ones they had learned in as high school
students. These mathematics students (as well as other content
students) needed content specific methods courses that helped them
understand their content in ways to teach it, something they could

not accomplish in a general methods course.

Entry of Math content group:

Math content group 1: ”We all feel math needs to
be explained in as many different ways as possible, as
simply as possible. This is the challenge for us as
our studies take us away from simplicity and
require[us] to consider complex concepts and abstract
ideas. It changes our view of what is simple any more.
Probably the most frustrating part of this assignment

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was directing the lesson with little more than

observation of teachers to use as the source of

information." [p.11
The students in this math group, as in other content groups, talk
about their belief that math should be "explained" in a multiplicity
of ways, highlighting their "teaching is telling" stance.

I felt limited in my ability to help these groups look at their
concept after their teaching and in some cases during the planning
stages of their lessons, especially the math group and the music
group. My lack of content knowledge prevented me from helping these
groups in particular content specific ways. It was difficult to
think about asking questions to move students further in their
understanding of teaching content when I did not know the questions
to ask. Further, it was difficult to ask questions about a lesson
when I did not begin with a basic understanding of the concept being
taught in order to judge the soundness of the concept taught. I
could ask questions that led students to think more deeply about
their lesson in a lot of contents, but I was limited in others and I
shared this with my students.

I also had a difficult time dealing with the physical education
groups because of their attitude that I considered them incompetent.
After all, every other professor or instructor they had ever taken
had treated them like they were incapable of learning, except for
those in their own department [paraphrasing their words]. Both of
my physical education groups visited in my office during the

semester where they conveyed their concerns to me.

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I did not share this view. My view is and was that they are
not just teachers of physical education, but they are teachers of
the health sciences, math, science, and others, because of their
minors. They need to begin to think about teaching in ways that
allow their students access to effective ways to think about subject
matter and learn it. They will, in some cases, go to a rural
setting and teach physical education and math or science. They may
be the only science teacher. This means that they must know their
content in the same ways that other content teachers know theirs.
Time needs to be spent with these individuals who believe that they
will only be teachers of physical education and coaches.

Students took the task very seriously and once they got past
the idea that "this is what the instructor wants, " they really had
a rich experience and learned from one another within and across
content groups. One of my committee members suggested that they
found a parallel between this task and what they imagined would
happen in a methods class. I am inclined to agree with her because
in the final course evaluations, students valued the tasks that put
them into a teaching experience far above other tasks that I

considered more important [see final course evaluation, question 2].

2mm

Things were escalating in this second part of the course
because of fieldwork and the need to prepare my students for the
classrooms they would be teaching three lessons in. They needed

information on planning and instruction and I was not ready to do

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that just yet. I kept thinking throughout this portion of the
course that more time and a different field schedule would help the
process of looking at personal beliefs about teaching and learning
to teach. I was really feeling pressured because we were
approaching the half way mark in the semester and my students would
be entering their field classrooms to teach in a few weeks. Thus
far I had not worked with them in traditional ways to prepare them
for the field--teaching them how to write instructional objectives,
use the Madeline Hunter lesson plan format (modified at this
university), as well as strategies of discussion, questioning,
demonstration, lecture (approved format for beginning secondary
methods at this university). I had concentrated on looking at the
secondary context and what it meant to know content. I wanted more
time to develop the "knowing” concept, how does one know a content
and what does that have to do with teaching it. We could spend the
entire semester on this! I was angry about having to stop and think
about preparing students for field in the conventional way. What we
were doing made so much more sense to me as preparation for field.
I even thought about moving field to the very end of the course, but
I did not have time to think about and plan a clear approach. I
thought about what might work as the course evolved in my journal.
Field should really be the last thing we do in

methods . . . maybe an end with field, with a period of

reflection and discussion after that. Perhaps in that

reflective space, looking back on all of what we had

talked about, wrote about--looking then at how field

might have crystallized some things for them or spawned
new questions. [rj #3 p. 29]

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I conferred with two of my committee members and from our
conversations decided to share my thinking with my students, letting
them know that I did not think this was the best approach, however
because of time and policy, it was the only approach. I took two
three hour blocks and worked with my students as they learned to
craft instructional objectives and lesson plans, and I lectured

about the required strategies to be covered in their field lessons

(above).
” W ” to e
Wilson, Shulman, and Richert's (1989) ”150 Different Ways. . .”

was very positively received by my students. They found it
accessible and they also thought about it in “practical" terms even
though it is theory based. I was surprised at the effect of this
article on my students. Perhaps it came at the right time for them
to hear what it had to say and, in some way, Grossman's model of
teacher knowledge highlighted what the article had to say as well.

With the specter of the lessons to be taught in the field
looming before them, the article seemed to provide students with
ways to think about teaching a lesson that made sense. Maybe that
was the change here, that they were thinking about making sense to
their students.

As I reflected on a student's statement where she described
her thinking in relation to teaching and learning being in ”fantasy

land" when she thought about teaching traditionally, I realized that

181

some of my students were rethinking their views and this particular

article may have been the catalyst.

ngeemeh's Model pf Teachep Knowledge

I thought teaching Grossman's (1990) model was a good idea
because I wanted students to see and think about the categories of
knowledge that effective teachers draw on to plan and teach.
.Unfortunately, I used Grossman's model before I had taken time to
understand it well enough to teach it, especially the substantive
and syntactic components of subject matter knowledge. I needed a
way to talk about these components so that my students could begin
to think about them and how they helped form subject matter
knowledge. I also realized that this is a difficult concept,
perhaps not an appropriate one for a beginning methods course.
Perhaps a different approach on my part would have helped more
students begin to see the usefulness of the model as they try to
determine what they need to know about their content to teach

effectively in the secondary classroom.

MW

The course was at a stage where many things had been set in
motion. The dialogic journals were coming in on a rotating basis as
were the content group journals. Many students, however, were
unhappy with having their dialogic journals read every four weeks so
they started handing them in more frequently. I was reluctant to

refuse because I sensed that their journals were a vehicle where I

182

could enter their thoughts and help them clarify and extend their
thinking. They were also beginning to ask questions of me in their
dialogic journal. Questions seemed to be about texts and the need
for further clarification, especially Hawkins' ”I, Thou, It" and
Wilson, Shulman and Richert's (1989) "'150 Different Ways....,"
teachers they were observing in the field who did not fit the models
we were reading about and thinking about, and questions about
whether they could know enough to teach effectively. I tried to
respond to those questions because I had set these journals up as a
conversation about the texts and as a discussion between student and
instructor. Students began to answer the questions that I posed for
them in their journals so the reading took longer and longer.

First revisions of personal narratives came in as well. Field
placements had been set and students were planning to go into their
field assignments to teach in a few short weeks. Classes were spent
discussing the texts and planning and implementing tasks that I
planned in conjunction with those texts. I knew that I needed to
spend time outside of class reflecting about what happened in the
course and why it happened. I needed to be thinking about what I
might do to facilitate learning in a different way or to work on
further extensions of the same learning. The time I spent reading
the first drafts and then first revisions of their personal
narratives was incredible, hours and hours. The next revision did
not require as much time because they had an idea of where they were
going with their narratives at this point because of my feedback.

At the time I felt inundated by this course but I did not feel like

183

I could change anything because all of the pieces still seemed
somehow important to the whole.

During this time I had a number of conversations with my
committee members and my peers about certain parts of the course.
I'm not sure I ever let anyone on my committee know exactly how I
was feeling about the whole picture. I guess I thought I was
supposed to figure this out on my own. I'm not sure where this idea
came from, but it's an interesting thought for someone who had
planned an entire methods course around a concept that included
intense collaboration. As a result of some of the conversations, I
did drop the content group journal because it really was not
accomplishing what I wanted it to anyway. It probably would have
been much more effective if it had been the only journal for
students to respond in.

One conversation in particular with a peer and colleague left
me believing that I had created an ineffective course. At the time,
however, I really did not chose to ”hear” what he said.

Talked to R tonight about the difficulties I am

having in this methods course. We talked for a long

time as I explained all that I was doing and still

hoping to accomplish. R told me my expectations were

unrealistic . . . what I wanted to accomplish was a

definite impossibility in one semester with one course.

She also said that I really wasn't just teaching one

course, I was trying to teach three courses, a content

knowledge methods course, a foundations of ed. course,

and a school in society course. As I tried to explain

why I felt all of this needed to be in place for these

students . . . R remained adamant that a course, to be

effective, can only contain so much/beyond a certain

point nothing is reflected on or connected with.
[reflection j#2, lO-'92, p. l8-l9]

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I was frustrated and puzzled when I hung up the phone. I thought
initially, as I reflected on the phone call, that I had been
teaching an ineffective course. At one level what my colleague said
made a great deal of sense. At another level I was observing my
students do a great deal of thoughtful reflection on many texts and
tasks in the course. I was watching my students realize that
teaching was a complex endeavor and that they needed to move a lot
further in their understanding before they could become effective
teachers. They were also discovering, in many cases, that the
teachers they had thought of as ”good" teachers were not, according
[to our readings and related discussions in class. Some very
powerful realizations were happening in students' personal
narratives and in their dialogic journals. The work of the course
was overwhelming and mistakes and adjustments were made often, but I

believed the course was effective in many ways.

a k N w

M d 0

As I think about the mini-teaching task using the moon as a
context to teach a content concept, I am wondering about cross
disciplinary teaching at this point in the course. Cross
disciplinary teaching is a difficult concept for experienced
teachers and it requires knowledge of connections between
disciplines. This seems like a difficult venture for preservice
students who are learning to teach. I am also thinking that using

the moon as a context to teach a content concept from.was initially

185

confusing to my students. They think of their content areas as
isolated and become confused when they are asked to make connections
to other disciplines when they perceive no connections. One group,
highlighted earlier, tried to figure out what defined history and
did not want to mix it up with science. It is clear to me from this
group's struggle and others that I observed and interacted with that
they did engage in thinking about what made up their discipline,

and I suspect this was the first time for many of them to involve
themselves in this kind of thinking. Their views were myopic and
did not include the bigger dimensions of their content area. They
thought of their content as encapsulated fragments to be learned and
once mastered they would "know” their content.

This task pushed them to think about knowing and teaching
content in a different way. They had to depend on what they could
observe, research and on prior knowledge of their content. They had
to look inside of what they knew, to figure it out so that they
could represent it for learners who did not know it. They also had
to depend on themselves and content group members in the learning
phase and that was very different for them. One student summed up
well what many others wrote in their course evaluations about the
mini-teaching lesson; "I would have to say that as the learner in
this project I felt very different because I could not ask questions
or expect my teacher to tell me what I needed to know in order to do
the project. I needed to depend on me. That made it very different
from the usual situation of learning that I am used to" [question

#2, final course evaluations, Appendix]. I have watched many

186

different groups experience difficulty with the assignment and while
I need to be clearer in my directions and perhaps in my guidance,
maybe the difficulty also occurs because students want to or are

challenged to act differently than they are.

C eac

I am also wondering about group teaching at this level as well,
even though my students valued their mini-teaching experience above
any other task in their evaluations. Team teaching is also another
difficult practice for preservice teachers. I have seen some very
good lessons, however, and the focus of collaboration is definitely
an important part of this course. I have had students complain
about the difficulty they have meeting outside of class which is a
definite concern on a commuter campus. When I think about handing
over time in class to work on these lessons, I am bothered by what
readings we won't cover and how many discussions will be cut short.

I am also aware through conversations with group members who
have valued the group experience, especially the teaching, that
members report that they would never have spent the time on a lesson
if they had done it alone. They refer to spending hours, developing
a lesson because of the different perspectives of the group members
in relation to the same content area. One group reported that they
spent twenty hours developing a lesson to be team taught. They
worked hard developing their lesson initially and conferred with me
about their lesson. I asked a few questions and made a statement or

two--What is the concept you want to teach? It doesn't seem clear

187

as I read the lesson. What will the students learn from playing a
game like jeopardy? What will your students walk away from your
lesson knowing? I'm still not clear what it is you're trying to
teach. Can you clarify it for me? [j#3, 10'92, p. 24] After their
session with me they rethought and reconstructed their lesson,
spending more hours thinking about how to translate what they know
into what and how to teach. Without the team teaching approach this
in depth work would not have been done.

Students also talk about the support they feel from other
members of the group as they plan and teach. They also feel this is
good preparation for their independent teaching in the field [course
evaluation, #2, Appendix]. Perhaps handing over time in class for
the groups to think and plan is just as important as whole group
discussions. Concentrating on five or six texts instead of twenty

would help redefine the time available.

he W t

I have struggled with the work of this course for three
semesters and I am well into the fourth as I write this. Because
of the time devoted to finishing my dissertation this semester and
last, I have drastically reduced the number of readings and tasks.
Even though students are not writing in a dialogic journal, writing
a unit plan, or reading a great number of articles, I am still
seeing and hearing thoughtful reflection in personal narratives,
class discussions, and content group discussions. I do not feel as

involved in managing the course, yet students are making the same

188

connections. It is becoming clear to me that I do not have to put
everything into the course each semester. A few powerful readings,
identified through final course evaluations, meaningful tasks that
cause students to use what they have learned from readings and A
discussions, and content groups as a way of managing the work of the

course make the course manageable and powerful for one teacher.

Wain

Again I am faced with the prominent belief that the real goods
of teaching are in the field. In a particularly powerful journal
response, the realization that students decide at some point
whether they will play the game of the college classroom and get the
grade or listen to the ”expert” in the field and learn to teach,
presents itself once again. I find it difficult to confront these
preservice student beliefs and do not know exactly how to do it. I
know that what I say and do because of the field component can reach
teachers in the field and can be the source of lost placements if
these teachers interpret that I have criticized them in any way.

I am convinced that I need to rethink this course with the
field component in a different place. To do that I need to decide
what I want field experience to do for the students and for me in
this course. Perhaps the power of field for my students is enhanced
because of its placement in the course and the emphasis on
preparation for field instead of an evolving course that field fits

naturally into at some point in the semester. I will need time to

189

think this through as I adhere to the fieldwork guidelines of this
NCATE approved university program.

I can see the value of structured observation in secondary
settings and I tried to set that up to happen during the first part
of the course because I was concerned that students needed to be
familiar with the secondary setting in a manner that was different
that their personal school experience. It seems as though the
tutoring of special needs students could be continued during the
"knowing" exploration. Perhaps the "what does knowing have to do
with teaching” question could be the last course question and the
field lessons could be taught during this time.

I would run into problems however, because I would be
competing for placements with the other methods courses. One
solution I have considered is to open another urban school and work
exclusively with two schools while I do the placements and the
supervision. Perhaps students could team teach in these particular
schools as well since they have adopted the middle school concept.

I am aware that we do not spend enough time thinking and
learning about content knowledge and how to teach it for student
understanding. This has to be the most important concern. This is
a dilemma and one I need to explore further. The field program will
stay so I need to find a way to work with the field program to allow
the components to enhance our thinking about content knowledge and
how it informs the effectiveness of what we do as teachers of

secondary students.

190

My intent that student assumptions of "knowing enough" to teach

would be challenged by the second course question was realized at
different levels. Some students were greatly concerned that they
did not know their content after believing through assessments in
their content courses that they did. They also recognized as they
read course texts, planned and taught a lesson, that they needed
to know their content differently to teach it. Through these
experiences they were forced to examine their content knowledge
base. Most students faced themselves honestly and admitted that
they didn't understand many parts of the subject matter they would
be expected to teach, and could only transfer it as they had
learned it. With this knowledge students prepared to deepen their
exploration of what it means to teach subject matter as they moved
into a study of the last course question, What does knowing one's

content have to do with teaching it?

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT DOES KNOWING ONE'S CONTENT
HAVE TO DO WITH TEACHING IT?

Qgeggiew

As my students and I moved into our exploration of the third
course question, it was a particularly busy and rich part of the
course. My students were preparing to enter the field to teach
three lessons which they were working on with the field teacher's
input. They were also preparing, within their content area groups,
to teach a second mini-teaching lesson in which they were supposed
to represent a concept in more than one way to increase learner
understanding. In addition students were preparing to hand in the
final drafts of their personal narratives for any final comments or
questions about their development, and they were beginning to read
and respond to content specific articles chosen for their groups.

We were focusing on looking at how one's knowledge of content
can limit the teaching of it as we examined the third course
question. In content groups and in whole group, students thought
hard about how to transform.what they thought they knew into ways
to teach it to students who did not have the same knowledge.
Pressing my students to look back at their first mini-teaching

lessons and reflect on how difficult it was to teach some of the

19]

192

concepts, helped students think about how they were unable to
change their knowledge into representations that learners could
connect with. Students repeated what they had stated during their
personal lesson critiques, that they really did not understand their
concept clearly enough to transfer it in ways for others to learn. I
wanted my students to continue exploring ideas of transforming and
representing knowledge to support learning. I wanted them to see a
strong connection between their knowing and teaching, and the
limitations that exist if a teacher only knows content in a personal
way or thinks of it as a fixed body of information.

In this chapter students continued to reflect on and read "150
Different Ways of Knowing: Representations of Knowledge in
Teaching” and they worked with content specific texts in science,
mathematics, history and English. All students read the science and
mathematics texts as a basis for discussion about student
misconceptions.

Students were involved in five learning tasks described in this
chapter: mini-teaching #2, content journals, fieldwork teaching,
final drafts of personal narratives and field reflection papers [See
course schematic, figure one, part 3, Appendix]. Student responses
to the above tasks are reported. I hightlight two students'
fieldwork lessons and two students' personal narratives. Finally, I
discuss my thinking at the time of the course work and my thinking

about the work of the course now.

193

lam

”'150 Ways Different Ways' of Knowing: Representation of
Knowledge in Teaching" (1989) was introduced in connection with the
second question, yet it had great implications for this chapter as
well. I asked my students to revisit this article often as they
thought about preparing their mini-lessons and their field lessons.
I particularly used the ”pedagogical reasoning model” described in
the article to help students think about lesson planning. Content
groups used the model to "walk through” planning a lesson.

We had reached a point in the course where we had some shared
understandings about the secondary context, especially the students,
and what teachers needed to know about their content. So it
seemed the right time for students to read some texts that related
to their individual content areas. They could ponder over these
together, and discuss how the issues we had explored together
looked in a particular content classroom . . . theirs.

I selected these texts because of the teachers portrayed in
them and because of the theoretical concerns--conceptual change
teaching, teaching as perspective, and teaching with transformative
aims. These texts were ”Teaching Science” (Anderson and Smith,
1987), ”Peering at History Through Different Lenses: The Role of
Disciplinary Perspectives in Teaching History” (Wilson and Wineburg,
1989), "The Teacher as Respondent to the High School Writer" (Dunn,
Florio-Ruane, Clark, 1989) and ”A Pedagogical Autobiography:

Mathematics Teaching" (Rickard, 1991).

194

These articles offered something for all students, independent
of their content. Each text looked at content teachers at different
levels of knowing. Content specific articles also gave students
ideas about how content teachers interpreted their work with subject
specific aims in relation to their knowing.

Mr. Jameson connected his outside interest in photography to
the writing classroom in "Teacher as Respondent to the High School
Writer" (1989). Students in Mr. Jameson's course were portrayed as
learning in different ways as they wrote about something they had a
particular interest in. The boundaries in this classroom were not
rigidly defined.

Wilson's and Wineburg's (1989) piece, ”Peering At History
Through Different Lenses,” allowed history students to think about
their interest emphasis, sociological, political, historical, and
how that affects their content knowledge and how they might teach
it. This article was subject specific but had implications for
other contents.

With ”Teaching Science" (1987) I wanted to give students
something more to think about, uncovering and attempting to correct
scientific misconceptions. Once again this requires teaching that
is not conventional. All of these articles prod students to think
about knowing their content in order to teach it for student
understanding. All of the boundaries may look different but the
foci seem similar.

The individual content groups were responsible for leading the

discussion for their particular article. The others were asked to

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read all of the articles to respond to the group's questions and to
take advantage of the information that might apply across content
for them. Unfortunately, many students only read the articles they
were responsible for, while some students requested and read all of
the articles.

I required all of the students to read Anderson and Smith's
article ”Teaching Science" (1987) because of the emphasis on
conceptual change teaching. I thought this text would be relevant
for all students because they would be teaching students who carried
misconceptions in their content area. I coupled the discussion of
this reading with the viewing of "Private Universe," a video of
researchers looking at students' private conceptions/
misconceptions in relation to scientific understandings. I decided
to show the video because I wanted to impress my students with the
knowledge that intervention into private beliefs or misconceptions
is difficult. It requires that teachers know their students and
their content well enough to be familiar with the common
misconceptions that exist within disciplines. I also wanted them to
be aware of the prevalence of misconceptions and what an
intervention looked like.

All students were also required to read Tony Rickard's ,
”Pedagogical Autobiography; A Mathematical Journey" (1991). Rickard
surfaces every novice teacher's nightmare: What if a student asks
you something you can't explain because you don't know? Rickard's
search for ”knowing" is on and students can connect to that feeling

at this point in the course very clearly. Tony's moment of facing

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what he did not understand is a shared experience among many
beginning teachers. What is not shared occurs after he faces his

limitations, his quest to understand.

de e n es to exts

Students continued to work with and value "'150 Different Ways'
of Knowing: Representations in teaching.” This particular article
seemed to help students understand where they were in their
preparation for teaching. One student stated that she thought she
could .”..just go in and explain math to students like I would to
one of my friends-but I can't, they don't understand in the way that
someone in college would." This same student thought she would be a
good teacher simply because she could explain the math procedures
well, ” . . . Now I know there's a lot more to it than I thought. I
will need to know math in every way possible, not just the way I
learned it" [#50]. The article allowed one student to think about
how he might teach and how much more he needs to know. "I know why
some teachers are ineffective, because although they know their
subject matter, they lack different ways to present it . . . it has
made me think about what I really know right now, what I still need
to know, and how I'm going to represent all that stuff in my head to
my students [#48] [final course evaluations, #'s 50, 48].

Students already had faced the reality that knowing what a
textbook says and relying on personal knowledge is not the same as

knowing one's content. They now realized that they needed to

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understand their own knowledge well enough to transform it into new
examples for their students to explore and access.

My students found the article, "Teaching Science," by Anderson
and Smith (1987) to be surprising and powerful as they thought about
possible misconceptions that might exist in their own content area.
They would need to find ways to discover these in order to teach
their students effectively. They also were surprised at the
misconceptions highly educated adults had in relation to scientific
understandings. They admitted to some of these same
misunderstanding concerning seasons and lunar eclipses, depicted in
the video, as well as some of the examples in the reading, i.e.
light and vision.

We had to laugh after reading this article,

because we obviously have lots of misconceptions,

including the light and vision example. We thought

about what some people's misconceptions about music

might be.... [cj, music group #1, p. 21]

We in this methods course are working for

"conceptual change” . . . you as a teacher question and

get to know your students . . . then you are able to

move a student from their old conceptions to new ones

[cj, English group #1, p. 23]

An English student connected with the idea of the ”scientific
mindset.”
The article by the science teacher who commented

on helping his students develop a scientific mindset

when conducting an experiment sticks in my mind. I

think the mindset for students has a lot to do with

their learning and success. I am a different person

when I think of myself as a writer. It makes my mind

prepared to do the things that my ”mental model” of a
writer would do. [final course evaluation, #9]

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Many students connected with Rickard's story (1991), "A
Pedagogical Autobiography; A Mathematical Journey," whether they
were mathematics majors or not. They related his struggles to their
own in some cases.

I enjoyed his account of how he formed concepts
questioned them, and repeatedly adjusted for new
knowledge. It mimics what's happening to me here

.” [cj, science group #2]

This paper is the perfect note to end on. It

takes us full cycle through teaching for conceptual

change-from shielded misconceptions to confrontation

and new information. It shows a man wrestling to

assimilate and make his own, ideas which are alien to

him. Much the way I've had to deal with some of the

concepts in methods to come to a clearer understanding

lei. art group# 1]

Rickard became a teacher who is also a learner

. he grew by having his assumptions and

perspectives about teaching challenged . . . by the why

questions [cj, English group #1]

Other students identified with Rickard's decisions about
teaching and choosing a major because they had ”always been good at
it.” His article caused the math students in one of the sections to
rethink what they knew about adding zeros and actually question some
of their math professors about this.

Many students seemed to be making important discoveries at this
point in time about themselves, primarily, and what they knew or
did not know about their content. Somehow they had never thought
about how they were going to teach their content except to think

about a district curriculum guide and a textbook. The pervasiveness

of this attitude surprised me.

199

Take

Mini-peaching ppoject #2. This learning experience was based
on the idea of ”representation" discussed in Wilson and Shulman,
Richert's (1987) "150 Different Ways of Knowing: Representations of
Knowledge in Teaching." The idea of representing their knowledge in
more than one way was also a requirement for one of their field
lessons. Their preparation in the content group was also
preparation for the field.

Students were preparing to teach their second and final
mini-teaching lesson. While their first lesson, using the moon as a
context to teach a content concept, had been less structured, I
required this second lesson to be more structured. This lesson
would be focused toward one of their three required lessons, to be
taught in the field for secondary students. For this assignment
students were to teach a lesson on a content concept, transforming
their knowledge of that concept into more than one ”representation”
to support student understanding. They also taught this as a
mini-lesson to their methods classmates.

To help my students begin to see what transforming content
knowledge into instructional representations involves, I presented a
series of representations of the concept of ”setting" in relation to
the study or writing of a short story. I brought in a print of
Robert Bateman's "Vantage Point," a painting of a bald eagle
standing on a large cedar stump, overgrown with moss and sea grass,
firmly anchored to a stretch of rocky beach on the Pacific ocean.

I asked students what Bateman needed to know in order to paint this

200

bird in this particular habitat. For example, would he need to know
about seasonal behaviors, such as migration, nesting, eating habits?
I asked my students if they thought it was important to situate a
bird or other species of wildlife in their natural setting. I
queried whether authenticity of setting was important to a premier
wildlife painter.

I then passed out the lyrics to a song written about the
Vietnam conflict, "Goodnight Saigon,” written by Billy Joel. I gave
my students time to read and discuss the lyrics in their content
groups and tell me what Billy Joel needed to know about war in order
to write this song. I asked if Joel had created a setting through
his lyrics. I asked them to describe it to me and they used words
like depressing, dark, hopeless, and fearful. I asked them whether
they thought the setting was authentic and they responded that it
was because they could ”feel” it and see it. I asked them if a
setting should evoke a feeling and they thought it probably should
to pull the listener in.

Finally I talked about Shirley Jackson's short story ”The
Lottery” and asked my students what the author would need to know to
”situate” the story and characters, for example would she need to
know about the historical context of the time the story took place?
Human nature? I asked them if the setting gave them a feeling and
they said that it did. They used words like “helpless,” "anxious,”
”unreal." [annotated lesson plans, p. 10]

I also focused on the “pedagogical reasoning model“ in Wilson,

Shulman and Richert's (1987) ”'150 Different Ways' of

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Knowing. . . ." (p. 119), after presenting my ”representation” to my
students. I told my students that I had an understanding
(comprehension) of the importance of "setting" to an author and I
also realized that there were many kinds of authors who utilized
"setting” in their works. I "reviewed” works from different arenas
that I thought would illustrate the power of setting (alternative
representations). I thought about the students I would be
introducing the concept of "setting" to and I tried to include
student backgrounds in art, science, music, English, history.
Background in mathematics and physical education were not included
except through possible outside interests or interest in learning
about the concept of “representation.” As I presented the lesson I
was ”instructing” in a thoughtful effective manner using
questioning, discussion, pacing and group activity (later). I
evaluated my students' understanding of ”setting” through
questioning during the lesson, and of planning an effective lesson
with representations through their "walk through” the pedagogical
reasoning model in their content groups. I also evaluated the
effectiveness of my own teaching about "representation" using the
concept of setting, as I observed my students working through the
model. I explained to my students during my direct instruction that
as a teacher educator I would reflect on the lesson I had prepared
for them thinking about their responses individually and as a group.
Through this (reflection) I would reach a (new comprehension) and I
would teach the lesson differently in the future because of what I

learned from the process and from them.

202

Each content group then selected a concept and used the
pedagogical reasoning model to work through planning a lesson they

would teach in their second mini-teaching lesson.

gpppehe_g;eep_jpppheie. Groups were recording their

discussions and preparations for their mini-lessons in their content
group journals. The entries dwindled and they lacked substance in
relation to the group's thinking and discoveries, as a whole.

During this part of the course I decided, after discussion with two

of my committee members to discontinue the content journal.

Fielggephp The department requires students to do twenty seven
hours of fieldwork. I changed a few things in the original
fieldwork guidelines. The observation hours, which encompassed
visits to urban, suburban and rural secondary schools, were
relatively unstructured. I wanted students to look for particular
things inside and outside of the classroom. I asked students to pay
attention to and describe, in field notes, the communities the
schools were situated in, the physical appearance of the school and
the classrooms, the lesson that was being taught, what the learners
were like and what they seemed to be learning, whether there was
interaction between student and teacher and what it looked and
sounded like. I did this because I wanted students to recognize
that the outside of the school many times defines the inside of the
school, and I wanted them to be aware of what was going on in the

classroom. I wanted them to begin connecting what we were reading

203

about and discussing to their observations inside and outside of the
classroom.

I also had my students write a Field Reflection Paper on their
field experiences using a narrative format. They were to utilize
their field notes and describe what happened and then write an
analysis of what they saw, connecting it to readings and or
concepts explored in our general methods course. I required this
paper instead of the traditional field log because it encouraged
students to think in greater detail about what they were seeing and

doing.

Personal_narra£ixsai My students were also immersed their

personal narratives which encompassed the semester, the personal
narrative. This task provided another window through which my
students and I could view their beliefs about teaching and
learning, as they intensively examined their own learning. It was
also another place where I mediated and directed their thinking
toward certain concepts explored through the organizing questions,
texts and tasks of the course. As I intervened with questions and
comments students revised and expanded their stories as they
reflected on my comments in relation to their memory of the learning

episode.

204

Spudent Responses to Tasks
pring to iigppe out ”pepresehtatioh," Many students had

difficulty understanding the idea of "representation" of their
knowledge relative to teaching a content concept. Students do not
naturally think about the "transformation" step detailed in Wilson
et a1. (1987). Students have a sense that they teach as they were
taught, because after all they "understand” it. Their idea of
teaching, drawn from the components of the pedagogical reasoning
model might encompass only ”comprehension," ”direct instruction,"
and ”evaluation.” Some simply came up with many different ways to
"tell” students the same thing, a kind of repetitive exercise that
hammered in the same idea.

For example, the math group's representations included
"telling" the students the rule, ”writing” the rule on the board,
”doing" a problem, ”writing" the rule on an overhead and "working" a
problem on the overhead. They were teaching the concept of
converting fractions to decimals as a rule.

One of the science groups followed the same pattern as they

detailed what they would do in their mini-teaching lesson, as

detailed in their content group journal: ”. . . discuss formula and
how and why it affects our lives on a daily basis. . . . Introduce
the formula and explain how it works and why. . . . Explain as well
as show graphically. . . .” [cgj sci. #1, p. 24].

In both cases these groups started with the formula,
(beginning with the abstraction of the concept) instead of starting

at a concrete level and allowing learners to work to the abstract

205

with inquiry and questioning. Students were comfortable with the
abstract because that is what they had memorized and believed they
understood. They were uncomfortable with the concrete because they
did not understand where to begin.

Because of student difficulty with the idea of representation,
we revisited often Wilson, Shulman, and Richert's article, ”150
Different Ways of Knowing . . .” and especially the “pedagogical
reasoning model.” My students found this model to be an effective
way to think about what they needed to know and do to plan a lesson
as we worked through it in class and then in their individual
content groups as they planned mini-teaching #2. This article and
discussion also caused some of my students to reflect on what they
had learned in other courses about teaching and what they already
knew that helped them understand knowledge transformation and
”representation.” Many students wrote about this in their dialogic
journals and in their field reflection papers.

Of all of the groups, art and drama, in particular, appeared
to have grabbed the essence of knowledge transformation and
”representation." I would like to concentrate on this group, the
comments in their content journal and their mini-teaching, to
illustrate the impact of "'150 Different Ways of Knowing:
Representations of Knowledge in Teaching” and the pedagogical
reasoning model discussed in Wilson et a1. (1987).

The journal entries below reveal the value that these students
have placed on this particular article and the concepts of effective

teaching it presents. They also reveal these students' thinking

206

about this article and what they have learned in relation to the
educational images presented in other education courses. Finally,
there is a realization of what pedagogical content knowledge is, an
”aha" of sorts. These journal entries were made before their
mini-teaching lesson #2. All comments written below are taken from
the art and drama group's context journal and are written by each
student as they report for the week.

Art group-l #6

-- I think this article helped me in learning

how to plan classes. I made notes to myself
throughout the reading of this article.

-- in planning lessons teachers need to evaluate
their own understanding of subject matter

-- I should develop a biography of what I know
about other content areas that I can relate
to my own

-- I should pool all of my knowledge sources
together and decide what exactly I want my
students to learn and accomplish

-- I must give my students alternative ways to
see the subject matter [cj#6, 10-'92, p. 30]

This reporter-student was moved by the article to write unsolicited
notes to help him as he advanced through the education sequence. He
is also moving inside of himself to try to assess and understand
what he knows because of the article.

Art group-l #6: In my Communication in the
Classroom class we learned that superstar teachers have
these things in common; routinization, eye contact with
all, organization, establishing rules and regulations,
following through consistently and fairly. It left out
truly understanding your subject and knowing yours and
your students' possibilities and limitations.
Pedagogical content knowledge is a combination of

207

looking at the whole picture and transforming it-that
simple statement encapsulates the essence of teaching.
The questions of why am I teaching this? What can the
student learn? What are the purposes? are essential to
the formation, development and foundation of
pedagogical content knowledge . . . [cj #6, 10-'92 p.
39]

The article helped this student reporter recognize that the
"technical” aspects of teaching are secondary to understanding what
you are doing as a teacher and how to approach becoming an effective
teacher using a plan that includes knowledge of student, content,
and connections between the two.

Art group-l #6: Figure 4.2 from 150 Ways of
Knowing is a model of the process a teacher goes
through in preparing and teaching information. This
process appears overwhelming when looked at in theory.
However, it has been my experience that answers often
come from a natural course of events rather than
striving to reach a solution . . . example of this

. last year my dancers were working on leaps for an
upcoming competition. I was trying to have them move
with the accent on the up beat. I broke down the leaps
technically, showing them how the plie' gave them their
spring. I also told them to work through the entire
length of the body, from the toe up for strength. All
this helped but did not produce the effect I wanted.

It wasn't until a couple of days later that the
solution came to me. I was driving out in the country
to visit a friend and I was enjoying the changing of
the colors. Suddenly, from out of the blue a herd of
deer appeared, running and leaping across the field.

As I watched, I realized that the deer used the exact
air-born quality in their leaps that my dancers needed.
I relayed the story to them and it made a difference in
the quality of their leaps. They still needed to train
their muscles to acquire the strength needed, but they
now understood better what they were working toward
[cj#6, 10-'92, p. 32-33]

This student-reporter actually describes her own involvement with
the pedagogical reasoning model as a teacher of dance before she

realized the model existed. This student was very excited when she

208

read the article because she felt as though she now had a "language"
to think about her teaching with [cj. #6, p. 33].

As my art and drama students prepared to teach their
mini-teaching lesson and their field lesson using the concept of
"representation" they decided to teach a lesson about the concept of
"expression” in art, representing the concept in more than one way.
They believed that exploring this concept would help their art,
dance and drama students understand that when individuals reveal
their inner self it can take many forms and there is not a
correctness or incorrectness to the concept of expression. This
would be a foundation lesson for their students.

They started their lesson with two of the content group
artists drawing patterns on the blackboard, with chalk, to the
music of a new age artist, Yanni. A third member of the group, also
an artist, gave the group a running commentary on what they were
seeing each artist do and how the patterns that were developing
before our eyes might have been inspired. She spoke of mood
displayed in artistic pattern and individual interpretation. Once
the piece of music ended, she interviewed each of the artists and
they gave the group their story about how their pattern had
developed.

One artist had closed his eyes and let the music lead his hand
into a pattern of intricate scrolls. He had interpreted the music
through a baroque-like pattern, ornate, intricate, yet not totally
predictable. The other artist had let her body move with the music

as she drew wave like patterns and overlapping circles in large free

209

strokes. She had interpreted the sound in an open, free, and
simplistic form.

The commentator changed the context of interpretation from
music to a still life of fruit and wine. The same two artists had
painted the still life and the paintings were very different in
their visual effect. As the commentator interviewed each of them,
one admitted to seeing patterns and texture when he looked at the
still life, while the other artist stated that she saw the immediacy
of color. While one painting was intricate and true to the
exactness of the model, the other was free, with splashes of color
that one could imagine as the fruit modeled.

They then invited the class to interpret another piece of music
with a pen and paper, The class drew as the music played and then
the content group teachers pointed out the diversity of
interpretation and the lack of correctness or incorrectness. These
were simply personal interpretations and individual expression.

The drama and dance major in this group spoke of the importance
of interpretation in acting, especially in comedy. She spoke about
the use of exaggeration in comedy, and modeled the players in the
game of baseball. She asked us to think about what we saw baseball
[batters] do. We came up with spitting in their hands, rubbing dirt
on their hands and practice swings. She demonstrated each action
using exaggeration. She did the same thing with the baseball
pitcher and catcher.

She then called for volunteers to "play" a game of baseball.

The result was wonderful and funny. The other students participated

210

with intensity and humor and those who remained in the audience
began nagging the batter . . . hey batter, hey batter....

The content group attempted to impress upon the class that
there was much to know and think about here when one thinks about
interpretation and how to help students understand the concept [J#3,

p. 51, 11'92].

t n G Jou ls

While my students reacted favorably, in the early part of the
course, to the idea of content journals, their attitude changed as
the weeks wore on. They were not willing to reflect on and write
about the attitudes and beliefs of their content group. They were
afraid that they would somehow betray their peers. They were afraid
that they might write something that was not true, a
misinterpretation, if you will. They treated the content journals
”as a place to report what happened, a log of description with little
if any reflective analysis. It became a chore for many of them and
unpleasant as many groups wrote about it, after I decided to
discontinue the content journal:

[Science group] We all agreed that the biggest

negative, however, was this group journal. None of us

ever felt certain that the reporting we did was a true

depiction of the group sentiments. We were all

concerned with how we worded our entries. Would

someone's feelings be hurt by what was written? The

group journal is the one item we would suggest a future

change on. Would the concept of a group log be more

effective? We could briefly recap our group work in an

item by item format. You could still follow the

groups' progression through the semester without a lot
of sidestepping and bullshitting [cgj, 12-'92, p. 49]

211

[English group] We didn't think the group journal

was very helpful. The journal was more of a duty than a

choice that helped us. What we put in the group

journal could have been handled in the dialogic

journals. That way you could've had several

perspectives on the experience. We felt the group

journal was just a rehash of what we discussed in

class. [cgj. p. 29]

[Math group] There was a lot of apprehension

about the grade we would receive as a group. Today's

author can relate to this because as he is writing this

summary he is having a difficult time finding words to

express the group's thoughts. I don't know if these

fears of 'letting the group down' are anything for us

to worry about, but they do exist and were reported in

our discussion. [cgj, p. 28].

Group members wanted to take care of one another and protect
each other's right to interpretation. They were also dealing with a
group grade for the content journal and they did not want to do
anything to affect the group grade. They did not want to speak for
one another in the content journal, and they were relieved when the

content journal was discontinued.

MW

My students were quite nervous about actually teaching. They
had received their placements and made contact with their
cooperating teachers. Initially they observed in the cooperating
teacher's classroom and met with them to talk about the content they
would teach before teaching three different lessons to two groups of
students. My students would fit into the content being taught so
that the students and the classroom teacher would not have to
contend with a curriculum change being brought in from the outside.

Most of my students had what they referred to as productive

212

experiences. I observed and evaluated many of them. I thought
that most of the students learned something more about their own
content knowledge, engaging students, the kind of relationship they
need to develop in the classroom with their students and their
content, managing to get a lesson taught, and the things that may
happen because of limited preparation and personal beliefs brought
into the classroom.

Because this was their first ”teaching” experience in the field
many of them thought that they had done a better job of implementing
their lesson than they actually had. The math major who had
students do homework for fifteen minutes while she assisted, working
problems on students' papers for them thought she had done a good
job. Judging by the questions students had during the homework
session, I wondered, as we spoke later, whether they had understood
changing fractions to decimals, and decimals to fractions.

Some had fared better than others in asking questions that
would invite students to respond. Many held their place in front of
the class and lectured, using the chalkboard or the overhead to
emphasize many of their points. I also heard some of them tell
their students that the information they were talking about would be
on a quiz.

Some students commented that they had experienced an
adrenaline rush that carried them for hours after their teaching,
and convinced them that they had experienced what it felt like to
really teach. Finally, they were where the "real” learning about

teaching took place and they had done some ”real” teaching. The

213

power of being in charge of a classroom was intoxicating for many of
them and they talked about how they had managed with the students [j
#1, field notes, ll-'92 p. 37].

The two students, whose lessons follow, stood out in my
observations because of their preparation, attempted interaction
with students, and their attempts to transform their knowledge for
students to understand. The earth science student developed some
interesting representations, but maintained a traditional format.

In both of these lessons I could identify issues we had discussed in

our methods course.

A ' es - cal ed a n. Adam taught a lesson on
weight training as part of a larger unit for junior high school
males. He had a highly motivated group, and he was also personally
committed to weight training.

Adam introduced his lesson by talking about the history of
weight training and then discussed his own experiences in weight
training, as a football player and beyond. He elicited responses to
questions he posed about the benefits of weight training and also
some costs. ”What are some positive benefits of lifting weights?
What age levels are appropriate for lifting weights? What are some
things that might happen if you lift without a spotter? Can anyone
be a spotter? and so on. Adam asked two of his aides who were
football players from this high school to demonstrate proper lifting
and machine techniques, as he described what they were doing to the

group. He also had his models do improper techniques and discussed

214

xthe possible painful outcomes using his demonstrators to point out
the possible muscle groups and tendon sites that might be injured.
Adam emphasized learning to do weight training correctly.

After this demonstration and modeling, he had the young men
break up into four groups. Each group was monitored by the
instructors and demonstrators. Adam was careful to move from group
to group as he exchanged places so that all students had access to
him during the lesson.

Adam drew all of the students back together during the last
five to ten minutes of class to review what they had discussed and
practiced. He invited questions from his students as well. He also
invited them to utilize the after school hours offered by the high
school and the youth weight program at the local YMCA.

Adam demonstrated a tremendous amount of respect for the young
men he interacted with, referring to them as "gentlemen" and
listening to, valuing and "hearing” their questions in whole group
discussion and one on one. He responded to all questions asked,
repeating some for class emphasis. He praised students for their
participation and attention in his class. When students spoke or
asked questions Adam moved slightly toward them as he listened to
what they were saying.

Adam appeared to have researched the history of weight training
and nautilus equipment because he had a lot of knowledge about the
mechanics of the machines, and his knowledge of physiology and

kinesiology was also apparent as he connected the motion and the

215

notion of resistance to the marriage of the human body and the work

performed on the machines [j #l, p. 36-37].

Abby's lesson-earth science. Abby was a non-traditional
student. She had worked for Dow Chemical in the oil fields for
fifteen years as a geologist. She was returning to obtain
certification for teaching in the secondary schools. Abby was
completing majors in physics and mathematics and already had a major
in chemistry.

Abby's lessons in the field were very much lecture oriented or
”presentation” oriented. She tended to want to do all of the work
and ”tell" students all of the information she knew. Abby was
exceptionally prepared for her lessons but her students were not
often invited to take an active role in the learning process.

Abby began her lesson by talking a bit about her experiences in
her role as a geologist. She told them they would be looking at
rocks and the rock cycle during her stay with them. Abby explained
how rocks and their particular characteristics formed the context
for all that she did in her work. She talked particularly about
rock patterns, and the types that one needed to identify to make an
educated guess that oil would be near by.

She talked about the types of rocks and formations as "maps to
the treasure” they were seeking and how the rocks needed to be
"read" carefully. Students found this information very interesting
and listened intently. They did not talk to one another during this

time and they had some questions about Abby's experiences when her

216

introduction was completed. Abby's introduction illustrated how
having rich content knowledge is critical to student engagement with
subject matter.

Abby then introduced the subject matter of rocks and the rock
cycle by earlier asking three students to portray Iggy (igneous),
Sed (sedimentary), and Meta (metamorphic). She then explained the
general characteristics of the three rock types in humanistic terms
as she introduced the students to the class. ”Iggy has a fiery
temper and a low boiling point, molten, simmering like a volcano
inside, but when cooled down is solid and dependable . . . Sed is
rather loose and tends to fall apart if pushed too far-loves to hang
out around the river . . . Meta is a very complex person made up of
a lot of different qualities-solid under pressure.”

Abby lectured for the next twenty five minutes, using an
overhead. Students were frantically taking notes and missed
Opportunities to ask questions and reflect on the information as
they raced to get it all down. They knew a quiz was coming at the
end of class. There were nine new terms to know.

After the lecture, Abby asked students to examine each type of
rock and identify the defining characteristics. Information was
given to them in a hand out as they did this, they had examined and
identified these same rocks in an earlier lesson. This was a bit of
a review before the quiz. Students were given a quiz at the end of
the class. Abby corrected and returned the quiz the following day.

Abby was extremely open and discovery oriented in our methods

class and delighted in the "new” concepts we explored as we worked

217

toward defining good teaching. She was particularly interested in
the article ”'150 Different Ways' of Knowing: Representations of
Knowledge in Teaching” and stated that her approach to connect human
characteristics with rock types had its inception with this article
as she thought of the example of connecting Captain Kirk and Julius
Caesar in the article. Abby's representation had enabled students
to access the defining characteristics of rock types by connecting
them to human characteristics.

Abby displayed an open disposition toward the more student
centered, inquiry oriented learning and she used the traditional
lecture format. While she appeared to "buy” all that we discussed
in class, the concepts were not "real" to her at this point--she did
not believe them and did not act on them. She provided her pupils
with important information through lecture, and the length and
intensity of her lecture seemed uncomfortable for these ninth

graders [j #1, pp. 28-30].

d lec a er

I was puzzled as I read my students field reflection papers.
Students who I thought would go into field and teach as they had
been taught or praise conventional teaching methods were making
connections to course concepts and course texts. They still hung
onto some old ways, as my science student did, in part, in her earth
science lesson, but they, like Abby, were making small attempts to
understand and integrate some of the concepts we had explored in

class.

218

There appeared to be some patterns as I read my students'
papers. Students found themselves teaching as they had been taught,
and realizing that they did not want to do this. Students were also
trying to figure out their role and how much information to give 1
students and how much to let students discover. Many did not feel
as though they were properly prepared.

As they were planning their lessons in their content groups and
with their cooperating teachers and talking about them with me, they
were particularly concerned about whether students would understand
the concept. Others, particularly the history, math and science
groups, even though they were concerned with their students'
understanding as well, seemed to want to depend on lecture and the
text book.

Field reflection papers were rich with statements about the
course and how students were seeing the work of the course in a
different light. Some students had come to look at teaching
differently as they examined teachers they had viewed as ”good" in
their narratives and discovered they were not as they examined what
they had taken away as learners. Armed with this information some
students found their field work changed their already faltering
view of how easy teaching would be. A math student reflected:

”I was not properly prepared. I expected teaching

to be as ”easy as it looks." I even suspect that Mrs.

C had to reteach my lesson. I just showed the students

how to do the problems and assigned in class problems

to check their understanding. I was everything I hated

in the math teachers that taught me." [Field reflection
paper #4, p. 9, Fall-Winter '92]

219

Another student was still thinking about and figuring out the
Hawkins' triangle as he talked about being part of one in his
tutoring of a special needs student. Scott said that the high point
of his field experience came when he realized he had been part of
the triangle, as he worked with a special needs student who had to
write a story for an English assignment. Scott reported that he was
careful not to give the student a story, but questioned him about
his interests and what he might like to write about. Scott tried
not to ”tell" the student anything but tried to respond to his
student's questions with more questions and observations of his own.
Scott thought he had provided a way for his students to check his
understanding and move on, looking at his observations and giving
them back to the student with new information, allowing the student
to come to his own conclusions. Scott's statement was, "He came up
with his own story and I had taught without teaching!” He appeared
to understand that the teacher in Hawkins' essay provided
information to move a student to another point of discovery. By
imagining the ”feedback loop" that Hawkins describes, Scott saw his
student giving him information which he then utilized to provide
questions and further clarifying statements to assist the student's
thinking. Scott saw his roll as a facilitator of learning not a

”dispenser of knowledge" [j #3, p. 59].

mm

In this part of the course the personal narratives, in some

cases were changing. Some students were looking at their learning

220

experience in a new light. They were handing in their third
revision at this juncture of the course. I did find the personal
narrative process to be powerful for some of my students.

Two cases in particular, written by a music major and a
mathematics major, illustrated the power of the narrative. The
realization that something was changing did not come until the third
revision of the narrative for these two students. Their narratives
were initially very traditional, perfunctory kinds of responses to

an assignment.

Megeh'e happative, Megan was a traditional undergraduate
student and she did not have a particularly difficult time recalling
and writing about the most wonderful mathematics teacher she had
ever had. She spent a lot of time talking about how he always had
time for students' questions even if they "didn't get it" even after
they had met with the instructor. She felt that she had learned so
much from this teacher and that she wanted to be just like him.

In my first intervention, through written questioning, I asked
Megan to describe what she learned in the particular episode she
wrote about because her approach had been vague. She had written
that they had just been working problems in algebra. She could not
remember any specific concept. I also asked her to think about the
Hawkin's triangle in "1, Thou, It” and to try identify what the
parts were in her episode, according to Hawkins. How would he talk

about the interactional triangle in her math classroom. She

221

responded that Hawkins would see her teacher (I) using the concept
(it) in the text book and teaching it to the students (thou).

The teacher would use the board to work problems on and they
would work problems that were part of their homework. Hawkins, she
felt, would see interaction as the teacher came around the room and
spent time with all of them as they worked their problems, telling
them where they were having problems.

Megan still had the notion that her teacher was an effective
teacher assisting students in ”understanding mathematics.” It
seemed that she was trying to fit the relationship that Hawkins
talked about between the teacher, the student, and the content into
her learning episode. She was having difficulty fashioning the fit.
Hawkins had not talked about a dependence on the teacher and the
teacher's resources, rather he had promoted a vision of equality of
commitment to learning and teaching content. She did not see him at
this point as a "teller" of knowledge and herself as the "receiver."
She knew him as a teacher who "spent time” with his students showing
them how to ”do” math.

I asked Megan how her teacher had transformed his knowledge
to teach it to them so they could understand it in multiple ways
after our class read Wilson et a1. (1987). I asked her what he
needed to know about mathematics to teach in the manner that he did.
Finally, I asked Megan how many different ways he taught one concept
so that students could access information to complete partial

learnings they might have for a mathematical concept being taught.

222

These were the major questions asked although others occurred
along in the paper. Megan's paper, revision number three, came in
late and I allowed it because she appeared to be having a problem
revising. The paper I received was so very powerful I will never
forget the feeling as I read it, exuberance, sadness, excitement and
a validation of the personal feeling that the narrative was powerful
as an agent of change.

This week [M's narrative} came to me in an

entirely different form. The whole thing was changed.

The whole thing was different. The narrative's

beginning explained the change. M began by saying, ”I

don't know what I've been thinking, I don't know why

I've been saying that this teacher . . . was a good

teacher, because with everything that I've learned and

with everything that I now know and the kinds of things

that I'm beginning to question in myself in looking at

my own beliefs, I understand that this person was not a

good teacher and I feel cheated." [j#3, Fall semester

'92, p. 39]

Megan went on to explain that her mathematics teacher did not
attempt to transform his knowledge; he had text book knowledge and
never deviated from the examples in the text. She also said that he
did not respond to all of his students in the same manner, some were
not responded to at all. She was one of the lucky ones. She also
said he never really asked for student responses, and never really
taught for understanding in the way that Wilson, Shulman, and
Richert talked about it. Megan was very sobered by the whole
experience of the narrative and her realizations. I counted this as

a major growth experience for her in relation to understanding

teaching and learning.

223

Kate'e napretive. The second particularly compelling student
narrative was written by a non-traditional student. She was
returning to school for certification after working as a music
therapist for seven years. She had also worked as a music teacher
giving private lessons. Kate wanted to write about an episode of
teaching and learning in which she was the private tutor. I wasn't
quite sure where this would go but I thought that the experiences
needed to have meaning to the author, soKate went with it and we
proceeded to look at her episode after the same readings that I had
identified for Megan. Kate had also chosen to read Rickard's
(1991) "Pedagogical Autobiography: Mathematics Teaching" because
she felt that there was a connection between music and mathematics.

Kate wrote about a student that she was unable to reach. The
experience, each time her student came for a lesson, was unbearable
for both of them. The student was moody and unresponsive to
practice or suggestions for practice. At one point the student
refused to do anything except sit and stare at the wall and finally
the student vandalized a possession of my student's.

In my responses to Kate's narrative draft, I asked her
whether she had any knowledge of her student's history and how that
might be contributing to his attitude. I asked her also whether she
saw a Hawkin's triangle working in the teaching situation and what
part she played. I also asked her if she had attempted to appeal to
her student in relevant ways, offering to let him suggest a
selection he was interested in while learning the new concepts she

felt he needed to progress.

224

Kate had a hard time responding and extending in her narrative
until, again, the third revision. When her third revision came in a
great change had taken place:

I don't know why I thought this assignment was
something different than what I just did, but the
entire semester I just haven't gotten it. Now all of a
sudden I sat down to write my third draft and it just
started pouring out. I started talking about my

beliefs . . . what I thought and how my beliefs either
fit or didn't fit with what I now knew I needed to do
as a teacher. . . . [j #3, Fall '92, p. 39]

Kate's narrative at this stage speaks about her beliefs about
herself as a teacher and what she needs to know to teach difficult
students. She talked about a belief that she had that the teacher
should be respected for her knowledge and competence and she also
talked about her deep love for her music. She speaks about the need
for a relationship between student and teacher and "caring about the
content together” [j #3, p. 39]. Kate's recognition that she needed
to provide an entry for her student into her content in a way that
respected what the student knew and valued about music was a

powerful step toward becoming an effective teacher of music.

at u t ou ow i s
We 0 t e e
W
f ow d e' le a

As I modeled different ways to look at the concept of
”setting,” I was uncertain about my efforts because I did not
believe that all students would be able to translate my
representations to their content areas. I thought the idea of

transforming my knowledge for student understanding would become

225

apparent as I worked through my examples and connected them to the
pedagogical reasoning model in Wilson et a1. (1987).

I had the idea that everyone would understand "setting" and
begin to carry these examples into their own content and come up I
with effective representations for their mini-teaching projects.
However, I could not build bridges to all content areas from my
examples of ”setting," and I did not point out all of the different
questions I could ask, as a teacher, in relation to each notion of
setting I talked about. I did not take the time to think deeply
about what my examples might teach; they were hurried and
ineffective for some content areas because of my limited effort and
limited knowledge in multiple subject areas.

Once again because of my lack of knowledge my math, science,
music and language majors were left without clear ”representations"
from me. A dilemma exists for me because I cannot help students
think about representation across many subject matters. One
representation, no matter how perfect, will not provide a clear
model for all content areas to work from. In order for my students
to understand ”representation" a collection of clear models need to
be taught from the vantage point of each content, emphasizing the

incontrovertible fact that teaching is subject specific.

ee ba d s
I was particularly bothered by the fact that I did not have
enough content knowledge to judge whether or not many students had

developed correct representations to teach their lessons. I was

 

226

wondering at this point in the course whether I was helping my
students or furthering misconceptions they had. It was at this time
that I thought about my original idea of enlisting professors of
content, at this university, to observe and critique student
representations. I had not managed to get this part of my
conception past the planning stage. Time was the issue here, my
time to approach individuals with this new idea, and their time to
respond. I would not give up on this idea. Other semesters
stretched before me when I would have time to pursue my initial
idea.

This was a very important piece of the course for me. It was
here I hOped my students would make the connection between content
knowledge and pedagogical decision making. I hoped that they would
realize that they could not just pick a "method" from a list and use
it. The method really must grow from one's own understanding and
students' understanding of their content. I initially thought in my
reflection that I did not have a powerful way to help my students
toward this realization. But of course I did, Wilson et al.'s
(1987) article provided the power, and the voices of these authors
did what I only started to do. They provided clear information and
examples, a ”representation" if you will, of way to plan to teach

effectively.

mm
It was difficult to find content specific texts for all of the

contents represented in my study. Many of the texts I did select

227

for my students were appreciated and valued because they spoke to
students about their content and ways to manage it and interpret it.
One article that was considered as a content specific article by
many was "150 Different Ways of Knowing: Representations of
Knowledge in the Classroom," (Wilson, Shulman, Richert, 1987),

because of its application across content areas.

ent rou J a s

I had been struggling with what I wanted from the content group
journals from the beginning of the course. I thought they would be
a place for students to talk about the group process in relation to
decision making, conflict resolution, diverse connections to and
understanding of content, and dilemmas. I was perhaps unrealistic
in my expectations, but I never realized how much tension and
personal struggle students experienced while writing this group
journal. I suspect that ascribing a group assessment to the journal
provoked anxiety about the quality of the entries. I also believe
that this journal did not take on the importance of other reflective
writing; because students were not able to write honestly because
other group members would be reading it. It was also one more

responsibility added to the already great number in the course!

W

The field lessons seemed to me at one level to take the
students' focus from the texts and discussion of the course to

giving their "all" to teaching their lessons. The field lessons

228

became the most important issue in their lives for a time as they
devoted their waking hours to observing and meeting with their field
teachers and developing their lesson plans.

Later I found through their dialogic journals, field reflection
papers, and final evaluations that many were making connections to
issues discussed in the course. One student talked about making
connections in her final evaluation.

The actual teaching was probably the most helpful
part of this course. It allowed me to tie together the
concepts we talked about and read about in a way that
made them real. I could see how difficult planning a
lesson could be. I could understand how students would
respond to different techniques I was using, and I
could really see how hard it was to teach history for
understanding. I could see how much I didn't know.
[See final course evaluation, question #4, Appendix]

Another student made some connections as he talked about teaching
his math lessons.

”In my third lesson I tried to use representations
effectively and consciously involve female students.
This lesson was a revelation for me even though I think
my representations were superficial they did cover the
basic concept. I need to know more so I'm able to
answer some misconceptions students have. I think that
the interest and involvement of representations used by
teachers are directly proportional to the teacher's
knowledge of the subject being taught.” (field
reflection paper #4]

a‘ a ves
The power for me, as I read the various drafts of the
narrative, was watching the story unfold, the real story, the one
that is uncovered with time, new knowledge and realizations,

reflection, and honesty.

229

I was quite moved by my students' narratives, in many cases.
At one point in the course I was not sure I would use narratives
again because they did not seem helpful to my students in their
thinking about their beliefs about teaching and learning. During
this third part of the course, I became convinced that they played
an important role in helping students think about teaching and
learning from their own context as a learner.

It's kind of like they're at the point where

they're making connections. They're making statements

about their beliefs. It's almost as though they have

worked through all of the layers they have built up

over the years in dealing with ineffective teachers.

Through the editing, revisions, questions I've been

asking them in these personal narratives, I've

attempted to kind of get underneath the layers. It's

almost as though we finally got down to bedrock on the

third draft and they're opening up in a personal way.

I think of my music major. She's touched by what she

is finding out about herself. She's in many ways

saying, ”yes, this is the real me, this is what I have

to work with, these are my resources and now I have to

figure out how to combine them with this new knowledge

to become an effective teacher. [j#3, Fall '92
semester, p. 39]

I was not clear why some students reached a point in the
process of writing their personal narratives where they experienced
a turn around in their thinking. I was also not clear about what

caused the turn around for some.

t ink Now bout is Pa t o e s '
I guess that I have mixed feelings about this part of the
course. On one hand I look at the kinds of things that were
happening for many of my students and I am pleased and excited by

the possibilities of this course as I think about reshaping it to

230

make it more manageable. Many of the things happened that I hoped
would happen. Students were making connections from the course to
the field and the field to the course. They were connecting the
kind of knowledge they had to limitations in teaching, and
recognizing that the kind of understanding informed the type of
representations they could develop. They were aware of a special
relationship between the teacher, the student, and the content.
They were becoming aware of who they were and who their students
were and how that informed teaching. Finally the content groups
were well received and valued for their collaborative aim. There
seems to be much to celebrate here. Why did I initially concentrate
only on the deficits of the course? Perhaps because I see the power
that this kind of course might have for students given the resources
and time.

I was concerned that I handled this part of the course badly.
I knew that I did not have the content knowledge to address student
concerns in the field and even in our classroom, as I tried to help
them think about representations of knowledge, teaching in the
field, their personal narratives, and their second mini-teaching
lesson. I think I forgot that I never intended to teach a content
methods course. I knew that I could not do that. Somehow, in the
process though, that was what I started to concentrate on.

When I think about the question that this section of the course
is developed around, I wonder about my own ”knowing” in relation to
the content of the course I designed and taught. My thoughts were

too grand. It was impossible to teach such a course as I had

 

 

231

conceptualized it. I did not have the knowledge to do it. I was
learning about the limitations of my original vision and rethinking
the warnings of "doing too much” shared by my graduate colleagues.

If I had the resources, what might this course look like?
Content teachers to teach representations? Developing a repertoire
of representations that other content people could teach me? I must
deal with the realities of where I teach when I think about what
this course might look like. It is possible that I could master a
representation for each content group represented in my course. One
of my committee members, Dr. Wilcox, has helped me think about this
and whether it is feasible. She taught me a representation to use
with my mathematics groups, examining the concepts of perimeter and
area. I have worked with this representation once and I am
preparing to do it again. I want to confer with her this summer
about my findings. I

I am confident that my students have some level of
understanding of the third course question after this section of the
course. I believe that their understanding does not come only from
the texts and tasks of this section of the course. This course
section was a place where all of the strands of the course merged
and students realized connections to the other two course questions
they had explored. They understood that they did not know their
content in ways to teach it, but they now had a way to think about
doing that. The texts and tasks had helped define where they were
and how far they had to go. Some students were moving more quickly

than others, but all students had questioned their beliefs about

232

teaching content to secondary students in some manner, indicating

movement .

CHAPTER IX

REVISITING THE OLD VISION AND
LOOKING TOWARD THE NEW

Iptreduetioh

In this chapter I look back at my research question "How does a
beginning teacher educator conceptualize, design, and implement a
general secondary methods course grounded in considerations of
subject matter?” and reflect on the study that emerged and what I
have to say about that now. This chapter is a personal commentary
on teaching a new course while studying it and the subsequent
effects on students, the course, and me as a beginning teacher
educator. Finally, this chapter is a look forward at the course
that has grown out of this study and some possible implications for

teacher education.

W

The research question that drove my study identified three
equally important phases in teaching--conceptualizing, designing and
implementing. As I consider the question now, I am struck by the
realization that I thought about these phases as separate instead of

interrelated. In practice, one phase informed the other, and I

233

234

could not be involved in one without thinking about the other two.
Yet I did not consciously reflect on or report how one phase
connected to another in my journals. In retrospect, I would now use
the history of my conception and design of the new course to try to
help me understand the implementation.

I spent the majority of my time thinking about the
implementation phase, especially three of the subsidiary questions
(1) To what extent am I, as the teacher, able to implement this
course as I intended? (2) What shapes my ability to do so? (3)
What difficulties do I encounter in implementing this curriculum?
Driven by my beliefs about what a secondary methods course should
be, my own thinking became a constraint because of my stubborn views
about what this course needed to be and my reluctance to alter it in
any way. I attempted to craft a course that included all that I had
learned in graduate school, substantiating my own change and new
identity. Even when I had evidence that a piece of the course was
problematic, such as the content group journal, the time involved in
responding to dialogic journals, or the teacher educator-student
relationship I resisted changing my original plans.

Looking at my study, I am taken aback by the magnitude of the
whole enterprise and how my students and I managed to stay afloat.

I had never really ”looked" at the course as a whole until I
developed a schematic of it in the summer of 1993 as part of my data
analysis (Figure 1, Appendix). As the diagram developed, I began to
understand what I had done. I had designed my study around key

components of my graduate training that had affected my personal

235

change. Clearly, the number of required readings and projects

emanating from the syllabus and my unwillingness to be flexible with

the curriculum displayed an incongruity of belief and practice.

These issues were principal constraints in the implementation phase.

I saw things in the curriculum that I knew needed changing, but I

was resolute in my stance that all things needed to act together to

work toward student change, as they had for me in my graduate

training.
After three more semesters of teaching a modified version of

this secondary methods course, my thinking and decision making are

directed toward my students' learning to teach their content areas.

I am thinking more clearly about what students bring to the course

not just about what I think they need. I am no longer apprehensive

about adjusting elements of the course when they become problematic.

Understanding the dimensions of the course I initially conceived of

comes more freely with distance. My conceptualization of this

course continues to evolve with added experience and reflection,

informing anew the nature of the design and implementation.

W
W
Was

I determined that content groups are an effective way to
organize a general secondary methods course grounded in subject
specific concerns. They focus students on their content as they
work on various texts and tasks. I found that students did use

their content groups to consider theory and practice especially when

236

they planned lessons based around the concept of "representation of
knowledge for teaching” Wilson et a1. (1987). Their discussions,
presentations and journal writing all reflected their thinking about
theory and practice, as they talked and wrote about the teacher-
student-content relationship (Hawkins, 1974) that effective teachers
like Ms. Fish (Powell, Farrar, Cohen, 1985) have in their
classrooms, and how they, as high school students, were affected by
the hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968). Content groups created a
subject specific context for students to think about more general
issues of teaching.

I learned that collaborative groups need intense direction and
practice at the beginning of their formation. I assumed, because my
students are older, that they would participate on a fairly equal
basis and let their voices be heard. Older does not mean more
confident and less competitive. I have learned that I need to spend
more time talking about my expectations as well as the expectations
they should have for group interaction. Through this last semester
I have learned that it helps to have a volunteer group rehearse and
model group behavior that I suggest. I can direct them in behaviors
that I have identified as problematic and positive as they interact
around the first set of study questions--prob1ems such as
dominating voice, content expert, quiet listener, over achiever,
questioner, peacemaker, resister. After they rehearse, they model
these behaviors for the larger group while I provide a commentary
about what I think is happening. The whole group then offers

suggestions to solve problematic behavior, confronting the behavior

237

in a number of ways, such as through content group discussion,
free-writes about the problem, each member speaking privately with
the person who exhibits the behavior, instructor intervention etc.,
while the "model" group plays each suggestion out. This appears to
be working. As I check with the groups, most of them are handling
any problems that occur.

The content groups formed in the new methods course provided my
students with a support system outside of our classroom. They were
able to carry their experiences and relationship into their content
classrooms as well. They also found that they had a common
knowledge base and common experiences to share with one another and
this forged a cohesiveness between my students that I did not
envision when I first thought of content groups as the social
organization of the course. They became a social group outside of

our classroom as well.

fly pele Qefinipieh, 1 have also learned something about my

role. Originally I viewed my role as facilitator and
inquirer-researcher. These role descriptors carry a certain sense
of separateness, an operating "at arm's length" while conducting my
class and my study. While I believe that I did assist my students'
learning, as I investigated and recorded their responses to the
elements of the course design as well as my responses to their ideas
and actions, there was no separateness. Because of my openness
about my study and an invitation to students to provide ongoing
feedback about the course, I made myself accessible to students in

ways that became

238

problematic for me at times personally and as a researcher. I felt
vulnerable in this situation even though I had given permission for
this to happen. My decisions and beliefs about teaching and
learning to teach were being challenged as some students rejected or
resisted the texts or tasks I had crafted for a new take at a
conventional methods course. I learned something about myself and
how I deal with confrontation. In the case of the disgruntled
content groups, students who openly (sometimes hostilely) resisted
reading course texts or the ideas discussed in texts, or groups who
resisted journal tasks, I found that I tried to avoid these problems
because they were so unexpected. Each of these problems required
time to figure out how to move toward understanding and resolution
of the problem, a rare resource in this study. The bigger issue for
me became a personal one. The new methods course I developed to
address the problems of the old methods course was an extension of
my personal beliefs about teaching and learning. As a result, I was
unable to separate myself from the course.

As I reflect on what I learned about my role, I cannot separate
my learning from my students. The dialogic journals brought us
closer as we wrote responses to one another about the texts examined
and discussed in the content groups and in whole group. My joining
each content group in order to listen, assess and probe also brought
us closer through the intimacy of a smaller conversation. I came to
know my students because I lived with them throughout the week as I
recorded information about my actions and their reactions in class,

and as I read and responded in their dialogic journals and in their

 

 

239

personal narratives. They valued my responses in their journals and
started to respond, in kind, and ask questions about my comments.

I also noticed many parallels between my students' learning and
my own as we grappled with important issues in learning about
learning to teach. Clearly the parallel I think about most as I
consider the study concerns our struggles with limited knowledge of
content and how that limitation affected how we attempted to

represent our content (Shulman et al., 1987).

 

Because of the growing connection between my students and me,
I began to feel a deep sense of responsibility for making the course
"work." As a result, when things did not go smoothly (e.g., when I
could not understand concepts my math and physics majors were
discussing, when content groups disagreed, when students resisted
certain texts or tasks) I took it very personally. I wanted
students to grow in their understanding of their pupils and the
connectedness of content and pedagogy. I cared so passionately that
I placed unrealistic expectations on myself and my students. The
complexity of the course overwhelmed everyone. At the same time,
recognizing evidence of students' growth through journal entries,
conversations, personal narratives and field reflection papers

provided me with the energy to finish the semester.

 

I attribute my inability to maintain a separateness to my
novice status. While I had learned to think about teaching in a
different way, I'm not sure I learned to think about myself in a
different way. I was still a novice in my personal connection to my

students and this new content.

240

This way of teaching in an accessible manner, in contrast to
more conventional ways, did not naturally create a distance between
teacher and students. I also think that the content draws
instructor and student together. Because the students believe they
know the content, there may be no "expert" status connected to the
education instructor, whereas there appears to be clear "expert"
status granted to content professors. Expert status creates a

distance. I went too far in managing the teaching-learning

 

situation. Even though I do not any longer believe in an educator
being the central figure in teaching and learning, I believe that I
occupied that position while teaching this course. Perhaps this
sense of centrality came from being the creator, teacher and
researcher of the course. I had a difficult time maintaining a
separateness that allowed all individuals to benefit from the
learning situation. I felt my presence too much in the various
components of the course. I added an extra measure of
responsibility to my role, and it pervaded the facilitator role and
the inquirer-researcher role. I sometimes forgot to document
important student learning as I wrapped myself in a mantle of
responsibility. This was a role that I was familiar with from life,
I do not usually carry out business "at arm's length.” I learned
from my study that I need to keep a clearer separation to be
defined apart from my students and the course I teach to enhance my
effectiveness. With separateness, I am able to see trouble coming
and address it from a more neutral stance. I am not so apt to read

disastrous meanings or resistance into student responses. With

 

241

some distance, I am beginning to question, listen and observe in a
more objective manner in my interactions with my students and the

course .

how sppgehpe wepe effectedI Students' responses to the new

methods course varied. Some were delighted that an instructor
wanted them to think. Some were interested and intrigued by the

ideas they read about, discussed, and carried into the field.

 

Others were interested only in the practical and did not want to
spend their time reading, discussing and writing about theoretical
aspects of teaching promoted by ”idealists.” I dealt with this
tension throughout the course. As I looked at the final course
evaluations, it appeared that ”practice" was still valued above
theory, but as I reviewed the course evaluations, (See Appendix), I
realized that my students had valued the tasks of the course that
had required the least work from me and the most work from them.
Still they valued the practical experiences above all, their
mini-teaching lessons in content groups and their fieldwork
experiences. I also see from the evaluations and from my
interactions with my students through their journals, personal
narratives, and field reflection papers, that my students valued
two highly theoretical articles: Hawkins's ”1, Thou, It," and
Wilson, Shulman and Richert's "150 Different Ways of Knowing:
Representations of Knowledge in Teaching."

This valuing of practice and theory puzzled me. Students

recognized connections between theory and practice as they worked

242

with particular articles in their content groups, but I had not
identified an appreciation of the connections and a carry over
outside of their content groups. In their field reflection papers
and final fast-writes, some students were clearly writing about
both theory and practice. They "saw" the Hawkins triangle working
in classrooms or believed they were part of one. Some connected
with and practiced the idea of transforming what they knew in order
to teach for student understanding. One student even claimed in his
reflection paper that he was able to "put theory into practice” and
he was excited about it.

My students and I bumped up against the "theory versus
practice" issue often during my study and I continue to face it
with each new group of students I encounter. Lately, I have started
to talk about how professions have their own theoretical framework
and language, and that is partially what defines them as a
profession. When students spurn the term "pedagogy” I am reminded
of my own encounter with it in my first course in the doctoral
program. This is more than preferring to learn from practice over
theory, for many it is a rail against elitism, a stance against
academics, a push for anti-intellectualism. This stance finds its
taproot in my students' personal histories and in the everyday

experiences they have in the fieldwork component. I have learned

 

 

243

that any progress we might make in thinking about theory in the
methods classroom is quickly "undone" by a few of the classroom
teachers my students spend time with in the field. One student,
only last week, talked about how his cooperating teacher had told
him to forget anything he heard in his methods courses, that theory
was a lot of ”crap" and would not help him at all in teaching in the
classroom (Eric, J#4, ll-10'93, p. 6).

I am fortunate because my students allow me a measure of
credibility. I have been a secondary teacher so I have a chance to
counter this kind of "advice" by reflecting openly on my secondary
experiences and my fairly new realization that I need theory to help
me understand how to operate effectively in the content classroom,
and to review and study my practice critically .

I learned that some of the course texts , especially ”I, Thou,
It,’I (Hawkins, 1975), and "150 Different Ways of Knowing:
Representations of Knowledge in Teaching" (Wilson, Shuman, Richert,
1987), allowed me to question my students and gently remind them
that they had seen Hawkins' triangle in some classrooms and not
others, and they had observed a few classrooms where they thought
the teachers transformed their knowledge and ”represented” it in
multiple ways for students to access. And I nudge them to remember
that they know from personal experience what happens when knowledge
is represented in only one way. As I listen to them connecting
these texts to their observations, tutoring, and formal teaching, I
also remind them that they have been valuing theory informing

practice. Further, I ask them how far "commonsense and practical

 

 

244

knowledge" (Wilson, Shulman, Richert, 1987) will allow them to
progress in their quest to teach effectively, and some are caught up
by my probing. I see many of them thinking about the comfortable
stance they had envisioned as a content teacher, evidenced by the
long silences, furrowed brows, and pensive entries in their dialogic
journals prefaced by "I just never realized what there was to
teaching."

Through this study I realized that secondary teacher education
students can study and analyze how to think about teaching their
content from a theoretical base presented through important texts,
with the assistance of an external voice of conscience reminding
them of what they already suspect from what they have seen and
experienced. Working through tasks based on theory; having to plan
a lesson that requires them to examine their learning, researching
an unfamiliar topic to teach, transforming their knowledge into a
representation to help students understand a concept, helps students
become more involved with theory informing practice. Many content
voices collaborating to figure out how to connect theory to practice
sometime encounter dead ends and often their own limitations, but

this seems like an appropriate path toward possible change.

flew ehe cohpse ehehged, My students are still in content

groups and they still read powerful texts and write sometimes in
dialogic journals. I have learned that I can have the same (or more
powerful) impact with five or six articles instead of twelve. I

have also learned that journals are key for many students' learning

245

and processing because many of them have returned and told me so.
They did not realize this until they left the course.

The course changed as I started slowly to let go of my
responsibility to make things work for students and turned more of
the responsibility over to them. The changes were small the first
time through the course--de1etion of the content journal, omission
of discussion of some readings, changing the guidelines of two major
papers because of time constraints. After the experience of
responding to all of the dialogic journals during the study, I had
students respond only to selected readings the following semester
and for the last two semesters students have not had journals at all
due to my personal time constraint. Readings were cut significantly
in the second semester as were assignments. I eliminated the unit
plan completely. Beginning methods seemed the place to plan and
write thoughtful lessons based on ideas promoted in the readings.
Unit planning made more sense in an advanced methods course. I cut
field observation time down since students were coming from an
introductory course that required eighty hour of observation and
asked that students focus on the ideas we were discussing from the
readings they were assigned. Group grades dropped to thirty points

second semester from one hundred and ten the semester of the study.

W

The future course takes its form from the initial
conceptualization and design. The social organization of content

groups will remain. Journal writing will continue for selected

246

articles. Discussion questions will continue to help students
explore articles in more depth.

Students will begin the course by trying to understand the
secondary setting they were once apart of through texts, discussion
and questioning. They will provide autobiographical sketches of an
instance of content teaching and learning from their high school
days in which they were the learner. During this time student
beliefs will be examined in more detail through discussion and more
focused questions in their autobiographical learner-sketches.

Fieldwork will consist of teaching two or three lessons in the
field, only after students have completed two mini-teaching lessons
in the university classroom. One of those mini-lesson will be taped
and critiqued by the group who teaches the lesson. I have done this
taping for two semesters now and students find it helpful as ehey
listen to the things they say as they try to teach a concept.
Students will still teach a content concept using the moon as
context. This will explore the learning and teaching phase of
teaching a lesson.

Formal field lessons will be taught only in urban settings. I
have worked closely with one urban middle school through the last
two semesters and I am preparing to attempt to open another to my
methods students. If this attempt becomes a reality, one class
will be working with teachers in one school while the other group
will encounter similar experiences in another. Students will no
longer be scattered among seven different secondary schools, and

they will be able to think about their common experiences and

 

 

247

support one another as they work in a multicultural setting, most
for the first time. Observation will be eliminated and special
needs work will also be focused in the urban schools.

Content groups will begin to wrestle with the idea of the
student-teacher-content- relationship and how they need to know
their students and their contents. When they move into planning
lessons they will read and discuss Shulman et al., (1987) and use
the pedagogical reasoning model to help them understand what they
need to do with each lesson they teach. As a class and in content
groups students will spend time figuring out the idea of
representation. I am working on developing a repertoire with one
clear representation for each content area that I will present to
the class. Students from urban high schools will visit my students
as they plan their lessons and give them feedback on the clarity of
their representations. These high school students will give my
students different perspectives on what works and what does not. My
students will develop a paper based on this experience and what they
learned from their content group interaction and their interaction
with the high school students. Near the end of the semester each
group will read and present a content specific article to the larger
group and connect it to the ideas they have been examining.

The course is not totally clear at this point but, it will

become clearer when I have time to put it on paper.

248

Living Inside the Course While Studying It:
Implicatione For Teacher Research

 

This was the most difficult thing I have ever done and I know
that I am forever changed by the experience. Because I studied
myself and my ideas and actions, I experienced myriad emotions
throughout my inquiry. I felt as though I had been on an extended
roller coaster ride when the semester ended. Wilson, Miller, and
Yerkes talk about the courage involved in such a venture, "Courage
plays a role in such work in several ways. First, it takes courage
to take chances: to try new things, to veer from the familiar, to
examine one's practice. Examining one's own teaching can be
difficult, for it calls into question choices one makes daily, as
well as choices made in the past” (Wilson, Miller, and Yerkes, 1993,
p. 110). I'm sure that I did not experience a feeling of courage,
but perhaps that comes later when I can view my study from a
different time and place.

My first misconception was that I tried to give equal time to
my teacher role and researcher role. Because of the complexity of
the course and the fact that it was designed with teacher-student
interaction and assisted learning in the foreground, an inordinate
amount of time was required to manage the course. Because of this I
found myself making choices that privileged teaching over research.
I was not able to develop a comfortable union between teacher and
researcher during this study. I was very conscious of myself as
teacher and myself as researcher. I started thinking about my dual
role during the summer of 1992 with the help of Dr. Wilcox. She

drew a simple diagram that represented the teacher educator and the

 

249

researcher and we briefly described what each did in the study I was
proposing. I have continued to try to think about this with more
elaborate diagrams throughout the study. I've not yet found that I
have a clear understanding.

Collecting, and writing up data was difficult. The intensity
of each class meeting left me mentally spent. When I returned to my
office to record the day's events many times the thoughts would not
come, so I would wait a bit and try to write later. This worked for
a few weeks until all of my out of class time was spent responding
to individual and group journals. I didn't have any time for
reflection. I only had time for retelling what happened in class,
almost with a deliberate notetaking mentality. I found that I had
to force myself to record my thoughts after a while because of my
management of the methods course. Because of my inability to
analyze critically what I was doing, I placed myself in an
impossible situation as a teacher and a researcher.

I also found it hard to study my actions as I implemented a
course that I had designed. It was difficult to move myself to a
place where I could look at the problems of the course as simply
that. There were many times when I could not discern where the
boundaries of the course ended and mine began. I attribute this
partially to my novice status as a researcher and teacher educator.
I also think about teaching and curriculum planning as ultimately a
personal venture. They are statements of self in many ways.
Researching one's practice requires that one constantly examine

motives, knowledge, and actions. I am reminded of my colleague's

250

caution that I was trying to do too much in my study, that I was
trying to teach more than one course and because of this my students
would learn very little. I remember my anger, but he was looking at
the issue from outside the course and I was ”living” my course at
the time.

I also invited my students to provide me with information about
the course and they did not hesitate to let me know what seemed
problematic about it. I was also always consciously concerned with
trying to look at all sides of an issue in my inquiry. I wanted to
bring a measure of objectivity to my study, but I see that my
reflections are my interpretations of what I saw and my actions were

informed by that interpretation as well.

WW

I believe my study will give teacher educators an opportunity
to view the uncertainties of a novice teacher educator working hard
to change what happens inside of a general secondary methods
classroom. Clearly it is possible to craft a general secondary
methods course that helps students think about teaching and learning
in less conventional ways. It is also possible to consider content
areas in thoughtful ways as preservice secondary teachers,
organized into content groups, think about how they will need to
know their content in order to teach it. This course that I
designed and studied is a reasonable and meaningful response to the
economic and philosophic dilemma of few content methods courses on

small campuses.

 

 

 

251

Teacher educators and classroom teachers can learn about what
it means to study one's teaching from my research. The natural time
constraints that occur because of assessment, planning and managing
unexpected student responses, coupled with outside university
responsibilities, prevent opportunities for consistent
documentation, reflection and analysis. I also believe that it is
difficult to separate oneself from the course being taught in order
to study a process that you define. It is a difficult and personal
venture. I discovered some things about myself that I was
uncomfortable with, but I count these personal discoveries as
movement forward in my development as an effective teacher educator.
I am learning how to co-exist with my students without becoming
overly accessible to them and I am spending more time thinking about
curriculum and what students bring. I am approaching my planning in
a more organized manner, remembering that ”less is more" when
teaching is inquiry based. I am looking deeply into my own
”knowing" about what I teach.

I will continue to research the course I conceptualized in this
study as I consider the changes that continue to occur as I learn
more about teaching in a way that fosters student reflection,
discovery and change. There are many areas of the course that I
want to spend time thinking about as I weigh and measure their total
effect in moving secondary methods students toward awareness and
change as they study teaching and learning to teach through the lens

of their content area.

APPENDIX

TEACHER EDUCATION 204
GENERAL METHODS OF TEACHING IN SECONDARY
AND MIDDLE SCHOOLS

FALL 1992

lpeggpeppg: Carol S. Wolfe
Qifiee: Reeves Hall, Room 133
foice Hourez Tuesday, 10:30-11:30 and 3:30-5:30

Thursday, 10:30-11:30 and 3:30-5z30
Ehphe: (517) 790-7045 (0); (517) 790-1531 (H)
§1e§e_Time: Section 1, Tuesday, 12:30-3z20 A/Arts Rm. 105
eng_£1eee: Section 2, Thursday, 12:30-3z20 A/Arts Rm. 105

u er 3 es:
*In order to remain enrolled in this course, you must be admitted to
Saginaw Valley State University and the College of Education, and
have been issued a permit. Your permit to register for 200 level
education classes will be examined on the first day of class.

Ceupse Qescriptioh:
This course is designed to help you begin thinking about secondary

teaching in new ways. All of you are entering this course with
certain beliefs about what it means to teach in your content area,
and what it means to be a "good teacher" in a secondary setting. TE
204 is organized around classroom and field experiences that
challenge you to examine your beliefs about subject matter knowledge
and what it means to teach for student understanding in the context
of a secondary school. You will be asked to consider how ghee you
know and hey you know it informs your choice of what to teach and
he! to teach it. The design of TE 204 will also provide
opportunities for extensive peer collaboration, as you wrestle with
the work involved in planning for instruction in your particular
content, as well as personal and group reflection on educational
issues that arise from course texts, individual writings, small
group tasks, experiences in the field and course conversations.

Qgezxiew of the Ceppee:

The course is organized around four major questions:

 

(1) What does it mean to teach in a secondary setting?

(2) What does it mean to ”know” one's content?

(3) What does ”knowing" one's content have to do with
teaching it?

(4) What does it mean to teach for student understanding?

252

253

The first question focuses on the setting of teaching. What are the
secondary schools for? What do students really learn about content
there? What does good teaching look like in a secondary setting?
What does the student bring to the setting? What does the teacher
bring to the setting? Where does subject matter fit n the
student-teacher relationship?

The second question focuses on preservice secondary education
students' beliefs about "knowing" in relation to their content.

What sorts of disciplinary concepts do secondary preservice teachers
think they need to know in order to plan for instruction? How does
a preservice student ”know” their content? What does a preservice
student need to do in order to develop a more extensive knowledge
base in their content area?

The third question focuses on the critical connection between
”knowing" content and recognizing how to transform or ”represent"
that knowledge for a diverse population of learners. How do
teachers' personal professional understandings, or a content area,
inform the kind of decision making used to select a particular
method to illustrate important concepts? What do teachers need to
know about their students in order to make decisions about how to
teach their content for student understanding?

The fourth question focuses on the student coming to "know" concepts
within a content or discipline. Students, for example, can "do”
math without really understanding it. This is the received view of
knowledge in which the teacher, as knower, gives knowledge to the
student and understanding naturally follows. How does teacher
knowledge of content (how they understand their discipline) help
define student understanding? What does a teacher need to
understand in order to help students understand subject matter?

W:
W:

Your success in this course depends largely on your attendance and
active participation in the course tasks. It is particularly
important that you complete readings, journal responses, and other
assignments on time, because class and group preparedness will count
in your final course grade.

MW:

Much of the material we will encounter together will be difficult
and not easily integrated into any existing framework of knowledge
about teaching and learning you may already possess. We will be
exploring and, perhaps, building new frameworks together, and
adjusting some existing ones. Writing about the issues and concepts
we encounter in the texts, class conversations, and content group
interactions will help to expand and clarify your understanding.
Dialogic journal writing will initiate a conversation with the
authors of course texts and your TE 204 instructor that will

254

continue throughout the semester. This conversation will be focused
on assigned readings, class discussion, group work, field experience
and related questions posed in response in your journal entries. In
order to receive full credit for your journal in TE 204 you must
respond thpughpfully to all course readings and focused questions
posed by your instructor in your journals. Journals will be
collected weekly.

gohteht Area Groupez

It is important that we not separate teaching strategies and the
work of secondary teachers from the content areas they have chosen
to work within. Forming content area groups will provide
opportunities for individuals to think about planning for
instruction through the lenses of their subject matter. Together,
math majors, biology majors etc., can help each other to become
smarter about why certain methods work, or do not work, in teaching
their particular content. The work of content area groups in TE 204
will take on the form of group inquiry as they read, write,
question, plan, and initiate discourse from the focus of their
content areas. Working within content area groups will also foster
a collaborative spirit which is extremely necessary in the
profession of teaching. Your content area groups will be formed
during the second week of classes and will remain in tact for the
tenure of the semester.

hoist—ts:
W:

You will be required to write a personal narrative about teaching
and learning in your content area. Your narrative will concentrate
on an episode of teaching and learning in your secondary content
area, in which you were the learner. From this initial point your
instructor will ”enter the narrative," so to speak, and direct your
thinking about teaching and learning through questions posed for
you. These questions will help you reflect on and analyze your
"story” as you acquire new information through course texts and
discourse. The narrative, it is hoped, will chronicle your personal
thinking about teaching and learning as we move through the course.
You will begin writing your narrative on the first day of class and
you will continue to revise and extent it as the semester continues.
Your narrative will look somewhat different as you expand your
knowledge base about teaching and learning through your experiences
in TE 204. You will do two revisions and a final analysis of your
narrative. You will be given a grade on your final analysis.

him:

Some examples of teaching that we will examine will be your own. In
the context of your content group, you will be expected to plep_eng
WWW- You will
present the lessons, materials, and the process that you went
through to develop these lessons to the whole group. For the second

255

lesson you teach the whole group, you will develop the iessen plan
to present some concept from your content area. In your final

presentation you will justify why the lesson plan you developed
seemed appropriate for your particular content.

Qiglggie J OBIflngI

These were explained earlier and will be an ongoing protect
throughout the semester.

W:

Each content group will be expected to keep a group journal. You
will be given time in class to write about the activities,
discoveries, conversations, new ways of thinking about the work of
teaching, etc. of the group. Each week a different member will be
responsible for recording in the journal, however, all members are
asked to contribute ideas and information to the recorder. Journals
will be collected on a rotating basis by the instructor.

lasaoaflsas:

You will be required to develop three complete lesson plans with the
help of your instructor and your content area group members that
will be used to teach actual lessons in the field.

Snip Blah:

You will be required to develop a unit plan as a content group. You
will hand in the group unit plan as well as individual reflection
papers on the process of researching and developing the unit.

MW:

Upon completion of all of the field components you will be required
to write a description and analysis of the process utilizing course
concepts and issues. Further explanation will be given at a later

date.

Mites:

At times throughout the course you will be asked to focus your
thinking about concepts, readings, etc., with a quick written
response. These fastwrites will help me know what you are thinking.

finalizes:

There will be an essay final exam during finals week. A study guide
will be distributed a week ahead of time. You are encouraged to
form study groups to work your way through the study guide.

W:
*Course packet available in the bookstore for TE 204 Methods of
Teaching in Middle and Secondary Schools.

Galahan and Clark. (1992). WWW
high School. 4th edition, New York, N.Y.: Longman, Inc.

256
Posner, G.J. (1989). Field experience: methods of reflective
teaching. Third Ed., New York, N.Y.: Longman, Inc.

*Other required readings will be supplied to you by the instructor
as listed in the course calendar.

257

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING

TE 204

1. Class attendance and participation . . . . 35 points (5 per
absence)

2. Micro-teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 points (15
points each)

3. Group unit plan and group journal . . . . 80 points (60
and 20)

4. Personal narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 points

5. Field reflection paper . . . . . . . . . . 30 points

6. Dialogic journals . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 points

7. Final Exam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 points

Totei peihts poesibie: ST;

The final course grade will be computed by comparing the student's
total number of points to the highest earned by a student in the
course. The scale used to determine the final grade will be:

95% to 1002 of the top point total - A
871 to 942 of the top point total - B
752 to 862 of the top point total - C
662 to 741 of the top point total - D
Below 661 of the top point total - F

Assignments will be evaluated according to: a) thoroughness and
evidence of thoughtful consideration of readings chosen for the
course, b) adherence to the assignment's intent as we define it
together in class, and c) organization, clarity, and mechanics.

**Note: there will be a 10% reduction from the total possible
points for each day the written assignment is late.

Part 1:

Class.
9/1-9/3

9/8-9/10

Readings:

9/15-9/17

258

TE 204 METHODS OF TEACHING IN SECONDARY AND

MIDDLE SCHOOLS
FALL 1992
COURSE CALENDAR

What does it mean to teach in a secondary setting?

oduct 0 cu e: introductions; preview of
course content, activities and policies; ”fastwrite”
on "Teaching in (insert content area) is..." and
group assignments; fieldwork information sheets and
discussion; written assignment: Personal_narra£ixe...
dialogic journal response and content journals due.
"Goodlad's Goals for Schools...”

Powell, Arthur C., Farrar E., and Cohen, David K.

(1985). e S o a h 0 ° e
Laaers_ia_ths_£dusa£iosal_narketnlss_- PD. 8-39-

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Lightfoot, (1983) Brookline High School, pp. 150-220.
In_Ihs_§22d_fligh_§2h221.

Melnick, Carol R., (1992). ”The Out of School
Curriculum: An Invitation, Not an Inventory." In

e' .
Schubert, W.H., and Ryers, W.C., (Ed.). Longman, New
York., pp. 81-105.

Discuss and analyze readings...group task; introduce
content group mini-teaching task. Hand back written
assignments...peer discussion. Discuss group
process. Introduce Hawkins' essay. Dialogic
journals and content journals due.

Hawkins, D. (1974). ”1, Thou, It.” In The_1pfippmed
Xisi2ni_Essaxs_2n_Learning_and_fluman_nature. N Y.:

Agathon Press.

Discuss ”I, Thou, It" in relation to student,
teacher, subject matter, relationship in the
secondary setting...content area group synthesis.
Time given for content groups to begin discussing and
planning mini-teaching task. Introduction to field
work and field supervisors. Dialogic and Content
Journals due.

Jackson, P. (1968). ”The Daily Grind." In Li£e_ih
Clesspoome. New York: Holt., pp.3-37.

9/22-9/24

ead s:

9/29-10/1

Part 2. What

Readings:

10/6-10/8

10/13-10/15

259

Discuss the sources and characteristics of the hidden
curriculum. What is it? Where does it come from?
How does it shape students’ experiences in a
secondary setting? How does it connect tot he
explicit curriculum? Fastwrite on hidden curriculum.
Time given for planning and discussion of ‘
mini-teaching project. Dialogic journals and content
journals due.

Oakes, J. (1986). "Keeping Track” (part 1).

Lightfoot, (1983), Brookline High School, pp.
150-220. In The Qoed High Sehgel.

Kahle, J.B. (1990). "Real Students Take Chemistry and
Physics: Gender Issues" pp. 92-133. In Hiadg!§_iats

Seiehce Slaeeroems.

Suina, Joe. (1985). ”...And Then I Went to
School...” ew n 0 al ea . Vol. 2.

Peshkin, Alan., White, Carolyn. (1990). "Four Black
American Students: Coming of Age in a Multiethnic

High School,” Teeehepe Qollege gecopd. Vol. 92, No.
1: pp. 21-38.

Discuss the legacy of tracking; pros and
cons...discuss student diversity issues-groups take
responsibility for discussion-role play. Wrap-up
mini-teaching preparation. First revision of
personal narrative due. Dialogic journals and
content journals due.

does it mean to ”know" one's content?

Wilson, S.M., Shulman, L., Richert, A.E. (1987).
"'150 Different Ways' of Knowing: Representations of
Knowledge in Teaching." In Calderhead, J. (ed.),

or Te ' n . Sussex: Holt,
Reinhardt, Winston.

Mini-teaching presentations. Dialogic journals and
content journals due.

Discussion of Wilson, Shulman, Richert
article...discussion of teacher knowledge...content
group representations.

Readings:

10/20-10/22

10/27-10/29

Part 3. What
it?

11/3-11/5

11/10-11/12

260

Callahan, J.F., Clark, L.H. (1992). Teaching in the
Middle and Seconda SchoolS' Plannin or

Competence. Macmillan, N.Y. Modules 2 & 3, pp.
19-66.

Feiman-Nemser, S., Buchmann, M. (1985). "Pitfalls of
Experience in Teacher Preparation." NCRTEzMSU Vol.
87, #1, Fall 1985.

Rosenshine, B., Stevens, R. (1990). "Teaching
Functions." pp. 376-391.

Discussion of planning for instruction. Content
group development of lesson plan appropriate for
content area. Sharing of plan and justification.
Objectives and domains. Content and dialogic
journals due.

Continued planning for instruction. Continued
sharing of lesson plans from "pedagogical reasoning
model.” Wrap up of course question 1. Content and
dialogical journals due.

does "knowing one's content” have to do with teaching

Callahan, J., Clark, L.H., (1992). Teeehing_ih_§he
uiddla_and_ae22ndarx_§shoolsi__£lansing_for

gompetence. Macmillan, N.Y. Read Modules 5 through 9
pp. 101-233.

Continued discussion of planning for
instruction...Introduction of second mini-teaching
task...time given to work on content group task.
Dialogic journals and content journals due.

Anderson, C.W., Smith, E.L. (1987). "Teaching
Science" In Richardson-Koehler, V. EQEQEEQILE

Handh22ki__A_Bssesr2h_£srsnsstixs. White Plains.

Wilson, Suzanne M., Wineburg, Samuel, (1989).
"Peering at History through Different Lenses: The
role of Disciplinary Perspectives in Teaching
History." pp. 525-539.

"Private Universe" video...discussion of articles by
content area groups. Time given for mini-teaching
planning. Introduction of guidelines for field
reflection paper. Dialogic and content journals due.

Readings:

Part 4. What

e d s:

11/1o-11/12

11/17-11/19

11/24-11/26

12/1-12/3

12/8-12/10

12/15-12/17

261

Rickard, Anthony. (1991) "A Pedagogical Autobiography
Mathematics Teaching," Michigan State University.
(Unpublished paper)

does it mean to teach for student understanding?

Nickerson, Raymond. (1985) "Understanding
Understanding.” er u . 93
(2) pp.201-239.

Discussion of part 4 question. Discussion of
Nickerson article. Unit planning as group with
consideration of previous discussion. Dialogic
journals - group 4 due. Field reflection papers due.
Mini-teaching presentations..second draft of personal
narrative due.

Dunn, S., Florio-Ruane, S., Clark, C.M. (1989) ”The
Teacher as Respondent tot he High School Writer."
Sponsored by the Institute for Research on Teaching
College of Education, Michigan State University.

Discussion of assigned article. Unit planning
continued. Discuss reflection papers on unit

planning as a collaborative process. Dialogic
journals-group 5 due.

Work session for unit plan, reflection papers for
field and for unit group process. Dialogic
journals-group 1. Henson, Kenneth T. hepheee_ehd

St ate e r e ch n in e 0 da a d M dd e
Schoels. Chapters 7, 8, 9. Discussion of articles
by content area groups...Group task of tying reading
of part 3 together and posing possible answers to
questions that have developed for them through their
work in part 3.

Discussion of readings. Group unit plans and group
journals due. Individual reflection papers due.
Dialogic journals--group 2 and 3.

Wrapping up...Whole group oral reflection...personal
narratives due. Dialogic journals-group 4 and 5.
Introduce study guides for final exams and discuss.

Final Exam.

 

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262

EIEAL §TUD§NT COURSE EVALUAIIOE 0: TE 204

Five questions were developed by the instructor-more than one
response from each student was possible for each question.

1. What texts in the course seemed most powerful for you? Why?
What did they help you to do or to think about in relation to
teaching and learning in your content?

TEXTS: Total students 47
"I, Thou, It" David Hawkins 27
'150 Ways” Shulman, Wilson, Richert 31
”Teaching Science" Anderson, Smith 8 five majors
”Out of School Curriculum" Helnick 10
”Peering Through Lenses of Hist.” Wilson 7 all majors
”English Teacher as Respondent..." Florio- 4 three majors
Ruane, Dunn, Clark ‘
"Pitfalls of Experience" Feiman-Nemser, 3
Buchmann

”Real Students Take Chemistry..." Kahle

"Shopping Hall High School" Powell et al.

"Tracking" Cakes

"Pour Black Students..."Peshkin, White

"Brookline High School” Lightfoot

”Daily Grind” Jackson

”Teaching Functions" Roshenshine, Stevens

"Multicultural Art Classroom" Stuhr et a1.
1 e e ... Henson

”Pedagogical Auto..." Rickard

”And Then I went to School” Suina

all majors

HU‘INNNWNNWbUI

2. What tasks in the course seemed most helpful for you in
relation to planning and thinking about teaching and learning
in your content area? In general?

TASKS:

Readings

Dialogue Journals

Personal narratives

Fastwrites

miniteachings (2)

Fieldwork (observ., teaching, tutoring)
(See Julianna's-connection to course)

Content Group Journals

Unit Plans

Concept Maps

Content group discussions

NMHOO¢
UO‘

NHNO

263

264

3. Comment on the idea of working through the texts and tasks of
the course within content groups...was it helpful...not
helpful?

Helpful 43

Not Helpful 4

*Reasons for ”not helpful"

group grades - I

wanted cross content groups - 1

members' experiences same - I

felt pushed aside by members because of lower knowledge level - 1

4. Write about what helped or did not help you access your subject
matter in the course?

new

Whole group discussions
Mini-teaching

Content Groups

Class format (relaxed)

Unit planning

Instructor comments in journals
Fieldwork (structured observation)
Fieldwork (actual teaching)

ERG

Accessibility of instructor
Readings

Whole course

N

O

NSHNH#NO\HHNO\

Articles needed to be given ahead

More articles on P.E.. Art, Music, Lang.
Vbrked in minor area/only major
Articles were "too technical"

NNbH

265

5. A course is more than texts and tasks.

aspect of the course.

Cooperative climate

Application of concepts in group and
miniteaching

Friendships

People-mix of contents

Respect gained for others' contents

Sense of mutual accomplishment

Positive hard work

Learning from peers

Instructor-accessibility, caring, open,
flexible, sharing experiences

Mutual respect communication (I-S, S-I)

Whole group discussions

Reflective format of course

Fieldwork

More lecture-visuals needed to impact
learning-discussion alone difficult

Needed "...guest speakers to show us
(tell us) how it is."

Write about another

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

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