Re: Confused in California

Phillip Allen White (pwhite who-is-at carbon.cudenver.edu)
Sun, 11 Jan 1998 20:04:05 -0700 (MST)

On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, David Dirlam wrote:
> In general, dynamic systems thinking applied to teaching practices
> suggests that we can (1) identify teaching practices, (2) identify those
> that really should be replaced, and (3) tell the circumstances when others
> are useful.

Everyone - I've been following this particular thread with great
interest - because as an elementary teacher my entire teaching career
has been dogged by administrators with a check-list in hard of _best
teaching practices_. Thus, my transition time was clocked; my questioning
strategies were recorded; my opening statements & closing statements; my
classroom management _strategies_ were documented; the physical placement
of my lesson plan on my desk (upper left hand corner / turned in each
week to be approved); my seating charts; my substitute folder; my
read-alouds; my parent volunteer program; my implementation of
student-time-on-task; my bulletin boards; where the American flag actually
hung; recess time; yadder yadder yadder yadder.

And this all came from, as David suggests, researchers walking
into classrooms, assuming the power to _name_ teaching practices,
_diagnose_ which didn't work, and _prescribe_ what to do instead.
Researcher as the holder of information, teacher as the recipient of the
information. Administration to control and enforce.

How about using some activity theory to explain how, first,
classroom actually work?

How about _not_ problematizing the teacher as the site of why
schools don't work?

How about recognizing that within the systems of systems of
systems that teachers are doing actually what the system wants them to be
doing? It is not enough to pathologize the teacher as the deliverer of
school failure, and to not fail to recognize that schools are _supposed_
to fail students. What happens in schools is no accident. It is supposed
to be happening this way. Some particular sorts of students are supposed
to experience academic success and others aren't. And there are always
the contradictions of the individual - but as a whole system, middle class
anglos are successful and _others_ aren't.

Yet, even within xmca discourse, when it's convenient the problem
is situated in the student.

As one writer to xmca earlier wrote - something to the effect -
"it's the students who don't get it that complain because they got a grade
they didn't like."

So, is it part of activity theory to situate the problem in the
student, when the student is in the university classroom, and to situate
the problem in the public school teacher when the student is in the public
school?


phillip

pwhite who-is-at carbon.cudenver.edu