> 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.
>
While these administrative practices are reprehensible for many reasons,
they also reflect a deep seated perspective to the notion that complex
activities like teaching are built from simpler factors -- transition time,
seating charts, etc, etc. Researchers then become the factor finders and
factor chefs. We tell you what to use and how much and where.
As a Peircean reslist, I dont believe in factors anymore. I believe in
influences and facets, but these are quite different things. I also
believe that most good teachers intuitively understand that the factor
theory is wrong, and their disdain from research stems from that tacet
understanding. What would happen to education if; a) we as a culture could
articulate our disdain for the factor approach, and b) we took series, in
terms of praxis and research, the abandonment of the factor approach?
gary
shank who-is-at duq.edu
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omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est, in speculum,
nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis,
nostri status, nostri sortis
fidele signaculum.
--Master Alanus de Insulus, 12th century
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