Re: Confused in California
maria judith (costlins who-is-at ism.com.br)
Sat, 7 Feb 1998 04:21:48 -0800 (PST)
Phillip Allen White wrote:
>
> 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
> It is very interesting to read about the school failure in the way
phillip put it. I have tried to study the reasons why some students are
waited to be successfull and other not, but it is very difficult to
prove it. I think the problem is very similar in our schools in
Brasil.maria lins