>I am struggling also, not to give up on School, tempting though the idea
>is. Universities can work on changing things at their end, I work in my
>classroom and do what I can. Which lately, sounds mostly like defending
>teachers.
I hope it didn't seem like I was attacking teachers. I was, actually,
ineptly, perhaps, suggesting that it is not just the teachers, but thew
whole system, which is where we agree, that it is a complex system of
subjectivities and the social...
>diane writes:
>>then it isn't about only what the teachers "need to learn"; but about
>>what a school community needs to put in place to make possible
>>
>>kinds of dialogic interactions; kinds of communicative possibilities which
>>traditional classroom structures prohibit...
Kathie writes:
>If a teacher has the time/space to self-evaluate, then _she_ will be able
>to make that decision and I(or others) may help by providing information
>and support. But if a teacher is required to use dialogue more than
>monologue, how can anyone know (believe, hope, etc) that the teacher will
>be willing or skilled enough to pull it off or then even if she is both of
>those things, that the students/parents/community will accept the new thing
>that she is doing.
Yes, exactly. I was thinking more of "trouble-shooting", where academics
might act as advocates or activists towards changes which are progressive,
such as finding ways to move to dialogic interactions; less about specific
pedagogical praxis, and more about how administrators & parents & teachers
& children interact within a school context. Whoa. Hey. Call the Idealist
Police! I'm slipping!! ha ha.
> This is where the context plays such a big role. This is
>what makes best, or even better, practices so difficult to generalize. In
>my attempts to articulate a collaborative, deliberative process for
>school/ing, I try to depict an dialogue (I do think that's "better")of all
>the people involved because, as someone else said, it's impossible to
>change one component of a complex system without changing the whole system
>to some extent. So why not involve the whole system, explicitly, from the
>start?
well ya. Why not?
There must be ways to help, there must be ways to act. That was more my
thinking.
diane