I think your (2) distinctions of teaching are right on the mark in relation to
the tale I told,
but I think, as well, there are - as always - a complex interplay of
relations at work... particularly in the school's assumptions about
a (fictive) distinction between mind & body .. As in yr first
type of teaching, it is the traditional "mind" model:
>
>1) Teaching academic stuff, "some of the basics of the gr.1 curriculum",
>which seemed to be indifferent to needs and problems that child had been
>engaged and struggled. The power of this teaching is that you can teach a
>student whatever you (or somebody else -- more powerful, which more often a
>case) want. The weakness of this type of teaching, unless what is taught
>is left indifferent to the child, is that even if the learning (aka
>transmission of knowledge) successful, it is very shallow (like training
>animals in a circle). In short, this type of teaching often (but still not
>always because student can make his or her own efforts) generate "extrinsic
>learning" -- student does what is required but only in a contrive settings.
Ah - echoes of Foucault's "Discipline & Punish", where
'regulating the body' is integrated into curriculum;
although from my experiences
in early childhood education, it seems not so much about regulating the body
as it is a utterly repressed FEAR of bodies, especially children's bodies -
As well, the school context where I (oh-so-briefly) worked was in a
desperately poor
neighbourhood, and the school had to deal with a range of overt
social
problems such as poverty, family violence
malnutrition, neglect, aggression and anxiety,
and so on...
It is interesting (sad) that the school policies responded to these
with stricter "controls" on children's participation... (one might even call it
institutional dis-associative disorder.) ;-)
The intervention that I chose clearly violated these policies -
I was hired to implement a short-term/intensive "tutoring" intervention,
and "teach" this boy to do his worksheets:
the explicit concern was that
he achieve a certain grade-level competence so that he could go into gr.2
("we simply can't hold these children back! our classrooms are filled to
capacity as it is" - thus the school, dealing with their over-population issues
and low funding, once again, leaned on teaching #1... results-results-results.
yr second teaching distinction:
>
>2) Teaching relaxation techniques that can (and apparently did) give the
>child control over important for him circumstances. The power of this type
>of teaching is in generating deep and empowering learning in a student.
>The "weakness" of this type of teaching is that nobody can unilaterally
>define the content of this type of teaching. This type of teaching leads
>to so called "intrinsic" or "authentic learning."
...reflects of course my own faith in the relation between the body & mind,
that if he could teach himself to relax, he might be able to sit
through the class-based curriculum, respond to other children, and so on.
At that time, as well, I was involved in a research project where we were
teaching Tai Chi to children who had been "measured" as having
anxiety problems,
and we wanted to see if regular Tai Chi classes might
"reduce the anxiety levels" -
it did, of course, but the research was
disregarded, too flakey, too left-field, too weird... ooh, just like me! ha ha
I tried to explain my motivation in the reports,
but the school language specialist, I remember,
was so horrified that I would teach alternative relaxation techniques without
parental consent (!), and she also made a point of indicating that she was
the specialist, and that her diagnosis was based on his poor language skills,
subsequential to his "disorder"
- emphazing to me that "we are not social workers" and the issues
concerning his medication cannot be part of the school's responsibility...
>Each type of teaching promotes its own social relations. The first type
>dynamically promotes compliance, cooperation (in a sense of bargaining),
>coercion, cheating, surveillance, mistrust, and rebellion. The second type
>dynamically promotes collaboration, trust, mutuality, respect, and help.
>I think that you, Diane, were fired mainly because your teaching approach
>Number 2 undermined institutional relations in the school heavily based on
>Number 1 type of teaching and social relations promoted by it.
I think you're right Eugene.Me and my "flagrant disregard" of school
policy, and my decision to "implement" alternative interventions without
parental consent, and my as you note, undermining the school's practice...
something else which I've been thinking about here is that, as an example
of the "zone", it was purely spontaneous. At that time I was not reading Vyg,
knew nothing about the "zone" - it is only upon reflection that
I can interpet it as a "zone" moment;
and, by the same token, now that I know more about Vyg's work and the
zpd, I still regard it as something which is not so much about "how can we
manipulate this (zpd) in order to maximize its potential?";
but that, under certain environmental conditions, the zone is emergent, so
"how can we manipulate the environment to maximize on emergent zpd?"
.
Which would defend the notion of, say, grouping children on the basis of
ability instead of age... but again, as with most educational issues,
there is a tyranny of ignorance, denial, and repression at work.
gee. Why *am* I in Education???
:-)
diane
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right"
(Ani Difranco)
*********************************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of graduate studies
centre for the study of curriculum and instruction
university of british columbia,
vancouver, british columbia, canada V6T 1Z4
(604) 253-4807
dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca