Abstract
This paper has two interrelated goals. The first is to introduce a framework: oppositional democracy. The second is to use this framework to address what I see as a central problem that occurs when learning to teach: the moment when someone with power tells an aspiring teacher that something she hopes to accomplish is unrealistic. The framework of oppositional democracy helps us understand this problem while also suggesting responses that free an aspiring teacher to experiment in responsible ways, thereby empowering her to work against practices she does not want to be complicit in perpetuating.
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Notes
I use the example of learning to teach in the United States because it is the context I know and work in. More important, and as I hope to show, the problem I address in this paper is not one unique to the American context, and the problem of demoralization, in particular, is one that any teacher working in a neoliberal context will contend with in one way or another. As neoliberal education reform spreads across the globe, the types of problems discussed in this paper are only likely to multiply. Though the various pathways to becoming a teacher will vary from country to country, and though the edTPA exam—described later in this paper—may remain an American assessment, the pressures on teachers to conform to a narrowing of teaching are felt across national borders (Paine and Zeichner 2012). It is this issue—that narrowing of teaching—that lies at the heart of the paper, even though the I discuss it within the context of teaching in the United States.
For an excellent discussion of student teaching, one that informs some of the generalizations made below, see Darling-Hammond (2014).
For a classic—though still relevant—discussion of this phenomenon, see Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann (1983).
Again, for a good discussion of this type of research, see Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009). In many ways—and this assertion would need a full paper to unpack—it seems like insider knowledge is coming to hold a privileged position. That is, though we still assert that the objective positivistic knowledge stands in the dominant position, a look at leadings journals and book publications may not bear this assertion out. But—again—this is something that could be studied and is merely stated as a question here.
A common criticism leveled against teacher education programs is that they do a more job of preparing teachers because they devalue the work of teaching (Levine 2006). Moves to put teaching at the center of teacher education are meant to respond to this criticism.
For a good description of ambitious instruction—what it looks like and how it can be taught—see Kazemi et al. (2009).
For an introduction to visible thinking, see Ritchart (2015).
For an excellent discussion of deeper learning, see Martinez and McGrath (2014).
As Santoro (2011) very helpfully makes clear, demoralization is not burnout. Demoralization occurs when a teacher feels as if she is disconnected from the moral sources of teacher: that the teacher she does pulls her further from her ideals.
For a good discussion of some of these issues, see Berliner and Glass (2014). For a good discussion of asserting agency even in the face of overwhelming constraint, see Taylor (1992). Though I won’t build on Taylor’s argument directly in this paper, I find it an important support for working against injustice and for the better, even when it feels as if we are locked into regimes and ways of thinking that make us complicit in injustice.
It goes without saying that other resources can and should be brought to bear on this issue. My hope is that philosophy, by helping us conceptualize this issue in a different way, may help us think differently about what it might mean to effectively respond to this critically important issue.
Though educational researchers in the United States demonstrate an interest in learning from effective school reform across the globe (Darling-Hammond 2017), I fear the United States is exporting its demoralizing educational reform, ushering in a global era of measurement and miseducation (Biesta 2016).
As I hope will be made clear, alienation has a variety of possible meanings, but Medearis uses it in a narrow way to describe structures of power that have the potential to constrain individual agency.
For a powerful overview, see Wolin (2008).
For a nice overview of this, see the table Medearis (2015) puts together on p. 105.
For a defense of this position, see Sato (2014).
For excellent discussion of democratic experiments in living, see Anderson (2009).
For an example of what this work might look like, see Frank (2017).
For an extended look at an approach to education based on the principles of doing no harm to children, see Carini and Himley (2010, especially p. 8).
This is mean to echo Delpit’s (2006) reminder that we don’t do other people’s children any favors by failing to give them an education we would want for our own children.
I see Kirp’s (2015) work as mitigating against fads and silver bullets while endorsing the hard and dedicated work of educational change.
For something of a similar argument, see Frank (2017).
I would like to thank Barbara Thayer-Bacon for her support and guidance throughout the editorial process. It was a wonderful experience, and I am deeply grateful for her editorial work.
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Frank, J. Teaching is Oppositional: On the Importance of Supporting Experimental Teaching During Student Teaching. Stud Philos Educ 37, 499–512 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9610-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9610-y