Post on 12-Dec-2015
transcript
teacher control in the learner-centered classroom: an unavoidable paradox?
adam lefstein
adaml@netvision.net.il
navcon2003
at a glance
• problems at “birch” high school
• a selective history lesson– traditional instruction and discipline– progressive instruction– progressive discipline?
• back to “birch”
• what to do?
towards diagnosis – some things teachers told me:
1) staff are too permissive; students think ‘anything goes’.
2) students import emotional problems into school.
3) teachers are inconsistent in their rules and enforcement.
4) school studies are irrelevant and uninteresting; bored students disrupt lessons.
which explanation might be the key to solving the problem?
1) staff are too permissive; students think ‘anything goes’.
2) students import emotional problems into school.
3) teachers are inconsistent in their rules and enforcement.
4) school studies are irrelevant and uninteresting; bored students disrupt lessons.
5) other?
are proposed solutions compatible with learning and teaching in a community of thinking?
why isn’t anybody talking about the relationship between the pedagogical reforms and power relations?
could the growing “discipline problems” be a product of our teaching reforms?
discipline as technology of power
• distribution in space
• control of activity
• hierarchical observation
• normalizing judgment and examination
disciplinary technology – control of activity
“Take your slates. At the word take, the children, with their right hands, take hold of the string by which the slate is suspended from the nail before them, and, with their left hands, they grasp the slate in themiddle; at the word slates, they unhook it and place it on the table.”
b. class-roomsc. “design provides:
Ability to observe more students with less people...”
d. mainoffice
a. teachers’ room
disciplinary technology – normalizing judgment
and examination
“a pupil who at the end of three examinations has been unable to pass into the higher order must be placed, well in evidence, on the bench of the ‘ignorant’.”
“All the pupils in the grade should receive instruction relative to the same points, and write the same words simultaneously; thus all will attend to the same thing, at the same time...”
the progressivist revolution
John Dewey1859-1952
“Now the change which is coming into our education is the shifting of the center of gravity... the child
becomes the sun about which the appliances of education revolve; he is the center about which they are organized.”
progressivist instruction
• natural learning
• student’s interests
• active learning
• cooperative learning
• authentic assessment
• democratic experience
traditional discipline subverted by progressivist instruction
• distribution in space
• control of activity
• hierarchical observation
• normalizing judgment and examination
• cooperative learning
• differentiated learning
• active learning
• authentic assessment
what about classroom control?
a) what may seem like disorder is actually the noise and bustle of engaged learning
b) student misbehavior is a sign that the lesson is inappropriate or uninteresting
c) youthful rebellion against authority is natural and positive
d) education for democracy means granting students self-government
e) other?
“there is a certain disorder in any busy workshop... and there is the confusion, the bustle, that results from activity.”
selective history lesson: review
• traditional instruction and discipline coincide
• progressivist instruction subverts traditional discipline
• progressivist approach to the “discipline” problem: denial and self-blame
• cajoling• self-restraint• corrective interjections
• angry explosion• immediate consequences
in the lesson...
traditional disciplinarian
progressivist teacher
• subject areateacher
• subject leader• facilitators
separation mechanisms: school organization
• “homeroom” teacher
• grade leader• psychologist
disciplineteaching and
learning
notes toward progressivist classroom government
• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• rituals
• power sharing
• accepting the inevitable
merging instruction and power issues
• school organization• curriculum design• professional
development
notes toward progressivist classroom government
• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability mechanisms• rituals
• power sharing
• accepting the inevitable
notes toward progressivist classroom government
• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• alternative rituals• power sharing
• accepting the inevitable
notes toward progressivist classroom government
• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• rituals
• gradual power sharing• accepting the inevitable
notes toward progressivist classroom government
• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• rituals
• power sharing
• accepting the inevitability of power relations
for further readingDewey, John. 1938. Experience and education. New York: The
Macmillan company.
Egan, Kieran. 2002. Getting it wrong from the beginning : our progressivist inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Random House.
Kohn, Alfie. 1996. Beyond discipline: from compliance to community. Alexandria, Va.: ASCD.
Lefstein, A. 2002. Thinking power and pedagogy apart - Coping with discipline in progressivist school reform. Teachers College Record 104 (8):1627-1655.
Tanner, Laurel N. 1997. Dewey's laboratory school: lessons for today. New York: Teachers College Press.