This article was downloaded by: [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] On: 24 December 2013, At: 06:43 Publisher: Taylor & Francis Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujec20 What Does it Mean to be a “Good” Early Childhood Teacher? An Analysis of Themes in Application Essays Submitted to Two Early Childhood Education Teacher Certification Programs Leigh M. O'Brien a , Sue Novinger b & Arlene Leach-Bizari c a State University of New York at Geneseo , Geneseo, New York, USA b State University of New York at Brockport , Brockport, New York, USA c Nazareth College , Rochester, New York, USA Published online: 26 Sep 2007. To cite this article: Leigh M. O'Brien , Sue Novinger & Arlene Leach-Bizari (2007) What Does it Mean to be a “Good” Early Childhood Teacher? An Analysis of Themes in Application Essays Submitted to Two Early Childhood Education Teacher Certification Programs, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 28:3, 205-217, DOI: 10.1080/10901020701555499 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10901020701555499 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
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This article was downloaded by: [Moskow State Univ Bibliote]On: 24 December 2013, At: 06:43Publisher: Taylor & FrancisInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of Early Childhood TeacherEducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujec20
What Does it Mean to be a “Good”Early Childhood Teacher? An Analysis ofThemes in Application Essays Submittedto Two Early Childhood EducationTeacher Certification ProgramsLeigh M. O'Brien a , Sue Novinger b & Arlene Leach-Bizari ca State University of New York at Geneseo , Geneseo, New York, USAb State University of New York at Brockport , Brockport, New York,USAc Nazareth College , Rochester, New York, USAPublished online: 26 Sep 2007.
To cite this article: Leigh M. O'Brien , Sue Novinger & Arlene Leach-Bizari (2007) What Does it Meanto be a “Good” Early Childhood Teacher? An Analysis of Themes in Application Essays Submitted toTwo Early Childhood Education Teacher Certification Programs, Journal of Early Childhood TeacherEducation, 28:3, 205-217, DOI: 10.1080/10901020701555499
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10901020701555499
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
UJEC1090-10271745-5642Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Vol. 28, No. 3, July 2007: pp. 1–25Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education
What Does it Mean to be a “Good” Early Childhood Teacher? An Analysis of Themes in Application
Essays Submitted to Two Early Childhood Education Teacher Certification Programs
Being a “Good” Early Childhood TeacherL. M. O’Brien et al. LEIGH M. O’BRIEN1, SUE NOVINGER2 AND ARLENE LEACH-BIZARI3
1State University of New York at Geneseo, Geneseo, New York, USA2State University of New York at Brockport, Brockport, New York, USA3Nazareth College, Rochester, New York, USA
Three teacher educators at two colleges in western New York have used content analy-sis to analyze prospective undergraduate and graduate students’ applications to theirearly childhood education programs. Despite a number of apparent differencesbetween both the applicants and the programs to which they were applying, there wasa remarkable degree of similarity in applicant essays around the ways in which theyconstructed and communicated their understandings of the “good” early childhoodteacher. These constructions raise questions about how this discourse is disseminated,understood, taken up, and perpetuated in teacher education programs. The implica-tions of this analysis pose challenges and present possibilities for early childhoodteacher educators working from nonmainstream perspectives.
Introduction
Everyone, it seems, has an idealized image of the “good teacher” and the qualities that sheor he embodies (e.g., Ayers, 1989; Cartwright, 1999; Farnham-Diggory, 1972). Prospec-tive students who hope to become early childhood teachers are certainly no exception.Therefore, when applying for admission to an early childhood teacher education program,it seems likely that they would draw on their images of what it means to be a good teacher.
In this study, we used content analysis to look closely at the application essays writtenby applicants to two very different early childhood education (ECE) teacher preparationprograms—one an undergraduate program at a state-assisted public liberal arts and sci-ences college; the other, a graduate program at a private liberal arts and sciences schoolwith a large teacher education program. Our initial goal was to identify the differences andsimilarities between the two applicant pools. However, as we undertook our analyses, webegan to focus on a developing impression that the applicants used their essays to arguethat they should be admitted to our programs by enumerating the personal characteristics,experiences, and qualities that they felt would identify them to us as “good candidates”and eventually, through admission and study, as good teachers. We were intrigued by this.Although neither application form explicitly invited or encouraged this focus, the applicants
Received 5 December 2005; accepted 28 March 2007.Address correspondence to Leigh M. O’Brien, 221-D South Hall, SUNY Geneseo, 1 College
seem to have “read” an implicit expectation embedded in the application process andresponded accordingly. Hence, our inquiry changed to focus on applicants’ images of the“good early childhood teacher.”
To support our examination of the images of the “good early childhood teacher” thatwe found in the applications, we considered the work of diverse theorists and paradigms.These included those working from a constructivist/social constructivist framework (e.g.,Cannella & Reiff, 1994; Duckworth, 1996; Forman, 1987; Fosnot, 1989), those who relyextensively on Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) (Bredekamp & Copple,1997; NAEYC, 1987), progressivists who draw on Dewey (e.g., 1902/1990) and socialreconstructionists (e.g., Counts, 1932), holistic educators (for example, Miller, 1997), andcritical theorists such as Freire (1986), Giroux (1988), and hooks (1994).
Ultimately, we found critical feminist/post-modern work on teacher identity espe-cially relevant to our analysis (e.g., Althusser, 1971; Convery, 1999; Ellsworth, 1997;Grieshaber & Cannella, 2001; Lenz Taguchi, 2005; Phillips & Hatch, 2000; Ryan,Ochsner, & Genishi, 2001) as we thought about how prospective teachers might choose toshape and present their idealized images of good teachers with the faculty members whowill evaluate their essays in mind. Lenz Taguchi goes so far as to suggest that “what pre-occupies the students is the imagery of the teacher educator and what she/he expects anddemands” (p. 247). Drawing on this body of work, we believed it was reasonable toassume that prospective teachers write application essays with the express goal of gainingadmission to a teacher preparation program, and, thus, tend to present their image of whata good teacher is to the “gatekeepers” of admission based on what they think the “experts”want or expect to hear.
Working from a Post Modern Perspective
From a post-modern perspective, identity is never singular or stable, but is instead multi-ple and constantly shifting. According to Convery (1999) and Phillips and Hatch (2000),teachers and prospective teachers take up teaching identities based, at least in part, on theiridealized images of good teachers. These images are situated in a range of overlapping andcompeting discourses. Juzwik (2006) identifies at least four different definitions of theterm discourse. These usages include everyday classroom discourse related to learningand instruction; the distinction widely used in education between discourse and Discourse,the latter referring to (a) durable, structuring cultural collectives into which persons areaffiliated through a variety of discursive and extra-discursive means; (b) understandingsof discourse as language above the level of the sentence; and (c) Foucauldian and othercritical senses of the term as used in education. We use this last definition because of itsexplicit focus on relations among language, social structures, and power.
Following this line of thinking suggests that what it means to be a good teacher shiftsand changes depending on the discourses in which prospective teachers are situated. Further,since discourses embody relations of power (Foucault, 1977), a discourse may gain a domi-nant position over alternative discourses in the way it is strengthened and supported by cre-dentialed individuals and prominent organizations (Pacini-Ketchabaw & Schecter, 2002).
Importantly, we take up different positions, or enact different identities, within differ-ent discourses (Davies, 2000). Ellsworth (1997) uses the notion of “mode of address” toexamine this process. She writes, “Each time we address someone we take up a positionwithin knowledge, power, and desire in relation to them and assign them to a position inrelation to ourselves and a context” (p. 54). Both who we think we are and who we thinkwe are addressing shape the modes of address, and the identities, we enact.
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And so, as we examined applicant belief systems through the lens of post-modernism,we asked ourselves questions such as, “Who do the applicants think we are? What modesof address are they using? How are they hailing us, in their attempts to present themselvesas particular kinds of early childhood teachers-to-be? How do the applicants seek toaddress us? What do they seek to accomplish with their texts (beyond simply gainingadmission to a program)?”
The applicants to our programs presumably are using the capital—dispositions,knowledge, perceptions, and so forth—that they think will gain them access to a specificcertification program. Hence, we also ask, what “cultural capital” (e.g., Bordieu, 1990;Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) do the applicants think they bring—or should bring—to thefield of ECE? What cultural capital do they believe we will find valuable? And buildingon the discussion above, if identity is not singular, what are the discourses taken up by theapplicants? What identities might they be seeking to enact through their essays?
The Discourse of Developmentally Appropriate Practice
As we have argued, what counts as capital varies from discourse to discourse. Thus, in ourefforts to understand what counts as cultural capital to our applicants, we must be sensitiveto the discourses in which they are immersed.
In the United States, the discourse of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) isdominant in early childhood education, shaping and constraining possibilities (as do alldiscourses), in this case vis-à-vis programs for children and prospective teachers alike(Grieshaber, 2001). Disseminated by the National Association for the Education of YoungChildren, the largest Early Childhood Education (ECE) organization in the U.S., DAPcomprises a set of guidelines for making decisions based on current knowledge and sharedbeliefs about what constitutes high-quality early childhood education practice (Bredekamp &Copple, 1997, p. 3). DAP is premised on the following: using knowledge about childdevelopment and learning, individual children, and social/cultural contexts to inform prac-tice; using multiple sources of knowledge in professional decision-making; and resolvingcontradictions in practice (Bredekamp & Copple). In addition, this discourse is linkedwith discourses of quality and accreditation (Novinger & O’Brien, 2003; Novinger,O’Brien & Sweigman, 2005) ensuring its dominant position.
Grieshaber and Cannella (2001) contend that, because of its power, DAP “constructs theidentity of the good early childhood practitioner. The discourse creates both the desire to bethe good teacher and a definition of the good teacher in DAP terms” (p. 15). As do Grieshaberand Cannella, Ryan and her colleagues (2001) note that the DAP discourse constructs imagesof appropriate (good) and inappropriate (bad) ECE teachers, and because this dominant dis-course is officially sanctioned, it pushes aside and restricts the emergence and validity ofother images of good ECE teachers. Thus the “DAP good teacher” becomes iconic ratherthan simply one suggested template of many possible models of sound pedagogical practice.
Methods and Findings
Building on a 1993 comparison of education students at Harvard with education studentsat a Northeastern urban college (Weiner, Swearingen, Pagano, & Obi, 1993), our initialfocus was to try to ascertain, through inductive analysis of student application essays,whether there were substantive differences between the rationales given by two groups ofcandidates regarding their choices of program. However, in this article, we go beyond ananalysis of the differences to try to elucidate applicants’ stated reasons for choosing ECE
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as a field of study. Finally, we attempt to link this information to the paradigms thatappear to guide prospective students’ thinking.
Our data sources were application essays written by prospective students to two verydifferent ECE teacher-certification programs: one an undergraduate program at a state-assisted college, and the other a master’s-level program at a private college. Theundergraduates (N = 20) were all applying for an initial ECE certification program. Theprospective graduate students (N = 24) were already certified as teachers, typically inElementary Education; thus, this program provided a second certification (in ECE) and amaster’s degree, as required by New York state regulations. To insure confidentiality, stu-dent workers copied the applicants’ letters, removing all identifying information, and thenforwarded them to the researchers along with demographic information on gender, date ofbirth, prior certification, and other related information.
Determining Images
Each essay was broken down into sentences or sets of sentences that addressed a reasonthe applicant gave to indicate his/her suitability for entering the program. There were atotal of 234 comments from the undergraduate pool of applicants, and 209 from the gradu-ate pool. We used conceptual content analysis to sort and analyze applicants’ conceptionsof the good early childhood teacher. From these we identified 13 initial categories thatcrossed both programs and were identified by at least five of the applicants. Four addi-tional categories (for a total of 17) were added during the coding process.
We found that, in general, most responses were process- as opposed to content-focused. Common foci included being determined (e.g., “I feel that my attributes of perse-verance, self-confidence, initiative, and organization make me a well-qualified candidate”);
Figure 1. Responses per Category, and Corresponding Definition (n = 443).
Category Responses Definitions
M 59 Professional DevelopmentH 55 Prior Experience Working with ChildrenF 44 Students Learning from MeJ 38 Being PositiveA 33 Commitment to the FieldI 33 Loving Children/Love Working with ChildrenB 28 Making a Difference in Children’s LivesL 25 Respect ChildrenE 24 Learning from StudentsG 23 Knowing Developmental Levels, etc. (ECE knowledge)K 23 Determination/Persistence/Hard WorkerC 19 Being a Life-Long LearnerD 14 Being a NurturerO 12 Importance of Early YearsR 6 Responsiveness, Patience, Compassion, SensitivityS 6 Self-Awareness/ReflectionN 1 Dream or Aspirations
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Being a “Good” Early Childhood Teacher 209
being a life-long learner (e.g., “As an educator it is my responsibility to keep learning newand innovative ways to teach the children I have in my care”); and respecting children(e.g., “Each child is a unique individual and I have grown to value the different gifts thateach child possesses”). Applicants tended to write in generalities, the majority of whichcould easily also suggest current cultural conceptions of care giving or mothering: Theydescribed themselves as loving children (e.g., “Watching this child communicate with hispeers and teacher brought joy to my heart”), being nurturing (“What kept me going werethe children who needed love, affection, challenges, and just someone who would be thereconsistently”), and having a positive disposition (“My positive outlook truly stands outand makes a world of difference when working with children”).
These responses align with Grieshaber’s summary of DAP, worth quoting at lengthhere due to its relevance for our analysis:
Bredekamp and Copple (1997) identify many examples of appropriate prac-tice for teachers of children aged three to five…focusing on the portrayal ofadults as warm, gentle, supportive, responsive, patient, encouraging, and facil-itating beings who patiently redirect and guide children in their developmentand learning. For example, “teachers are patient, realizing that not everyminor infraction warrants a response” (p. 129), and teachers recognize that“learning experiences are more effective when the curriculum is responsive tothe children’s interests and ideas as they emerge (p. 131). (2001, p. 64)
However, we noted that the responses very rarely described teaching as an intellectualpursuit requiring a disposition toward reflection, inquiry/research, and activism. Thisomission we both understand and find problematic. As Grieshaber (2001) has argued,there is a contrast between the attributes required of adults within the discourse of DAPand attributes that have been described as necessary in advocating for young children.While adults working with young children within the dominant discourse are expected tobe nurturing and responsive to their charges, advocacy requires a willingness to deal withconflict, confrontation, and negotiation. Similar concerns could be raised about the teachercharacteristics necessary to raise questions through reflection and inquiry/research and thelack of questioning expected by DAP given its status as a “consensus” model of best prac-tice in ECE.
Building on these concerns, Ryan et al. (2001) challenge us to think about what ismissing when we only rely on one dominant image of what a good early childhood teachershould look like. In their review of the dichotomous teacher images seen in the children’sbook, Miss Nelson is Missing!, they illustrate the possibilities and limitations of differentapproaches to early childhood research on teaching. Following this line of thinking, weaim to elucidate why a position at the center (currently the discourse of DAP) might be soattractive to our applicants, as well as suggest a few of the options on the margins of earlychildhood practice that could broaden the possibilities of practice for new teachers.
Undergraduates and Graduates
From the beginning, we had expected to see obvious differences between the undergradu-ate and graduate applicants’ essays, not only because of the age differential and the natureof the institutions, but also because the application forms were quite different from oneanother. The undergraduate application asked respondents to choose among possible“teacher candidate dispositions” that describe the candidate; the application to the graduate
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program was open-ended. But instead of clear differences, we initially saw mostly similar-ities, as shown in Figure 2.
As we worked with this data, we saw that these various responses could be mergedinto six basic categories: professional development, prior experience, student learning, apositive stance toward teaching, commitment, and loving children. It was when wefocused on these topics that we saw interesting differences between the ways in whichundergraduate and graduate students completed the applications, as shown in Figure 3.
Further exploration revealed specific areas of difference between the two applicantpools. As Figure 4 illustrates, the undergraduate program applicants tended to emphasizetheir prior experiences working with children, as well as qualities of character such asbeing positive, loving children, learning from students, and determination.
In contrast, the graduate program applicants (see Figure 5) tended to focus on gettinga degree as a means to an end; that is, they focused on admission to the program as anopportunity for job training to improve personal credentials and/or improvement in techni-cal skill by which they might impart skills or knowledge. For example, one applicantwrote, “My goal is to continue working in early childhood education as an inner-city pre-school teacher. A specialized graduate program in early childhood education woulddevelop my professional abilities.” Similarly, another said, “I will be able to immediatelyimplement what I learn in this graduate program in my classroom. It will enable me to knowmy students’’ developmental levels, needs, and thoughts, and thus, I can improve my meth-ods of teaching accordingly.” In both cases applicants clearly hope to make a difference instudents’ lives, but what kind of difference and how this might occur is not as clear.
The similarities and differences that we identified in our comparison of the responsesof undergraduates and graduates seeking admission to the two programs led us to furtherexploration and theorizing about what these prospective teachers thought about earlychildhood education in general, about our programs, about the role of early childhoodteachers, and about their own visions for themselves.
Discussion
First, we found that the 17 discrete response categories (see Figure1) could be collapsedinto two broad categories: what I (the applicant) will get from being a teacher of youngchildren (categories B, D, E, I, J, K, and L) and what I will be able to give as a teacher ofyoung children (categories A, C, F, G, and H). In addition, the most common response cat-egory for the applicants to the graduate program, professional development/becoming abetter teacher (M), can be seen as an amalgam of the “giving and getting” categories: Iwant to attend your program to better serve students, and in order to do so, I need to bet-ter myself. These categories are consistent with what Calderwood (2003) calls the “MissAmerica” question: What is the principal contribution the candidate most desires to maketo the field of education? And, like Calderwood, we got two consistent answers to thequestion: The first is to make a difference in the life of at least one student (what I willgive); the second is to be that special teacher, the one who is remembered (what I will get).
These responses tell us a good deal about how applicants view the teacher’s role, andprompted us to try to situate applicants’ constructions of idealized early childhood teach-ers within circulating discourses, to think about what this might mean for the identities
Figure 3. Overall Comparison of Top Totals (n = 443).
they could take up as teachers-to-be, and to consider the potential implications for the fieldof early childhood education.
On the whole, we saw both sets of responses as giving voice to mainstream discoursesidentified earlier about what schooling is for and the role of the teacher in this preparation.It is interesting that applicants seem to be immersed in the dominant discourse of DAPwell before they come to our programs. In all likelihood they come to this discoursethrough popular images of early childhood teachers in literature and films such as MaryPoppins, Matilda, Madeline, and Miss Nelson is Missing, as well as their presumed famil-iarity with the academic/training emphases for different age groups and their past or cur-rent work with children in child care and other early childhood settings.
Their responses further suggest immersion in the dominant U.S. ideology of individu-alism and objectivity. We saw these two foci in the valorization of the individual qualitiesof being positive, nurturing, determined, respectful, and loving, as well as in the absenceof attention to the broader socio-economic/political context in which all education resides.These orientations can be seen in applicant statements such as the following: “The mostimportant value to have with students is respect. Respect is the key to running an orga-nized classroom”; and “My emphasis is on creating a classroom and a curriculum that fos-ters early childhood learners’ self-confidence, early literacy and math skills, creativity,and life-long eagerness to learn!”
Given the applicants’ general orientation to the mainstream discourse, we found itodd that there was no mention of coconstruction of knowledge or interaction between
Figure 4. Top Five Undergraduate Responses (n = 234).
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teacher and learner, both key components of social constructivism and DAP. Further,there was no critique of the “getting-kids-ready-for-school” discourse which was one ofthe main reasons DAP was created. Also missing, perhaps less surprisingly given the apo-litical view many have of teaching (Counts, 1932), was a view of education as a vehiclefor social change, as might be found in progressive or critical approaches to education.Education for active, democratic citizenship, for example, was not mentioned once. Infact, as we alluded to above, the entire school-society link was missing; so, too, was anynotion of transformation, emancipation, or alliance building.
Consistent with this omission, the applicants spoke of children or future students ingeneralized, homogenous terms without noting or attending to cultural, economic, geo-graphic, or gender diversity. For instance, one applicant to the undergraduate programwrote, “Kids are so innocent, still untouched by all the troubles in the world, and I thinkthat it would be such an incredible experience to be just one of the people who set thefoundation for the rest of their lives.” Reflecting a similar orientation, an applicant to thegraduate program wrote, “Some of my educational objectives [presumably for the chil-dren] are language development, self-expression, and self-esteem, plus learning to workwithin a group.”
Much speculation could occur as to the nature and perhaps even the cause of theseomissions. What seems striking to us is that what was unsaid in the application essays illu-minates the ways that dominant discourses may be serving to limit and bound the waysthat applicants seemed able to imagine good teacher identities. In crafting their positions
as ideal teacher candidates, nearly all cloaked themselves in the traditional garb of the“good mother”: a positive disposition, experience that yields competence, and love ofchildren. In this way, applicants seem to be mirroring the familiar and culturally sanc-tioned qualities of care. At the same time, they overlooked, disregarded, or perhaps evenavoided the less familiar, the potentially controversial, and unconventional descriptions ofwhat an educator of young children might look like.
Paradoxically, while hoping to make a difference in the lives of children, and lookingto teacher education programs for the skills and dispositions with which to do so, mostcandidates situate themselves in a discourse that is unlikely to endorse or support thisexpressed ambition of making a difference and developing the ability to effect positivechange in the lives of their students. Because of its prescriptive and dichotomous nature(practice is either appropriate or inappropriate), the DAP book (Bredekamp & Copple,1997) and video (NAEYC, 1987) in essence present “teachers should…” statements(Lubeck, 1996).
However, for good or ill, there rarely are “right answers” in teaching; instead it is ahighly individual craft “involving teachers’ personal definitions of problems and their res-olutions” (Goffin, 1996, p. 127). Ignoring the interplay of context, biography, and valuesin the construction of teacher practices leads to an oversimplified view of what it means tobe a teacher of young children. When we move from the modernist notion of certain andgeneralizable truths about teaching to a post-modern focus on the immediate and dynamicaspects of teaching, more nuanced, complex images of teachers are possible (Ryan et al.,2001).
Conclusions
Looking closely at applicants’ rationales for pursuing a specific field of study (see, forexample, King, 1993; Phillips & Hatch, 2000; Weiner et al. 1993) can assist us in match-ing students’ backgrounds and needs with the nature and scope of courses we offer in ourprograms. In addition, teacher educators can gain insight into the discourses with whichstudents enter our programs so that we might be better prepared to complicate students’notions of what it means to be an early childhood educator. Given our applicants’ clearand consistent use of generalized, dominant—and limiting—discourses of the good earlychildhood teacher, and guessing that these are not unusual or unique to our programs, weare suggesting that teacher educators have much work to do with students in order toextend their conceptions of teaching by building on, challenging, encouraging, and recog-nizing alternative understandings of who and what actions and activities may qualify asgood teaching.
Our study leads us to think about ways in which we might reshape our programs tomake it possible for students to construct multiple and perhaps overlapping images ofgood early childhood teachers and good teaching. We agree with Greishaber (2001) whoargues that the central challenge for teacher educators lies in attempting to adopt identi-ties/positions outside of or in opposition to the dominant discourse, so that we mightengage prospective teachers in exploring and critiquing a wider range of possibilities. Oneway of doing this is to ensure that alternate theories and subjectivities are an importantpart of the coursework in our ECE programs.
For instance, we might offer images that build on feminist and critical theory such asFreire’s (1986), Noddings’s (1992), Liston and Garrison’s (2004), and Goldstein’s (1999,2002) notions of an education based on caring relationships wherein knowledge is cocon-structed and there is a commitment to building a community of learners. Other possible
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models include narrative-oriented teacher education (Heikkinen, Syrjala, Huttunen, &Estola, 2004), Deweyan models (e.g., Cuffaro, 1995; O’Brien, 2002), and what bell hooks(1994) calls engaged pedagogy. But how do we avoid inventing just another kind ofteacher preparation that constitutes another set of discourses that, while different from theone we resist, is equally limiting?
Britzman (2000) notes that the most important obstacle when trying to implementteacher education practice differently is that the image of the teacher is already inscribedin complex and contradictory sets of discourses, meanings, and connected ways of“doing” learning and teaching. Thus, it is not so much who the students currently are, or,as Ellsworth (1997) adds, instead of “teaching truths or teaching truthfully,” we have toteach differently, by relating to, activating, or using students’ desires, fears, and pleasuresin the teaching process. She argues for the necessity of getting personal in our pedagogy toavoid the mainstreaming and disregarding of differences. This kind of work requires us tochallenge our own notions continually of what it means to be a good early childhoodteacher by questioning the discourses in which we are ourselves immersed.
We are aware of the tensions inherent in what we are calling for: Acknowledging ourroles as gatekeepers to the profession of ECE and guides for the direction our courses andprograms take puts us in danger of being the “bankers” (Freire, 1986) we have critiqued. Wethink that this tension can be dissipated by implementing a dialogic model. While maintain-ing our obligations to the profession, we think early childhood teacher educators must movefrom a deficit perspective (e.g., “these applicants’ conceptions are so simplistic”) to astrength-based one (e.g., “these applicants are caring and concerned about being good teach-ers”) that complicates and extends existing constructions. We believe that we can and shouldwork together with our students to craft multiple versions of the good early childhood educa-tor. In this way, we may move with them and ourselves toward a richer, more sophisticated,more authentic, and hopefully more powerful model of pedagogy. Ultimately, we maytogether craft a more inclusive and truly alternative vision of the good early childhood edu-cator that might better serve teachers, the children and families with whom they work, and,ultimately, the larger and increasingly diverse society in which we live.
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