This book received the CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title 2002: "Selected for their excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as important--often the first--treatment of their subject." Choice Maganzine, January 2003.
Wolff-Michael Roth,Kenneth Tobin, At the Elbows of Another: Learning to Teach by Coteaching
(New York: Peter Lang, 2002). (ISBN: 0-8204-5567-9 pbk)
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Overview of the Chapters in the Book
In the first
chapter, we articulate our epistemology of teaching that is
grounded in practice (rather than focusing on 'knowledge,
'beliefs' and 'values' that are often considered to reside between
the ears). Our epistemology highlights elements in the experience
of teaching such as the fact that we always and already find
ourselves in a world and with other people, who sometimes are the
recipients of our actions, and that we are unreflective about a
lot of the things we do in our daily work as teachers. From past
experiences arise patterned dispositions that allow experienced
practitioners to perceive and act in particular ways. We show how
coteaching--accomplishing the task of teaching in a collective
manner and, in this case, also learning to teach--provides a
context in which teachers can develop and new teachers can learn
to teach.
Chapter 2 is based
on Ken's autobiographical account of having to learn
again to teach when he moved to Philadelphia, where he
eventually taught science on a daily basis in the lowest stream of
an urban high school. Ken taught in Mario's class and, although
they had talked about teaching the class together, Ken found
himself often teaching on his own with an expectation that he
would expertly deal with difficult situations. Ken's account
allows us to understand that past experience may lead to forms of
teaching that are not appropriate under all circumstances,
especially when the teacher and students have markedly differing
social and cultural histories. Ken's autobiographical account does
not conclude on a happy note. In our conversation about the
experience of (re-) learning to teach we address some of the
particular difficulties that arise from teaching and learning to
teach when there is a considerable gap between the social and
cultural backgrounds of the teacher and students.
Chapter 3 deals
with Mario's experiences of teaching and learning to teach during
his first three years in the same inner city school. As a recently
certified teacher Mario has not had the equivalent teaching
experiences as Ken but he has more in common with the students in
terms of age and interests and he understands more about the
social and cultural dimensions of their lives. As a youth Mario
had extensive experience of what Eli Anderson described as the
'code of the street'. Consequently he is in a position to make
sense of the ways of being that students bring with them from the
street to the classroom.In the chapter we use an autobiographical
narrative of Mario's 'becoming-in-the-classroom' as the starting
point for our conversation about important issues that arise from
teaching and learning to teach. In particular, we focus on the
dialectical tension that arises from teaching as a means to
enhance students' opportunities in a world very different from the
teacher's and the reproduction of inequities that arise from
cultural differences.
Changing one's
approach to teaching and teacher education does not come easy.
Both personal and institutional contexts provide starting points
for and constraints to how coteaching will evolve in a particular
setting. In the first half of Chapter 4, we provide
autobiographical narratives that describe the development of our
own teaching and theories of teaching in the course of our careers
and that ultimately led us to our coteaching/ cogenerative
dialoguing model. In the second part of Chapter 4, we describe how
coteaching/ cogenerative dialoguing was implemented in the
contexts of teacher education at the University of Pennsylvania
and City High School. We describe how coteaching evolved in
different ways for particular individuals and classroom settings.
The background information in this chapter is of particular
importance, as it sets up the context in which the stories of
teaching featured in Chapters 5-8 occurred.
Urban schools with
large proportions of students from an 'underclass' and largely of
African American origin provide particular challenges for new and
resident teachers and the students they teach. In Chapter 5, we
articulate some of the issues faced in an urban school and
subsequently show the potential of our coteaching/ cogenerative
dialoguing paradigm to assist the work of teachers. In this
chapter, we particularly focus on how Stephanie, concurrently
enrolled in a teacher education program and coteaching with Bert,
learned to teach in an urban school in which coteaching/
cogenerative dialoguing were used.
It is well known
that in the course of their careers and with increasing
experience, teachers deepen their understandings of subject matter
and subject matter pedagogy. This is often a rather long and
protracted process. In Chapter 6, we provide a case study in which
a group of coteachers (Michael, Ken, Stephanie and Bert) deepened
their understandings of an aspect of genetics (from a grade-10
science course) and the pedagogy associated with it. Specifically,
we focus on our own learning of genetics in the process of being
researcher-teachers, an aspect seldom made thematic in educational
research. Coteaching and cogenerative dialoguing turn out to be
ideal contexts for learning to teach in implicit and explicit
ways.
In their studies
of teaching and learning researchers traditionally look, as if
through windows, from the outside into classrooms, to observe
teachers and learners participate in an enacted
curriculum. The outside view is frequently regarded as objective and too often is
highly jaundiced and critical of teachers and
students.Alternatively, teacher-researchers generally rely
on their own experience to characterize a world they experience
through rose-colored glasses, easily falling prey to the dangers
of immediate understanding (since they are too close to the
events). Our paradigm of coteaching/ cogenerative dialoguing
provides for a different way of doing research, because
'researchers' and 'teachers' engage in both activities. Soon after
a shared coteaching experience the participants, or
representatives from the key stakeholders involved in coteaching,
meet to discuss what happened, why it happened, and how learning
might be afforded in the future. Differences in individuals'
understandings of 'shared' events provide the starting points for
critical hermeneutic analysis and a foundation for the development
of a local theory or praxeology. In Chapter 7, we theorize
coteaching/ cogenerative dialoguing at a meta-level, using
activity theory, and thereby articulate new roles for researchers
with respect to classroom events. In this chapter, we also examine
learning environments from the perspective of activity theory and
thereby lay out a fresh approach to research in one of the rapidly
growing areas of science education.
An important part
of becoming a teacher resides in the evaluation of teaching
performance. New teachers in the field usually are evaluated by
their cooperating teachers and university supervisors. Similarly,
during their first two years in a particular school system and
before receiving a permanent contract, beginning teachers are
evaluated by department heads, principals, or other evaluators
appointed by the school board. In each of these instances the
manner of performing evaluation has been to use people external to
the process of teaching a particular class. In Chapter 8, we
propose coteaching/ cogenerative dialoguing as an alternative for
supervision and evaluation. We argue that our proposed evaluation
process retains the focus on teaching students, while making
evaluation of teaching more equitable.
In our epilogue,
we look backward at what we have written while looking forward to
a thorny future of enacting what is a rosy vision for reform of
teaching and learning. In so doing we balance the optimism of our vision
with the pessimism of social and cultural reproduction cycles that
are all too common in social institutions such as
schooling. In
considering the plausibility of revolution or evolution as bases
for change we face the necessity of the reform touching schools
and universities in ways that alter traditional practices and ways
of being.
We acknowledge that unless institutional changes occur to remove many
contradictions in the salient activities of key stakeholders it is
unlikely that their efforts will receive the support that is
essential for enduring improvements.