Rethinking Online Education

Media, Ideologies, and Identities

Bessie Mitsikopoulou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317252801
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

"Rethinking Online Education" analyzes online educational materials on the recent Iraq war aimed to be used by U.S. educators in elementary and secondary schools. It is suggested that far from being ideologically neutral, these educational materials weave together resources which provide a coherent view of the Iraq war theme, and can thus been seen as constituting a kind of an informal curriculum. Mitsikopoulou argues that the teacher resources adhere to different pedagogical discourses and constitute materializations of two broad approaches to education. A number of pedagogical issues are also raised in the discussion: What is the difference between critical thinking and critical pedagogy? How is the genre of lesson plan realized in different teaching philosophies and how do curricular texts change when they are delivered online? This important book highlights the need to explore the new forms of textuality which emerge from online curricular materials and to develop an understanding of the processes of text composition, distribution and consumption.

Part B

Curricular Materials for Teachers

Chapter 4

The Genre of Lesson Plans

THE PREVIOUS THREE CHAPTERS FOCUSED ON THE WAYS STUDENTS experience the informal curriculum comprising the body of suggested lessons in the NewsHour Extra and Rethinking Schools portals. Chapters 1 and 2 presented the pedagogies that the two informal curricula draw from and analyzed the language activities in the suggested lessons. Chapter 3 analyzed the embedded ideologies in the media and other texts that function as reading texts in the suggested lessons. The emphasis in this and the next chapters shifts from students to teachers and the ways teachers experience the curriculum through their engagement with the lesson plans. This chapter starts with a conceptualization of lesson planning as a historical and cultural practice and a suggestion for reading lesson plans within their sociohistorical context. It provides a brief review of related research concerning what we call the traditional lesson plan and moves to an analysis of the genre of lesson plan in NewsHour Extra, by illustrating its organization. I suggest that NewsHour Extra lesson plans constitute a sophisticated version of traditional lesson plans, which are descriptive and procedural, follow a strict format resembling that of a technical document, and have formal and “objective” language. The second part of the chapter presents a brief account of the reflective lesson plan, which I describe as an alternative to the traditional lesson plan. The analysis that follows explores Rethinking Schools’ lesson plans as retrospective versions of the reflective lesson plan, because they have been written after a particular class has been conducted, and they use personalized language addressing colleagues and describing their personal experience, including personal evaluations, uncertainties, failures, and successes.

This chapter shows that the genre of lesson plans is differently realized in the two portals. However, these generic differences go beyond differences in style and format. Like Volosinov (1986, 23), who saw genre realizations not simply as moments of the choice, assembly, and reproduction of forms and techniques, but as sites where “differently oriented social interests within one and the same sign community” intersect, contest, and struggle, I approach the genre of lesson plan as “a nexus for struggles over difference, identity and politics” (Luke 1996, 317). From this perspective, the differential manifestations of the genre of lesson plans in NewsHour Extra and Rethinking Schools are explored as articulations of their different ideological positions, which, as we shall see, are about the Iraq War as much as they are about wider pedagogical and educational matters.

The Lesson Plan as a Historical and Cultural Practice

Lesson planning has been variously approached by educational researchers, who have generated considerable discussion concerning its features, format, and use in the educational process. This book focuses on the different manifestations of the lesson plan genre and their ideological underpinnings. We will, thus, approach lesson planning as a historical and cultural practice that is “handed down through the institutional practices of teacher education and professional development programs” (Tasker et al. 2010, 130). Analyzing the lesson plans within their sociocultural and historical contexts is important, if we take into account that dominant forms of pedagogical processes develop within specific educational and sociohistorical contexts. Therefore, although lesson plans can be seen as texts that mediate the actions of the teacher, at least in print, these actions are neither purely personal nor incidental. They are rooted in well-established institutional practices, theories of language, learning, and teaching that constitute the dominant paradigm of the time. When a paradigm shift takes place, practices change, and so do the ways we use to record them. It is in these cases that genre changes may be noted. In this sense, we may conceive of lesson plans as symbolic texts that, at least externally, mediate teaching processes.

At the same time, it is important to consider that, although a lesson plan is not a real lesson, it is, however, a way of getting close to what is expected to take place in the actual teaching process (Linne 2001, 135). It is also a way of identifying elements of the dominant classroom discourse in a particular educational context. In her analysis of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century lesson plans, Linne (2001) explores how the lesson as pedagogical text was structured in the early periods of modern compulsory schooling in Sweden. Her analysis captures genre changes that, as she suggests, are indicative of wider educational and social changes. She also argues that the lesson plans at the beginning of the twentieth century reflect dominant themes in the curriculum code and the mentality of the period (145), and she claims that

the formation of classroom discourse, as historically and socially constructed, is reflected in the lesson plans. Both what is said and the rules of how it is said—the discursive rules—contribute to the creation of the meaning of the text. (140)

To illustrate her point, Linne describes the ritual of reading a text found in the lesson plans, which, she suggests, is characteristic of the specific classroom discourse: First the teacher reads a biblical text, then one or all of the pupils read it, and next it is divided into pieces and read again. Reading aloud in the classroom, so that everyone can hear and the teacher can correct possible mistakes, is a core part of this ritual. Such an account also indicates the teacher’s and students’ role in this classroom discourse, she argues. The focus is clearly on the teacher, who takes the leading role, and students are not participants in a conversation but rather represent an abstract collection of silent voices.

Linne argues that relating lesson plans to classroom discourse enhances their understanding within their sociohistorical context. If we take into account that a lesson plan is a text that stands for something else—the lesson—then we may explore its embedded and implicit assumptions about the elements of a good lesson and the legitimate ways of recording them in a document. For instance, today many templates are available for lesson plans; these are often presented as objective and universal tools to be used in different educational contexts. Many of them are online environments produced by software companies that claim to make teachers’ lives easier (see Chapter 5) and that promote the lesson plans in the market as effective tools in the service of educators. In this context, writing a lesson plan is considered mainly a technical skill to be mastered by teachers of different educational contexts and cultures. However, as Lave and Wenger (1991, 76) state, any tool or technology “is intricately tied to the cultural practice and social organization with which the technology is meant to function.” This does not seem to be the case with these market templates, which, far from being neutral, are reflective of a particular type of educational professionalism. Koutsogiannis (2004) brings the example of templates that are translated almost verbatim from English into other languages and are promoted as ideal solutions to the problems of various local settings, regardless of language and cultural context. He argues that the noted tendency toward uniformity is particularly problematic for the less-spoken languages, mainly because these semiotic resources are alien to the history and culture of these societies.

Attempting to approach lesson plans within their sociohistorical context (both at a broader sociocultural level and at the more specific educational context in which they appear), the following analysis focuses on the structure of the lesson plans, their discursive patterns, the narrative in which these texts involve both teachers and students, and the effects on the pedagogic subjects they discursively construct. As we shall see, the lesson plans in the two portals are involved in the formation of two different types of classroom discourse at a critical historical time, not only for the American nation but for the whole world. By inquiring into the forms and content of these texts, which represent classroom discourses from two different pedagogical paradigms, we will also look into the pedagogic identities discursively constructed for both teachers and students.

The Traditional Lesson Plan

This section offers a brief review of related literature and looks into the genre of lesson plan. Placing the genre in its broader historical and cultural context and examining the various tensions and trends around the genre will help us understand how the dominant generic structure of the lesson plan has come to take its present form and what its underlying ideological, epistemological, and theoretical bases are.

What is widely known today as the typical lesson plan has its origins in Tyler’s (1950) model of curriculum planning, which identifies four main steps: (1) specify objectives, (2) select learning activities, (3) organize learning activities, and (4) specify evaluation procedures. Most importantly for this model, which has been recommended for all levels of education (Clark and Peterson 1986), planning progresses logically from one’s goals and objectives. Although the model was first formulated in the 1950s, it gained greater prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, during curriculum reforms. Yinger (1980) notes that this model of curriculum planning, known as the rational model, was originally adapted from models of economics and national and city planning. Because of the “rational and scientific appeal” that it attributed to educational curriculum, Yinger (1980, 108) continues, this model has managed to affect all types of educational planning, from curriculum to teachers’ daily planning. John (2006, 485) argues that much of the attraction of the rational model to lesson planning lies in its “elegant simplicity.” He also claims (487) that four main reasons account for why the rational model has become the dominant model and has maintained its popularity for several decades. The first reason is a well-established view that inexperienced teachers need to learn how to plan in a rational way first, before they develop more complex lesson structures. A second argument that is often made is that students need to follow the same model required by official documents. This means, however, according to John, that students are prepared for teaching as required by policy makers, not as required by the needs of classroom teaching. A third argument is that the use of a commonly agreed upon model helps communication among teachers and other personnel. Finally, it is argued that when all teachers follow the rational plan, it is easier to manage, assess, and direct their work. In this account, the use of the lesson plan was mainly viewed as a way to monitor (inexperienced) teachers’ work, to achieve some kind of uniformity when discussing a lesson, and to provide a conventionalized way of recording classroom experience.

John (2006) identifies four sequential steps in the genre of the rational lesson plan, which for presentation purposes are described in Table 4.1. A problem with this model is that it isolates means and ends as successive steps and that it views planning and teaching as linear processes that proceed from preplanned opening to predetermined ending (Doyle and Holm 1998). Important aspects of planning and teaching are lost when students have to conform to rigid templates and wrestle with the technical aspects of a lesson plan in which “teaching and learning are broken down into segments or key elements, which are then sub-divided into tasks, which are further broken down into behaviors and assessed by performance criteria” (John 2006, 487). Consequently, the rational lesson plan, with its variations, may look good on paper, but it is, to a great extent, predictive and prescriptive.

Table 4.1 The Genre of the Rational Lesson Plan

Step 1	Selection of the topic to be taught. Student age and ability range are major factors in the early consideration of aims and objectives.
Step 2	Exemplification of aims and objectives. Learning objectives and goals are specified.
Step 3	Consideration of the teaching methods and learning experiences: The lesson plan is broken down into activities (type of activity, time, and materials are specified).
Step 4	Assessment process: Efficacy of the teaching methods and activities are measured against the set objectives.

Zahorik (1970) was perhaps the first to conduct empirical research on lesson plans. He concluded that the typical planning model makes teachers less sensitive to students’ needs and more rigid in their teaching. He argues that once teachers identify lesson outcomes, their teach...