The Good Teacher

Dominant Discourses in Teacher Education

Alex Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134308736
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Moore's insightful text explores and makes better sense of professional practice by examining that practice in the context of popular views. The book identifies and elaborates three dominant discourses of good teaching:

* the competent craftsperson, currently favoured by central governments
* the reflective practitioner, which continues to get widespread support among teacher trainers and educators
* the charismatic subject, whose popular appeal is evidenced in filmic and other media representations of teaching.

All of these are critiqued on the basis of their capacity both to help and to hinder improved practice and understandings of practice. In particular, it is argued that the discourses all have a tendency, if not checked, to over-emphasise the individual teacher's or student teacher's responsibility for successful and unsuccessful classroom encounters, and to understate the role of the wider society and education system in such successes and failures.

Winner of a Society for Education Studies book prize in 2005, this is a well-informed source of advice and support for teachers and anyone considering teaching as a career.

Part I
The good teacher

Themes and issues

1 Being a good teacher – influences and calls

The question 'What makes a good teacher?' is just about the most important in education. . . . We do know some of the answers to the question . . . and our most urgent objective should be to establish the conditions under which the best existing practice can be spread more widely.

(Lord Boyle, Introduction to Kemble 1971, pp. 9, 11)

Revealed: the ideal teacher.

(Headline in the Times Educational Supplement, 16 June 2000, p. 5, announcing the publication of Hay McBer 2000)

Being a good teacher: component and reflective practitioners

The last three decades have seen a plethora of publications about how to teach and about how to teach teachers. "While many of these have concentrated on the organisation and broad content of courses of teacher education (NUT 1976; DES 1981; Alexander et al. 1984), others have fallen into the category of the teaching guide, offering tips and advice to inexperienced teachers on such matters as managing pupils' learning and behaviour, marking and assessing pupils' work, and long- and short-term lesson planning (e.g. Cohen and Manion 1977; Stephens and Crawley 1994). Such publications may be said to support a particular model of teaching and of initial and continuing teacher education that prioritises the notion of the teacher as trained 'craftsperson' (Marland 1975).

These publications sit not uncomfortably with another model of teaching and teacher education that has recently enjoyed a resurgence of popularity with government agencies in Britain and elsewhere: that of the 'competent' teacher (Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education 1992; Department for Education and Employment 1997a, 1997b; Teacher Training Agency 1998). According to this model, teachers are trained in the acquisition of certain competences related to aspects of classroom management, long-term, medium-term and short-term planning, developing and sharing subject knowledge, and assessing, recording and reporting students' work leading to the achievement of prescribed, assessable and (presumably) acquired-for-life 'standards'.

Together, these models have come to represent what I shall call the competent craftsperson discourse of teaching and teacher education, wherein the teacher is configured and understood as one who 'works upon' the raw material of their students, improving the extent and quality of learning and skills through the application and development of identified skills of their own. (I use the term 'discourse' - more of which later - in the Foucauldian sense, to denote the constructed linguistic, conceptual and ethical parameters within which our perceptions of the social world and our actions within it are framed: parameters essentially introduced and sustained by language and 'knowledge', and controlled and patrolled by ideologies that tend to serve specific interests at the expense of others.)

Other publications have moved beyond what might be called the skills-based approach to teaching, to offer advice about underlying perceptions, procedures and approaches in what is recognised as a highly complex set of activities and interrelations. Such publications, eschewing the notion that teaching is reducible to discrete and finite lists of skills and practices, have focused on the importance of informed reflection on what one does in the classroom. This notion of 'reflective practice', which places as much emphasis on teachers' own evaluations of their practice (in specific contexts) as on the planning and management skills into which such evaluations feed, though already current under different names in the early 1970s (see, for instance, Combs 1972; Wragg 1974), really came to the fore in the 1980s and early 1990s in Britain through the work of such writers as Schon (1983, 1987), Valli (1992) and Elliott (1993a, 1993b). Today, what has evolved into a reflective practitioner discourse continues to show its popular appeal on bookshop shelves (e.g. Loughran 1996; Loughran and Russell 1997; Mitchell and Weber 1996; Pollard 2002a, 2002b), even as it becomes increasingly marginalised by government-sponsored publications favouring the 'competent craftsperson' discourse (Ofsted/TTA 1996; DfEE 1997a, 1997b) - a discourse with which it might, at first glance, appear to be at odds.

Popular conceptualisations of good teachers: charismatic and caring subjects

In addition to these two 'official' discourses of good teaching (official, that is, in terms of their representation and validation in policy documentation and in books aimed at teachers and teacher educators) there exists a third discourse that has great popular appeal: that of the teacher as charismatic subject. Within the terms of this discourse the key to good teaching is conceived as having less to do with education and training, and more to do with the inherent or intrinsic qualities of character or personality of the teacher, typically coupled with a deeply 'caring' orientation aimed very specifically at 'making a difference' to pupils' lives. Within this discourse, successful teachers are perceived not as having been 'made' (not, at least, through processes of teacher training and education), but as simply possessing 'the right stuff' - the capacity to command enthusiasm, respect and even love through the sheer force of their classroom presence.

If there are fewer published materials on being charismatic than on being competent or reflective, it is precisely because of this underpinning principle of the charismatic subject discourse that charisma cannot be 'acquired': that is to say, no amount of training or education can turn a 'dull', uncharismatic teacher into a lively, charismatic one, any more than one can train, teach or compel someone to be enthusiastic or caring. The concept of the charismatic teacher - which continues to haunt large numbers of teachers and student teachers - is, however, continually popularised and hegemonised in filmic and other Active representations of successful teaching, where it can have the effect not so much of complementing as of undermining both the competent craftsperson and the reflective practitioner discourses. As we shall see in Chapter 3, the successful, charismatic teachers portrayed in (for example) feature films tend to have had little or no teacher education or training, to know nothing about theories of teaching and learning, and to eschew reflection on practice in favour of instinctive or opportunistic responses and reactions to classroom events.

The charismatic subject discourse, despite its somewhat peripheral status in the official discourses of good teaching, remains a very powerful one, not least because it is itself founded on and supported by a series of what Britzman (1991) refers to as 'cultural myths' and what Bruner (1996) calls 'folk pedagogy': that is to say, particular 'common-sense' convictions and suppositions about teaching and learning that act as supporters and perpetuators of the discourse. For Britzman, 'cultural myths' include such everyday platitudes as 'everything depends on the teacher', 'the teacher as expert' and 'the teacher as self-made' (Britzman 1991, pp. 6-8, 222-37) platitudes which provide 'a set of ideal images, definitions, justifications, and measures for thought, feeling, and agency that work to render as unitary and certain the reality [they seek] to produce'. For Bruner, 'folk pedagogies' are, in essence, also cultural myths, this time supporting convictions that, for example, children are 'empty vessels to be filled with knowledge that only adults can provide' and 'pupils should be presented with facts, principles and rules of action [to be] remembered, and then applied' (Bruner 1996, pp. 49, 55: see also Watkins and Mortimore 1999, p. 15).

Britzman's suggestion that cultural myths contribute to the construction of something called reality through the over-simplification and universalisation of social life and experience points up the attraction both of myths and of the discourses they shape and support. Myths, after all, 'provide a semblance of order, control, and certainty in the face of the uncertainty and vulnerability of the teacher's world' (ibid.). However, the universalising discourses they help to construct, Britzman argues, have the effect of heaping too much attention on the actions of the individual and too little on the social structures in which the individual's actions are situated, having consequently a fundamentally conservative function, encouraging a symptomatic rather than a causal explanation of failure, and supporting individual at the expense of collective responsibility. As Britzman suggests:

In the case of student teachers, cultural myths structure a particular discourse about power, authority, and knowledge that heightens individual effort as it trivializes school structure and the agency of students. The problem is that when the power of individual effort becomes abstracted from the dynamics of the social, student teachers cannot effectively intervene in the complex conditions that push them to take up the normative practices that discourage their desires for change.

(1991, p. 222, my italics)

Britzman argues that teacher education has traditionally been dogged by a persistent common-sense belief - often, in the past, operationalised in policy and practice - that, if not necessarily 'born' rather than 'made', teachers do 'make themselves'. This particular cultural myth, she suggests,

functions to devalue any meaningful attempt to make relevant teacher education, educational theory, and the social process of acknowledging the values and interests one brings to and constructs because of the educational encounter.

(1991, p. 230)

In a curious way (curious, since the concept of good teachers being 'born' seems to stand in direct opposition to the concept of good teachers being 'made'), the charismatic discourse serves a similar function in relation to teacher education and training to that identified by Britzman regarding teachers as self-made professionals. That is, the discourse not only undermines the discourses of the competent craftsperson and the reflective practitioner, but it also undermines the very project of teacher education and training itself - including the belief that productive teaching cannot be achieved in the absence of genuine understanding (understanding, for example, of theories related to teaching and learning; of the part played by the teacher's and pupil's own histories, dispositions, perceptions and experiences in the teaching and learning situation; and of the wider social and cultural relations within which all forms of classroom practice are inevitably located). It is precisely this emphasis on understanding - which can be promoted and developed through constructive and instructive dialogues both among teachers and between student teachers and their more experienced colleagues - that lies at the heart of everything else that I wish to argue and promote in this book.

Dominant discourses: the dangers of reductionism

One of the suggestions I shall make in the pages that follow is that the two discourses of the competent craftsperson and the reflective practitioner not only remain the dominant 'official' discourses in teacher education, but have the capacity - if not always the intention - both to weaken one another and to marginalise alternative teacher-education discourses, including discourses which seek to prioritise the idiosyncratic, contingent aspects of teaching and learning (Maguire 1995; Moore 1996) as opposed to those which may be perceived and presented as 'universal'. I shall argue that all these discourses, though typically perceived and presented in apparent opposition to one another, are often similarly characterised by and rooted in psychological notions of the ideal, unified 'self' (Lacan 1977, 1979; Walkerdine 1982, 1990) and in a 'modernist' or 'scientific' view of teaching and learning that is circumscribed by a notion of closure and the naming of parts (Hamilton 1993; Reid 1993). This is a view which, I am aware, will initially surprise, disappoint and perhaps anger some proponents of reflective practice but which will, I hope, become more acceptable as I declare my own allegiance not only to reflective practice itself but to a particular form of reflective practice which I shall refer to as reflexivity. As for the charismatic subject discourse, I shall suggest that although this features far less prominently in the taught elements of pre-service (and indeed early and continuing professional development) courses for schoolteachers, it is a discourse that student teachers 'bring with them' into their courses, where it often conflicts with the two other discourses or at best sits in a state of uneasy tolerance with them. Furthermore, the continuing championing of the charismatic discourse 'outside' the training/development discourse - in films and in newspapers, certainly, but also on the street or in conversations with family and friends - can, unless it is dealt with and contextualised via the taught course, lead to considerable discomfort and even self-imposed failure on the student teacher's part (Moore and Atkinson 1998).

None of this means that I believe the competent craftsperson, reflective practitioner or charismatic subject discourses to be wholly or inevitably 'bad' or to be avoided (in fact, they are unavoidable), or that I shall be suggesting that teachers do not need to be competent or reflective, or that they should not be perceived at times as 'charismatic' or at all times as 'caring' (though, as will become clear, I shall be using these latter terms in very particular ways). Indeed, I have spent a great part of the past fifteen years of my professional life trying to help teachers and student teachers to become both more competent at and more constructively reflective about what they do, as well as foregrounding their own enthusiasm and passion in the classroom encounter - and I shall no doubt continue to do so. There is much of merit in the competent craftsperson and reflective practitioner discourses, not least in the oppositional stance they may help to provide in relation to some other dominant discourses (like the charismatic subject discourse) which unhelpfully mystify the teaching process or which threaten to exclude the majority of the population from the possibility of ever successfully pursuing teaching as a career. Conversely, the charismatic subject discourse itself can, depending on how we address and internalise it, act as a useful counter to some of the more mechanistic, technicist tendencies of the competent practitioner discourse (and, more recently, of the reflective practice discourse), reminding us that teaching is an art as well as a science, that good communication skills are at the heart of good teaching, and that what is communicat-ed should not restrict itself to facts, knowledge or skills alone.

The problem with all these discourses occurs when they are adopted not in concert with one another or with other, equally instructive discourses, but in a way which affords them too great a dominance: we might say, when they evolve from being merely beliefs or views about teaching to discourses through which teaching is fundamentally perceived, experienced, spoken about and understood. When this happens, they revert, I shall suggest, to their Cartesian roots, becoming sucked down into the same essentialist positions that Britzman correctly identifies and challenges in the 'teachers-make-themselves' discourse and that may be seen as implicit in the Times Educational Supplement quotation with which this chapter opened in the case of the competent craftsperson and charismatic subject discourses, inevitably so if the discourse refuses to open its borders to other traffic; in the case of the reflective practitioner discourse, potentially (and too often actually) so if its parameters are too closely confined or if it allows itself to become taken over or 'colonized' (Kress 1989, p. 7) by technicist discourses like that of the competent craftsperson.

While few would deny that the competent craftsperson and the reflective practitioner discourses may offer some help and support to teachers and student teachers in improving classroom relations and practice, experience suggests that they are just as likely to cause concern, confusion and misguided behaviour through their over-personalisation and indeed oversimplification of teaching activity (Mitchell and Weber 1996). As McLaughlin and Talbert observed a few years ago - though of educational systems other than our own - good teaching, if considered at all, needs to be considered both in terms of effective learning and as a collaborative, collective enterprise:

As ideas about the task of teaching have changed from the relatively mechanistic notions that spawned an industry of teacher-proof curricula to recognition of teaching as a professional enterprise r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I The good teacher Themes and issues
• 1 Being a good teacher – influences and calls
• 2 Identifying the good teacher – a shifting concept
• Part II Dominant discourses
• 3 ‘Made in heaven' – charismatic subjects
• 4 The training discourse – competent craftspersons
• 5 The appeal of reason – reflective practitioners
• Part III Positionings
• 6 The pragmatic turn — coping, surviving and (re-)positioning
• 7 The reflexive turn – exploring private and professional selves
• Afterword: reclaiming teaching
• References
• Index