constructivist pedagogies and prospective teachers' beliefs

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Teaching and Teacher Education 16 (2000) 21}32

What does the teacher do?Constructivist pedagogies and prospective teachers' beliefs

about the role of a teacher

Diane Holt-Reynolds*

School of Education, Michigan State University, 329 Erickson Hall, East Lausing, MI 48824, USA

Received 23 February 1998; received in revised form 16 December 1998; accepted 17 February 1999

Abstract

The constructivist pedagogies that are increasingly part of teacher education course work and expectations emerge

from an intellectual world where knowledge is seen as created rather than received, mediated by discourse rather than

transferred by teacher talk, explored and transformed rather than remembered as a uniform set of positivistic ideas.

Increasingly, teacher educators ask new teachers to learn how to elicit and then use students ' existing ideas as a basis for

helping them construct new, more reasoned, more accurate or more disciplined understandings. While the role a teacher

plays in developing or shaping students' thinking via constructivist pedagogies is obvious to teacher educators who

advocate such strategies, the case of Taylor, a prospective English teacher, suggests that the role a teacher plays when

using these strategies may not be at all clear to prospective teachers. Rather than understanding constructivistpedagogies as techniques for thinking with learners, for teaching them, Tayor saw these strategies as ends in themselves.

Faced with models of constructivist pedagogies, Taylor concluded that the teacher 's role ends when she has activated

learners, invited them to talk, successfully engaged their participation. This article describes how she reached this

conclusion and explores the ways in which constructivist pedagogies can lead prospective teachers to project a thin vision

of their role as a teacher. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Responsible programs of teacher education servemultiple clients. We see in our university class-

rooms our primary clients, prospective teachers.

And in their eyes we can also see the images of our

secondary clients, the school students these pro-

spective teachers will one day teach. National stan-

dards in mathematics, science and the language arts

*Tel.:#517-355-1725; fax:#517-432-5092.E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Holt-Reynolds)

have helped map professional ideals about the kind

of learning opportunities schools should o!er to

children. These national standards assume class-rooms where inquiry and coconstruction as well as

other forms of student-centered, discourse-based

interactions dominate. They call for problem-based

instruction, for liberal use of classroom talk as

a medium within which students will learn and as

a forum students will use to demonstrate their

learning. They prefer peer interactions, consulta-

tions and deliberations.

Since theories of socially mediated knowledge

are foundational to these kinds of classroomcommunities, many programs of teacher education

0742-051X/99/$ - see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

PII: S 0 7 4 2 - 0 5 1 X ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 3 2 - 3


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implicitly, explicitly and often exclusively urge pro-

spective teachers to adopt some form of social

constructivist epistemology. The case study pre-

sented here is not o!ered as a vehicle for exploring

the soundness of current constructivist trends. Nor

is this report intended to parse or evaluate the

distinctions and variations in ways teacher educa-

tors think about constructivist pedagogies (see

Phillips, 1995). Rather, I will argue here that learn-

ing to envision classrooms as discourse-based and

student-centered is a complex task and particularly

vulnerable to prospective teacher misinterpretation

of role.

2. What are we asking of today's teachers?

The constructivist pedagogies that are increas-

ingly part of teacher education course work and

expectations emerge from an intellectual world

where knowledge is seen as created rather than

received (von Glasersfeld, 1991), mediated by dis-

course rather than transferred by teacher talk

(Vygotsky, 1962), explored and transformed rather

than remembered as a uniform set of positivistic

ideas (Dewey, 1969; Rorty, 1979). Consequently, we

no longer educate teachers solely for a role as

a dispenser of knowledge. Some teacher educators

may, in fact, actively work to bias prospective

teachers against such a role. Increasingly, we ask

new teachers to learn how to elicit student partici-

pation and then use students' existing ideas as

a basis for helping them construct new, more rea-

soned, more accurate or more disciplined under-

standings. We ask them to learn how to actively

engage students' participation and then use that

participation as a context within which to do thisthing we call `teachinga. Sfard (1998) notes the

emergence of participation metaphors in the dis-

course we currently use for talking about teaching

and learning. Participation metaphors subtly

equate learning with activity and with doing.

They suggest to us that students who are actively

doing things in classrooms are learning while

students who are passive in classrooms are not

learning.

Pedagogies of coconstruction have given rise tothese participation metaphors with their emphasis

on re#ecting, building, inquiring, talking, writing

and project-centered learning. These pedagogies

project a teacher who is able to use personal

expertise and authority as the teacher to develop

a classroom culture that invites and values student

participation in intellectual tasks. Teacher educa-

tors who advocate such pedagogical strategies as-

sume that teachers will use them as contexts within

which to guide, shape and expand students' think-

ing (Ball, 1989; McDiarmid, 1989).

This focus on engaging students in participation

may be misleading for prospective teachers.

Teacher educators know and fully understand that

constructivist pedagogies are used by teachers to

help students grow, change and learn. Teacher edu-

cators know that student participation is not anend in itself but is a means, a context within which

teachers work to help students think, question,

revise understandings and learn something about

a concept the teacher set out to teach. As the

following data will suggest, there is every reason to

wonder whether prospective teachers get this full

picture. Might they see only that good teaching

means engaging students actively but overlook the

fundamentally instructional role inherent within

constructivist pedagogies?

3. Developing a role as a teacher: the case of Taylor

Taylor was a traditional undergraduate, 19 years

old, in her sophomore year majoring in English at

a large, mid-western institution when I "rst met

her. She was one of a group of prospective English

teachers who volunteered to participate in an 18

month study where I functioned as a member of

a research team. Her case is a dramatic one. Ithighlights the challenges that prospective teachers

face as they struggle to develop a sense for what

role they might play in the learning of others.

4. How we found Taylor: a study design

At The National Center for Research on

Teacher Learning, we wanted to learn how suc-

cessful literature majors, undergraduates able to

maintain a 3.0 standing or better in their major,

22 D. Holt-Reynolds /Teaching and Teacher Education 16 (2000) 21 }32


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transfer their own disciplinary expertise } their abil-

ities as readers } into an understanding of the school

subject `literaturea and project a subject-speci"c

pedagogical role for themselves as teachers. Drawing

speci"cally on the work of Grossman (1990,1991) we

were speci"cally curious about how these prospec-

tive literature teachers saw and understood the pur-

poses and actions of reading and how they imagined

that literature teachers would support those pur-

poses and actions. We wanted to explore their beliefs

about their role as a teacher just as they were com-

pleting a bachelor's degree and prior to experience

with a teacher education program or real classrooms

as student teachers or interns. We isolated this point

in prospective teachers' careers because we wanted

to understand more perfectly who prospectiveteachers are intellectually when they enter programs

of teacher education. Our most fundamental ques-

tion was: What are prospective English teachers

likely to believe about the role of teachers of litera-

ture when they "rst begin teacher education course

work? We were engaged at the time in restructuring

our secondary teacher certi"cation proram. We

wanted data upon which to base decisions about

how to adapt teacher education course work given

that prospective English teachers encounter these

courses near the end of completion of their under-

graduate major.

4.1. Data collection

Taylor was one of 16 English majors we selected

from a pool of potential volunteers drawn from

the entire group of students enrolled in any one

of their English department's 300-level courses.

We took our volunteers from a pool of sophomores

or juniors rather than freshmen so that we couldbe more certain of their selection of English as

a stable major and of their ability to earn a 3.0 or

better in English department courses; and, we

avoided seniors because prospective teachers in this

certi"cation program spend signi"cant numbers of

hours in schools early in the senior year. We

wanted ample opportunities to talk with partici-

pants before they had already modi"ed their posi-

tions to accommodate teacher education course

work and accompanying"

eld experiences (seeTighe, 1991).

A team of researchers conducted entrance and

exit interviews as well as brief interviews at the end

of each of the three semesters we were in contact

with participants. The most extensive of these inter-

views was the entrance interview, a 119 question

protocol broken into four 2 hour sittings. Part One

solicited participants' histories as readers by asking

them to recall early experiences as readers both at

home and at school; Part Two invited participants

to attempt to de"ne `literaturea and to talk about

their values for genre and text types; Part Three

elicited participants' current theories about critical

perspectives widely recognized within the

discipline; and Part Four moved into participants'

projections about the role of a literature teacher.

During this part of the interview, we askedparticipants to select books for an imaginary class

and to talk about the rationales guiding their selec-

tions; we asked them to read Poe's `The Ravenaand to talk about what they did as a reader to

understand the poem. Finally, interviewers asked

participants to construct a test on Romeo and Juliet

for 10th graders by choosing test items from among

a set of 25 questions we had written. While the

fourth part of the interview most directly elicited

participants' current beliefs about the role of a liter-

ature teacher, all parts of the interview yielded

useful and illuminating data about what these

prospective teachers thought literature teachers

should do.

All interviews were both audio and video taped.

Participants answered all questions and talked

their way through interview tasks spontaneously

with the interviewer present and free to supplement

the protocol with additional clarifying and probing

questions. In the case of Taylor, I was the inter-

viewer. A more complete description of these inter-view protocols is available in Appendix A.

We concluded our study with an exit interview

that repeated many items from parts Two, Three

and Four of the entrance interview protocol. Inter-

viewers explicitly probed for shifts in perspective

and inquired about apparent changes in partici-

pants' views. End-of-semester interviews served

primarily as vehicles for maintaining contact, dis-

covering whether study participants continued to

anticipate a career in teaching and to establish

rapport between participants and interviewers.

D. Holt-Reynolds /Teaching and Teacher Education 16 (2000) 21 }32 23


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4.2. Data analysis

Each participant's data were read as a whole text

at the end of the study by the team of "ve re-

searchers. While each researcher read the entire

corpus of data from a participant, each researcher

also focused on one piece of the larger research

question, read the participant's data with that one

sub-question in mind and prepared an issue paper

re#ecting the participant's position on the ques-

tion/issue. We chose issues to parallel the parts of

the entrance/exit interview protocols: personal his-

tory and biography, de"nition of literature, theory

of reading and perspective on the role of a teacher

were the four issues for focus. The research team

met together to build the case around each partici-pant's data resolving discrepant views by rereading

portions of the data and through conversation until

consensus was reached.

4.3. Taylor

All participants expressed ambivalence about

what teachers should do in order to teach litera-

ture. All were enamored of class discussion as a

primary teaching strategy. All were certain that

getting kids to talk about the books was an impor-

tant teaching role. None were clear about what the

teacher might do, what role she/he might serve

during these discussions other than to ask for stu-

dents' opinions and attempt to include all class

members. One believed that teachers should follow

a class discussion by telling students the right ideas

if they failed to locate them through the discussion

process.

Taylor's data are not outstanding because they

reveal a point of view unique within the largerstudy; they are outstanding because they are very

explicit. This is likely due to the fact that Taylor

was the only study participant to change her mind

about what a teacher should do during the time we

were interviewing her. More than anyone else in the

study, Taylor spent the 18 months we were inter-

viewing her worrying this very question. Conse-

quently, her data illustrate a dilemma we saw in

varying degrees in each participant's data, but

Taylor's transcripts o

!er particularly clean, directcommentary on the question.

5. `I can't do what a teacher should doa.

Taylor's dilemma

Taylor came to our university, the second of

three children from a home where both parents

were professional educators. Teaching was a role

Taylor expected to step into. Her K-12 apprentice-

ship of observation (Lortie, 1976) had been aug-

mented by daily life with parents who were

teachers. Taylor believed her parents were her

models for the career she had chosen for herself.

`I was always working with my mom. She

taught journalism, and I'd help out with

thata. Taylor explained that her projected career

as an English teacher was just naturala given

her parents' careers. Taylor's mother taughthigh school public speaking and supervised

the journalism extra-curricular activities; her

father was the assistant superintendent of her

district.

I think seeing [my parents' careers] and growing

up with them maybe in#uenced me and has di-

rected me [to teaching]. And then being with

teachers that I liked. That has a lot to do with

[my choice], I think.

At the time of my "rst interview with her, Taylor

was eager to talk about her experiences with uni-

versity literature instructors. She particularly ad-

mired one professor, whom I will call Dr. Jensen,

because of what she perceived to be his knowledge

of literature.

He not only shows you the point of view of the

people [in a text], he gives you the issues and the

background. Who the author was, where he wasborn, where he [im]migrated to, the issues that

were surrounding his life. Professor Jensen

knows a lot of background. That really impresses

me.

Taylor consistently showed herself to be sensitive

to the processes her professors used when they

generated meaning from literary texts. She told

me about her conscious e!ort to learn these

processes from Professor Jensen and enact them on

her own.



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[He] draws things out of the reading. He knows

the works, and he knows the style and what the

people are thinking. He'll say, `Look at it like

thisa, and all of a sudden, things start clicking.

Taylor's ability to articulate with some precision

the mental processes/actions she perceived her

professor to take was the one way in which her

data were unusual in our participant group.

We agreed that her attention to the ways her

professors used their expertize signaled her own

preoccupation with her search for models she could

adopt or adapt for her own use as an emerging

teacher. Our hypothesis was supported by her

statement below.

I'm kind of struggling with the literature. I like

the reading. I have a hard time interpreting the

reading. And I know that I'm going to need to

be able to understand it and interpret it in order

to teach it. I've had two excellent professors, and

they are wonderful in terms of interpreting, and

that's what I want to learn to do. I can read the

book and go to class, and they'll interpret it for

me. I can see where they're coming from in that

instance, in that specixc book (emphasis is

Taylor's). But I'm afraid I'm not learning how to

go about interpreting all books and the steps and

the processes and how to read a book for the

interpretations. And that's what I'm hoping to

get out [of my education] the most.

Here Taylor explicated her sense that there is

a particular role for a teacher and that she needs to

learn it. As a teacher, she anticipated showing

others how to do this particular mental work.

I agree with requiring close reading. Not just

surface reading. Seeing the symbolism, seeing the

metaphors2. You pick up on the technique2.

That's what I've been saying; the reader learns to

interpret. You pick up on the technique. There's

some form of basic outline that a critic follows

when he's critiquing something. You emphasize

the good and the bad. Then you make compari-

sons to the [author's] life and to the background

and to the time [period]2. They go o!

ondi!erent directions, but that's a very basic outline

I'm sure that they kind of follow. And by follow-

ing that, we see the things [the critics] are em-

phasizing.

Taylor expected to become pro"cient at what she

saw her professors doing, what she understood

literary critics to be doing. But she also confessed

her belief that she was currently unable to read in

this way by herself. Taylor explained, `That's

what I need. I need someone to get me going

and just lead me in the direction, and I can interpret

things2. I see a theme, but I don't see

a pointa.

However, Taylor believed she could not cur-

rently enact the role she believed literature teachers

need to "ll. She believed she could not personallyinterpret text.

I'm not oblivious to the idea that I will have to

teach literature. I do have a fear of it right now.

Like I said, I can't interpret it. And I know that

fear will go away when I learn how to interpret.

That's what I want to learn the most.

Taylor reported that she read for pleasure books

that are not especially demanding } Dr. Suess as

allegory and young adult literature typically se-

lected by preteens and early adolescents. She told

me she read Stephen King and Danielle Steele

because, `They're just enjoyment books to get away

from the literature and the hard core booksa.

Across the initial interview series, Taylor o!ered

little evidence to suggest that she was a strong

reader or that she "t the common pro"le of English

majors who read complex or sophisticated books

for the sheer pleasure of it. Rather, she used leisure

reading `to get away from the literature and thehard core booksa.

As early as her sophomore year, Taylor was

projecting toward the time when she would be the

literature teacher working with a classroom of ado-

lescent learners. It is important to understand the

task she had set for herself } to become someone

who knows literature in those ways that will qualify

her to teach it to others. Taylor expected that

someone who knows literature would follow

a known, dependable process in order to arrive at

an interpretation. She anticipated a teaching role



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for herself that included an ability to teach this

known, dependable process to others. But Taylor

seriously questioned her ability to "ll the teacher's

role as she saw it. I will not engage here in an

evaluation or critique of the particular role she

envisioned; the point is, she believed that literature

teachers need to interpret texts and then show

students how to interpret them.

Curiously, during this same time period Taylor

objected to all of my questions about what she

might teach and why. She preferred to talk about

èxposinga students to texts, not `teachinga those

texts.

I don't think we're taught literature. I think we're

exposed to it. We're allowed to get into it asmuch as we want2. If [my students] know it

the way that I'm learning it in college, they will

be able to decide for themselves if they like it. I'm

being exposed in college.

Of all Taylor's entrance interview statements,

this is one of the most di$cult to really understand.

I can make sense of it only if I imagine that in

Taylor's mind, `teachinga meant telling students

something while èxposinga meant showing stu-

dents her own uses of this predictable process she

saw her professors utilize. My reading of Taylor in

this way is supported by her response to my ques-

tions about what she might do if her future students

failed to understand a poem she had taught. Taylor

asserted,

Some students aren't very interested in literature,

and they probably won't use it in their lifetime

anyway. So [not understanding] isn't hurting

them; it's just not bene"ting them. If we didn'thave literature in school, it wouldn't hurt them.

It just would not bene"t them.

Taylor was only just beginning her university

course work in literature. As an outsider watching

her case unfold, I assumed Taylor would talk about

her skills as an interpreter quite di!erently by the

time our conversations would be completed. My

assumptions proved fundamentally false. Across

the entrance interviews and then across three sets ofend-of-semester interviews and concluding with

a "nal round of exit interviews, Taylor failed to

reach a point where she believed that she fun-

ctioned as an independent maker of meaning

around a text. She eventually abandoned the goal

altogether.

I cannot put her self-reports down as an issue of

poor self-esteem or self-e!acement. In general,

Taylor talked about herself quite positively. She

called herselfàggressivea and à real leadera. She

recounted with pride events from a freshman edu-

cation class where she had noticed her unique abil-

ity to look at educational issues across à full range

of schoola to include administrative positions. She

saw this ability as positive and useful. As time

passed, she worked on campus as a residence

hall advisor and often shared stories of her decisiveactions in that role. And in our "nal conversation

together, she explained, again with pleasure,

that she had `grown regarding multi-cultural

issuesa. Taylor typically spoke about herself

with pride and gave every indication of high self-

esteem. Only on the subject of her ability to

interpret literature was she less than positive. The

fact that she believed the ability in question was

critical to her success as a teacher, that she saw it as

central to the task of teaching and that it represent-

ed her only instance of serious self-doubt leads

me to represent her inability to interpret literature

as an important and very likely an accurate

assessment.

6. `But, I can do this!a Taylor's solution

By the beginning of her senior year, Taylor had

stopped talking about processes for generating in-

terpretations; she had stopped talking about herfear that she might not be prepared to teach. She

had taken an English department adolescent litera-

ture course designed especially for prospective

teachers. Again, she was impressed with her profes-

sor. This professor treated the course as a context

for modeling strategies classroom teachers could

use to invite readers to develop personal meanings.

If Taylor knew that this professor, whom I will call

Dr. Woods, was operating from an entirely di!er-

ent critical perspective than Dr. Jensen whom she

had previously admired, she did not tell me. Taylor



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simply stopped raising questions of authors'

meanings. She began talking about the importance

of personally valid interpretations. And she noted

that these would certainly vary. By the time of the

exit interviews, Taylor had decided that acting like

a good reader did not involve generating indepen-

dently one potentially valid meaning/interpretation

but instead involved noticing and appreciating

multiple ones. `I'm not searching for one meaning.

I'm searching for possible meaningsa. She ex-

plained that readers would gain pleasure from the

recognition that `[t]here is another interpretation.

That there are othersa.

This shift in focus may signal nothing more im-

portant than Taylor's intuitive ability to "nd the

central, distinguishing feature of a favored profes-sor's stance on the question of interpretation. Still,

it is instructive to notice that Taylor began to place

greater value on the ability to see the interpreta-

tions of others than on developing her own, public-

ly defensible interpretations.

You talk in class; you hear three more meanings.

And then your understanding is how you kind of

choose to handle all of these meanings and how

you put them together, take parts, delete some.

So, that's your understanding. And you gain

a greater pleasure if you are open as a reader.

You just listen to them all. Accept or don't ac-

cept. And you just bring it all together into an

understanding. It's very individual2. I don't

necessarily think that, after you've heard every-

thing and recognized everything, that you need

to say, `O.K. This is understanding for mea.

I think you just gain understanding by the open-

mindedness part of it, of just recognizing all the

di!erent [interpretations]. That's what I thinkunderstanding is.

By the time I last saw her, Taylor had decided

that people know literature when they can listen in

open-minded fashion to the personal interpreta-

tions of others. They might reach a personal under-

standing themselves. If so, "ne. But they might not.

Understanding the meanings made by others, `re-

cognizing all the di!erent interpretationsa, would

be enough. And it was something she believed shecould do herself.

7. Participation equals learning

Taylor's exposure to an English educator's

modeling of constructivist, participation-centered

pedagogies had made a new impression. Knowing

that she believed she had never mastered the intel-

lectual work Dr. Jensen modeled, I wanted to

understand more about her rejection of a reading

and interpreting process she had previously ad-

mired. I reminded Taylor of her admiration for

Dr. Jensen's methods, read her a portion of her own

entrance interview data and asked her how she

thought about generating interpretations of text at

that moment.

I've learned di!erent ways to attempt to interpretor to begin to interpret. I don't think there is one

interpretation. I don't think there is one way to

interpret. I think I have an ability to do it be-

cause my idea of interpretation is so individual.

Everyone's individual interpretation has value.

I've built up my own con"dence that I can inter-

pret. I think everyone can interpret2 I still

think that some evidence for an idea is stronger

and some is weaker, but I think all evidence has

validity2

. I'll look at a student's passion. If he is

adamant and real passionate, I don't want to

sti#e him and say, `No, you're wronga.

Taylor's response evades questions of what

makes an interpretation good, better or really

excellent by emphasizing and valuing instead indi-

viduality and con"dence or passion as the charac-

terizing elements for critique. Taylor appeared

open to the relativistic notion that all ideas are

equally good and no one can evaluate the ideas of

another except by understanding the thinking be-hind those ideas. Adopting this intellectual position

appeared to have allowed her to set aside questions

of how to develop a good interpretation as unim-

portant. At the same time, it let her set aside ques-

tions of how to teach others to do this puzzling and

elusive act. And it freed her to look instead at how

to get kids involved with literature minus the need

to evaluate, scrutinize, coach or direct the quality of

that involvement. It resonated with what she be-

lieved she was hearing from her adolescent litera-

ture professor: `Let students' ideas frame your



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teachinga. Encountering constructivist pedagogies

at a time when she was vulnerable intellectually to

doubts about whether she could ever become the

teacher she believed she would need to be may well

have preempted Taylor's sense of a con#ict and

hence her energy for resolving it.

Taylor had made powerful revisions in what she

envisioned as her role as a teacher. By the time of

the exit interviews, Taylor imagined scrupulously

avoiding a moment when, as the teacher, she would

o!er an interpretation. Taylor-as-Teacher now im-

agined encouraging students to o!er and tolerate

multiple possible answers. Hers would be a

classroom where a teacher would on principle do

little more than manage students' active responses

to literature, their projects and their class dis-cussions.

I don't believe that literature is taught2.

`Teachinga is where someone has information to

relay. It's like, `This is weather in clouds. Rain

comes from cloudsa. That's teaching it; you're

telling them. But I don't think you can do that

[with literature]. You can't tell them the mean-

ing because I don't believe there is only one

meaning or that teachers' meaning are the right

meaning2. I want to play the role of what

society labels a teacher, but I see my responsibili-

ties in the classroom di!erent than what a lot of

people think.

I pressed her speci"cally about whether that role

included anything like showing students what she

once imagined a teacher would do } show students

how to interpret text. She recalled:

I think what happened to me is one of the mostpowerful ways [to help students become better

interpreters]. That is the idea of building con"-

dence that all interpretations are valid. Just this

idea of constantly saying, Òkay, let's read this

poem. What do you think it means? Oh, great

idea! Good idea! That's totally di!erent, but I see

where you're getting thisa. You know, just con-

stantly having people talk about their interpreta-

tions and never saying, `Wrong, wrong, wronga.

Not being the judge of interpretations. You al-ready know how to interpret. Your interpreta-

tion is what you got out of it. All you need to do

is build up their con"dence.

I pursued Taylor's new vision of teaching by

asking her to imagine a tenth-grade classroom

where she might want students to read `The

Ravena. I asked Taylor what her role would be.

What would I do? I really believe in this. Let the

kids get out of it what they get out of it. Don 't let

them slack o!and say, Ì don't get ita. I could see

myself having a reading of this in class. Have

students brainstorm meanings or discuss ques-

tions or what they don't understand2. [I'd

ask]. `What meaning did you get out of this?

Bring me in something that represents thatmeaning and kind of create a booklet. Poems or

song lyrics. It can be pictures or cut-outs or

whatevera2. Then, they can stand up in front of

class and say, `Well, this is very depressing. So

I went to the library and I made the "rst page of

my booklet obituaries because I hear death in

this poema. I'd have them create something tan-

gible that represents their meaning physically

and require a presentation to really emphasize

that what everyone got out of this is di!erent.

Taylor said, Ì really believe thisa. I wanted to

test her resolve. So, I pretended to be a student

attempting her assignment. I said:

Suppose I bring you in a picture of an automo-

bile accident because in `The Ravena, this guy

was in an auto accident and his wife died and

now he's in a wheelchair with a canary a friend

brought over. His wife is a ghost. He is real

depressed, on drugs because he is in pain and hethinks the canary is a raven.

Within `The Ravena there is no textual support

for imagining it as a story about an automobile

accident. My imaginary answer was calculated to

tempt Taylor to adjust my literal level of reading

for this poem. But Taylor responded to my book-

let's length, not to its content. Ì would realize that

my assignment } I was anticipating maybe a book-

let of poems or maybe some song lyrics, not just

one picture with a two second explanationa. She



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seemed either undisturbed by or unaware of the

mismatch between my ideas about the poem and its

literal-level content. So, I expanded my imaginary

booklet to include a few newspaper clippings about

auto accidents resulting from drunk driving, a per-

sonal story of my uncle who lost a child due to

a drunk driver and a request that we start a SADD

group in our school.

Taylor liked my expanded project. `I like how

you interpreted or created a story. I like how you

brought in personal re#ections. But I still need your

re#ection on the poem. Why is he writing it? Is he

trying to tell people something?a Still playing my

role as imaginary student, still using the interview

as an occasion to learn how Taylor imagined her

role as a teacher, I explained that Poe was trying towarn people about the evils of drunk driving.

Taylor accepted that but wanted `morea. She

attempted to improve my attention to the poem

without negating anything I had said about my

understanding of it. She concluded by noting,

`You're not too far o!. It's just that I need a con-

nectora, between the ideas I had presented and the

poem.

Taylor was never satis"ed with my imaginary

persona's attempts to link an interpretation to the

poem, but neither did she challenge my reading or

imagine informing it in any way. Playing her role

as my teacher, she coached my project, not my

reading.

8. Teacher education and Taylor - thinking

Taylor shared her "rst take on aligning partici-

pation-centered teaching strategies with a teaching

role. It was not an alignment I'd want to support.She imagined that teaching is about getting stu-

dents to talk, engaging them in a project loosely

focused on a piece of curriculum. Prior to overt

teacher education interventions, Taylor was en-

amored of participatory, constructivist pedagogies.

She eagerly embraced them. But her reason, how-

ever out of awareness, had more to do with "nding

a role that required little intellectual interaction

between herself-as-Teacher and her students and

less to do with her emerging sense that adolescentslearn something through engagement in inquiry or

debate about texts. If Taylor knew that her role

could include shaping students' ideas, informing

the bases on which they made judgments or o!ered

rationales or any other sort of intellectual ex-

change, she did not demonstrate this belief in our

interviews together. Our exchange ended with

Taylor's outline of the kinds of activities she imag-

ined would fall to her as a teacher.

My job would be to kind of be the prober in

a class discussion. I would just kind of be the one

asking questions for the class to talk about}real

general questions. Or I'll play devil's advocate to

what they do say and have them think about it or

provide evidence for it and just get the class

discussion going. My job is to probe the ration-ales [students have] for believing what they do

about a poem2. When the discussion starts,

those that don't have an idea what's going on

listen. Then they pick up on what everyone is

talking about. I just let ideas come out.

9. What I learn from Taylor

Taylor's case warns me that for some prospective

literature teachers, apparent commitment to con-

structivist pedagogies may be nothing more than

a means for avoiding a confrontation with per-

ceived personal inability as a knower. A prospec-

tive teacher like Taylor could agree to teach Romeo

and Juliet, engage students in a personal project

loosely tied to the story line, grade those projects

holistically or as portfolio contributions and every-

one watching might be delighted with her e!orts

while dismissing the rough spots as tied to the

di$culties any beginner would experience the "rsttime through Shakespeare with adolescent readers.

A Taylor could easily pass through a teacher edu-

cation program and none of us be the wiser or

make a conscious, professionally based move to

help.

Therefore, Taylor's case reminds me of the im-

portance of the teacher education knowledge base.

Prospective teachers need to understand the theor-

etical underpinnings of the practical, useful teach-

ing strategies we are eager to see them adopt. Yet,

prospective teachers are typically impatient with



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and intolerant of `theorya. Taylor attended a land

grant university. It is possible that other types of

universities attract prospective teachers who revel

in theory and eagerly connect theories of epistemol-

ogy to teacher practice. In my institution, prospec-

tive teachers are more like Taylor. They expect

teacher education courses to be practical, to model

pedagogies and provide opportunities to practice

strategies and techniques. But, if they are indeed

like Taylor, responding to their urgent desire for

practical strategies } even modeling the full, best

implementation of those strategies } may actually

serve them poorly.

How can we as teacher educators act responsibly

toward our eager, impatient and vulnerable clients?

If Taylor represents more than one isolated case,then those of us who teach teachers need to work to

help prospective teachers see constructivist peda-

gogies as techniques for teaching, not merely as

strategies for activating kids. We need to guard

against the possibility that prospective teachers will

conclude, `My job is to generate discussion } any

discussion. Talk is itself the goala. We need to

reexamine our own roles and our own goals. In our

eagerness to challenge the acquisition model biases

we believe most prospective secondary teachers

bring to education course work, to present to these

prospective teachers images of teaching as some-

thing other than telling, we need to remember to

also show them how to use these new strategies as

methods for building new learning. These means

are not ends. Participation is not necessarily learn-

ing.

Prospective English teachers who are forming

thin visions of themselves as teachers may be di$-

cult to identify. Their eagerness to learn how to

host class conversations would very likely soundlike a commitment to solid, student-centered teach-

ing } something we would be disposed to support.

Their enthusiasm for teaching as a career and

pleasure in the ideas students bring to class dis-

cussions might serve to reassure us that we've made

our case for the importance of listening to students'

ideas. We will need to develop habits of friendly

skepticism. Our lives as researchers have taught

us to look for discon"rming evidence. We will need

to develop a similar discipline in our lives asteachers.

Doing responsible teacher education means ac-

knowledging that we must help our clients discover

the power of a role as a teacher. Teacher educators

need to do what good teachers anywhere need to

do } help our students learn to think. We will need

to consciously create opportunities to hear in the

midst of prospective teachers' noisy enthusiasm for

constructivist practices their silence in response to

critical questions about what students should learn

through the activities and how teachers work to

ensure that learning. Taylor is not the story of how

someone failed to develop as a teacher. Taylor

shows us something more about the kinds of beliefs

and constructions prospective teachers might carry

inside as we look at them seated in our teacher

education courses. Her case invites us to developstrategies for helping all prospective teachers

evolve rich, full visions of their roles as practi-

tioners of constructivist pedagogies.

Appendix A. Description of understanding literature

interview protocol

Part one solicited participants' histories as

readers by asking them to recall early experiences

as readers both at home and at school, favoritebooks, school experiences as readers, and memories

of family events where stories } oral or textual

} "gured prominently.

Examples:

E Tell me about how your interest in reading and

literature developed?

E Tell me what you remember about reading and

literature in elementary school.

E When you think back to your high schoolEnglish classes, what stands out for you?

E Tell me about why you decided to major in

English2.

E What's the best English or literature course

you've taken?

E What made it so good?

E What about the #ip side } What's the worst

English or literature course you've taken?

E What made it bad?

Part two invited participants to attempt to de"ne

`literaturea and to talk about their values for genre



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and text types. This portion of the protocol in-

cluded asking participants to examine 25 di!erent

`textsa and to decide whether to classify each as

literature. Sample texts were presented one at

a time beginning with texts like The Complete

Shakespeare and moving toward more potentially

controversial texts } for example: a romance novel

complete with steamy front cover; non-"ction,

non-story texts like Darwin's Origins Of The Spe-

cies; newspapers and magazines; rap lyrics; instruc-

tions for operating a co!ee maker; and "nally,

a child's wordless picture book. Interviewers pre-

sented the samples one at a time in e!ect allowing

participants to progressively develop a categor-

ization system. As interviewers pointed out internal

inconsistencies in participants' emerging argu-ments, participants alternative `decisionsa about

whether a text might be literature and super-ordi-

nate theories about literature were recorded.

Part three elicited participants' current theories

about critical perspectives widely recognized within

the discipline. Interviewers gave participants four

di!erent one-page position papers written from each

of four critical perspectives } New Criticism, Hu-

manism, Deconstructionism, and Readers Response

theory. Participants read, evaluated and talkedabout elements with which they either agreed or

disagreed within each position paper and then made

comparisons and contrasts across the four papers.

Examples:

E When you think about what it means to know or

understand literature, what sort of ideas come to

mind? What do you think of when you hear the

phrase `to know literature?a How did you come

to think that way?

E As you probably know, we are trying to "nd out

more about how people think about literature

and what it means to say someone knows litera-

ture. Can you think of someone who you would

say knows literature?

E How did you come to believe this person knows

literature?

Part four moved into participants' projections

about the role of a literature teacher. Participantswere asked to select books for an imaginary class

and to talk about the rationales guiding their selec-

tions; they were asked to read Poe's `The Ravena

and to talk about what they did as a reader to

understand the poem. Finally, interviewers asked

participants to construct a test on Romeo and Juliet

for 10th graders by choosing test items from among

a set of 25 questions we had written.

Examples:

E Here is a copy of `The Ravena. Read it, and

when you're "nished we'll talk a little about what

you think is going on in this poem.

E What do you know about Poe's life? The reason

I'm asking this is because sometimes what we

know about an author's life in#uences how we read

and think about his or her work. Is that important

for you when you're reading `The Ravena?

E `The Ravena is a poem you could "nd yourself

teaching one day. Would you choose to teach it if

you found it in the anthology your students had

been assigned? Could you explain what factors

might a!ect your decision?

E Let's assume for a moment that this poem is

important to teach in a high school curriculum.

Think about grades 9 } 12. Where do you think

this poem could best be included? Would this bea di$cult poem for students? What helps you

decide? How do you predict students will react

to this poem?

E Imagine that you were going to `teach this

poema: What would you focus on?

E If I were a visitor in your classroom when you

were teaching this poem, what would I likely see

you doing? How about the students } what

would they likely be doing? From the "rst mo-

ment that students see the poem through to the

last time they talk, think or write about it, what

might be going on in your classroom?

E Why do you think we teach literature in college?

How about in high schools? And in elementary

schools?

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