THE BOOKS

John L. Rudolph, Section Editor

Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms, edited by AlbertoJ. Rodriguez and Richard S. Kitchen. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, USA, 2005. xvi+ 273 pp. ISBN 0-8058-4680-8.

When I was offered the opportunity to write a review of Preparing Mathematics and Sci-ence Teachers for Diverse Classrooms: Promising Strategies for Transformative Pedagogy,I accepted without hesitation. When I read the title, I was hopeful that I might find withinits pages the guidance and support that I long for in my work to help prospective teachersconfront and navigate the delicate tensions and painful contradictions that can come withlearning to teach in diverse classrooms. I was not disappointed.

After reading the strategies for transformative pedagogy offered in this volume, I foundmyself pulling bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedomoff of my bookshelf and flipping through its well-worn pages. In a chapter entitled “Embrac-ing change: Teaching in a multicultural world,” hooks shares some hard-earned wisdom thatI find particularly relevant to my review of Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachersfor Diverse Classrooms. She writes:

I have not forgotten the day a student came to class and told me: “We take your class.We learn to look at the world from a critical standpoint, one that considers race, sex, andclass. And we can’t enjoy our life anymore.” Looking out over the class, across race, sexualpreference, and ethnicity, I saw students nodding their heads. And I saw for the first timethat there can be, and usually is, some degree of pain involved in giving up old ways ofthinking and knowing and learning new approaches. I respect that pain. (hooks, 1994, p. 43)

It seems to me that Alberto Rodriguez, Richard Kitchen, and all of the authors whocontributed to this volume have collectively looked out across a class of white, middle-class, female prospective teachers, as bell hooks did, and understood the pain that can comewith giving up old ways of thinking, knowing, and learning. Certainly the strategies theyoffer teacher educators operate from a profound understanding of, and respect for, that pain.

Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms makes an impor-tant, deeply empathetic connection between the discomfort and uncertainty these prospec-tive teachers feel and the resistance they show toward the opportunities for transformationthat we offer. I was especially touched and inspired by the way this book frames resistanceconstructively without vilifying or demonizing the resistors. In his introductory chapter,Rodriguez explains:

This is one of the challenges that the authors in this volume wish to meet by describingtheir promising strategies of counterresistance, that is, pedagogical strategies designed topositively address prospective teachers’ difficulties, concerns, and/or direct opposition tothe notion that all educators can (and should) create multicultural and gender-inclusivelearning environments where all students feel supported to learn. (pp. 6–7)

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Characterizing these difficulties, concerns, and opposition under the broad heading of re-sistance, Rodriquez suggests that this resistance can come in two forms: resistance toideological change (RIC) and resistance to pedagogical change (RPC). He defines RIC as“resistance to changing one’s beliefs and value systems” (p. 5). And he defines RPC as“resistance to learning to teach for understanding” (p. 7). In this discussion, Rodriguezconnects resistance to ideological change with multicultural education and resistance topedagogical change with constructivism, two highly influential and widely used theories inteacher education. They are so influential, in fact, that these two theoretical frameworks,Rodriguez explains, have informed the work of each of the authors contributing to this book.

In chapter 2, however, Rodriguez points out the shortcomings of both multicultural edu-cation and social constructivism as theoretical frameworks to help us meet transformativegoals. What is missing from both, he argues, is power. Power, he contends, is the constructthat “links multicultural education’s tenets (as a theory of social justice) with social construc-tivism (as a theory of learning)” (p. 17). The way to make that crucial link, he proposes, iswith an alternative theoretical framework that he calls sociotransformative constructivism(sTc). Rodriquez explains that sTc “supports the notion that knowledge is socially con-structed and mediated by institutional, historical, and social codes, but at the same time sTcseeks to engage the learners in (de)constructing the structures of power from which thoseestablished codes spring” (p. 17). This (de)construction requires teacher-education studentsto engage in dialogic conversation, authentic activity, metacognition, and reflexivity. It isthrough these activities that sTc offers the promise of counterresistance strategies that doindeed respect the pain that can come with giving up old ways of thinking, knowing, andlearning. I believe this is the book’s most significant contribution.

With frameworks for understanding prospective teachers’ resistance and for counter-ing that resistance in place, Rodriquez and his fellow authors fill the remaining pages oftheir book with the transformative strategies they promised. Some of these strategies in-volve prospective teachers interacting with diverse students in their schools and in theircommunities. Through these authentic, human interactions, prospective teachers are givenopportunities to experience the richness of culturally diverse communities (Kitchen), tomake connections between students’ home language and science instruction (Luykx &Cuevas), to observe diverse students succeed in mathematics (Leonard & Dantley), and toexamine the nexus of culture and learning in students’ understanding of science concepts(Chin).

Other strategies like those offered by Thea Dunn and Joy Moore engage prospectiveteachers in reflective, reflexive, and/or autobiographical activities designed to help themcritically examine and assess influences on their own learning. Some contributors sug-gest giving prospective teachers first-hand opportunities to compare and contrast differentpedagogical strategies through hands-on activities (Barnes & Barnes), to conduct inquiry-based experiments (Scott), or to create new and socially relevant science texts (Brandt).And Kitchen, Randy Yerrick, and Jacque Ensign make compelling arguments for model-ing lessons that are culturally and politically relevant and for sharing stories of culturallyresponsive teaching.

There are 11 chapters in this book filled with concrete, well-defined strategies for teachereducators who wish to help their students understand that they can and should create inclu-sive learning environments where all students feel supported to learn. I have used many ofthese strategies in my own teacher education courses in the past, and I will be adding newstrategies from this book to these courses in the future. As I do however, I will be mindfulof a critical question that Yerrick addresses in chapter 10. He argues that any strategy thatseeks to be transformative must speak to how “successful, White, middle-class prospectiveteachers can expand their notions of content, children and pedagogy” (p. 203). Illustrated by

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the bold underlining in my book, Yerrick’s message clearly stood out in my mind. His insis-tence that we must attend to how those of us born into privilege expand our notions and giveup old ways of thinking, knowing, and learning resonated deeply in the same way that twoprovocative questions raised by Megan Boler (1991) did when I was a PhD student takingRadical Theories in Education. She asks, “Why and when does a person willingly undertakechange, especially if one is materially and ideologically safe and comfortable? What doesone stand to gain from questioning one’s cherished beliefs and changing fundamental waysof thinking?” (p. 181).

This brings me to the most compelling aspect of the strategies offered in Preparing Math-ematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms. That is, their overarching attentionto these questions. In their collective empathy for and understanding of the importance ofthese questions, I believe the contributions found within this volume will take us a longway toward attaining our goals for transformative pedagogy. It is without hesitation that Irecommend it to the readers of Science Education.

REFERENCES

Boler, M. (1991). Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge.hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as a practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

SHERIE MCCLAMDepartment of Science and Mathematics EducationUniversity of MelbourneVictoria, Australia 3010

DOI 10.1002/sce.20104Published online 18 July 2005 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).