Educational Insights | Volume 8, Number 2, 2003 | George Richardson et al. |...lematics and Possibilities of Developing a Curriculum for Cultural Diversity
Richardson, G. et al. (December 2003). Performing the Problematics and Possibilities of Developing a
Curriculum for Cultural Diversity Educational Insights, 8(2). [Available:
http:/ / www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/ publication/ insights/ v08n02/ contextualexplorations/ richardson/ richardson.html]
Performing the Problematics and Possibilities of Developing a
Curriculum for Cultural Diversity
Terry Carson, Ingrid Johnston, George Richardson
Jyoti Mangat and Jennifer Tupper
Department of Secondary Education,
University of Alberta.
Lynne Wiltse
University College of the Caribou.
Joyce Mgombelo
Memorial University.
Performed at Provoking Curriculum Conference
UBC
February/March 2003
Performing the Problematics and Possibilities of Developing
a Curriculum for Cultural Diversity
Terry Carson, Ingrid Johnston, George Richardson
Jyoti Mangat and Jennifer Tupper
University of Alberta.
Lynne Wiltse
University College of the Caribou.
Joyce Mgombelo
Memorial University.
Opening Notes
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George Richardson: One of Ted Aoki’s most important contributions to
the field of curriculum scholarship is the insight that curriculum is much
more process than product. For Aoki, curriculum is best imagined as a
negotiatory act that takes place between curriculum understood as formal
plan and curriculum understood as lived experience (Aoki, 1988, 1989,
1992). In a broad sense, it is in this complex negotiatory space that we all
craft our professional identities and “overcome mere correctness, so that
we can see and hear our doings as teachers harboured within pedagogical
being, so we can see and hear who we are as teachers” (Aoki, 1992, 27). In
many ways, the performance that follows below announces itself from the
(in)between spaces that Aoki has characterized as “a multiplicity growing
from the middle”(Aoki, 1992, 19). By voicing the tensions pre-service
teachers experience in their teacher education program between
multiculturalism as plan and multiculturalism as lived experience, and
between their idealized personal and professional identities and the
identities they must negotiate, we hope our performance provides helpful
insights into problematics and possibilities of developing a curriculum for
cultural diversity.
Our performance consists of five linked scenes. Each scene attempts to
represent a different aspect of developing a curriculum for cultural
diversity in teacher education curriculum.
SCENE ONE
Creating a Cultural Artefact
Terry Carson: If we accept that culture matters in teaching, and if we
interpret the pedagogy of teacher education as making interventions in the
formation of teaching identities, then it is our responsibility to address
cultural difference in the teacher education program. Our question is how
to address the matter of cultural difference in such a way that pre-service
teachers are able to find an enunciatory space from which to explore the
tensions and ambivalences of cultural difference and the complexities of
their own emerging professional identities. At the University of Alberta,
we have been concerned that the curriculum of our teacher education
program does not address the question of cultural difference. This concern
led to the creation of a six-year initiative, the Culture and Teaching Project,
funded by the Metropolis Project.
Ingrid Johnston: Our first major initiative in the Culture and Teaching
project was the creation of an educational video, entitled Cultural
Conversations: Diverse Cultures, Complex Teaching, produced in
collaboration with pre-service teachers, university faculty members,
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representatives from community groups, and administrators, teachers,
students and parents at three urban schools. The video as a cultural artefact
is intended to help teacher educators and student teachers to “engage in
empathetic inquiry into [their] own histories and cultural practices” (Salvio
in Pinar, 1998, 45) and to serve as a cultural location from which student
teachers are able to challenge their understandings of cultural difference.
The video attempts to address what Britzman (1991) calls the “overfamiliarity” of teaching as a seemingly transparent cultural activity—
a view
reinforced by images in the media and popular culture—
which leaves the
impression that learning to teach involves the acquisition of a self-evident
body of teaching and managerial skills. Such a process appears to leave the
self untouched by teaching and fails to address the negotiatory nature of
teacher identity formation that takes place during the teacher education
program and throughout initial teaching experiences.
The video also explores historical tensions around Canada’s development
as an officially multicultural nation; it considers ambivalences around how
student teachers see themselves as implicated in questions of culture and
identity, and how schools have taken up notions of cultural difference in
their curriculum and pedagogy.
Finally, the video as “epistemological object” (Bhabha, 1995) both
‘ represents’ and ‘ critiques’ the notion of diversity as a set of “cultural
contents and customs.” This ambiguity, we believe, creates possibilities for
engaging pre-service teachers in Bhabha’s enunciatory “third space,” a
location from which they can explore the complexities of their own
emerging professional identities. As a cultural product, the video reflects
our own understandings, prejudices and beliefs, and articulates the
constraints, the dilemmas and decisions surrounding the collaborative
process that created it.
SCENE TWO
Cultural Difference and Teacher Identity: Conversations Around a
Video
In the year following the creation of Cultural Conversations, we asked
student teachers to respond to the issues the video raised around cultural
difference, identity formation and teaching.
George Richardson: It’s been a full term since we began to use the
Culture and Teaching video, and I’m glad we are taking this opportunity to
discuss the impact it has had in our teacher education classes.
Lynne Wiltse: I am too, and I think it’s been particularly useful to have
had students record their responses to the video on tape. I know you’ve
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been reviewing the tapes—
what are students saying about their reaction to
the video?
George Richardson: It’s interesting—
I think it’s possible to group the
responses into four broad perspectives on cultural difference. In some ways
each perspective might be considered as an enunciatory space from which
pre-service teachers examine and explore how their own identities are
implicated in cultural difference.
Joyce Mgombelo: But is it really possible to separate the responses so
precisely and to fix identities so neatly? What does Joan Scott (1995) say
about identity formation—
that it’s an “ongoing and ambiguous process of
differentiation subject to redefinition, resistance and change” (….)?
George Richardson: Of course, you’re right, identity formation is
complex. But listening to the tapes, I still get the sense that student
teachers are engaging cultural difference in certain identifiable patterns.
The first, and most commonly expressed perspective, is that cultural
difference is a “pedagogic problem” much like classroom management, for
example and that, as a problem, it is most easily resolved through
technique.
First Perspective: Understanding Cultural Difference as Pedagogical
Technique
Student Voices
For beginning teachers it was good to see the practices [of multicultural
education] being implemented and what options are available.
This video heightened my awareness about cultural diversity. I think that
some more tips would be beneficial…to know what to expect and to be
aware of how to bring the school community [members] together despite
their differences.
We have to learn how to incorporate their [ethnocultural minorities’]
learning needs into our lesson plans and curricula. Unfortunately, the video
did not focus more on how this is being done or if it can be done.
Lynne Wiltse: We certainly know that pre-service teachers have deep
concerns over technical issues like classroom discipline, lesson planning
and time management. Given these concerns, it’s not terribly surprising
that acknowledging cultural difference is reframed as little more than a
technique in the developing arsenal of student teachers.
George Richardson: I think that’s quite true, but I see a kind of retreat in
what we just heard. Reframing cultural difference as an issue best
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approached through technique is ‘ safe’ in the sense that it means student
teachers need not have any ‘ opinions’ about cultural difference, and their
own cultural identities are certainly not open to question. Why don’t we
listen to the voices of students in the second category for whom cultural
difference and cultural identity is external to their own identities?
Second Perspective: Understanding Cultural Difference as
Externalized Other
Student Voices
I think it’s great that there is greater awareness and instruction in this. I
grew up and still live in a community where there is very little cultural
diversity and I really enjoy learning about new cultures.
I am going with an open mind and an eagerness to learn from students
about their cultures, and I hope to encourage students to celebrate their
cultures with each other.
Both of my parents are from different backgrounds and as I was growing
up, I was not taught to look at myself in terms of ethnicity. I do not follow
any specific culture that could be termed to follow under multiculturalism.
Lynne Wiltse: I see there’s a kind of cultural blindness at work here that
suggests that minorities have “culture” but that the mainstream does not.
This blindness is exactly what Peter McLaren (1995) and Ruth
Frankenberg (1997) talk of when they note that dominant cultures
internalize their own power to such a degree that they resist selfquestioning.
Joyce Mgombelo:: Exactly, and when does this blindness become
resentment? What concerns me more than externalization of cultural
difference is the potential for racism. In your review of the tapes did you
find any examples of anger and resentment towards the way the video tried
to sensitize student teachers to cultural difference?
George Richardson: Yes, I did, there were enough responses of this kind
to make up a third and frankly quite troubling perspective.
Third Perspective Understanding Cultural Difference as Threatening
Presence
Student Voices
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I realize that I will encounter a great deal of ethnic diversity when I go out
to the school. I feel somewhat ill-prepared to deal with students whose
cultural background is so significantly different from my own.
With the very diverse cultures found at Edmonton schools, education like
this is necessary for teachers. It really opens your eyes as to what’s out
there that [we] teachers will have to deal with.
Perhaps in Alberta it’s [cultural diversity] not as…what’s the word, visible.
It’s not as much of an issue yet, but in places like Toronto it’s an issue. It’s
not a matter of what you would like, it’s there already.
Joyce Mgombelo: I see what you mean, this sense of the Other as an
unwanted, alien presence and a direct threat to their own identities. I think
it was Julia Kristeva (1993) who spoke of nations constructed around a
“cult of origins” that tend to frame itself around a rejection of “those others
who do not share my origins” (p. 2).
George Richardson: And what does this mean for the classrooms where
students with these views will be working? With concerns about the
survival of their own identities, will the video promote reflection,
understanding and openness, or will it be seen as yet another threat?
Joyce Mgombelo: It seems to me that what we’ve heard up to this point
paints a less than encouraging picture about how students see cultural
difference. Did you find any evidence in the tapes that students view
cultural difference in a more positive light?
George Richardson: Yes. A number of students could see how their own
cultural locations were a part of the wider notion of cultural difference.
What was most encouraging about these students was that they could also
see how this understanding could help them teach in culturally diverse
classrooms.
Fourth Perspective: Understanding Cultural Difference as Lived
Experience
Student Voices
I think it is extremely important that when we talk about cultural diversity
that we remember that there is a white culture.
As teachers we need to promote tolerance, but realize our own politics and
deal with them so we can give all our students a fair and equal opportunity.
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As a First Nation person, I watched this video from my eyes who are most
definitely ‘ culture biased.’ In some ways I do not think that we have
changed since the policies of expulsion and elimination: we have in some
aspects become more careful as a society in the way we promote
assimilation. I call this ‘ polite racism.’ However, with my own cultural
biases, I must state that there is hope. With more educators who feel [the
importance of] meeting and connecting with each family one at a time.
This is where I feel that I will place myself as an educator.
Lynne Wiltse: This is certainly reassuring. But I find it interesting that the
student who was most able to reflect on her cultural identity was a First
Nations student teacher. Perhaps the video really only preaches to the
converted, and we’re still left with the question of what impact it has on the
majority of our students who will never have the experience of being
cultural minorities.
Joyce Mgombelo: But don’t your concerns point to the very reason why
we should continue to use the video? Whatever its shortcomings, it opens
up an enunciatory space where self-reflection is possible. When else will
such an opportunity arise for student teachers? Certainly not once they
begin teaching.
George Richardson: Basically I agree, but I think that if we’re going to
continue to use the video, we also need to think about the next stage of our
research. From the data we’ve collected to date, I think we should begin a
conversation around why many of our student teachers resist the notion
that they speak from a specific cultural location. I think a good starting
point for that conversation is considering whiteness as a cultural construct.
SCENE THREE
Stories of Whiteness and Teaching
The following five narratives, related by members of the Culture and
Teaching research team, offer personal perspectives on questions of
whiteness and teaching.
George Richardson: That’s Not About Here
As a beginning teacher in a remote northern community in the 1970’s,
one of my assignments was to teach social studies from grades 8
through 12. At the time, issues of social justice were very much a part
of the new Alberta social studies curriculum. In particular, students
were expected to take part in discussions about the causes of and
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solutions to poverty in Canada. Eager to involve my students in the
values clarification and social inquiry approaches I had learned in my
teacher education classes and that were then sweeping through social
studies, I attempted to engage my Grade 11 students, many of whom
were Mé tis and Aboriginal, in serious discussions about what caused
poverty in Canada and what they should do about it. To my surprise,
most students expressed little interest in the issue, and many were
visibly and vocally bored.
Their disinterest only increased the more I pushed them to take up a
stance on such issues as homelessness, the unequal distribution of
wealth and the need for low income housing. Finally, in desperation, I
asked Maria, one of my best students, to stay after class to discuss
what was going wrong. I explained to her how important it was for
students to come to grips with poverty, and expressed my concern that
the class seem uninterested in such a significant social issue. Maria
listened quietly, then said, “but Mr. Richardson, that’s not about here.”
When I asked her to explain, she indicated that the text and all the
resources were about poverty in Toronto and that students found it
boring because it wasn’t about any world they knew or felt connected
to.
Maria helped me to see that both my teacher education classes and the
social studies curriculum were framed in white, Anglo-Saxon, and
urban terms that made her world invisible and that my students’ bored
reaction was a logical response to their own marginalization. Why
should they enter into a dialogue with a curriculum that refused to
acknowledge their existence?
Joyce Mgombelo: “A Good Student”
This story is about a conversation I had with one parent—an African parent,
Nangula. Nangula was complaining about a meeting he just had with his
daughter’s grade 5 teacher. The purpose of the meeting was mainly to talk
about Ndapewa’s (Nangula’s daughter) report card. The parent was very
excited about his daughter’s performance, for the report showed very good
grades in almost all subjects: Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, etc.
What seemed to come out of that discussion between the parent and the
teacher was that the teacher was encouraging the girl to pursue physical
education more than other subjects. The teacher seemed to concentrate on
the Ndapewa’s performance in physical education. She said:
“I am so glad to have Ndapewa in my class. She is a very good
student, cooperates very well with her team-members and she
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possesses very good skills in basketball and soccer. She should keep
up the good job and some day she will become a very good
athlete/sportswoman.”
But the parent was very surprised and disturbed by the direction this
conversation was taking. He noticed how the teacher was putting more
emphasis on Ndapewa’s good job in Physical Education and ignoring other
subjects in which Ndapewa was equally good. He wondered to himself:
“Why would the teacher talk about physical education only while my
daughter was also doing very well in mathematics and the sciences?
Why is she encouraging Ndapewa to do her best in Physical
Education and says nothing about Science or Mathematics or even
Language Arts?”
Lynne Wiltse: What’s the Matter With Them?
My first teaching job was in 1980 in an isolated Aboriginal community in
the Cariboo Chilcotin region of British Columbia. I arrived in the
community having recently completed what I considered to be a first-rate
teacher education program at the University of Victoria. A few days before
school began, a group of curious children from the reserve, all students at
the school, arrived at my teacherage to meet the new teacher. The new
principal and his wife were in the other half of the teacherage. After asking
me some questions, the children began to talk amongst themselves about
me, the principal and his wife. They referred to the principal as ‘ he.’ Then
I heard someone call his wife ‘ he,’ and the next moment I was ‘ he’ as well.
I was confused. They had been calling me Miss Wiltse. They knew I was
female—didn’t they? They knew the difference between men and
women—didn’t they? I can still remember wondering what was the matter
with them? Thinking, I know these are ‘ backwoods’ kids, but what have I
got myself in for here?
Sometime in the first few weeks of school, I learned that my students
spoke a dialect of English, sometimes referred to as Indian or Indigenous
English, which was the result of the influence of the Indigenous language
on English. I learned that dialects are variations of a language, exhibiting
varying degrees of differences in the areas of pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary and discourse patterns. For example, in many Indigenous
languages, speakers classify things according to whether they are animate
or inanimate, and not according to a gender that is masculine, feminine or
neuter as in English. So, Aboriginal students learning English will
frequently say ‘ he’ when they mean ‘ she.’ I learned that while ‘ nonstandard’ dialects of English are systematic and rule-governed, they are
often considered to be deficient forms of language. There was a logical
explanation for the way my students spoke. But, I didn’t know that. I
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hadn’t learned about dialect (or so many other things relevant to these
students) in my teacher education program. And so, when I met my first
students, I did think that there was something wrong with the way they
spoke.
It didn’t occur to me that the fault lay in my teacher education program.
Jyoti Mangat: Multiculturalism in the Suburbs
I was raised in a predominantly white, middle-class suburb and as a child I
was often the only “brown person” in school. The overwhelming majority
of my students were white as well. Generally, I have grown accustomed to
not seeing myself as “not white,” even sometimes when the context is one
in which race, culture, and ethnicity are the topics of discussion. Despite
the fact that I was born in India, and as a result of the social advantages of
my upbringing, I tend largely, but not exclusively, to identify myself with
the dominant culture.
As the only non-white teacher in the large suburban high school where I
taught for four years, I was always very conscious in my teaching of not
wanting to be seen as a teacher with an “agenda.” Because of the
overwhelmingly homogeneous student population, questions of culture
were never pressing in my school—indeed, these were questions that
weren’t even asked or addressed during my time there. As a result, I was
concerned that attempts on my part to raise issues of culture and difference
in the classroom and in the staff room might possibly be interpreted as my
having some sort of “chip on my shoulder” about racial issues. However, I
struggled with this difficulty because of my own interest in questions
surrounding multiculturalism.
Over my time at this high school, I began to see some of the ways in which
my position as a “minority” teacher took on a more symbolic presence than
I might have imagined. For example, the parents of the few non-white
students I did teach usually seemed to be very happy, and often relieved, to
meet me. For most, I was one of the few non-white teachers their children
had had in their schooling and they were often curious about what brought
me to education as a career. This interest intensified when I returned to
university to pursue a master’s degree while still teaching high school
English.
One of the participants in my masters’ research was the son of another
teacher in the district. This student’s family also had origins in India and I
realized when this student returned his signed consent form to me that
questions of culture and difference are as significant in a relatively
homogeneous environment as they are in a more diverse setting. Across the
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bottom of the consent form, near her signature, this student’s mother had
written, “I’m so proud of you.” This woman was not a teacher I had ever
worked with, nor had I ever taught her child—really, our only connections
were the fact that neither of us was white and that we both worked in the
same school district.
This encounter has made me think about the fact that none of the white
teachers I’ve talked to about my research have ever responded in this way.
There have been varying degrees of interest, but no one else seems to have
taken what I’m trying to do quite so personally. I wonder if this is what
Spivak means when she talks about “strategic essentialism”?
Ingrid Johnston: Interrogating Whiteness in a Teacher Education
Class
As a white, middle-class woman who teaches student teachers, the majority
of whom are also white, I feel I should be addressing and challenging
perceived norms of whiteness. In a class I taught for secondary
undergraduate students who are English language arts majors. I introduced
a reading, viewing and discussion activity that focused on issues of racism,
prejudice and intolerance, built around Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a
Mockingbird, (1960) which has become a staple of the North American
school canon.
Lee’s novel offers a liberal, humanist stance on questions of race and
intolerance. Filtered through the perspective of Scout, a young white girl,
the story centres around Atticus, her lawyer father, who exposes the racism
of a small southern U.S. town, and saves the life of an African-American
man wrongly accused of rape. In an effort to foreground how the novel is
focalized through a white middle-class perspective, I asked my student
teachers to read Harper Lee’s novel in conjunction with Roll of Thunder,
Hear My Cry, by the African-American writer, Mildred Taylor. In this
novel, events of racism and intolerance in the American South are
portrayed through the eyes of a young black girl. I also asked students to
view the film A Time to Kill, a late 1990s Hollywood version of John
Grisham’s novel that depicts the trial of a black man accused of killing the
white men who raped his daughter. Students kept a reading and viewing
log of ideas, reflections and memories that the three texts evoked and then
brought these to class for discussion.
A majority of my student teachers loved Lee’s novel, identified effortlessly
with the novel’s strong white characters, felt angry at the racist views held
by many of the town’s citizens, and expressed empathy for the weak black
characters who were so unjustly treated in the story. Similarly, they saw
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only the “rightness” of the white lawyer in A Time to Kill bringing about
justice for the oppressed African-Americans.
I had hoped that reading Mildred Taylor’s novel in conjunction with
Harper Lee’s book, might cause students to interrogate their identification
with the white characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, but this was not the
case. Most found Mildred Taylor’s book far less engaging. I paid
insufficient attention to the power of Lee’s ability to construct them as
“ideal readers” of her text, and I failed to take account of student teachers’
lack of experience or preparation for dealing with issues surrounding
cultural difference. They tended to see racial identity as something
troublesomely possessed by other people and were unaware of how their
own racial identity privileges them. I am beginning to understand the
difficulties of challenging historically-privileged positions of power
conferred by whiteness, and the complexities of resisting discourses that
privilege or marginalize readers in particular ways.
SCENE FOUR
Tensions of Resistance and Ideology
Jyoti Mangat: The Limits of Critical Theory
Critical pedagogy, with its belief in the transformative power of education,
takes as its starting point issues surrounding justice and injustice. With
critiques of commonly-held belief systems as its prime intent, critical
theorists such as Giroux (1994) and Peter McLaren (1995) have placed
power differentials at the centre of current educational debates. However,
there seems to be a pedagogical shortfall at the heart of critical theory that
privileges what Giroux (1994) refers to as “illumination” as the reasoned
path to social justice.
Our work, while it takes up concerns similar to those of critical theory, is
interested in a more psychoanalytic approach to anti-racist and
multicultural education. By incorporating elements of psychoanalysis into
our theoretical framework, we have attempted to shift the location of our
interrogation from the other to the self. Along with an interrogation of the
external, institutional conditions that continue to hinder the ideals of antiracist education, we believe in the need to interrogate the resistances to
knowledge that reside within individuals.
The Culture and Teaching Project has drawn upon the application of
psychoanalytic theory to education (Britzman, 1998; Briton, 2000). Here,
we have been interested in in-depth explorations of student teachers’
attitudes toward multicultural and anti-racist education in their teacher
education program and in the school curriculum. This study builds upon
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earlier research in the Culture and Teaching Project that shows general
consensus about the value of multicultural education, but disagreement
about the role of anti-racist education. The sources and dynamics of this
disagreement were explored through hermeneutic conversations with the
student teachers. In addition, social psychoanalysis informs the research
and it is employed as an aspect of reflective practice in teacher education.
While psychoanalysis has traditionally been applied to individual
psychotherapy, there is a growing recognition that it might have an even
greater significance for social and educational theory (Kincheloe and Pinar,
1991). In terms of education, psychoanalysis has drawn attention to the
role of the unconscious in learning, helping to explain, for example, why
knowledge that is potentially dangerous and threatening to one’s selfimage is rejected. The psychoanalytic concepts of “dangerous knowledge”
and “a passion for ignorance” (Britzman, 1998) offer potentially productive
insights for understanding the debate between anti-racist and multicultural
education. This project elaborates upon Britzman’s conceptual work by
having these insights inform hermeneutic conversations with student
teachers over an extended period of time.
Terry Carson: Ideology and Pedagogy in Multicultural/Antiracist Education
What are the limits of ideology that became apparent in our hermeneutic
conversations with pre-service teachers during their teaching experiences?
We discovered that the student teachers in our study became increasingly
aware of some of the problematics of language in multicultural/anti-racist
education.
One student, Amy, spoke of how attempts by the school to attend to culture
ended up being celebrations of foods and fashions, making
multiculturalism “cheap, gaudy and frivolous.” The Stop Racism Day that
occurred during her time at the school seemed to fall short, or was ignored
altogether. This phenomenon of always falling short of expectations is,
according to Slavoj Zizek (2000), a feature of ideology. Student teachers
are well aware of prohibitions against racism and official support for
multiculturalism, but they do not know, with any precision, what the law
is. Ideology depends upon this gap between knowing that there is a law and
not knowing the exact regulations. As Zizek says, it is the tragic fate of the
subject to “be held hostage to the word,” “to a priori guilty ... in his very
existence guilty without knowing why” (p.14).
Jennifer Tupper: Navigating the Tensions between Saying and
Doing
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Student Voice # 1
“I’ve had a really hard time fitting in. The only way I could bring in art
from another culture was to imbed it in that formalism. I had to be sneaky.”
Student Voice #2
“There needs to be a way of balancing the curriculum. But there’s pressure
to keep to the pace…yet you really should try to go there.”
Student Voice #3
“Nothing I did in my student teaching was my own. I felt I was walking
into this suit every day, putting on survival shoes.”
Student Voice #4
“Me considering myself to be a feminist, why would I consider cutting my
lesson on women? Why would that be the first to go and not any other
stuff? Why?—because that’s not on the exam.”
These are some of the comments that emerged from several conversations
we engaged in with pre-service teachers over the course of their student
teaching experiences. Initially, we were attempting to uncover how these
individuals thought about multicultural or anti-racist education in the
classroom context. What emerged, however, went beyond discussions of
multiculturalism or anti-racism and reinforced Deborah Britzman’s
assertion that learning to teach is a negotiatory process. The way that we
imagine that we will teach as we are preparing to enter the classroom is not
necessarily reflected in the way we actually teach. Rather, it is a process of
constant negotiation and mediation.
Likening the student teaching experience to “putting on survival shoes” is a
reminder of the inevitable difficulty of life. For many pre-service teachers,
walking into the classroom requires putting on a different set of clothes,
occasionally ill-fitting, and often uncomfortable. The pre-service teacher
who imagined herself to be a feminist, but dropped her lesson on women
because it was not on the exam, was uncomfortable with this decision. In
fact, she was somewhat surprised by it since the action contradicted what
she believed to be an integral part of her identity. She found herself
wearing “clothes” that didn’t really fit, but she wore them nonetheless.
As teacher educators, it is important to remember that our pre-service
teachers are constantly negotiating their own subject positions as teachers
and that they are living in tension between saying and doing. We, too, must
think carefully about our pedagogy as we prepare our students to teach.
Elizabeth Ellsworth reminds us that in teaching, things are not always as
they seem. She reminds us that there is a difference between thinking we
know what we are doing as educators versus entertaining the idea that
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teaching is “undecidable.” Is it realistic to expect that our own subjectivities
will always influence the decisions that we make, that these will decide for
us how we teach? Calling ourselves feminist or anti-racist does not mean
that we will enact these ideals in our own pedagogy.
In education classes, it is easy to get caught up in a pedagogy of
prescription—discussing the “best way to teach” the “best way to take up
issues of culture and gender” and the “best way to address difficulties.”
Sometimes, our students even demand this approach expecting that we will
provide them with a teaching formula. As a teacher educator, I have
struggled with this in my own classroom. But how does this serve our
students once they leave the university and enter the schools? How does
this help them recognize the “undecidability” of teaching? How does this
help them navigate the tension that they will live in between saying and
doing?
Conclusion(s)
Where do these questions leave us as teacher educators committed to
projects of anti-racist and multicultural education? How should we conduct
ourselves with respect to our students and their own processes of
negotiation as they are learning to teach? Perhaps we can begin by actively
recognizing the tensions that exists between saying and doing, and by
acknowledging that in teaching, things are not always as they seem. In this
way, we may be able to create what Ted Aoki calls “enunciatory spaces of
cultural and language differences,” (Aoki, 1999, 33) in which pre-service
teachers are able to explore the difficult spaces (in)between curriculum as
planned and curriculum as lived experience.
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