Academic Wisdom and Practical Action

by Pam Whitty

INTRODUCTION

In her 1912 essay "The Modern Woman" Helen Keller wrote about the disparity she experienced between life and the academy: "It simply happens, as it happens with many students, that such academic wisdom as I was priviledged to share in did not touch the problems I met later" (1912/1920, p.42).

Although Keller wrote these words eighty-four years ago, her obsevation remains relevant today. In particular, I find that it speaks to my work as an educator of adults at the University of New Brunswick where I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in early childhood, curriculum and cultural studies. The lack of connection between the educational theories taught at the university and the problems encountered in practice is a common refrain I hear in both the university and the school.

In this paper I describe changes made to a teacher education approach that were facilitated by my own reflective understanding of the university workplace, my past and present experiences in the workplace of school, and my desire to explicitly value, as well as to challenge, the work in both. The encouragement of colleagues in my faculty, and teachers and administrators in the school -- as well as feminist and critical theorists -- have helped to transform the possibility of change into a concrete reality.

SHIFTING TERRAINS

The Teacher Model
The traditional supervisory model of teacer education, as Britzman (1986, p.47) points out, is a training model. In a teacher training approach, theory is learned in the university, and the practicum requirement in enacted in the workplace of school. From Britzman's perspective, the teacher training model incorrectly assumes an immediate integration of educational theory with classroom practice. Britzman's analysis fits my experience over the last twenty years as a student intern, cooperating teacher, and for the past five years, as a university practicum "supervisor." Currently, as part if my teaching workload, I "supervise" students interns during their fifteen-week practicum in the school.

When the interns enter their practicum classroom, they ofter leave the university behind, theoretically as well as physically. In my first year of practicum supervision I visited five interns in five schools located at points around the province--a thoroughly fragmenting experince for everyone concerned. Typically, what I heard from the interns as they assumed the multiple aspects of their teaching role was that the school workplace was the "real world"; university learning had become unreal, in contrast to the accepted notion that theory and practice would be automatically integrated within the classroom. Suddenly the university was polarized from the school, devalued as the "other" world, and the challenge for me was how to connect the learning in both by moving the two worlds closer together.

The Teacher Education Centre
For the past two years, I have been the University Associate for a Teacher Education Centre. This project is specifically intended to replace the traditional supervisory model and encourage "greater dialogue between the faculty and the school, as well as amongst the interns and cooperating teachers" (Smith, 1996, p.2). The particular partnership I am involved with includes five early childhood practicum students, several cooperating teachers and the administrative staff of a local elementary school which houses just over 400 students.

In consultations which involve the school principal, our coordinator of field studies, the interns, and myself, placements are made with teacher who specifically request to be part of the practicum experience. An important consideration in my initial selection of a school as practicum site was that the principal and two of the cooperating teachers were actively involved in graduate work at the university.

Through the introduction of four major structural changes to the traditional program, we created opportunities for an ongoing dialogue that was dubbed "critical conversation"; these forums included clustering, "the switch", the seminar, and written conversations.

LINKING WORLDS VIA CRITICAL CONVERSATION

Clustering as Collegial Support
Perhaps the most visible change has been the placement of interns in one elementary school, creating a concentrated focus for my work. No longer must I travel to five different locations; as well, grouping interns in one location disrupts isolation in a positive way. Interns are learning to develop collegiality early in their careers. The fact that most of the five already knew each other from various university classes helped support this sense of collaboration.

The physical proximity of the interns to each other--next door, upstairs, even at times in the same room--provided opportunities for continuing conversations with each other. When they spoke to me they frequently commented on the reciprocal curricular and moral support made possible by the proximity. They strongly believed that they were established as their own community within the school, and as such had a collective voice. The interns visited each other's classrooms; discussed the wide-ranging ways in which curriculum was applied; and organized with administration to discuss the kinds of questions they might expect at interviews. Because they had shared university classes and were familiar with some of the same theorists, they could explicitly enact and critique theories of education in relation to their classroom experience.

"The Switch" as a Broadening of Experience
In the traditional approach to the practicum, interns were place with one cooperating teacher for the entire fifteen-week period. In the Teacher Centre approach, they are encouraged to switch their placements just past the midpoint. The intention of "the switch," as this particular aspect of the practicum came to be called, was to expand the intern's range of experience during the practicum period. The prospect of this transition aroused considerable apprehension on the part of cooperating teachers who were familiar with the traditional model, as well as with interns who expressed concern over a break in continuity with their classes. I persisted in asking everyone involved to adopt an open, experimental attitude toward "the switch".

In both years of the program, and regardless of the degree of anxiety, interns have felt benefits of "the switch" almost immediately. For one thing, the exposure to new teachers and teaching methods is accompanied by the realization that there is more than one way to do education in the classroom. As Sherry Billings (1995) observed, "the switch" broke up the isolating pattern of one-intern-to-a-teacher. Another benefit is that interns have their sense of reponsibility opened up to include all the children in a school, rather than the traditional, exclusive focus on a single class.

Based on their own economic and curricular needs, student interns negotiate the nature of their placements with the cooperating teachers, trying for a flexibility that will make them better equipped for the job market. For example, interns who had specialized in early childhood education choose an upper elementary placement; and one bilingual student selected and English placement first followed by a French one.

Interns also practice peer instruction, explaining different aspect of classroom life, such as routines and projects, to the new interns who will inherit their classes. In some cases, interns visited classes or shadowed particular teachers for a few days, discovering in the process that most classroom doors are open to them. One advantage of such a limited visit such as this has been to allow teachers who want to be involved in the practicum to do so in a less intensive way.

Critical Conversation in a Weekly Seminar
From my perspective as a supervisor, one of the most serious drawbacks of a training approach was the lack of time available for interns to read and to engage in critical conversations. In an effort to provide a forum for such conversation, I redistributed my own workload in order to offer a practicum seminar. In order to sustain the seminar on a cost-recovery basis I needed fifteen people: in the first year I had six interns and nine students who would be doing their practicums in the following term. In addition to my classroom and school visits, I saw the interns as a group every week, greatly expanding the conversational forum.

The on-campus seminar provided a separate place for interns to reflect on their week in the school, and an opportunity to link their experiences with the class readings. Intern seminars have included such topics as curricular integration across subject areas, and dealing with the gendered dynamics of the playground. Topics are chosen which do not breach child or teacher confidentiality. At the students' suggestion, we have invited math and literacy specialists to attend seminar sessions; the ensuing conversations underlined the importance of revisiting ideas learned at university during the period of internship.

Following the two-hour seminars, I meet with interns for at least an hour to discuss any ongoing ethical issues. Together we brainstorm possibilities for action--and sometimes the wisdom of inaction. For me, this is the most intellectually and emotionally powerful time that I spend with interns, for our conversations are dynamic, critical and ultimately, reciprocal.

For the interns-to-be, learning about what they might encounter in the school gives them an appreciation for the complexity of the school workplace as it is experienced by their peers. We all understand better the vulnerable position of interns, who are neither students nor workers.

Written Conversations and Reflective Thought
In addition to literally hundreds of conversations concerning multiple aspects of teaching and learning, we instituted a writing-and-response mode between interns, some of the cooperating teachers, and myself. Written conversations with the self generally occur in the intern's journals, which they share at their own discretion. We have discussed the ethics of journal writing and the handing-in of entries as prescribed in the traditional practicum format.

Another written form we use is letter-writing; I write to the seminar class in response to the weekly in-class conversations, and some interns write to their cooperating teachers, who then respond with additional insights into the teaching day. By the end of the second year, interns were writing letters to each other about critical incidents from their teaching day.

Each student intern is also required to write a final project for the seminar course. The objectives and content of all assignments for the seminar are co-constructed in class discussions and at individual meetings. Intern portfolios consist of samples of childrens' work (obtained with their permission) and photographs and other artifacts which could assist in job interviews; they also include a reflective written piece that details their learnings in both discrete and overlapping categories.

Interns-to-be could choose either to write a paper or to construct a teaching portfolio. Topics for papers included curricula on race, class and gender; authentic forms of evaluation; and child advocacy. Some prospective interns, awareness raised by seminar conversations on the complexity of school as workplace, decided to construct portfolios to take with them to their own practicum site. They reviewed the courses they had taken and pulled together scholarly and practical ideas they thought would be of benefit in practice.

CLOSING THE GAP

From my beginnings running from school to school doing a kind of patchwork training, things have come a long way. Indications of Teacher Centre successes abound: the principal's open invitation to the university; the teachers' open-door policy; and the many opportunities for verbal and written conversations about the curriculum proper as well as social curriculum.

In a professional faculty such as education it is crucial to negotiate the gap between theory and practice; this project has provided a way for me to work with current and prospective colleagues to close that gap. The practice of clustering provides support from experienced teachers, university faculty and peers during the intern's transition from place of study to role of quasi-worker. As interns experience the strength in collectivity and negotiate their placements, recording critical incidents and reflecting on ethical dilemas, they come closer to an understanding of what Britzman calls a dialogic image of teaching, in which "the tensions among what has preceded, what is confronted, and what one desires shape the contradictory realities of learning to teach (1991, p.8).

In privately held closing conversations with interns from both years, I asked two questions: what did you learn that you expected to learn and what was a surprise to you? Most of the interns expected to learn about the curriculum proper, how to plan and organize their teaching day; how to integrate curricula across subject areas; how to access resources; and how to interact with children whose prior knowledge and abilities varied widely.

Both years, students interns were surprised by the intensity of the social relations of power they witnessed in aspect of schooling that ranged from administrative structures to the gendered nature of playground dynamics. Many of them spoke of the challenges of advocating for certain children, and the difficulty of adopting and defending democratic practices which in essence contradict the hierarchical nature of school. Interns expressed a strong desire to learn how to speak in clear and constructive ways about their beliefs in a context that makes them vulnerable.

The next challenge from my point-of-view is the full employment of these competent and highly conscious individuals. I cannot help but compare the isolation of elementary teachers in their separate classrooms with the positive collectivity experienced by these interns. The structure of school time and the intensity of the classroom place so many demands on teachers that interns in this program enjoy opportunities for flexibility, freedom of movement and insights into the culture of the school that most teachers do not have.

I am left with questions: I wonder how we can make critical and connective practices continuously available to teachers. Will those interns who have already worked collectively be able to extend their connections into their own working lives? Are they better prepared to negotiate the contradictory realities of the workplace in which they will be teaching? With a study term pending, I am giving considerable thought to how I might continue my research with beginning teachers as an act of responsibility towards my own former workplace.

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