Andrew Gitlin

The Production of Margin and Center: Welcoming–Unwelcoming of Immigrant Students:

The authors of this article investigated a middle school in the United States, named Kousanar, and documented how Mexicans, Bosnians, and other immigrants were caught in institutional practices that simultaneously welcomed and “unwelcomed” them. To explain this contradiction, their data suggest that particular discourses and forms of materiality, in part, motivated and encouraged individuals and groups to make certain decisions and act in certain ways. Specifically, the authors found that teachers, students, and the local White community surrounding the school often were motivated by employment issues, the concerns of local businesses, fear of potential violence, and the wish to maintain an academic advantage. Conversely, immigrant students attending Kousanar and their parents often were motivated by family cohesion, a “good parent” discourse, safety concerns, and the wish for economic and academic opportunities. The authors conclude that discursive and contextual influences limit many opportunities for immigrant students and place them on the margins of school life.

Pre-Service Teachers' Thinking on Research: Implications for Inquiry Oriented Teacher Education.

Abstract Many teacher educators are championing inquiry oriented approaches that ask pre-service teachers to engage in a variety of activities including becoming critical consumers of research and participating in action research. What is largely missing from the literature is a sense of how preservice teachers think about research. This study attempts to fill in this gap, and by doing so considers how pre-service teachers’ thinking on research might inform approaches to inquiry teacher education. Our findings indicate that it may be helpful to investigate with preservice teachers what is research, to provide student teaching placements that support research as a form of inquiry, and to utilize action research as a bridge to more traditional forms of research.

The politics of method: from leftist ethnography to educative research

In the last two decades, ethnography has become the dominant methodology of the American educational left. While debates have raged over the use of this method, for the most part they have focused on concepts of reliability and validity. Unfortunately, this emphasis has obscured the relation between method and what the researcher is trying to achieve through the method ‐ its political moment. We strive to put the political moment back in the methodological debate by considering the potential of ethnography to foster emancipatory change ‐ the express purpose of the left. Our analysis suggests that the separation of understanding and application, as well as that of the researcher from those researched, constrains the potential of ethnography to inform and foster emancipatory change.

Toward educative communities: teacher education and the quest for the reflective practitioner

The current effort to reform teacher education around the aim of developing reflective teachers is unlikely to make a significant difference unless it is tied to a larger project that challenges the training orientation that dominates our understanding of teaching and schooling. The authors argue that the development of educative communities, based upon an ethic of caring and the establishment of dialogicalrelations, can serve as such an ideal. A discussion of this ideal is followed by two case studies that focus on ways that prcservice programs can link values and meaning to technical concerns, honor and examine what preservice teachers believe and know, and encourage the development of collegial relations.

Challenging Teacher Education as Training: Four Propositions.

ABSTRACT The authors examine two trends of thought central to much of the current discussion on the reform of teacher education: (1) Increasing the time certification students spend in schools and assessing their performance in relation to a predetermined list of desirable teaching skills; and (2) Developing preservice programs that require students to conform to a model of good teaching derived from ‘objective’ empirical research. While these trends differ in significant ways, the authors argue that both are inherently conservative, supporting the long standing training orientation where the technical aspects of teaching are separated from educational aims and purposes. To reform teacher education, the authors argue, requires challenges to the assumptions of training. To begin to do so, they present four propositions that in their view will make teacher education more educative: preservice teacher education must be joined to inservice programs; work contexts need to be carefully studied and criticized; t...

Inquiry, Imagination, and the Search for a Deep Politic

In this article, the author recommends that we consider how inquiry can facilitate the search for a deep politic. Using an epistemology that shifts between education and aesthetics, the search for a deep politic is based on our human potential to interrogate and (re)imagine everyday politics. By doing so, the author argues, it is possible to see anew and move beyond the status quo to the “not yet” without being completely immersed in the normative traditions of the present and past. Linking our ability to “see” everyday politics with our human ability to imagine and create facilitates a process of change that sits uneasily with the categories, structures, and relationships that tie us to the current constructions of our life-worlds.

Looking Again at Insider Knowledge: A Relational Approach to Knowledge Production and Assessment.

In this article, the authors challenge historical relations of power, which have valued academic knowledge over the experiential knowledge of teachers and claim that such knowledge is valuable and should be seen as legitimate. At the same time, though, they argue that there is a need to assess the knowledge produced by teachers and academics and offer a conceptual apparatus for conducting such assessments. According to the authors, assessment needs to be an ongoing process that occurs within a collaborative setting where differences in perspective are used as strengths to aid researchers (both teachers and academics) in critically examining their perceptions. More specifically, the authors suggest that by incorporating both insider and outsider knowledge (i.e., experiential and traditional forms of academic knowledge) into teacher research reports, a relational type of assessment can occur where both types of knowledge forms can be scrutinized.

Working the Pedagogical Borderlands: An African Critical Pedagogue Teaching Within an ESL Context

Abstract The global movement of people has increased the number of immigrant students in countries such as the United States and Canada. The number of immigrant teachers working with these students has also risen, especially those in English as a Second Language programs (ESL). Scholars have argued that the increase in immigrant teachers, and teachers of color more generally, along with pedagogies that draw from the personal and collective experiences of marginalized students is a needed corrective to the overly white, Eurocentric orientation to teaching and content found in schools. This article examines these assumptions by documenting the struggle of one Senegalese-American middle school ESL teacher who was attempting to utilize the culture of his students as a dominant part of his pedagogy. The findings indicate that this teacher found himself in a school context where his political desires for immigrant students were modified by institutional structures and disenabling discourses about immigrants. What he enacted was a borderland pedagogy that had elements of the culturally relevant pedagogy that he sought and the assimilationist pedagogy that was pervasive within the school. The implications suggest that placing responsibility on these immigrant teachers to challenge assimilationist and marginalizing tendencies in the schools may end up blaming these practitioners for influential factors that reside largely outside their control. Consequently, to meet the needs of those marginalized by society requires work with and on the possibilities and limits embedded in these borderland spaces of schools, teacher desires, and communities.

Supervision, Reflection, and Understanding: A Case for Horizontal Evaluation

term intent refers to the goals that might be accomplished over the semester or academic year. The intents may be written as, but not be limited to, statements of behavioral objectives. A supervisor using horizontal evaluation strategies attempts to clarify the relationships between the student teacher’s short-term and long-term intents and the observed practice. To examine these relationships, the supervisor may use three basic strategies: historical perspective, alternatives, and language analysis. Historical perspective. One strategy for clarifying the relationship between intent and practice is historical perspective. This involves the examination of the historical precedents of an intent or instructional practice. For example, a student teacher in an open classroom program might be using learning centers to organize the curriculum. The supervisor could help the student teacher reflect on the use of learning centers in an open classroom by suggesting that the student teacher consider the rationale initially proposed for open classrooms. This discussion would

Why Supervisors Behave as They Do: Relationship of Beliefs, Socialization, and Practice.

Regular education and special education supervisors were studied to determine: (1) what supervisors believe to be important aims for education; (2) what types of issues supervisors focus on in practice; (3) how beliefs are related to issues identified in practice; and (4) how socialization influences the selection of particular supervisory issues. The findings of this study indicate that supervisors hold a wide range of beliefs about the aims of education with an emphasis on meeting societal needs and developing cognitive skills. This contrasts sharply with supervisors’ practice which focuses, for the most part, on managerial issues. Socialization and assumptions about teaching seem to most strongly influence practice. 1The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Richard LePan, Ralph Reynolds and Robert Bullough, Jr for their critical reviews and suggestions during the preparation of this article. Funding for the research was provided through a grant awarded by the Research Committee, Graduate Schoo...