Daniel P. Liston

Varieties of discourse in supervisory conferences

Abstract The logic and substance of discourse between university supervisors and student teachers during post-observation supervisory conferences were studied in an elementary student teaching program in the United States. The findings describe these aspects of the discourse in relation to the programs goals and (a) the conceptual levels of supervisors and student teachers, (b) the content area of the lesson under analysis, and (c) the structure of the supervisors role. Implications of the findings for research, program development, and for the preparation and training of supervisors are discussed.

Reflective Teaching and Action Research in Preservice Teacher Education

ABSTRACT The authors argue that a reflective orientation to teaching should stress the giving of good reasons for educational actions. Prospective teachers should be encouraged to examine the aims and values of distinct educational traditions (e.g. conservative, progressive and radical traditions), be cognisant of their own implicit social and cultural beliefs, and have an understanding of schools as institutions and the surrounding communities. Action research, the authors argue, is one way to encourage students to reflect on their educational rationales and practices.

Critical Pedagogy and Teacher Education.

The authors offer their view of a normative basis for an approach to teacher education that contributes to the establishment of more critical and emancipatory practices in the public schools of the U.S. These ideas are then linked to the broader tradition of radicalism in teacher education. A variety of conceptual lenses and instructional strategies utilized by radically oriented teacher educators are discussed together with the possibilities for the realization of a radical agenda for teacher education. It is argued that teacher educators need to become much more politically involved in confronting the external conditions that limit the possibilities for reform in teacher education.

Stranger Than Fiction Arthur Levine's Educating School Teachers—the Basis for a Proposal

a report on the dismal state ofuniversity-sponsored and alternative routes forteacher education. Among Levine’s major rec-ommendation are calls to dismantle manyprograms and to transform schools of educationinto professional schools focused on “the worldof practice and practitioners” (p. 104). The reportattempts to capture the professional “life”history of teacher education and points to aviable, albeit challenging, future. In many wayshe is retelling and reshaping our narratives asteacher educators. In the film

The Structure and Goals of a Student Teaching Program and the Character and Quality of Supervisory Discourse.

Abstract This study compares the form and substance of supervisory discourse between university supervisors and elementary student teachers during postobservation conferences in two teacher education programs with similar organizational structures but with very different ideological orientations. One program represents a traditional-craft orientation to teacher education while the other represents an inquiry-oriented approach. The findings indicate a great deal of similarity with regard to both the form and substance of supervisory discourse in the two programs and suggest the need for changes in the organizational context of student teaching if innovations in the curriculum of student teaching are to be realized.

Teacher Education and the Social Context of Schooling: Issues for Curriculum Development

If one of the central aims of a teacher education program is to enable future teachers to give good reasons for their educational plans, and if these plans must take into account the social realities of schooling, then teacher educators must figure out coherent ways to encourage a reflective examination of these realities. In this paper the authors suggest a set of curricular concerns and issues that would encourage prospective teachers to think about the social, political, and institutional context of schooling.

Capitalist schools : explanation and ethics in radical studies of schooling

1. Studying Schools and Assessing Theories 2. Theoretical Debates and Explanatory Claims 3. The Logic and Assessment of Functional Explanations 4. Is there a Selective Tradition? 5. Ethical Values and Marxist Educational Critiques 6. Ethical Values and Marxist Educational Prescriptions 7. Explanatory Projects and Ethical Values.

Reverence and Love in Teaching

A few years ago I was seated around a seminar table that included Bob Moses, Eleanor Duckworth, Linda Mizell, Bill Ayers, Lorrie Shepard, Lisa Delpit, Dr. Vincent Harding, Mike Apple, George Stranahan, and a few others. We were gathered that day to honor Bob Moses’s accomplishments with the Algebra Project. The early part of the day was devoted to a seminar focused on the history and future of progressive education. In the afternoon Bob Moses delivered a talk to the University of Colorado community on quality education as a civil right. A number of questions were posed and addressed throughout the seminar, including What do we mean by, and what should “progressive education” look like in this century’s upcoming decades? During the ensuing discussion the topic turned to teachers’ capacities to educate all children and Mike Apple argued that knowing a student or colleague “really” was not a feat we humans could expect to achieve. In teaching other people’s children we are severely limited in our knowledge and understanding of others’ motives, interests, and capacities. In teaching all children we are constrained. Stepping into someone else’s shoes, so as to guide them educationally, was neither a feasible nor an advisable instructional move. When I heard Apple, my major professor, claim that our knowledge of others especially our students was severely restricted, I had to pause.

On Attentive Love in Education: The Case of Courage to Teach

In this essay, I explore the thesis that love and attention to inner, other, and outer realms are central to teaching and learning. Many teachers who have the potential to be excellent teachers leave teaching because of the institutional obstacles that contort and distort their loves and their ability to grow them. In the first part of the essay, I focus on Thomas Keating’s contemplative approach and note the role of love as well as sketch the basic outlines of attentive love utilizing the insights of three philosophers: Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and Sara Ruddick. In the second part of this essay, I focus on the interaction of love and attention within the Courage to Teach professional development program. I identify and elaborate several contemplative elements, grounded in attentive love, present in Courage renewal work.