Pedagogical Doubts and Uncertainties: Do They Work for Or Against Us?

Pedagogical doubts and uncertainties: Do they work for or against us?

Glenda MacNaughton, Associate Professor, Centre for Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood.

Article written for Reflections 2004

Consider the following statement made by an early childhood professional reflecting on what she needed to create and sustain innovation in her work with young children. She said:

Motivation is a big factor - me. I'm like a little seed in the ground, in a hole in a rut waiting to bloom. I don't want to be a wilted seed in the garden! Like a Gerbera that stands up and then goes eeeeer (She uses her hands to show how a Gerbera stands and then wilts). (Catherine)

Catherine’s words come from one of the research studies that I have been facilitating that explore critical reflection in early childhood studies. These studies are nested in a larger project on Teachers Teaching and Learning for Equity (TTALE) project currently being undertaken by the CEIEC that I direct. One study began with funding from the Margaret Trembarth Early Childhood Research Scholarship fund and it has received funding from the University of Melbourne and the Department of Education in Tasmania. As I share moments from them the reasons for the choice of 'doubts and uncertainties’ in title will become clearer.

The unfolding of the Trembarth project – a flavour of the processes

Meeting 1 - October

At this meeting we discussed what the 'critical' in critical reflection meant - its relationships to critical curriculum and critical social theory. In overview, we talked about the differences between reflection - looking back at something - and critical reflection - exploring what has happened in order to transform our understandings of it and produce greater equity in and through that transformation of it. This understanding of critical reflection comes from the critical educational theories of Friere, Kemmis, McClaren, Giroux and the critical social theory of Habermas (see for example, Carr & Kemmis 1986; Friere 1996). Following these theorists, critical reflection is the first step towards taking action that can transform teaching and learning in more equitable ways.

Meeting 2 - November

By this meeting each person was to have a foci for their critical reflection project, we were to share it and then use some notes I had provided on Getting to a Critical Question to build what would be a 'critical' question for each person. The point of disclosing questions was when the doubt of several of the participants emerged. Sammy began, I am not sure if I have got this right???' Millie hesitantly shared her question with the qualifier, ‘but I don’t know if this is an appropriate topic’ and as we moved around the table everyone's doubts about if their question was appropriate, if their topic was too broad, or not broad enough or critical enough rang through the air. With the doubts and hesitancies filling the air I reminded them to think about a question would enable them to explore new possibilities in their work with children.

By the end of the session we had generated the following questions:

• How can we rethink art experiences in the Under 3s'
• How can we rethink and remodel our music experiences?
• How can we refine and remould the structure of the CMIT program at our school? (2 people shared this question)
• How can I reconstruct my physical learning environment to actively engage all children?
• How can I rethink and remodel my approach to programming to include music?
• How can I reconceptualise my support for teachers in literacy to reflect a transforming approach to education?
• How can computers be linked into the curriculum to support and reform current teaching practices and make them meaningful.
• How can I ensure that my methods of presentation are equally empowering for all?
• How can I reconstruct my classroom to make it a socially just classroom?

We then took the key word/idea in the question and deconstructed it using what I have called the meaning map - we looked at how many meanings we could create for the word/concept and then where these meanings had come from. For the next meeting people were asked to think about the power effects of those meanings and limits to what they know.

Meeting 3 - February

We shared the questions each person had settled on. The group then offered each person suggestions for action on their particular question and we then had small group time planning those actions needed to begin to answer each person's question. The meeting was full of energy and certainty and people went away ready to use the following questions to generate critical reflection on what they did:

• how many ways are there to understand what has happened in your project to date?
• whose knowledge are you using to understand what has happened to date?
• who has benefited from the project's development and happenings to date?
• what has got in the way of you taking the project in new directions or moving you beyond your comfort zone?

Meeting 4

I call this our ‘Squishy, dark places meeting’ for reasons that will become obvious.

Squishy, dark places and the question of 'who benefits' from what I do?

We quickly settled into a rhythm in which each person reported back on what they had done, what they had discovered and then the group as a whole was offered suggestions to take the project forward. Sammy’s turn came about half way into the group meeting. Sammy had been a thoughtful member of the group who from the beginning seemed open to thinking in new ways but she had chosen what seemed to her a very simple concrete question to work with. 'How could she refresh her classroom environment to make it more meaningful for children's learning?' In the report back she reminded the group that this was her question and how someone had suggested at the last meeting that she ask the children what they would like the classroom to look like. She sat forward, drawing others in through the intense excitement that emanated from her as shared what had happened. The children had said that they would like - some squishy places, a hidey place", "things we can change" "dark", "lots of cushions" "things hanging from the ceiling".

Sammy completed the list and looked around the table and very deliberatively said, 'Why didn't I think to ask them before, they had such great ideas?'. She went on, "I have been reflecting on that question about how many different ways there are to understand my project and who benefits from the project and who is silenced through it. The aim of my project was to make the learning environment more meaningful for the children, to benefit them and yet I was silencing the voices of the very people I was supposedly doing it for. And that got me to thinking, how often have I done this before with parents, children?"

Sammy had gone to books on Feng Shui, articles on Reggio Emilio and some reading on Steiner environments at various people's suggestion but it was going to the children that prompted her to think more deeply about whose knowledge she privileges in her classroom decision-making. It became clear in both the tone of her voice and what she said that this discovery was both exciting and troubling. As she talked further she wondered about which of the children's ideas she would use and what the implications of their use might be for her as a teacher. What would a dark classroom with hidey places look like? How would other staff feel? Would it be safe in terms of supervision? What would parents think if it didn't look like a proper classroom? Could she do? Doubts gently bubbled up through her excitement fuelled by how others would see it and her own uncertainties about how to do it. She couldn't imagine what it might look like, and what might be lost that was valuable?. In addition, she faltered as she reflected on the implications beyond her own classroom. How could she have a classroom that looked very different to others?

She had also become interested through her reading in moving to using more natural materials. But, what if the children wanted stars war toys and other 'dreadful plastic toys?' but what did it mean if she didn't allow their choices in? She was certainly critically reflecting but where was it taking her. We returned to those critical questions:

• how many ways are there to understand what has happened in your project to date?
• whose knowledge are you using to understand what has happened to date?
• who has benefited from the project's development and happenings to date?
• what has got in the way of you taking the project in new directions or moving you beyond your comfort zone?

By the end of the meeting to a set of growing doubts about what to do and whether or not she should change her question had settled on her.

It was at this point my own doubts about what the critical questions meant for these teachers emerged.

• How could innovation take place when critical reflection produced, questions, doubt and uncertainty for teachers?
• Surely it was just a way of silencing teachers, confusing them and unsettling them?
• Would she think it all too much and leave?
• Were critical questions as I had posed them unhelpful to teachers?
• Did they put people off deeper reflection on their work, rather than incite it?
• Alternatively,might innovation actually require that we drive action through doubt, rather than through certainty?

Reflecting on this and what doubt and certainty mean for pedagogical action I see that certainty is more often seen as a desirable way of being and a desired state than doubt. The need to have the right answer, a certain way forward and the clarity that brings is powerful in our pedagogical world. From the students who say to me, just tell me the answer to the mapping of learning outcomes for children we seek certainty. Certainty about the best way to act, certainty about the effects of our interventions

Consider USA Professor Lillian Katz’s comment:

It seems reasonable to assume that effective teaching requires us to act with optimal (rather than maximal or minimal) certainty in the rightness of our actions; that is, to act with optimal intentionality, clarity, and decisiveness…. The issues of teachers’ confidence in their won curriculum and pedagogical decisions is a serious one, and has significant practical implications. … I continue to believe that in order to be effective, practitioners must have optimal confidence in their own actions and the underlying assumptions on which they are based. (Katz 1996, p. 145)

What happens when we privilege teachers' desires for certain ways forward and certain ways to act? What might happen if we embraced a pedagogy of doubt rather than a pedagogy of certainties? What might a pedagogy of doubt look like?

Is it that critical reflection and the doubt and questioning produced in and through it might actually be what is needed for innovation that intends greater equity and social justice? Had Sammy reached a point in which she would refuse to see as natural and normal the idea that 'teachers know best'. Is it the capacity to see how existing relations of power are embedded in our actions and our understandings the core of what makes critical reflection a possibility?

Furthermore, is it the capacity to see how existing relations of power are embedded in our actions and understandings that makes it more likely that critical reflection will be sustained once it is created because once seen they can never be unseen? "I'll never look at a classroom learning environment in the same way again"? Will Sammy ever be able to forget questions such as, 'who benefits, how and with what effect?' Will they always return to niggle at her, haunt her and give her pause to be doubtful in what she is doing and is it in this moment of doubt that action for equitable change will be created?

My sense of what can be learnt from these groups of teachers about the conditions under which critical reflection and innovation might best be fostered is only just beginning. The conditions under which they began to generate critical reflection and through this to produce innovations in their practices and ways of thinking that intended greater equity were several. But I suspect doubts and passion will play a part. Reconsider Catherine’s analysis of what she needed at the end of the Under 3s project.

Motivation is a big factor - me. I'm like a little seed in the ground, in a hole a rut waiting to bloom. I don't want to be a wilted seed garden! Like a Gerbera that stands up and then eeer (Wilts her hands). (Catherine)

From the other teachers I see doubt and uncertainty, the opportunity for deep engagement in ideas, time, space to reflect by herself and others as central to what might prevent her wilting. How will Cate find those in her work with under 3s. Who will provide her with the conditions to bloom? What are the conditions that you need to bloom pedagogically in your own work?

References

This paper is based on a previous conference presentation.

• Katz, L. 1996, Child development knowledge and teacher preparation: confronting assumptions, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 11, 135 – 146.
• Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: Education, knowledge and action research. Victoria, Australia: DeakinUniversity Press.
• Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Books.

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