PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING: AN INQUIRY SEMINAR WINTER I, 2011
DISCUSSION GUIDE
Aoki, T. (2005). Layered voices of teaching: The uncannily correct and the elusively true. In Irwin, R. & Pinar, W. (Eds.). Curriculum in a New Key: The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki (pp. 17-27). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
1. The title of this article is intriguing and provides a synthesis of the author’s response to the central question: What is teaching? Unpack what the author might mean by the phrases: “layered voices of teaching,” “uncannily correct” and “elusively true.”
2. Aoki invites the reader to consider the metaphor of hearing as way of understanding teaching. What is significant about the metaphor of hearing? What does it enable in our thinking that the metaphor of seeing might not? Reflect, for example, on the line: “I know better now what it is to hear when I look” (p. 22).
3. What does the author mean by each of three layers of voices—the outermost, the middle and the inner layer?
- What kinds of language/words might you associate with each layer?
- How does each layer represent (1) teaching and (2) educational inquiry?
- Are you drawn to any one of these layers? Why? Why not?
4. What is the difference Aoki suggests between the two apparently similar questions: What is teaching? What is teaching?
5. Aoki writes, “I wish to offer short narratives—stories—that point to, more than they tell, what it means to be oriented in a way that allows the essence of teaching to reveal itself to us”(p. 20). What does this reveal about Aoki’s understanding of teaching and inquiry?
6. Aoki speaks of the essence of teaching and uses such phrases as: “the truer sense of teaching” (p. 18) and “where teaching truly dwells” (p. 18). Do you believe that there is an essence of teaching? What might be the promise and the difficulty for teachers when we begin to talk in these terms?
7. What does the author mean by “being attuned to the call of care that is present in every pedagogic situation”?
8. What conditions in our schools enable or deny the importance of pedagogical relations?
9. Recall three stories about teaching? What themes can you identify across those stories that lend some insight to you about what teaching is?
10. Aoki identifies two themes: “pedagogical watchfulness”(p. 25) and “pedagogical thoughtfulness (p. 26);” explain the distinction and its significance. What aspects of the essence of teaching might not be captured in Aoki’s themes?
11. The author is concerned that much of contemporary thinking about teaching ignores the “lived world of teachers and students.” What is meant by “the lived world” and how will your inquiry project address Aoki’s concern?
12. Will you be a teacher? Who will you be as a teacher?
13. Can you recall an individual in your life that was a teacher, in Aoki’s sense of the term?
14. Does Aoki’s view of teaching make sense in a world where we commodify education, equate achievement with high test scores, and value rational thought above all else?
15. Discuss the following quote by William Pinar in which he refers to the persistent instrumentality of pedagogy, even that articulated by Aoki:
[T]eaching can be theorized and practiced in intriguing, even magical, ways, as the pedagogy of Ted Aoki, for one, documents. While teaching can be theorized non- instrumentally (as Aoki's oeuvre demonstrates), does not the very concept tempt us to think we can, at the minimum, influence, or more optimistically (or is it arrogantly?), produce, certain effects or consequences?
In review:
16. How might Freire’s conception of teacher as “cultural worker” bump up against Aoki’s notion of “tactful leader”?
17. In what ways might Henderson’s understanding of reflective practice conflict and/or coincide with Aoki’s understanding of pedagogical thoughtfulness?