‘Thought Cultures’ in Colleges of Education

A Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, University of Exeter, 11-14 September, 2002.

Margaret Sinkinson

Senior Lecturer

Centre for Health & Physical Education

Auckland College of Education

Private Bag 92 601

Symonds Street

Auckland

New Zealand

ABSTRACT:

Theoretical thinking that supports teacher education institutional cultures is examined in this paper and related tensions that may arise for both pre-service teachers and their teacher educators are considered.

Commitment by teacher educators to developing a particular type of ‘thinking professional’, one who is able to demonstrate critically reflective awareness of schooling, education, society and the teacher’s role in a post-modern world is examined. The development of such socially-critical thinking in both practising and pre-service teachers is seen as a logical and effective way of challenging some of the values embedded in education systems and institutions. But the deconstructive nature of critically reflective thought may not always be as empowering or as enabling as we would like it to be, and the process of critical reflection itself has the potential to create cultures that are not always healthy. Questions related to how useful – or safe – it is for our pre-service teachers to be critiquing and challenging the cultures of educational institutions within which they operate, are raised.

Please note that this paper is a work in progress

The debating points raised in this paper are based on issues that arose during a research project for a Master of Education thesis, completed early in 2000. The focus of that research was on the development of critically reflective perspectives in pre-service teachers through a professional mentoring process [Sinkinson, 2000]. Inherent in a critically reflective perspective is a process of analysis through deconstruction, and during the research several questions relating to the problematic nature of deconstructive analysis emerged, three of which are debated in this paper. They are; Why is it deemed desirable to have critically reflective pre-service teachers? Is the deconstructive nature of critical reflection particularly good for student mental health? And does critical reflection have any particular value or relevance in the cultures of predominantly ‘traditional’ schools or the growing number of ‘corporate’ – or business sponsored –schools and tertiary institutions?

If teacher educators were to be asked what it is they most hope to achieve through their delivery of teacher education, the answer may well include an expression of intent to develop within the pre-service teacher the potential to be a thinking professional. Ask these teacher educators to define the ‘thinking professional’ however, and you are likely to be presented with a continuum of descriptions that range from the self-evaluative practitioner through to the critical, political analyst. And almost always guaranteed in their responses will be a reference of one kind or another to ‘reflection’ – the reflective practitioner, reflective action, reflection in action, on action and for action, reflective pedagogy [Sinclair, Fox, Sheehan, Anderson & Ashman, 1999]. These commonly used and seemingly interchangeable terms have noticeable currency within teacher education rhetoric.

‘Cultures of reflection’ within colleges of education are clearly seen as desirable by many working in teacher education today, with the ‘critically reflective practitioner’ presenting as the consummate thinking professional in the minds of many teacher educators [Emery, 1996, Bullough. Jr, 1989, Smyth, 1989b]. For these educators the critically reflective practitioner is the one who demonstrates the skills, will and discernment necessary to become an advocate for groups or individuals against whom structures and systems within schooling and education may work.

But what is critical reflection? The epistemological assumptions which inform critically reflective practice are based on critical theory, and more latterly, post modern interpretations of ‘knowledge and knowing’ [Gibson, 1986; Habermas, 1990; Kelly, 1990; Lovat & Smith, 1995; Smith, 1999; Van Manen, 1977]. As Smith [1999] explains, it is a critical knowing that “…has as its purpose the emancipation of knowers through developing a deeper understanding of the relationship between individual actions and their locations in wider socio-political and economic frameworks” [p.8].

This process of ‘critical knowing’ involves an examination of beliefs, assumptions – or dogma – that inform teaching practices, an identification of alternatives or changes that are available in any given context, and an anticipation of possible consequences to those alternatives [ibid.]. To ensure this ‘critical knowing’ the culture of the institution within which the pre-service teacher is sited must foster opportunity to apply deconstructive analyses to issues related to schooling, the curriculum, and pedagogy.

It would seem that confusion exists as to what actually constitutes critical reflection and for some teacher educators the definition of a ‘critically reflective practitioner’ may remain largely unexplored. Consequently, attempts to develop a particular form of deconstructive thinking in pre-service teachers and an institutional culture that would encourage such thought, may be hindered. Key questions to explore might include:

What constitutes reflective practice, and when and how does reflection become critical reflection? What is the ‘critical’ in critical reflection? Perhaps more importantly, why are teacher educators concerned with educating pre-service teachers to be critically reflective practitioners when school administrators might argue that having a socially-critical consciousness is not necessarily useful for a neophyte teacher?

Giroux [1988] describes current educational theories and school practices as being grounded largely in modernist assumptions and ideals which are concerned with producing individuals who think critically, exercise social responsibility and work towards a world committed to liberal values of autonomy, reason, equity and freedom. Educational goals, aims and objectives are linked to an underpinning modernist belief in permanent change in a continual and progressive historic improvement in humankind. What is missing however is an understanding that socialising processes and legitimating codes are part of an education system that passes on a set of status quo assumptions presented as principled values. Giroux’s view is that constructs of post-modernism and critical theory offer educators new theoretical tools to rethink the context in which education is being presented. By incorporating tools of deconstruction, confrontation and reconstruction, critical reflection comes to initiate a broader insight into schooling and critical pedagogy, one which provides the grounds for a deepening and investigative concern with public life and social structures, through critical rationality.

Typically processes of reflection and critical reflection are presented as empowering. Empowerment evolves first within the self – self-knowledge, self-critique, self-analysis, self-discovery and self-efficacy. But ultimately teacher empowerment comes from the development of a critical and discerning understanding of social structures that work for or against certain groups or individuals [Hatton & Smith, 1995; Schon, 1987; 1991; Smith, 1999; Smyth, 1989b; Valli, 1993].

Smith identifies levels of reflection and suggests that there may be perceived hierarchies of reflective practices, with critical reflection being seen as the most developed form of reflection. He refers to Kemmis’ claim that all reflection on teaching must explore the double dialectic of thought / action and individual / society [Kemmis, 1996, cited in Smith, 1999, p.10]. Kemmis appears thereby to suggest that critical reflection is the only legitimate form of reflection. But Smith questions whether critical reflection is indeed a more liberating and evolved form of reflection. He points out the difficulties in both defining criteria for and finding evidence of demonstrations of critical reflectiveness in pre-service teachers. He argues also that there is no clear evidence to show that being a critically reflective practitioner ensures a more effective teacher than a more technical practitioner.

Bullough Jr [1989] identifies a continuum of reflectivity, on which we have at one end reflectivity “…directed primarily towards determining how to do something better while assuming educational purposes as given”, and at the other extreme “…issues relating to equality and justice” [p.16]. He also indicates the need to be conscious of the legitimacy of a chosen approach to reflectivity, because of what is at stake. As noted by Tom [1985, cited in Bullough Jr, 1989], decisions about how to define reflection as legitimate indicate ontology and inevitably mean embracing one epistemology or another.

Smyth [1989b] presents a ‘model for personal and professional empowerment’ that describes reflection as occurring most successfully when it begins with practitioners’ own experiences as they are assisted by their educators through a process of describing, informing, confronting and reconstructing theory and practice. Through the process practitioners gain some critical detachment on their own daily life, in what Shor and Freire [1987, p.43] call ‘an epistemological relationship to reality’. In time reflection at this level encompasses a concern for wider ethical, social and political contexts within which teaching occurs [Smyth, 1989b]. Students move towards reflecting on teaching and schooling in terms of technical, moral and ethical, and social and political dimensions [Zeichner, 1999]. Zeichner and Liston [1987], citing Tom [1985] state:

…critical reflection, incorporates moral and ethical criteria into the discourse about practical

action. At this level the central questions ask which educational goals, experiences, and

activities lead towards forms of life which are mediated by concerns for justice, equity, and

concrete fulfilment, and whether current arrangements serve important human needs and

important human purposes [p.25].

  • Why develop critically reflective pre-service teachers?

Enabling prospective teachers to develop the perception, ability and desire to assume greater roles in the directions of education and teaching is an ideal underpinning the practice of critical reflection. As future educators they may then take the responsibility of making decisions based on purposes justified on moral and educational as well as instructional grounds.

Deconstructive analysis – that is; applying a socially critical awareness to and mediating an identification of dominant, taken for granted political and social orders that are the prime influences on teachers’ conditions and activities – may help to prepare pre-service teachers to view knowledge and education as problematic and socially constructed rather than certain, and to approach curriculum content reflexively. Deconstruction is “…to render the familiarity of mass education strange” [Ball, in Atkinson, 2002, p78]. But developing this depth of socially critical understanding in pre-service teachers has its challenges. Zeichner et al [1987] explain how, prior to their pre-service education, many students have had little experience of reasoned analysis or of problematising their beliefs as part of their learning. Often much unlearning has to happen before critique and deconstructive analysis can occur and there may be learner resistance to developing this type of analysis. The underpinning critical theory and postmodern concepts may be quite new to the students, and contributing to critical debate outside of their previous educational experiences or expectations.

Engaging students in critical debate however, increases the likelihood of their developing an understanding of how knowledge and organisational structures may be engendered by ‘conventional wisdom’ and traditions of schooling [Armaline & Hoover, 1989]. Institutional traditions sometimes risk cultivating cultures of silence. Rodriguez [1995] identifies these traditions as ‘operational theories’ – basic, taken for granted assumptions about the ways in which the institution or organisation operates. Operational theories often go unrecognised, unchallenged and unscrutinised by its members, and Rodriguez’s belief is that until they are critically examined for evidence that all equity and power issues play little or no role in their development, they will continue to disempower and marginalise certain groups within that institution. Encouraging pre-service teachers to collaboratively analyse and examine their own experiences of education facilitates a recognition of those constitutive meanings, social rules, values and typical motives that govern many educational institutions [Comstock, 1982]. The students come to recognise the meaning they themselves give to structures that sometimes serve to constrain or invalidate their own teaching practices. To quote Dippo [1988, in Smyth, 1989b], teacher education must provide practitioners with:

…the tools and resources they need to recognise, analyse, and address the contradictions

and in so doing open-up the possibility that conditions in schools …. can be different…

[S]uch empowering educational goals [are] clearly linked to the larger political project

of redefining existing social and economic relations [p.4].

Tom [1985, cited in Smyth, 1989b p.4] describes critical reflection as characterised by its identification of the ‘arena of the problematic’ – that is, raising doubts about what, under ordinary circumstances, appears to be effective or wise practice. He signals however, that there may be lack of agreement over the object of that problematisation. It can range from micro aspects of teaching practices and subject knowledge, through to macro concerns about political and ethical factors underlying teaching, schooling or wider institutions and hierarchies of society. Smyth’s position is clear however. He believes that focussing on the micro, reductionist aspects of practice has a technocratic orientation, and failure to consider wider ethical, political scenery is to overlook “…crucial linkage between issues of agency and structure and to relegate teachers to being nothing more than ‘a cog in a self-perpetuating machine’…” [p.4]. His recommendation is that teacher education focus on developing in pre-service teachers the ability to question notions of power and ideology behind knowledge, and to gain the confidence to confront deficiencies within education systems that are frequently ascribed to teacher inadequacies. The reflective process advocated by Smyth requires a critique of the ideas positioned by existing structures and systems, an unpacking of histories to expose the origins of personal and societal values, beliefs and assumptions, and an accompanying notion of how things might be done differently.

  • Is critical reflection safe in ‘traditional’ school cultures?

The professional safety of our pre-service teachers in some school cultures was one question raised in the critical reflection debate. A concern voiced during my own research was whether our commitment to educating students to become critically reflective practitioners was shared by school communities [Sinkinson, 2000]. Schools operating within traditional hierarchies of management, where entrenched expectations decree thatteachers know their position within that hierarchy, still exist. Senior administrators within such hierarchies are not necessarily looking for challenging and scrutinising observations by more junior staff members. Our own students expressed concern that their vocalised critically reflective perspectives might easily be seen as criticism or lack of respect for more ‘senior’ knowledge [ibid].

Prevalent ideologies of schooling and the ideologies of teacher education programmes are often at odds [Armaline et al, 1989] and critical reflection may simply be socialised out of our pre-service teachers once they are in schools. As Hass and Shaffir [cited in Zeichner et al, 1987] comment:

…the commonsense view of student teaching as a time for ‘final’ demonstration of previously

learned instructional skills, together with the students’ understandable desire to create favorable

[sic] impressions of their instructional competence in ‘the here and now’, have served to

undermine, to some degree, the program’s concerns with inquiry and reflection [Hass & Shaffir,

1982, cited in Zeichner et al, 1987, p.41].

The dilemma for the teacher educator, identified by Hass and Shaffir, and indeed confirmed by my own research interviews with students, is that some students – and associate teachers – continue to have expectations of apprenticeship models of teacher education. There may be little tolerance for the self-direction, independent thought, agency, or systems-critique we are asking of our students. They sometimes avoid deconstructive analysis of teachers’ pedagogical practices, and for some associate [tutor] teachers this may be the preferred situation.

Consider too that in most instances the practicing teacher is likely to be inputting into the student teacher’s assessment. This differential power factor, along with the need to get along with the associate teacher will, at best, facilitate a benevolent, benign relationship. As Morton-Cooper and Palmer [1993] suggest, what is useful to the organisation and culture of the school, and what is valued or looked for by the student teacher, may be at odds. Zeichner et al [1987] concluded that a dominant view of the teacher’s role is still that of a technician and this, they believe, encourages conformist orientations to self and society. Challenges to the hegemony of entrenched status quo beliefs about teaching by the emancipated novice teacher may put that teacher at risk. New teachers are not usually encouraged to question the system nor to implement alternative approaches early in their careers, especially by schools that are increasingly exposed to policies that promote greater control over content, processes and outcomes of teachers’ work [ibid]. Through their teacher education are our pre-service teachers being encouraged to think and act in ways that are not necessarily sanctioned by the institutions within which they will work? As the realisation dawns for these students that prescription and conformity may be the norm, their critical reflection could, in effect, give rise to a cynical and pessimistic view of the world of schooling.

Impressions of our own third year pre-service teachers, gained from research interviews and group meetings [Sinkinson, 2000], was that over the duration of their degree study these students generally had developed quite clear, socially-critical insight into the wider social contexts that impact on teaching practices. Frequently they presented as being informed and thoughtful. Considering their fledging experiences of teaching and schooling, their wisdom and insights at times were gratifying. During our research interviews demonstrations of deconstruction were commonplace, but at times I felt concern about where that deconstruction might take a person if a reconstructivist element was not included in the process. Without a reconstruction of both personal and social experiences [Gutek, 1997], the thinker may become sceptical, even cynical. Cross [1997] describes deconstruction as a tool of criticism that initially works well, but which eventually leads to profound scepticism. From this research arose an impression that critical reflection was not always liberating. Our students’ deconstructions sometimes led to their seeing the teaching profession as hegemonic and repressive, but they had little idea of how this might be changed. One student questioned whether she wanted to go teaching at all, considering the levels of accountability and the apparent progressive deprofessionalisation of teaching. As Baudrillard [cited in Cross, 1997] warns, beware of deconstructing into ‘the void’.