(originally published in 16 Tons, Feb. 2003)
written by Jeff Stickney, Bayview SS
Courage has many forms, and it usually has a price. When our District held a conference last Spring on homophobia and hetero-sexism, that took courage. The recurring RISE and QUEST conferences are a demonstration of our District’s courage: its enduring resolve to work on issues of equity and inclusivity that some might just wish away. Creating additional release time for professional development on November 29th was also a demonstration of courage.
It sent a clear message to Queen’s Park that teachers and administrators need time to work together in figuring out how to best implement the challenging and often perplexing curriculum reform.
I thanked Bill Hogarth for creating that opportunity when he called me back in response to a letter I had sent him the same day, regarding the handling of lunch-time throughout our system. We had a frank discussion of the fairly widespread misinterpretation of what a “laid-on lunch” meant for that day, and I was reassured in the end that we could exercise OQf civic right to go out for lunch. Thankfully, the good will generated by the release time was not lost on the lunch; nor was our professional friendship and mutual respect. Through initiatives like New Directions, Bill (our Director) has created the openness in our system that makes this kind of communication -including this journal- possible.
What I do want to expound on, though, is the need for each of us - at all levels in our system - to continue to press (courageously perhaps) for alternative forms of professional development time. It is imperative that we send the message that what is needed is not just the laid on workshops, the guest speakers, or the big meetings, as important or as valuable as these may be. More trust must be extended to individuals to work professionally, either on their own or in teams of their own making, to develop curriculum and to problem-solve issues around the reform. When larger groups are brought together on these professional development days, more effort could be made to engage the critical thinking skills of the teachers and administrators in the audience. All too often we pacify our own educators with information delivery and training sessions (verbal memos) that contradict the spirit of the reform they are intended to convey. Acquiescence and compliance are not categories on the achievement charts (rubrics): thinking & inquiry is, and so it should be present in our discussions of the curriculum reform itself.
I applaud the student who speaks up in class and respectfully points out an error in my teachings or judgments; conversely, it often takes as much or more courage to admit a mistake, and to publicly unravel its mis-educative effects. Much as it would be irrational to expect of our students that they hold our teachings unshakably, without giving critical thought as to the evidence or strength of argumentation, it would be a sorry waste of professional development time if we spent most of it passively receiving doctrinaire pronouncements on effective teaching & assessment bits of wisdom garnered from books we never get time to read, delivered on overheads, font size 24, and read out loud to a stifled, irfantalized audience. [Note :This is a generic problem, and not an indictment of my colleagues at Bayview or friends in Curriculum.]
Instead of chanting empty slogans such as “design backwards” or “assess for success”, professional educators should be questioning the evidentiary basis of the reform: including questions of what warrants the evidence presented as evidence (Toulmin). Is it merely argument by authority or doxographical and anecdotal accounts (e.g., citing, in passing, the opinions of Wiggins & Stiggins, ‘common sense ‘ or isolated experiences), or is there an empirical basis and verifiable, longitudinal and culturally sensitive research to which we can refer (i.e., is there warranted assertability in the truth claims being made on behalf of the reform)? [Ask yourself: what would you want your dentist to do before switching the kind of amalgam used in your fillings. What if he/she simply followed the lead of a paradigm shift in dentistry, without actually reading the literature supporting it?] In the interest of developing what Michael Fullan calls a “professional learning culture”, it might be appropriate, for instance, to offer the staff readings considered foundational to the reform, and then to allow for critical discussion of the findings and the methods. These kinds of higher-order activities are atypical of professional development workshops and presentations, the majority of which are targeted at the affective instead of the cognitive domain. It is not just motivation or encouragement that we need, however, but the freedom to test assumptions and claims regarding pedagogical models, and the liberty to experiment with alternative models in our classroom.
With Teacher Performance Appraisals (ratings across 134 stipulative look-fors), there may be even less appreciation of alternative pedagogies and less tolerance of professional eclecticism. A consequence of the accountability movement has been increasing pressure toward compliance with mandated reform initiatives - the regimes of truth in education that are supported more by power structures than by rational argumentation over pedagogy. We need to break out of the potentially demoralizing, hegemonic grip of what Andy Hargreaves called “solaced standardization” (at Quest for Optimism, 2002), referring to the reductive approach of the over-built, expectations based curriculum reform in Ontario: a singularly atomistic view that diminishes teaching to ‘measuring’ too many bits of learning. Instead of glossing over or patching the internal contradictions within Secondary School Reform (e.g., the claim that ‘applied and academic are not different levels, but different learning styles’), some of our professional time should be devoted to exposing them. It is unconscionable that we have dragged our feet into the double cohort year without really resolving the conundrum over assessment and evaluation: the extent to which students entering university may not be able to calculate their percentage marks independently of the teacher, and therefore without the ability to scrutinize human errors in tabulation. This is no small matter, to be equitable, both parties must have access to the data and the formula used in determining final marks; this written agreement forms the basis for appeals. “Eye-balling marks” for ‘ consistency ‘ and using “professional judgment” as to whether mean, median or mode are, best utilized in each individual case (as spelled out in “Appendix K” of our Assessment Guidelines) increases the subjective (non-veridical) element and potentially undermines fair arbitration in disputes over marks. What I am suggesting is that we should not be passively accepting these decisions: we should also be testing, evaluating and challenging them in light of our practice as classroom teachers. Part ofthe courage we need to muster on professional development days is not just the gumption to affirm our right to go out for lunch, but to reclaim our professional right and obligation to think.
Just as it took courage and hard work to advocate for a more student-centred pedagogy and curriculum, it is going to take collective resolve to reclaim a teacher-centred focus for professional development. P.D. ought to be, foremost, our time to use responsibly; P.L.P.’s, our professional leaming plans, to create and implement as we deem appropriate, not as the Ministry of Education sees fit. The courage we are showing in doing, but not reporting our professional development to the College of Teachers is one step in this direction of reclaiming our professional self-determination. Another step is to ensure that Annual Learning plans are designed around the needs and growth trajectories of the individual teacher, and not the extrinsic goals ofthe school or organization. If learning plans are to be authentic testimonies and a meaningful exercise in professional reflection, we must resist the humbling influence of pastoral supervision that would pre-format and authorize these confessions.
Such forms of non-compliance and assertiveness are not as radical or new as they may seem. They stem from one of the Grand Narratives of our culture: the liberal, Enlightenment tradition (Kant), much celebrated in the educational literature of the 1960’s and 70’s. Within this tradition, individuals are viewed as rational, autonomous persons who exercise their will through choices. ‘Teaching is thus regarded as an eclectic, practical art (Schwab) that allows for reasonable difference - a rational and affective “conversation of instruction” (to paraphrase Oakeshott, Scheffler, Green, Hirst & Peters), instead of a battery of training, indoctrination or conditioning. What I have been advocating is that we apply the canons of rationality embedded in our respective disciplines to the critical understanding of the reformations passed down to us. It is this kind of liberal tradition into which we are initiating and engaging our students: one that we must continuously re-create for ourselves and (in postmodem fashion) de-construct for all its brilliant tropes (its rhetorical mask as the voice of reason). It requires not only approbation for, and the promulgation of, select moral dispositions, but the cultivation and promotion of intellectual virtues: not only courage (passion), but also reason. Our form of education (within modernity) is as much about intellectual honesty as integrity of character: about “coming clean” about the language-games we play out, and the truth claims we make, within the web of curriculum reforms and “effective schools” movements we are entangled in. It requires, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, an ongoing battle against the bewitchment of the intellect by means of language.
Jeff Stickney
Bayview S.S. |
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