Education 1101Education and Modern Society

Christopher W. JohnsonMontague 80Tuesdays / 4:6:45cwjohnso@d.umn.eduEngineering 213 (outside of library)

Teachers, Schools, and Society (Sadker & Zittleman).

The Teaching Profession and You

First Memories of School

Recall your first days of school… in different years. Note the sensory details.

First Teachers? Worst Teachers Best Teachers Family memories of teachers? How do you see teachers?

Question: Why do people choose teaching?

Primary Reasons for Teaching A Calling…born to be a teacher The Love of Children…works in

progress The Desire to Help…the enduring

potential to construct and reconstruct both themselves and their social world

Love of Subject Matter Default choice?

Which most describes your desire to become an educator?

17%

17%

17%17%

17%

17%

A calling The love of child...

The desire to help Love of Subject m...

Don’t know what e... I wouldn’t become...

1. A calling2. The love of children3. The desire to help4. Love of Subject

matter5. Don’t know what

else to do6. I wouldn’t become

a teacher

Why do (should?) students go to school?

Why Students Go to School: the Purposes of Education

Preserving and transmitting the past cultural heritage

Selecting and preparing students for occupational status levels

Preparing students to build a better society

It is the law (why?)

Why are you at U.M.D.?

25%

25%

25%

25%

To get a job. To learn more, be...

To make things be... My parents said I ...

1. To get a job. 2. To learn more,

become smarter3. To make things

better for the next generation

4. My parents said I had to go.

Preserving and Transmitting the Cultural Heritage

A rich tradition of enduring truths and values for each succeeding generation

A certain fund of knowledge must be possessed…cultural literacy…to be considered educated and to be successful in society

Rapid change, global market economy, multiculturalism militate against this approach, say critics

Selecting and Preparing Students for Occupational Status Levels

Certifying students for the world of work

Meritocracy…those who are the brightest and work the hardest, will go the furthest (tracking systems)

Perpetuating inequalities, critics say, based on class, race, gender

Preparing Students to Build a Better Society

Students can learn skills of social reform and to be tomorrow’s leaders

An informed citizenry is needed to have a productive society…Jefferson

Students will leave school overly idealistic and under skilled for success, some critics say

Do you think the schools you went to best prepared you to…

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33% 33%33%1. Get a good job in

the future2. Make a more just

and fair society3. Learn the rich

heritage from the past

About Teaching You’re not alone Roar of the crowd I’m proud Intellectual Life Artistic Make a difference Salary / Vacation

Lose the crowd Loneliness No respect Mindless Routine Conformity Burn-out (idealism) Weak professional

status

Teachers as Understood by Teacher Trainers. We Call These Dispositions

Teachers who are themselves lifelong learners and constantly updating their skills

Teachers committed to teaching children to be active learners.

Teachers who have high expectations of all of their students

Teachers who are deeply knowledgeable about their subject area

The Traditional Scenario

Teaching is about discipline Teaching is about control Teaching is about passivity Teaching is about competition Teaching is about values such as

punctuality, honesty, politeness

Changes influencing Teaching and Learning

Focus on teacher quality…subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of students (mainstream and marginalized)

Changes in Student Demographics…ethnic and racial, language, social class (global market economy, downsizing, service-based economy have led to the “working poor”

Compensation Factors

Tenure Longevity Average Salaries Merit Pay

Teaching as a Profession Media Depictions

Soundbite Understandings

Criteria for a profession (p. 11 of text). Teachers are “born, not made.” All you need to know is the subject Teacher candidates are less talented

How Teachers are Prepared

Normal Schools Teacher Licensure Teaching Contracts (then & now) Alternative licensure

Students who do well in school

25%

25%

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Are usually the s... Have unfair advan...

Work the hardest Have the best fam...

1. Are usually the smartest ones

2. Have unfair advantages over the rest

3. Work the hardest4. Have the best

families

Ways of Teaching

Paying attention to power Many kinds of power: legal,

administrative, economic, military Can be seen as relations among

individuals or groups based on social, political, and material imbalances or asymmetries

The most important kind of power anyone can have is

1. Legal power2. Administrative

power3. Economic power4. Military power

Power used in Education

Social, Political, Material Visible and Invisible…norms, expectations,

school rules and demands and expectations of individuals, institutions, and agencies

The Dominant Discourse…determines what counts as true, important, relevant, what gets spoken and what remains unsaid

Pedagogy requires an understanding of power

L.S. Vygotsky, Educational Psychology, 1921-23

We have seen that the individual’s own experience is the only teacher capable of forming new reactions in the individual. Only those relations are real for an individual that are given to him in his personal experience. This is why the student’s personal experience becomes the fundamental basis of pedagogical work. Strictly speaking, and from the scientific point of view, there is no other way of teaching….

….Ultimately the child teaches himself. It is in his organism as nowhere else that there occurs the decisive engagement between all those different factors that determine his behavior for years to come. In this sense, education, in every country, and in ever epoch, has always been social in nature…. Both in the seminary and in the old gymnasium, in the military school and in the schools for the daughters of the nobility, just as in the schools of ancient Greece and those of the Middle Ages and in the East, it was never the teacher and the tutor who did the teaching, but the particular social environment which was created for each individual instance. (Therefore), the assumption that the student is simply passive, just like the underestimation of his personal experience, is the greatest of sins, since it takes as its foundation the false rule that the teachers is everything and the student is nothing.

Progressive Education (Grant & Gillette 2006)

Dramatic demographic changes, familial patterns

Globalization of the economy, environment, labor, politics, culture

Curriculum reform movements Cultural transformation and social

transformation

Multicultural Education All aspects of schooling address the needs

and talents of a diverse population to ensure equity for all. It is both a philosophy and a process.

EMCSR…education that is multicultural and social reconstructionist to respond to changing population demographics, the influence of globalization, shifting conceptions of what knowledge and whose knowledge should influence the curriculum

Six key elements in a reconstructionist approach

Connect educational philosophy to a broader social philosophy grounded in democratic values

Schools cannot be “neutral” Not only cognitive but also moral discourse Students participate in communal

experiences Open discussion embracing differences Teachers as transformative intellectuals

Education 1101 You are a “consumer” of education,

and teacher education Understanding education… part of a

liberal education? Education as a case study for

business Governance and democracy Parenting Taxpayers

Course Nuts and Bolts

Course Website Email Montague 120 (How to Use It) Teaching Assistant Homework Clickers ITSS Portfolio

INTASCPORTFOLIORUBRIC_000.doc Portfolio Entry1.doc