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Ignoring the Obvious: A Constructivist Critique of aTraditional Teacher Education ProgramDavid ChicoinePublished online: 17 Sep 2010.
To cite this article: David Chicoine (2004) Ignoring the Obvious: A Constructivist Critique of a Traditional TeacherEducation Program , Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 36:3, -, DOI: 10.1207/s15326993es3603_4
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THE SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS CLASSROOM
Ignoring the Obvious: A Constructivist Critique of theTraditional Teacher Education Program
DAVID CHICOINESUNY at New Paltz
The purpose of this article is to present the conclusions of a Deweyan-orientedconstructivist educator concerning what I believe to be a number of crucial dys-functional elements embedded in the very structure of the traditional teacher edu-cation program. My experience as a teacher educator has led me to conclude thatcertain time-honored aspects of traditionally structured teacher education, so longentrenched that they are virtually invisible to many of the participants, are never-theless largely inappropriate to creating the kind of activity rich, in-depth, person-alized instruction that constructivist educators believe to be essential to a qualityeducational experience. My assumption is that if our future teachers are not goingto teach as they were taught by many of their own primary and secondary teachers,teacher education courses must not only present the bodies of knowledge neededby future teachers to assume responsible positions as professionals, they must alsoconsistently model the kinds of pedagogical practices that are conducive to active,in-depth learning. However, the overall structure—in particular the structuring oftime—within which professors and students function in a traditional teacher edu-cation program, and which almost everyone (at least in my experience) seems toaccept unquestioningly, makes this virtually impossible. It is my contention thatunless such programs are profoundly restructured in ways that better facilitatepreservice teachers’ construction of knowledge, skills, and dispositions related toeffective teaching, progressive school reform in the twenty-first century will be thelikely casualty.
I want to emphasize at this point that these conclusions are essentially impres-sionistic in nature, and are derived from my personal experience teaching multiplesections of a Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education course over a pe-riod of approximately seven years, one Introduction to Curriculum and Assess-ment course, and two graduate Social Foundations courses in the teacher educationprogram of what I believe to be a fairly typical midsized state university. I have ar-rived at my opinions gradually, but I think inevitably, as a result of my own obser-
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vations, impressions, and reflections on my experiences with students, colleagues,and curriculum. An accumulated set of informal remarks made to me by my stu-dents and colleagues over the years has only reinforced these conclusions derivedfrom personal experience. Additionally, I wish to acknowledge that, as my critiqueof traditional teacher education programs is based on my experience teaching inonly one such program, it is clear that I am generalizing well beyond my experi-ence. Later in this article I define exactly what I mean by a “traditional teacher edu-cation program,” detailing eight key structural features and one cultural featurethat comprise such a program, all of which are dysfunctional from theconstructivist point of view. My belief is that the program in which I have beenteaching, and from which I derive my definition of a traditional teacher educationprogram, is reasonably typical of many across our nation; however, this is my con-jecture, and the reader can judge its merit at the conclusion of the article.
My primary concern at the heart of this critique is with the quality of experienceof the participants in the traditional teacher education program, both of thosetaught and those doing the teaching. In a sense, I have brought to bear two lenseson this issue: constructivist learning theory and phenomenological inquiry. Essen-tially, the latter is informed by the former; that is, I have used constructivist notionsto provide an explanation for the subjective responses I have observed in myselfand others to various structural components of the teacher education program ofwhich we have been a part.
Overview of Constructivist Approaches
Before proceeding to the main issue, it is important to review just what is meantby constructivism and the constructivist approach to education in general. Thiswill provide the foundation for engaging a bill of particulars in regard to how tradi-tional teacher education programs and constructivist principles clash in fundamen-tal, and, in my opinion, often educationally devastating ways. However, becauseconstructivism is a complicated concept with sophisticated psychological andphilosophical aspects, the following review is necessarily simplified to a consider-able degree.
Constructivism is a name given to an epistemology, to a particular theory oflearning related to that epistemology, and perhaps also to a philosophy of educa-tion in alignment with this epistemology and learning theory. The major alternativeparadigm to which constructivism is most often opposed is what I term theobjectivist/behaviorist view (see Murphy 1997).
Constructivism has many fathers, among whom many scholars privilege Dewey,Piaget, and Vygotsky. Also, there are many different versions or types ofconstructivism, two of which are important for these purposes—personal or cogni-tive constructivism and social constructivism (I have more to say about both in a mo-ment). Despite this variety of versions, however, they all hold in common the beliefin the constructed nature of knowledge. This, of course, is in direct opposition to the
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view that knowledge is fixed and independent of the knower, that is, that there is onegiven reality which resides outside of the knower, and that knowledge is an accumu-lation of the so-called “truths” that can be discovered about that reality.Constructivism rejects this notion and instead posits that learners come to every situ-ation with knowledge gained from previous experience, and that this prior knowl-edge influences what new or modified knowledge they will construct from newlearning experiences. Constructivism, in other words, does not view knowledge asobjective, or as descriptions of how the world is, but as models of how the worldmight be. These models are seen as a set of working hypotheses that must constantlybe revised toaccommodatenewexperienceandwhich“derive theirvaliditynot fromtheir accuracy in describing the real world, but from the accuracy of any predictionswhich might be based on them” (Hanley 1994; Postlethwaite 1993).
In essence, then, and true to its name, constructivism basically posits that weconstruct our own understanding of the world in which we live, and that we do soby reflecting on our experience, or as Dewey would have it, through the process ofthinking or reflection, we reconstruct our experience (Dewey 1933). Similarly,Piaget might have said that as we process our experience we construct schema,cognitive structures, in our search for meaning and understanding, and that this is aprocess of generating our own “rules” and “mental models,” which we then use tomake sense of our experience, both past and present (Piaget 1973). Thus, ratherthan acquiring the very ideas and concepts by which we understand reality, in avery important sense constructivists believe that we make them (Phillips 2000, 7),and that “understanding” is therefore always comprised of a set of patterns ofknowledge that are indisputably unique, as well as subject to revision in light offurther experience, or for that matter, simply further reflection.
Another crucial element in the theory of constructivism is the notion that newknowledge is only generated when some new experience seems to be in conflictwith our already established theories or notions of how things are or should be. Theold theory doesn’t work; its explanatory function fails, even contradicts, the importof the new experience, disturbing one’s cognitive equilibrium (McCarty andSchwandt 2000, 46). As Alfie Kohn (1999) put it
Learning isn’t a matter of acquiring new information and storing it on top of the
information we already have. It’s a matter of coming across something unex-
pected, something that can’t easily be explained by those theories we’ve already
developed. To resolve that conflict, we have to change what we previously be-
lieved. We have to reorganize our way of understanding to accommodate the
new reality we’ve just encountered. (132–133)
In summarizing these tenets, Hanley (1994) stated that, from the point of view of
constructivism, meaning is intimately connected with experience. Students
come into a classroom with their own experiences and a cognitive structure
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based on those experiences. These preconceived structures are either valid, in-
valid or incomplete. The learner will reformulate his or her existing structures
only if new information or experiences are connected to knowledge already in
memory. Inferences, elaborations, and relations between old perceptions and
new ideas must be personally drawn by the student in order for the new idea to
become an integrated, useful part of his/her memory. Memorized facts or infor-
mation that has not been connected with the learner’s prior experiences will be
quickly forgotten. In short, the learner must actively construct new information
onto his/her existing mental framework for meaningful learning to occur. (2)
Finally, constructivism may be seen as closely associated with Deweyan prag-matism, or experimentalism, in that it maintains that the “truth” of any knowledgeclaim can only be determined by its consequences. In other words, knowledge isseen to be determined experimentally and is therefore always tentative and not ab-solute, and thus its function is perceived to be instrumental rather than descriptive.Knowledge from the constructivist point of view, particularly influenced byDewey, is valued by how well it serves the purpose of living more intelligently,fully and morally, and thus knowledge construction serves a vital pragmatic pur-pose for both the individual and society (Dewey [1916] 1966).
This basic epistemological stance has a number of implications for any learningtheory associated with it, of which I will focus on only five. First, because knowl-edge is constructed by the learner, as opposed to being transmitted from teacher ortext, learning itself is viewed as an active process; simply, if learning is to takeplace, the learner must be actively constructing rather than passively receiving(Phillips 1995, Jonassen 1991). Second, because learners construct new under-standings in relation to what they already know, that prior knowledge is a key fac-tor in the new understandings the learner comes to develop (Brooks and Brooks1999; Brooks and Brooks 1993). Third, synthesizing the first two concepts, be-cause the process of knowledge construction is an active one as well as one that en-gages both new and previous personal experience, we are led to the conclusion thatthe learner creates new and unique understandings, and thus the construction ofnew understandings must be seen as an essentially creative process. In otherwords, construction of knowledge through reconstruction of experience is synony-mous with creating knowledge (Brooks and Brooks 1999; Phillips 1995). Fourth,because new knowledge is not constructed unless the old schema have proved in-adequate to explain new experience, a conflict between new experience and priorbeliefs is essential to motivate the learning process. Fifth, and finally, for many ofits proponents, constructivism implies that learning is primarily a social process(Phillips 1995; Vygotsky 1978).
Here, we leave Piaget and his individualistic personal or cognitiveconstructivism behind, and Dewey and Vygotsky now take center stage with thissecond version of constructivism that I mentioned earlier, social constructivism, or
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what is sometimes called situated social constructivism. This version foregroundsa sociocultural view that learning and understanding are social in origin, where, asAirasian and Walsh (1997) put it, “knowledge is seen as constructed by an individ-ual’s interaction with a social milieu in which he or she is situated, resulting in achange in both the individual and the milieu” (445).
Such a perspective is closely associated with the concept of distributed intelli-gence, the theory that intelligence resides not only in the individual mind but isalso distributed across one’s environment, both social and physical. Thus, althoughcognitive-oriented constructivist theories emphasize the individual learner’s ef-forts at exploration and discovery, the socially-oriented constructivist theoriesstress the collaboration process of groups of learners. Perceiving a close connec-tion between them, nondogmatic constructivist educators may, of course, reject themutual exclusiveness of the two theories, and therefore value both individual andgroup learning activities (see Cobb 1994).
To sum up, then, learning from the constructivist perspective
isviewedasaself-regulatoryprocessof strugglingwith theconflictbetweenex-
isting personal models of the world and discrepant new insights, constructing
new representations and models of reality as a human meaning-making venture
with culturally developed tools and symbols, and further negotiating such
meaning through cooperative social activity, discourse, and debate. (Fosnot
1996, ix)
The basic theory of constructivism has certain crucial pedagogical implica-tions. First, there are many educational goals which can be seen as congruent withconstructivist epistemology and learning theory, some of the most important being(1) students should move in the direction of “becom[ing] autonomous learners andthinkers” and doers, (2) they should “explore” (and come to value exploring) “im-portant questions,” and (3) they should “build and integrate [ever] deeper under-standings of knowledge” (Richetti and Sheerin 1999, 58).
Now, pedagogy to achieve these goals generates a much longer list. To namesome of the most important points, (1) because learning is seen as an active process(and the phrase often associated with a Deweyan educational approach, “learningby doing,” comes to mind here) as well as a creative process, the constructivistclassroom must provide challenging issues, problems, and projects that require ac-tive engagement such as researching, experimenting, and reporting (Brooks andBrooks 1999); (2) because of the constructivist view of knowledge as instrumentaland pragmatic, the teacher must see that these issues, problems, and projects fo-cused on by the students are not only interesting but relevant, in that they addressthe important larger issues beyond the classroom, and thus represent authentic,real-world tasks (Stiggens 2001; Brooks and Brooks 1999; Eisner 1994); (3) be-cause new knowledge is always built on prior knowledge, an essential ingredient in
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ensuring the relevance and interest of the curriculum to the students is to shareownership of that curriculum with them by negotiating what gets studied, how itgets studied, and how that learning gets assessed (Rush 1999; Eisner 1994); (4) be-cause of their ability to stimulate productive reflection which can lead to everdeeper understandings, constructivist pedagogy necessitates regular use of feed-back-intensive assessment tools such as narrative evaluation, portfolio assessment,and student conferences, as well peer assessment activities (see Stiggens 2001;Wiggens 1993); (5) to promote the autonomy of the students as intelligent thinkersand doers, the teacher must primarily assume the role of coach and mentor, provid-ing (often individualized) guidance such that it leads each of the students not onlyin the right direction to solve the problem at hand, but also in the direction of even-tual independence; (6) complementary to such an approach is the fostering ofmetacognitive skills and self regulation, which implies a vital and ongoing focuson thoughtful self-evaluation activities; (7) because new concepts are seen asbuilding on and evolving out of current understandings, the educator must findways to surface these understandings and then challenge them in respectful waysthat engage and refine the students’ critical thinking abilities and appreciation ofmultiple perspectives; (8) because knowledge construction is seen (by manyconstructivists) largely as a social process, the educator must first ensure that theclass quickly develops into a true microcommunity, where it is safe to take intellec-tual risks and to discuss ideas and feelings openly; and (9) once a genuine commu-nity spirit has developed, the educator must see that frequent and diverse opportu-nities are provided for rich collaborative experiences, such as partner and smallgroup discussions and projects as well as whole class thematic discussions, pro-jects, and debates.
As I stated, this is only a partial list, yet I believe it will serve to support a majorpoint on which I will build my critique of traditional teacher education, and thatpoint is that virtually all of these constructivist goals and the pedagogical method-ologies related to them are time intensive. During my review of the literature, I re-peatedly encountered this idea, often couched as a warning that the would-beconstructivist teacher should be aware that this approach to learning implies theneed for a very different structuring of time in the learning environment (see, forexample, Perkins 1999; Airasian and Walsh 1997, 447–448; Brooks and Brooks1999; Southwest Educational Development Laboratory 1996; Hanley 1994, 4;Brooks and Brooks 1993; Wiggins 1993, 42). When the objectivist/behavioristmodel, predicated largely on teacher-as-lecturer and facilitator of textbook contentacquisition, is replaced by such activities as negotiation of learning goals and cur-riculum, small group and class discussions and debates around authentic issuesand focused on critical thinking skills, individual and group projects such as keep-ing journals and writing essays, research projects and oral reports; opportunities torevise one’s work; self and peer evaluation; careful and individualized feedback on
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student performance; and so forth, it becomes impossible to ignore the fact thatwhat might be called authentic learning activities that value process over productsimply take up much more time than does the lecture-memorize-and-testapproach—time both in the classroom and outside of it, and both the time of thestudents and of the teacher.
Structural Barriers to Constructivist Teaching in TraditionalTeacher Education Programs
Now I turn to my personal laboratory, my Social and Philosophical Foundationsof Education, Introduction to Curriculum and Assessment, and Social Foundationsclassrooms, and the teacher education program that is their context. In what fol-lows I share my interpretation of my experience teaching in a traditional teachereducation program and the meaning I construe (or should I say construct?) fromthat experience.
As a self-identified constructivist teacher, I find myself battling with the con-straints on my time and essentially losing that battle on virtually a daily basis. Ialso see the quality of the work of so many of my students as negatively impactedby their own insufficient possession of this scarce and yet most precious educa-tional resource, time. Indeed, my experience has been that almost every aspect ofboth the professors’ and the students’ experience is starved for time.
In what follows, I hope to demonstrate how eight specific structures plus onecultural feature of a traditionally structured teacher education program influencevirtually every aspect of both the professors’ and the students’ experience in a dys-functional way.
The dysfunctional structures of a traditional teacher education program are:
1. Student course load2. Faculty teaching load3. Number and length of class meetings4. Semester length5. Class size6. Curriculum mandates7. Program length8. Widespread use of adjuncts
(9) Little encouragement for intra- and/or inter-departmental collaboration(cultural rather than structural problem, but related to lack of time and thusthe structures listed above)
These largely invisible, ultimately arbitrary—in the sense that alternatives canbe imagined— structural/cultural choices circumscribe everything that happens
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and collectively exert a powerful but mostly unacknowledged influence on thekinds and quality of activities that are engaged in, of which I identify eight specificnegative consequences.
The negative educational consequences of the 8 dysfunctional structures are:
1. Amount and depth of knowledge, skills and dispositions that can be fo-cused on (including remediation)
2. Kinds and quality of class activities that can be engaged in3. Kinds and amount of assignments that can be given4. Quantity and quality of feedback for written and oral work.5. Number and length of student conferences6. Quality of student-teacher relationship7. Program coherence and continuity8. Program innovation
Let me address each of the eight dysfunctional structural features as I perceivethem to play out in the institutional setting where I have been teaching.
First, in multiple ways, significant time constraints are placed on both the stu-dent and the faculty in the traditional teacher education program. One major waytime is constrained is through the size of the course loads the students are encour-aged (and those on scholarship are required) to take. Workload is simply anotherdimension of time: too much work means too little time in which to do it. At my in-stitution, a five-course load (for fifteen credit hours) is considered normal, sixcourses (for eighteen credit hours) heavy but not at all unusual, and twenty ortwenty-one credit hours not unheard of. This leads inevitably to the situation wherethere is considerable pressure on each professor to limit the time and energy com-ponents of the total assignment load he or she gives to the class so as not to burdenthe students so heavily that they are unable to successfully complete assignmentsfrom their other classes.
In other words, the average five-course load is often (and perhaps usually) sim-ply too burdensome to allow the professor to present, or the student to explore, thesubject matter of any one of them in any real depth. Each of these courses repre-sents an immense body of knowledge, much of which a future teacher does indeedneed to acquire to perform professionally on receiving employment in a school.The Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education course I teach, for in-stance, is responsible for “covering” the social/cultural (sociological) foundationsof education, including the politics and economics of education, the philosophicalfoundations of education, the history of education, and particularly of Americaneducation, as well as the legal dimensions of education, and the ethical/moral di-mensions of education—all this in a one-semester, three-credit-hour course. Inlight of this immense curriculum, is it any wonder that even constructivist-orientedteacher educators often find themselves pushed in the direction of more frequent
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use of a lecture-dominated pedagogical approach—which of course subverts thekinds of active learning activities constructivists believe to be essential to a richand authentic learning experience—merely because there is so little time to coverso much vital material? The alternative, to cover only a small portion of the knowl-edge “territory” but in satisfying depth, represents an equally disheartening choicefor the constructivist educator—a Hobbesian choice, in effect—precisely becausea great deal of essential material and the related skills and dispositions have to bejettisoned.
This situation deserves a closer look. First, a formula is officially put forwardat my school where the student should expect that for every hour of class time,three hours of out of class time engagement in related learning activities shouldbe expected. Thus, for one three-credit-hour course, two and a half hours in classplus seven and a half hours of outside classwork equals ten hours of total timeper week (and for many education courses, my own not excepted, this representsan often significant underestimation). Multiply this by five courses for the aver-age student and you have (a minimum of) fifty hours per week of course-relatedwork, and for six courses it is sixty hours per week. Many of the students—cer-tainly the majority of those I have taught—also have jobs due to economic ne-cessity, which require twenty, twenty-five, or even thirty or more hours a weekof their time. And we cannot ignore the fact that students, especially those intheir early twenties, have time intensive social developmental needs. Also, manyof the older students returning to get certification have families with their ownimportant time intensive needs. Putting all this together, you arrive at a crushingworkload with a frenetic lifestyle where chronic sleep deprivation and highstress loads are the norm. Needless to say, all this works against both the kind ofquality of intellectual involvement that a constructivist approach demands from astudent and the amount of material a professor can “cover” as well as the depthin which it can be explored.
Another means by which the traditional structure circumscribes what the pro-fessor can teach is constraining how he or she can teach it. I am referring to thephenomenon of each semester being approximately fifteen weeks long, generallywith each course comprised of one two-hour and thirty minute session or twoone-hour and fifteen-minute sessions each week. The latter arrangement, perhapsthe most frequently employed on my campus, places serious constraints on mostpedagogical strategies which employ learning activities particularly suited toconstructivist oriented learning, such as student oral presentations, discussions,debates, role playing, and so forth. For example, it has been my experience thatsome of the best discussions or debates following a setup presentation by the pro-fessor or student(s) are cut off by the end of the class period, just when they are ap-proaching their most interesting and productive phase.
Further, the length of the semester, and, for that matter, the two-year length ofthe teacher education program itself, can both be problematic. Due to the large
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class sizes (and having multiple classes to teach) combined with class meetingswhich occur only once or twice weekly, I find regularly that I am just beginningto know my students really well by the end of a fifteen-week semester, and thatthe comfortable, safe atmosphere required for the kind of in-depth and seriousdiscussions that can challenge students’ stereotypes and open them up to thekind of self scrutiny required to develop their critical thinking skills is just beingfirmly established. The lack of long-term continuity between the professor andthe students dictated by the fifteen-week semester schedule represents the sacri-fice of invaluable potential from the constructivist point of view. Additionally, asmentioned earlier, attempting to cover in a single semester the wide range oftopics and issues vital to a solid grounding in the social and philosophical foun-dations of education leads to nothing less than painful educational triage. I be-lieve that the sheer size of the prescribed content of many of the teacher educa-tion courses, such as the Social and Philosophical Foundations course, theIntroduction to Curriculum and Assessment course, and the graduate SocialFoundations course (all of which I have taught), dictates that they should (atminimum, if I am to be honest) be considered two-semester courses, yet the tra-ditional two-year length of the teacher education program makes this virtuallyimpossible to accommodate.
All this is complicated by another factor alluded to earlier: class size. In thedepartment where I teach, twenty-eight is presently the recommended maximumclass size (it has been growing lately due to economic pressures and the relent-less drive to “corporatize” the university), although in fact—because demand of-ten exceeds supply and some professors have a hard time denying access to thecourse to those who really want it—courses may exceed this number. The rec-ommended maximum class size for a “writing intensive” course, where the writ-ing component is substantial, is twenty-two. (And let me add here that, based onconstructivist theory as well as personal observation, I believe virtually allteacher education courses should be writing intensive. It has been my experiencethat writing is perhaps the most effective and practical way available to the stu-dent to intelligently reconstruct experience, and, with appropriate feedback frompeers and instructors, develop critical thinking skills). In the case of both classsizes, but most egregiously with the standard one of twenty-eight, I have foundthat my ability to employ student oral presentations, a crucial active learningmethod (which, in these classes of future teachers, are twenty minutes long andwhich I refer to as “opportunities to teach the class”), followed by presenter-ledclass discussions (of twenty to thirty minutes or longer), is severely curtailed.There are simply too many students and not enough time. Also, I have found aclass of twenty-eight students to be too large to foster the kind of safe atmo-sphere where everyone feels comfortable in contributing to class discussion, avital component to educational success from a constructivist point of view. (If, ingood constructivist community building fashion, you arrange the twenty-eight
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desks in a circle— provided you have a classroom large enough to accommodatesuch expansive geometry—you almost feel like you need binoculars to seesomeone across from you.) And, as I have noted, even with a class size oftwenty-two, a good deal of the semester often goes by before such a safe atmo-sphere can be firmly established.
There is another educational casualty related to the unreasonable course-loaddemands placed on the students: someone must teach all these courses. At the timeof this writing, the standard teaching course load of teacher educators in my de-partment is three courses each semester. Given the other demands placed on theprofessor in addition to teaching and teaching preparation—such as office hoursfor conferencing and student advising, scholarship and publication, communityservice in the form of committee work at a number of levels, plus developing ongo-ing relationships with surrounding schools—the minimal time and energy remain-ing place severe practical constraints on the kinds of assignments that can be givenand assessment practices that can be employed. For example, when studentsclearly need to further their learning and writing skills through research paper andessay assignments, the professor instead can feel pressured to give quizzes and ex-ams, only because research papers and essays take too long to read, analyze, andprovide adequate written feedback. Also, where future professional teachersclearly need a certain degree of individualized instruction and mentoring (that isimplicit in the constructivist approach), the large class sizes combined with thelarge overall student load make it virtually impossible for a professor to establishany kind of personalized relationship with more than a handful of students. The ex-pected four hours of office time per week is entirely inadequate to conference inany regular and meaningful way with eighty, let alone a hundred or more, students.Even if you could find time to meet with all your students regularly, chances aremany of them will be too busy to meet with you at the times available.
From a constructivist point of view, this is all complicated by the particulartypes and urgency of the learning needs the students present. I find that a signifi-cant (and seemingly ever increasing) percentage of my students, especially thosetransferring from community colleges, enter my writing intensive sections in needof significant remediation in a number of key skill areas, including those related toreading comprehension, summarizing, grammar and spelling, paragraphing, essayform, oral presentation, and so forth. This remediation, if done properly, is particu-larly time intensive, as it involves writing extensive commentary on written workand oral presentations, encouraging (or requiring) revisions of major written as-signments (including written reflection on the process and results), and frequentand lengthy student conferencing (in person or through e-mail), both to scaffold ef-fectively in advance of a challenging assignment and to provide constructive feed-back after the fact. The time required to do this remediation is extremely difficultto find given all the other competing responsibilities placed on full-time faculty(and students).
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The situation is generally even worse when it comes to the adjunct professor,who, in many institutions, teaches a considerable percentage of introductoryteacher education courses. The average adjunct where I teach may have even lesstime and energy available, often due to the need to commute to a number of institu-tions, and due to the fact that this time and energy is not compensated for finan-cially, but also is not given an office—or any other designated place, for that mat-ter—in which to meet with students.
Yet another aspect of the traditionally structured teacher education program thatundermines an effective education of our future teachers is the lack of systematiccoordination in two vital areas: (1) between those who teach the same subject orcourse, and (2) between those responsible for continuity within the overall se-quence of courses throughout the program. In the traditional setup where I teach,each professor is something of a duke or duchess, with his or her classes compris-ing an independent dukedom or duchy. In at least one of the departments I’veworked, there has been no systematic sharing of perspectives on course content orpedagogy between those who teach the same course or related courses (such as“foundational” courses). (It should be noted here that adjuncts, in particular, areleft out of the loop, not invited to departmental or unit meetings.) Further, althoughall education majors must take courses in more than one department in the schoolof education, during the time I have been teaching, each department has had a moataround its castle, with the drawbridge coming down only rarely. This failure tocommunicate and collaborate effectively within and across departments makestrue program coherence impossible to attain.1
I just want to note briefly that from a constructivist perspective, the integrationthroughout the teacher education experience of theory and practice—authentic,real-world experience in the school and classroom with careful, systematic reflec-tion and exploration of the related theory—holds perhaps the greatest potential forcreating a truly professionalized profession of teaching. This, I believe, is best rep-resented by the now well-researched and documented professional developmentschool (PDS)/partner school model.2 However, the painful irony is that ambitiousreforms such as this are also likely casualties of the hidden structures outlined ear-lier, which often effectively preclude the kinds of long-term, in-depth conversa-tions and collaborations that are needed to catalyze the introduction of such majornew initiatives.
It should be noted that virtually all of these dysfunctional features have beenaround for a long time, having had their genesis in the same relentless quest for “ef-ficiency” that swept through the world of elementary and secondary education dur-ing the early part of the last century. At the heart of this movement was the philoso-phy of “scientific management,” the chief exponent of which was Frederick W.Taylor. The primary goal of this approach was of course to transplant into theworld of education both a fundamental objective of the business community—thepursuit of ever greater “productivity”—and the then newly-formulated, busi-
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ness-oriented efficiency strategies for achieving this productivity. As deMarraisand LeCompte (1999) pointed out
School districts soon were forced to choose “professionals”—graduates from
colleges of education that provided what purported to be professional training
for school administrators—instead of teachers to run the school. School effi-
ciency came to be defined in terms of how fast children could be pushed through
thegrades:An“efficient”schoolhadeverychildongrade level forhisorherage,
regardless of extenuating circumstances. Double-promotion or skipping grades
was widely used as a cost-saving measure. Course offerings were judged by
their cost per pupil and their utility in moving students right into jobs, notwith-
standing any measure of intrinsic worth or external cost. (75–76)
And later, in regard to the efficiency movement’s innovation of the “platoonschool” or “Gary Plan”
It subordinated instruction to the dictates of a time clock, interrupting instruc-
tion regardlessof student interestor thedifficultyof the subjectmatter.Teachers
could no longer decide how to allocate their instruction time….[they] had to
move their students through a certain number of curricular units per semester
whether or not they felt the material had been covered adequately. (76–78)
This historical pursuit of efficiency is the ascendant philosophy not only of publickindergarten through twelfth-grade education today, but perhaps for traditionallystructured state teacher education programs as well.3 A case could be made thatthis profit-oriented philosophy of “Efficiency-Above-All” is exerting its influencemore strongly than ever in the current corporate-driven tsunami of “standards, ac-countability, and [standardized] testing” that is sweeping over the educationallandscape.
Given the gathering darkness of these educational times, it would be remiss ofme not to explore at least briefly some directions that hold the promise of greaterlight and a viable alternative to the dysfunctional education that an unrelenting ad-ministrative focus on efficiency yields for our future teachers. Thus, in what fol-lows, I sketch out some tentative constructivist-oriented solutions to (and, whenthose are not available, coping mechanisms for) the systemic structural problemsrelated to time and workload that I have been addressing.
Constructivist Solutions
Although it is beyond the scope of this article to review either their key featuresor some prime examples, as mentioned earlier, I personally feel the PDS/partnerschool model offers the best potential to integrate classwork and fieldwork, theory
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and practice. If this intuition is valid, then perhaps the most important activityteacher educators in traditional programs can engage in is that of collegial dialogueto share experiences and perspectives in the service of identifying the problems en-demic to their program, in conjunction with a review and evaluation of the litera-ture on alternatives. The PDS model may emerge from this process as the only realsolution—or at least the beginning of a solution—to the negative consequencesthat result from traditional teacher education structures.
At any rate, I believe that any review and evaluation of a traditional programfrom a constructivist point of view will indicate that a number of crucial structuralfixes will be required. First, the traditional teacher education program length willbe seen as significantly too short; it will need to be lengthened, and lengthened sig-nificantly, if the requisite knowledge, skills, and dispositions crucial to successfulteaching are to be fostered effectively. Next, for true constructivist engagementwith course material, requiring fewer courses per semester but exploring the con-tent of each in greater depth is also crucial. This might entail the necessity of ex-tending a course over multiple semesters. Along with this, more integration of cur-riculum seems a promising avenue to explore. Such an approach might well benefitfrom team teaching structures. Certainly, whatever it takes to ensure that facultyand students have meaningful professional contact over periods much longer thana single semester should be considered, including cohort grouping. Of course,smaller class sizes than twenty-five or even twenty is essential; in my experience, aclass of fourteen or sixteen students seems to be an ideal size, sufficiently large toallow for a variety of perspectives although also small enough to make possible therequisite sense of psychological safety.
For good measure, I’ll add my constructivist-grounded belief that students ad-mitted to teacher education programs in general should be at least in theirmidtwenties or even late twenties, when crucial social developmental needs aremore likely to have been successfully negotiated and where more life experiencehas brought perspective and even, perhaps, some wisdom (or, as Piaget might say,more adequate “schema”). I would also suggest that teacher education faculty notonly teach fewer and smaller courses per semester, but that they get a sabbatical ev-ery fourth or fifth semester, so that when teaching, teaching is the activity that re-ceives full attention, and when researching and writing, those activities receive thefull attention they deserve. Finally, adjunct professors should be part of the teach-ing faculty only when their part-time status serves to further educational goals andnot institutional financial expedience.
Three anonymous reviewers who read a draft of this article suggested that, inaddition to the list of structural changes that are needed, I offer suggestions as towhat teacher educators presently caught in a temporally sliced-and-diced teachereducation program might do in their own classrooms to resist the efficiency-ori-ented barriers to effective learning that I have outlined. As I have indicated, I am in
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fact one such educator caught in the fine weave of the efficiently structuredTaylorist web. Thus, it is only fair to ask what I do to minimize the educationaldamage imposed by the structural constraints of my own traditional teacher educa-tion program.
As might be expected, I (attempt to) maximize the constructivist possibilitiesavailable within the severe constraints I have outlined earlier. For instance, so thatthe students can pursue their own particular interests, I introduce both individualand group choice wherever I reasonably can, in regard to projects, partners, classactivities, discussion topics, and so forth. This means that I often come prepared toclass with multiple lesson/game plans and an attitude of flexibility (however, pre-paring for this is time consuming). Additionally, I collaborate with the students oncertain fundamental decisions regarding curriculum and pedagogy, regularly solic-iting feedback and advice on the direction our inquiries should take, the appropri-ate workload, the proper mix of teacher versus student-centered activities, andgrading/assessment alternatives. With ongoing crises of conscience, I do my best(which is almost always not entirely successful) to adopt the less-is-more approachto subject matter, less coverage but in greater depth, by instituting a single majortheme (such as school reform) to organize and integrate the curriculum.
I regularly integrate current events in the world of education (and the world atlarge) into the topics we are investigating in the course; however, preparing for thisis time consuming, as are many of the class discussions that this approach entails. Iencourage the students to pose their own questions as often as possible, and havethose be the basis of both individual projects and class discussions and activities. Ialso do my best to teach sections which meet only once per week (rather than twiceweekly but half the time), which allows for longer, more in-depth class discussionsand group work. In fact, I employ collaborative learning activities followed byclass discussions in most class meetings, and focus primarily on educational andsocietal controversies.
Two examples might be helpful here. One such activity is having “trios” brain-storm a list of the skills and dispositions related to democracy, each “team” placingits list on the board followed by team presentations and class discussion, includingthe question of how well the schools they attended or teach in seem to foster thoseskills and dispositions. Another example would again involve students working intrios to define affirmative action, and then locate the competing values at the heartof the controversy, followed by team presentations and class discussion, includingstudents’ opinions on the issue as well as any background information that mayneed to be provided by the instructor. In conjunction with this, I emphasize the im-portance of challenging each other’s views and opinions, albeit in a sensitive, car-ing, and thoughtful way. To further this sensitivity and thoughtfulness, I have thestudents evaluate their own performances, those of their peers, and that of the in-structor, on a regular basis.
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Another important aspect of my courses that I define as constructivist involvesrequiring every student to observe a real-world classroom for several hours (and inmy graduate sections I allow in-service teachers to “observe” their own classroom)at about the two-thirds point in the semester. This is followed by the writing of anextensive “observation report” employing traditional ethnographic lenses as wellas the major conceptual lenses we have focused on during the semester (whichvary between my undergraduate and graduate courses, but may include progres-sive vs. traditional, education for “reproduction” vs. “transformation,” educationfor democracy, the hidden curriculum, etc.). This assignment represents the culmi-nating experience of the semester and receives the most weighted grade. I have thestudents formally present a synopsis of their findings to the class, followed by abrief period of questions and answers plus discussion. In addition to requiring aself evaluation by the presenter, I have three peers evaluate the student’s perfor-mance using a formal rubric, and I record the average grade.
All this has proven to be greatly appreciated by my students, particularly the op-portunities to apply what they have learned to an actual classroom, and to hear theexperiences of other students in other, often remarkably different, educational en-vironments. However, I consider this to be a somewhat feeble alternative to thekinds of experiences offered by PDS programs, which integrate observation withclasswork much more organically and comprehensively.
Perhaps the most important element in my pursuit of a constructivist approachis related to the decision to teach only writing intensive sections. This allows me togive extensive feedback on both substance and form on both the major and minorwriting assignments (and there is a writing assignment for nearly every class meet-ing)–and then encourage careful revisions. I think of this as a crucial way to shapestudent motivation as well as thinking and writing skills—a form of regular indi-vidual “conferencing” that is indispensable.
The list goes on. I do my best—with admittedly mixed success, given theconstraints—to integrate all of the constructivist approaches I outlined at begin-ning of this article. However, I want to point out that the thrust of my argumentis that, no matter how creative and dedicated a teacher educator is in integratingconstructivist approaches into his or her individual courses, the overall structurewithin which this must occur in a traditional teacher education program con-stricts to a significant extent the quality of the (cumulative) learning experiencepossible for the students. If the instructor opts for depth of coverage overbreadth, due to the short length of the course (etc.), the triage this involves usu-ally means that a major portion of what the students need to learn must necessar-ily be left out.
This is only aggravated by the fact that most students (whether at the undergrad-uate or graduate level), as well as the instructors, are often chronically over-whelmed with oppressive, stressful workloads.4 In any case, according to
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constructivist principles and given the desiderata of a preparation for true teacherprofessionalism, the inadequate length of the program itself in conjunction withthe heavy workloads experienced by the students ensure that no matter how val-iantly an instructor attempts to overcome the dysfunctional structures of the tradi-tional teacher education system, ultimately there will be at least partial failure ofthose efforts. Stated bluntly, it is unlikely that a student graduating from a tradi-tional teacher education program will have received an education which has ade-quately prepared him or her with the professional knowledge, skills, and disposi-tions required of an effective (constructivist) educator.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that although the foregoing critique has nec-essarily focused on specific features of the program in which I have been teaching,I have done so only to provide what I believe to be a concrete example of tradi-tional teacher education in general. The details of a given program aside, the im-portant point is that constructivist theory warns us that unless teacher educatorsrecognize and openly acknowledge that some of the very structures within whichtraditional teacher education operates severely constrain its effectiveness in pre-paring future teachers to meet their professional responsibilities, the drastic mea-sures that need to be taken to rectify the situation will never take place. This, inturn, will doom efforts at progressive school reform, for the domino effect in edu-cation is all too real: Without effective teacher education, skilled, knowledgeableteachers prepared to be change agents cannot reliably be fostered, and without atruly professional teaching force to undertake school reform from within, the sorrystate of public education in the late twentieth century will almost certainly be repli-cated—in quality if not in details—in the twenty-first century.
It is ironic that although many of us teach about the evils of the factory schoolmodel, the postsecondary educational setting within which this often takes place isitself essentially a factory school. A teacher education program structure more ap-propriate to constructivist requirements could be created by taking into accounteach of the structural elements I have critiqued and redesigning it to accommodateconstructivist imperatives in regard to content and pedagogy, including the needfor consistency and continuity and sheer breathing space that it presently lacks. Fortoo long, teacher educators in traditional programs have been ignoring the obvious:the pressing need to get their communal house in order.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of a draft of this article for theirconstructive criticism and helpful suggestions.
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Notes1. The assertions in this paragraph apply to the two consecutive years that I had appointedpositions and attended departmental meetings.2. For instance, see Osguthorpe et al. 1995; also, a vast literature may be accessed throughthe ERIC database.3. Certainly, this is the situation at the state university where I teach, where central adminis-trative pressures constantly seek above all to maximize the efficiency of the system.4. It should be pointed out here that constructivist-oriented teaching significantly adds toboth the instructor’s and the student’s traditional workload. A strict traditionalist approachoften eases the demands on the student and particularly on the instructor, hence a major rea-son for its enduring appeal.
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Correspondence should be addressed to David Chicoine, 19 Pine Tree Road, WestHurley, NY 12491. E-mail: [email protected]
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