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This article was downloaded by: [The Aga Khan University] On: 21 October 2014, At: 23:04 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Teaching Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cted20 Reflective journals: making constructive use of the “apprenticeship of observation” in preservice teacher education Nancy Flanagan Knapp a a Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology , University of Georgia , Athens , GA , USA Published online: 03 Aug 2012. To cite this article: Nancy Flanagan Knapp (2012) Reflective journals: making constructive use of the “apprenticeship of observation” in preservice teacher education, Teaching Education, 23:3, 323-340, DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2012.686487 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2012.686487 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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This article was downloaded by: [The Aga Khan University]On: 21 October 2014, At: 23:04Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Teaching EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cted20

Reflective journals: makingconstructive use of the “apprenticeshipof observation” in preservice teachereducationNancy Flanagan Knapp aa Department of Educational Psychology and InstructionalTechnology , University of Georgia , Athens , GA , USAPublished online: 03 Aug 2012.

To cite this article: Nancy Flanagan Knapp (2012) Reflective journals: making constructive use ofthe “apprenticeship of observation” in preservice teacher education, Teaching Education, 23:3,323-340, DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2012.686487

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2012.686487

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Reflective journals: making constructive use of the “apprenticeship of observation” in preservice teacher education

Reflective journals: making constructive use of the“apprenticeship of observation” in preservice teacher education

Nancy Flanagan Knapp*

Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology, University of Georgia,Athens, GA, USA

(Received 1 February 2011; final version received 1 March 2012)

Many scholars have characterized the “apprenticeship of observation” as a“pitfall” to be avoided or a barrier to be overcome in preservice teacher educa-tion, but directly challenging students’ experience-based beliefs often leads toresistance, making students feel discounted or disrespected. In my introductoryeducational psychology course, students write biweekly journals reflecting ontheir own lived experiences in light of course concepts and ideas. These reflec-tions are then shared in a variety of ways, serving as a vital context for furtherinvestigation and discussion of how these concepts and ideas translate into theclassroom. In this paper, I share typical journal questions and excerpts from theresponses of two recent classes to show how students can engage journal ques-tions at differing levels; how even the experiences of my mostly privileged andsuccessful students have at some points echoed, and thus can illuminate, thestruggles of the less privileged, the rebellious, and the failed students who mostneed good teaching; and how students’ own shared reflections can be used non-threateningly to help them confront their unconsidered assumptions about teach-ing and learning. Finally, I discuss choice, respect, and agency as three essentialconditions for effective use of student journals in preservice teacher education.

Keywords: apprenticeship of observation; constructivist psychology; educationalpsychology; preservice teacher education; reflective journals; teacher educationcurriculum; teacher thinking and knowledge

Introduction

At the heart of Freire’s (1970/1993) critical pedagogy lies his conviction that thelearner’s lived experiences must form the basis for teaching and learning (Thousandet al., 1999). We have long known that decontextualized knowledge, taught andlearned disconnected from lived experience, is not only less engaging (Ames, 1992)and more difficult to acquire (Anderson, 1984), but more fragile (Greeno, Collins,& Resnick, 1996) and less likely to be used in practice (Resnick, 1987; Rogoff,1990; Whitehead, 1929). A basic tenet of constructivist psychology is that theknowledge that has meaning for us, which we use to interpret and act within ourworld, is knowledge that has been constructed upon and integrated with the priorbeliefs and understandings which arise from our past experiences (Piaget, 1970;Vygotsky, 1978).

*Email: [email protected]

Teaching EducationVol. 23, No. 3, September 2012, 323–340

ISSN 1047-6210 print/ISSN 1470-1286 online� 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2012.686487http://www.tandfonline.com

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Preservice teacher education is no exception to this rule. In 1975, Lortie coinedthe term “apprenticeship of observation” to describe the powerful influence of pre-service teachers’ own experiences as K-12 students on their ultimate practices asteachers. Since Lortie’s ground-breaking study, many researchers have confirmedhis assertion that, in fact, teachers’ practices are shaped at least as much by theirlong “apprenticeships” as students as by the “taught knowledge” presented in theirteacher education programs (Anderson & Bird, 1995; Buchmann, 1989; Hollings-worth, 1989; Labaree, 2000; Martin & Russell, 2009; Mewborn & Stinson, 2007).

A two-sided problem

However, preservice teachers’ use of prior educational experiences to shape theirfuture practices can be problematic for several reasons. First, a great majority ofteachers and teacher candidates, at least in the USA, are female, European Ameri-can, middle-class, and English-speaking, a situation that has not changed signifi-cantly over the past 25 years (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES],2011; Toppo, 2003; Zimpher, 1989). These are exactly “those who are already wellserved by the dominant culture” (McLaren, 1999, p. 49). Their experiences inschool, and in life, are likely to have been very different from the experiences ofmany of the students they will be teaching, who are increasingly diverse in socio-economic status, cultural background, and home language (National Center for Edu-cation Statistics [NCES], 2010). Such differences can impede meaningfulcommunication between teachers and students (Aguilar, 2010; Gratier, Greenfield &Isaac, 2009), so that students are either unable (Castagno, 2008; Jimenez, 2002) orunwilling (Davila, 2010; Hill, 2009; Kohl, 1991) to learn. In turn, such differencescan also make it difficult for teachers to empathize with or even understand theirstudents (Delpit, 1988; Heath, 1982). Finally, because the system has worked fairlywell for them, teachers who were successful students from privileged backgroundsmay not initially see any reason to develop the type of empowering, emancipatoryteaching needed in today’s increasingly stratified and controlled society, especiallyfor those students who are otherwise least likely to succeed in school (Ayers, Hunt,& Quinn, 1998; Kumashiro, Baber, Richardson, Ricker-Wilson, & Wong, 2004;Porfilio and Malott, 2011). Thus, for most teachers, a practice based on unexaminedprior experience too often serves “to perpetuate traditions at the expense of reflec-tive and informed change” (Schempp, 1987, p. 1).

For all these reasons, scholars in teacher education have typically portrayed theapprenticeship of experience as something negative, an “obstacle” (Martin & Rus-sell, 2009) that teacher educators are encouraged to work “against” (Knowles &Holt-Reynolds, 1991) that must be “challenged” (McDiarmid, 1990) or “overcome”(Grossman, 1991) in the course of teacher education, a “pitfall” of incorrect knowl-edge (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985) that preservice teachers must “breakwith” (Ball, 1990) in order to learn to teach well and justly.

But openly confronting and challenging preservice teachers’ experience-basedknowledge and beliefs has not worked out very well in teacher education so far.For many years, teacher educators and scholars have recognized and bemoaned theprevalence and strength of “resistance” to their attempts to change the beliefs, atti-tudes, and future practices of students in teacher education through direct confronta-tion. Such resistance has been noted most often in classes on multicultural ordiversity education (e.g. Amos, 2010; Chizhik & Chizhik, 2005; Davis, Ramahlo,

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Beyerbach, & London, 2008; de Freitas, 2008; Hill-Jackson, 2007; Klug, Luckey,Wilkins, & Whitfield, 2006; LaDuke, 2009; McFalls & Cobb-Roberts, 2001; Tho-mas & Vanderhaar, 2008), but has also been reported frequently in classes intendedto help students develop dispositions toward and expertise in critical pedagogy (Por-filio & Malott, 2011), inquiry-based instruction (Nicol, 2006; Spector, Burkett, &Leard 2007), and other nontraditional models of teaching (Bird, Anderson, Sullivan,& Swidler, 1993).

Such resistance becomes perhaps not so surprising when one reads the descrip-tions of these preservice teachers by some of those who would teach them. It is rea-sonable to recognize that these mainly white and middle-class teacher educationstudents on average “bring very little cross-cultural background, knowledge, andexperience” to teaching (Sleeter, 2001), but to accuse them of a “lack of intersub-jectivity. … and [a] lack of commitment to social activism” (Chizhik & Chizhik,2005, p. 116), or worse, to describe the “white pre-service teachers” in our classesas having “mono-cultural realities, insulated lives, and immature experiences” (Hill-Jackson, 2007, p. 29) is ironically to apply the same sort of deficit model (Hilliard,1973) to the majority of our own students that we rightly would not accept ifapplied to others. Seen this way, the resistance of our students to such one-sided,negative portrayals, whether merely implied by didactic discussions of “white privi-lege,” (McIntosh, 1989) or explicitly stated via more direct critiques, echoes theappropriate and appropriately applauded resistance by some students from marginal-ized groups to similarly assigned, but even more negative, characterizations in thepublic schools (Davila, 2010; Finn, 1999; Hill, 2009; Willis, 1977/1981).

Using prior experience as a resource for learning through reflective journaling

If we are to “practice what we teach” (Knapp & Seifert, 2005; Holt-Reynolds,1992), I believe with Lowenstein (2009) that we must adopt a “radically differentapproach to teacher preparation” (p. 184), one that replaces such deficit-based viewswith a “conceptualization of [all] teacher candidates as competent learners whobring rich resources to their learning” (p. 187). For preservice teachers, as for alllearners, “the world must be approached as an object to be understood and knownby the efforts of learners themselves. Moreover, their acts of knowing are to bestimulated and grounded in their own being, experiences, needs, circumstances, anddestinies” (Lankshear & McLaren, 1993, p. 43, cited in McLaren, 1999).

Therefore, as a teacher educator I choose to use the prior educational experi-ences of my students as one authentic context in which to learn about the theoriesand ideas presented in my courses. In this paper, I will focus on how I usereflective journals to help my students individually and as a group access and“interrogate the text” of their own lives (Freire & Macedo, 1987), illustrating myexplanation with examples of typical journal questions and some student responsesto these questions drawn from two recent classes.

I supervise and teach an introductory educational psychology course that isrequired of all preservice teachers at the University of Georgia. Over 700 students ayear take this course from me or from the teaching assistants who work with me.The overwhelming majority of these students are like the majority of preserviceteachers in the USA discussed above: European American, middle-class, English-speaking, female, and “good students,” that is, students who have been successfulenough in traditional schooling to get into a major state university where the

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average high school GPA for entering freshmen is over 3.5. There is, however,some diversity: some students come from urban or suburban backgrounds, whileothers are from small towns or rural areas, and each class usually includes severalstudents of color or from foreign backgrounds and at least a couple of students whodid not find their earlier school experiences either easy or enjoyable. This diversityof educational experiences among the 30 or so students in a typical class canbecome a source of “real life” experiences to use in discussing class concepts.

Because this course is required prior to entering a teaching major, the major-ity of students are freshmen or sophomores, and many are still trying to decidewhether or which teaching major is right for them. I have used reflective jour-nals in such classes since I began to teach at the university level in 1993, prob-ably due to my own apprenticeship of observation as a graduate student inJames Gavelek’s courses at Michigan State University. However, the longer Ihave taught, the more I have realized that these journals provide an ideal wayfor my students to both reflect on and share their past experiences. These sharedexperiences then form one of several educational contexts students use to instan-tiate and investigate the psychological and educational concepts central to thecourse (Knapp, 1999) and also to begin critically investigating their own andothers’ ideas about teaching.

Preservice teachers’ journals have received increasing attention from scholarsin recent years. However, they have most often been written about as a researchtool, a means to assess either preservice teachers’ beliefs about a specific topic ofinterest (e.g. Gallagher, Vail, & Monda-Amaya, 2008; Knapp & Harper, 2009;Narkon, Black, & Jenkins, 2009) or the effectiveness of a particular program orother pedagogical strategy (e.g. Bolin, 2007; Clupf & Lox, 2009; Ma, Lai, Wil-liams, Prejean, & Ford, 2008; Nicol, 2006; Recchia, Beck, Esposito, & Tarrant,2009). Of the relatively fewer teacher educators writing about journals in preser-vice teacher education as a pedagogical tool, most have used such journals withstudents who are at advanced stages in their programs, already focused in a sub-ject area and/or placed in field experiences (e.g. Herrera & Murry, 2006; Isikoglu,2007; Kaplan, Rupley, Sparks, & Holcomb, 2007; Lee, 2007, 2008; Shin, 2006).To my knowledge, only one published article to date has advocated preserviceteachers’ journal writing in an early foundational course in educational psychology(Good & Whang, 2002) and this article focused mainly on how the preserviceteachers felt about writing the journals, rather than on the pedagogical uses orcontent of the journals themselves.

Individual journaling around past educational experiences

The process of examining and sharing students’ common and diverse past experi-ences in education begins in my classes with individually written biweekly journals.For each journal, students are asked to address a common question, based on atopic or theory recently or about to be covered in class, and also to write on at leastone other idea of their choice, something that struck them in the class readings oractivities in the prior two weeks. The assigned common question is quite deliber-ately structured with a main question usually designed to elicit memories of a spe-cific, significant past experience relevant to the topic and “probes” that invitereflection and analysis around that experience. Here is an example of one suchquestion, typically posed early in the course, just after the concept of differentiating

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instruction for student diversity (one of the three basic themes of the course) hasbeen introduced:

LAST WEEK WE INTRODUCED THE TOPIC OF STUDENT DIVERSITY. ALLOF US WILL TEACH CLASSES OF STUDENTS WHO ARE DIVERSE IN ETH-NICITY, CULTURE, HOME BACKGROUND, MOTIVATIONS, TALENTS, PRIORKNOWLEDGE, AND LEARNING PREFERENCES (TO NAME A FEW!). I’DLIKE YOU TO WRITE ABOUT HOW ONE OF YOUR TEACHERS (ANY TIMEDURING YOUR EDUCATION) DEALT WITH THE DIVERSITY OF STUDENTSIN HIS OR HER CLASS.

– HOW DID HE/SHE MAKE THEM ALL FEEL COMFORTABLE?– HOW DID HE/SHE HELP THEM ALL LEARN?– WHAT CAN YOU LEARN BY REFLECTING ON HIS/HERTEACHING PRACTICES?

IF YOU WANT, YOU MAY WRITE ABOUT A TEACHER WHO HANDLEDDIVERSITY BADLY INSTEAD OF WELL, COVERING THE SAME BASICAREAS.

Beginning at multiple levels of experience and analysis

My students vary widely in both the amount of experience they have with diverseclassrooms and their readiness to analyze those experiences; a question like this onecan be engaged at whatever level they find themselves. For example, Ahoshta (allnames are pseudonyms of students from a single recent class), a student of Arabdescent born and raised in the USA, seemed to be just beginning to question herown assumptions, even as she wrote:

I guess while I’ve been in school, I’ve never really paid attention to how my teachersaccommodated every day to students’ diversity. Which seems that maybe that theyhandled it well … My teachers always seemed to include everyone – not singling outany particular group or maybe (?) I feel this way because I was never singled out.

Kinesha, an African American student in the same class, was not surprisingly muchmore aware of most teachers’ discomfort with diversity and felt comfortable enoughto state bluntly in her journal response that, “Besides this [one small example],diversity really has not been addressed in the classes I have attended, because someteachers would rather not deal with it.”

Melissa, an European American, had a similar realization that most of her teach-ers had simply ignored student diversity; her response showed she was also begin-ning to be aware of the systemic implications of this omission:

For the life of me, I could not think of a teacher that dealt effectively with studentdiversity. Most of my teachers chose not to deal with it at all. That is pretty scary,considering I am a product of the H – County school system! (a nearby urban countywith a high proportion of minority and low SES students).

Charity, another European American student, was able to identify a specific peda-gogical consequence of a previous teacher’s lack of sensitivity to diversity in stu-dents’ home backgrounds, although she still seemed to hold a somewhat “deficit”model of this diversity:

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I had a teacher in elementary school who expected you to know a lot of outside infor-mation. This really hurt some students because if their parents did not spend time withthem and teach them outside of school, then they could not succeed well in school.This way of teaching, assuming that students have outside knowledge that they maynot, is very ineffective and negative, since you discourage students who do not haveany prior knowledge of a subject … I hope I will never make this mistake.

Finally, Roseanne recalled a Home Economics teacher who, in contrast to otherteachers at her school, not only “handled” student diversity well and caringly, butdeliberately and skillfully used it as a resource for teaching and learning – a mem-ory she feels will make a difference in her future teaching:

On the first day of class, [Mrs. Banks] told us we were getting a new student the nextday … from the special education department, which kind of worried us … I guessit’s true that people are afraid of what they don’t know, and we were. I had heardsnide remark after snide remark from the other teachers at school about the “retardedkids next door.” And these were my teachers, teachers who were supposed to openmy mind to new things, new ways of thinking … Mrs. Banks was different from anyof the other teachers we had known … She told us the girl’s name was Maria, and …she was in a wheelchair, and her body was physically deformed. She couldn’t speakwell, and she couldn’t look at you straight. Mrs. Banks said she drooled a lot. By thattime, we were all wondering why this girl was going to be attending our class, a “nor-mal” class with “normal” students … [Mrs. Banks] asked if there were any questionswe wanted to ask. Of course there were many questions, a lot of which were stupid,but it helped us feel more comfortable with the situation. No matter how dumb thequestions were, Mrs. Banks answered them in all sincerity and to the best of herknowledge. The next day came, and we were still a little scared, but we welcomedMaria with open arms, and open hearts.

We all got to know Maria that semester and made a new friend, inside and outside ofclass … I feel that as a future teacher, Mrs. Banks opened my mind to something Ihad not realized until writing this journal … that all kids deserve the opportunity at agood education, the best education I can give them, no matter how different theymight be.

Putting themselves (back) in the students’ shoes

Although we study and discuss useful elements in information processing theoryand even behaviorism, my classes are taught from and intended to foster a moreresponsive, constructivist teaching stance in preservice teachers. Their in-class com-ments and anonymous course evaluations indicate that almost of all my studentsappreciate and believe they have learned more due to my use of student-centeredstrategies like small group problem-solving, open classroom discussions, and struc-tured choice in assignments. However, they are much less certain about introducingany of these or similar strategies into their own future teaching practices; my stu-dents are so accustomed to having little agency in their own learning that they oftensee this disempowerment as the norm and my class as an interesting anomaly. Theirtendency to hark back to more familiar, traditional models of teaching is especiallystrong toward the end of the course, when we begin to talk about the implicationsof the theories they have been studying for classroom management, perhapsbecause, like most novice teachers, one of their biggest fears is being unable tomaintain classroom discipline (Melnick & Meister, 2008; Veenman, 1984). I can,

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and do, talk with them about how their classroom management is inextricably inter-twined with their teaching. I remind them that their students will feel comfortableto ask questions, think critically, and take the risks inherent in learning only if therules and daily routines in their future classrooms reaffirm teacher talk about valu-ing and respecting students. But one of my most effective strategies is to let themtell themselves, and each other, how much these things matter, through their jour-nals. A question I often assign during this unit is the following:

IN HER CHAPTER ON MANAGEMENT, WOOLFOLK (2011) EMPHASIZESTHAT AS TEACHERS WE ARE ALWAYS SENDING “MESSAGES” TO OURSTUDENTS, BOTH VERBALLY AND NONVERBALLY, BY THE RULES WEMAKE, THE LEARNING ACTIVITIES WE ENCOURAGE, AND THE WAYS WETALK WITH AND TO OUR STUDENTS. FOR THIS JOURNAL, LET’S LOOK ATEITHER A PARTICULARLY GOOD OR A PARTICULARLY BAD TEACHERYOU HAVE HAD, AND TALK ABOUT THE “MESSAGES” THAT TEACHERSENT TO YOUR CLASS ABOUT “STUDENTS.” SOME AREAS YOU MIGHTLIKE TO THINK ABOUT INCLUDE:

– WHAT DID SPECIFIC CLASSROOM RULES AND PROCEDURESCOMMUNICATE ABOUT THIS TEACHER’S VIEW OF STUDENTS?

– WHAT DID THE USUAL LEARNING ACTIVITIES SAY ABOUT HOW ANDWHAT THIS TEACHER THOUGHT STUDENTS WERE CAPABLE OFLEARNING?

– WHAT SPECIFIC VERBAL AND/OR NONVERBAL MESSAGES DID THISTEACHER SEND TO STUDENTS?

– DID THIS TEACHER SEND DIFFERENT MESSAGES TO DIFFERENT(GROUPS OF) STUDENTS?

FINALLY, TALK ABOUT HOW YOU AND/OR OTHER STUDENTSRESPONDED TO OR WERE AFFECTED BY THESE “MESSAGES” THAT WEREBEING SENT TO YOU.

In her response to this question, Janet described a teacher who created an effec-tive environment for learning not by strict enforcement of rules, but by communi-cating respect to her students and expecting them to respect each other as well.

Mrs. C always referred to all her students by their last name, like “Miss Mundy.” Thatwas awesome. It showed that she respected us. The message she sent off was that ourideas and opinions mattered to her. Mrs. C did not have a lot of classroom rules. Sheeven let us chew gum in her class as long as [we] did not put it under the desk or onthe floor. Mrs. C’s main rule is that everyone respected each other, meaning that whensomeone was talking, everyone had to listen and be respectful. No one was permittedto make fun of anyone for asking a ‘dumb’ question, because in Mrs. C’s class therewere no ‘dumb’ questions.

Bill wrote convincingly of how a teacher’s willingness to share power and intellec-tual authority has had a lasting effect on him to this day:

He would allow the students to have a say in what went on in the classroom. He was stillthe teacher and he ran the classroom, but if a student had a problem with something, heencouraged them to speak out and voice their opinion. He respected students’ ideas andreally wanted the students to learn the material any way they could … [He] was verypassionate, as well as knowledgeable, about the subject that he taught (economics and

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government). He was my favorite teacher of all time and still to this day I call and talk tohim about things [like] the stock market, or what’s going on in the world.

But even students who have been very successful in school can remember nega-tive experiences when prompted; these memories can help my preservice teacherssee more clearly what they do not want to do, and why, and also to “step into theshoes” of students whose school experiences may have been less positive than theirown. For example, in this response, Melissa recalled her own desire to misbehavein the classroom of one very bad teacher; her analysis makes it obvious why beinga “hard-nosed” teacher cannot ensure classroom order, and also may help her betterunderstand and deal with students whose more frequent negative school experienceshave left them with a more generally rebellious attitude.

Mr. Lance, my sixth grade Social Studies teacher, was horrible! … His method ofteaching involved putting mounds of notes on the overhead and expecting students tocopy them and fully understand them. His annoyance and frustration became obviouswhen a student asked him a question in the way he rolled his eyes, sighed, and talkedvery slowly in an extremely condescending manner. It was obvious he did not want tobe teaching and that he did not like kids … Looking back, it makes me angry … Mr.Lance’s attitude had a profound effect on the attitude of the classroom … If you werehis student, he either scared you into behaving, or you got so mad at him for hatingteaching so much that you began to resent him and want to misbehave. I started off asthe former, but quickly graduated to the latter.

In remembering a previous math teacher, Sandra gained insight into how a teacher’sindirect “messages” can devalue students as learners, especially those students whostruggled to understand; this insight made her determined to avoid sending such“messages” to her own future students.

At the time, I did not see the messages [Mrs. Daniels] was giving us, but after study-ing this, I can remember them … On the first day, we were put in a seating chart thatwe stayed in for the whole year. This tells me that she did not trust us as seniors topick our own seats and to behave for that period … There was no variety in her teach-ing techniques, which made us feel like she did not care too much if we were enjoy-ing the class. We moved from chapter to chapter, regardless if everyone understoodthe previous materials … Again, this attitude gave us the message that she did notreally care if we were learning it or not. She was more worried about getting to theend of the book by June.

She was always so nice to the really “smart” students and gave them all kinds of privi-leges. For example, they always got the hall pass whenever they wanted, even if theyhad already used it every day that week. As for the “not so smart” students, she alwayssnapped at them whenever they so much as moved in their desks. If some student wouldsay they did not understand the material or she was moving too fast, she would say infront of the class, “Ask so-and-so, because they really understand it.” … Although I willnot be teaching math, I have now learned what messages NOT to send to my students.

Accessing the repository of shared experiences

Prior experience is an even more powerful context for learning when students canshare and compare their experiences, in part because this gives them access to arange of thoughts and experiences beyond their own. When students find they sharea common belief or experience, it heightens the impact of the experience and helps

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them gain additional insight into its import. Conversely, hearing differing beliefsand experiences from other students with whom they have worked and learned allterm gives these an immediacy and validity that far surpasses the prosings of a text-book or teacher. Therefore, after students have written their journals, I facilitate thesharing of their responses in one of three ways.

Teacher read-alouds

The easiest way to highlight and share students’ experiences is to read excerptsfrom their journals, like those above, out loud at the beginning of class justbefore I hand them back. These excerpts are always read anonymously, and I usu-ally begin by saying something like, “Many of you wrote such interesting thingsthat I wanted to share some of them with you.” Then, as I read each selection, Iwill preface it with a comment like, “This person described a situation that wasjust a perfect example of …” or “This person wrote about [the topic] in a wayI’d never thought about …” I select excerpts to read that are not only powerfullywritten, but varied in stance and content, making sure that every student hassomething read aloud from at least one of their first three journals and avoidinganything that might be too personal or personally identifying. Once in a whilethere is a reading of this latter type that I really want to share because of thepowerful point it makes; for example, a student in a recent class wrote movinglyabout her experiences as a black student in an otherwise all-white gifted program.In such cases, as students are coming in at the beginning of class, I will unobtru-sively ask the author if I may share his or her writing, making it clear the choiceis completely theirs.

These simple read-alouds accomplish a multitude of pedagogical goals for me.First, they demonstrate conclusively that I value students’ ideas and experiences,and so should they. On the final, anonymous course evaluations, some studentsalways comment about the impression this made on them; in fact, just last week,a student who had been in my class three years ago told me how much havingparts of her journals read to the class had meant to her, how it had given herconfidence during a difficult first semester in school. Especially at first, this prac-tice also helps students understand what I am “looking for” in the journals; theirresponses always get better, with more in-depth questioning and thought andmuch less parroting of the textbook, after my first few read-aloud sessions. Judi-cious selection of the excerpts I read allows me to reinforce important conceptsfrom previous classes or present varied views of a topic to open further discus-sion. Finally, reading journal excerpts aloud is one way to bring into the class-room conversation the voices of students who hesitate to speak up in classdiscussions, but have important things to say and share.

In-class sharing by students

I sometimes use student journal responses as a lead-in to class consideration of anew topic by asking students to share from their journals before they turn them in.Students are always allowed to “pass” on sharing their writing, but since thistechnique does not allow students to remain anonymous, it is most appropriate fortopics that are not likely to be personally sensitive. For instance, before we discuss

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theories of intelligence in class, I often ask students to write on the followingquestion:

FOR THIS JOURNAL, PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT SOMEONE WHO YOUTHINK IS REALLY SMART.

– HOW DID YOU COME TO KNOW OR KNOWABOUT THIS PERSON?– WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS PERSON THAT MAKES YOU SAY THEY AREREALLY SMART?

– DO YOU THINK OTHER PEOPLE DO OR WOULD SEE THIS PERSON ASREALLY SMART, TOO?

Then, at the beginning of class, I ask each student to describe briefly the personthey wrote about, and I write a short phrase on the board to capture the main rea-son(s) the student sees that person as “really smart.” Students talk about their familymembers, their friends, and their heroes; after everyone has spoken, there are usu-ally 20–30 phrases on the board instantiating intelligence, such as “got a 4.0 in highschool,” “can fix anything,” “gives great advice,” “reads all the time,” “succeededagainst tough odds,” “loves to learn,” and “knows something about everything.”Then I start my lecture, introducing the various theories of intelligence we willstudy and using the students’ stories as examples that make these potentially drytheories more concrete and immediate. I also do not have to worry about convinc-ing my students that there are different types of intelligence and that not all are val-ued equally in school or in society – the evidence is right in front of them.

Handouts compiling student responses

Perhaps the most powerful way that I share student journal responses on some top-ics is by compiling them into a document which I then hand out and use as a basisfor further discussion in class. This technique works best when I ask students toreflect on some aspect of the class itself, using Schön’s (1987) “hall of mirrors”technique, in which students are invited to recognize parallels between their ownexperiences in my class and possible experiences of students in their future classes.Because the class is already a shared context, long quotes are not essential to under-stand each person’s response, which makes the compilation feasible. For example,when we study classroom assessment, not coincidentally in the weeks following themidterm, initially almost all my students (the ones who got good grades in school)assert that grades are relatively unproblematic, objective communications about astudent’s performance. Then, I give them the following journal question:

THIS WEEK WE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT ASSESSMENT AND GRAD-ING; I’D LIKE YOU TO THINK A BIT MORE ABOUT THE EFFECTS OFGRADES, USING THE RECENT GRADE YOU GOT ON THE MIDTERM EXAMAS A SITE FOR REFLECTION. WRITE ABOUT YOUR REACTIONS TO THEGRADE YOU GOT ON THE EXAM, INCLUDING SOME THE FOLLOWINGELEMENTS:

• GRADES ARE OFTEN CAST AS A WAY OF GIVING FEEDBACK TO STU-DENTS. WHAT DID YOUR SCORE ON THIS EXAM “COMMUNICATE” TOYOU?

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• HOW DID YOUR GRADE AFFECT YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT THIS CLASS?ABOUT EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN GENERAL? ABOUT YOURRELATIONSHIP WITH ME AS THE TEACHER?

• DID THE OPPORTUNITY TO RECAPTURE UP TO 9 POINTS OF THE 30 FORTHIS EXAM AFFECT YOUR REACTION TO YOUR SCORE?

• HOW DO YOU THINK YOUR REACTION WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENTIF YOU HAD SCORED QUITE DIFFERENTLY ON THE EXAM (I.E., MUCHHIGHER OR LOWER)?

FINALLY, TALK ABOUT WHAT YOUR REACTION TO THIS PARTICULARGRADE HAS TAUGHT YOU ABOUT GRADING YOUR STUDENTS IN THEFUTURE.

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING TO ME ABOUTYOUR GRADE ON THIS EXAM (AFTER ALL, I GAVE THE GRADES!), FEELFREE TO WRITE ABOUT A GRADE YOU GOT IN ANOTHER COLLEGECLASS, USING THE ABOVE QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR WRITING.

In order to understand this question and my students’ responses better, youneed to know that the midterm exam in my class consists of open-ended essayquestions based on typical classroom vignettes. Though students write theiranswers individually in class, they receive all the potential test questions at least10 days before the test and are encouraged to study together. Still, because itrequires them to generate and support from class materials their own answers tocommon educational dilemmas, students typically find the exam very challenging,so I offer an optional “recapture” exam several weeks later, using a differentvignette but the same format, on which students are invited to demonstrate thatthey have now mastered the theories that they had trouble with on the originalexam.

For most of my students, this midterm is the first time they have ever beenasked to generate exam answers that were not “in the book,” the first time theyhave ever received less than a “B” on an exam (the average initial grade is about65%), and the first time they have ever been offered the opportunity to retest toshow mastery of previously missed concepts. For many the experience is confus-ing and upsetting, but ultimately formative (for more information on this type oftesting and students’ responses to it, see Knapp, 2000). Almost all choose towrite about this exam in their journals, and their responses are telling. After theyhave submitted their journals, I type up some of their comments (being careful touse at least one from each student) and hand the compiled list out the next classperiod; Figure 1 shows an abbreviated version of such a compilation that I gaveout to another recent class.

By this point in the class, most students are pretty open in their journalresponses, and each term, they write about the same feelings, motivations, misattri-butions, fears, and reliefs related to grades that I want them to be able to recognizeand understand in their own future students. Their compiled comments serve as arich, authentic context for our subsequent class discussion about the effects of gradesand grading on student learning. Reading comments from their peers such as, “Iknow I am not a low C student, but you don’t, so now it’s like I’ve established thatimage in your class,” and “My score on this exam told me I was just ‘average’,”helps my students understand how grades can impact a student’s identity as a learner,

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while remarks like, “I felt I put my ‘all’ into preparing for the exam, however, Iguess I did it the wrong way,” and “I’m trying so hard to stay on top of the material,yet I’m doing poorly on the test,” effectively challenge their common “good-student”assumption that low grades usually reflect lack of effort. Responses like, “I get sonervous about how I performed,” “My test grade makes me feel more relaxed andcomfortable,” and “I would be so anxious to do well that … I would make myselfsick,” highlight the powerful emotions that grades invoke, while statements such as,“I started to feel that educational psychology was just plain irritating,” “These doubtswould probably lead to doubts about you as a teacher,” and “I feel stupid and I get

SOME OF YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUR MIDTERM GRADES

What kind of messages did your score on this exam "tell" you? • I thought I understood the themes and concepts well, but I guess I was wrong. • The score I received on this first exam signifies thatI need to try to make a perfect score on the next test. • I must admit, I am the kind of person who looks at the grade first and has to look over it about an hour later simply because I get so

nervous about how I performed. • In the past, I've equated my grade to how well (or not well) I have learned class material. . . . The same is true in this class. • My first reaction was 'Wow! That's not bad!' But when I realized that it equaled out to an 80%, I really felt bad. • I was a bit disappointed . . . I feel I have a better grasp than a 66%, a D! . . . I need to study more and figure out exactly what you

as the teacher want. • The grade has a major impact even more when I find out the class average, and how the entire class did. . . . If I make a bad grade

and the whole class does good, I feel stupid and I get mad at myself. • I felt I put my 'all' into preparing for the exam, however, I guess I did it the wrong way. . . . I spent the entire week prior to the exam

writing out all 18 essays and researching my notes to come up with the best solutions. • My score on this exam told me I was just 'average'. How did your grade affect your feelings about this class? About educational psychology in general? About your relationship with me as the teacher?

• My first thoughts were that I had messed up (a 25/30). I told myself that I hadn't prepared enough and that I was no good at these essay exams. I started to feel that educational psychology was just plain irritating.

• I'm sure that as a teacher you were looking for specific details to be covered and supported, but . . . often when I think I have substantially covered an area, the teacher wanted "more support."

• My test grade makes me feel more relaxed and comfortable in this class. • My confidence level is lower in class now. Because I spent a lot of time preparing, and felt that I knew the material and felt I did

well, it was a slam to my confidence to find out differently." • I know I am not a low C student, but you don't, so now it's like I've established that image in your class. • I'm glad you gave me feedback on each question because that really helped. • I have a hard time accepting Bs in any class; that is just my personality. • It did make me pause and reconsider the somewhat cavalier approach I had been slipping into in reference to the class. • The grade discouraged me because I'm trying so hard to stay on top of the material, yet I'm doing poorly on the test. • I've learned over the years to not blame the teacher or class, but blame myself. . . I do remember times when I used to just hate the

class because of a bad grade. • My grade affected my feelings greatly because it was so low. Did the opportunity to recapture up to 9 points of the 30 for this exam affect your reaction to your score?• If the 22/30 points was the best that I could have gotten, I wonder if I would have made the effort to check to see what I did wrong. .

. . I loved the fact that we are able to recapture up to nine points on this test. It allows us as students to see what we did wrong and how to make our ideas stronger.

• This made me feel like my grade was not set in stone. It could be improved. • Instead of feeling like I just missed a point--oh well, there's nothing I can do about it, . . . it's an opportunity to redeem myself. No

helplessness. • It does help to know that I can recapture 9 points, but it still doesn't help me feel better about my original grade. • It's not like you're giving away the points, but you're giving us a chance to prove that we do understand the concepts we were

tested on. • When you handed out that sheet that told us that we would have a chance to recapture 9 points on the exam, I got nervous. I

figured if you were doing that, the class must have not done well on the exams. How do you think your reaction would have been different if you had scored quite differently on the exam (i.e., much higher or lower)?

• Had I scored lower, I would most likely be very discouraged with the entire class, and would be so anxious to do well the rest of the quarter that I would make myself sick.

• [I might feel] If I'm going to get a bad grade anyway, I try not to like (the class) as much. • I prayed that I would make a B, but I would settle for a C. • I am quite certain that a C or lower [would give me] serious doubts about myself and doubts about this class. These doubts would

probably lead to doubts about you as a teacher. I would be very apprehensive to take another of the same type of exam.

What has your reaction to this particular grade taught you about grading your students in the future?

• I hope my students will not take their grades personally.It will have nothing to do with the way I feel about them. • My reaction to this grade has taught me that students sometimes need a second chance even if as a teacher you feel you have

been very fair and lenient in grading. • I'm angry at myself. . . . I need to let them know that it is OK to be disappointed, but not angry with themselves. • [This] has showed me that a low grade doesn't necessarily mean that the student didn't put a good deal of effort into studying and

preparing for the test.

Figure 1. Example of handout compiled from student journals.

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mad at myself” remind them how easily these powerful emotions can get transferredto the subject matter, the teacher, or the self.

Comments in the section about the recapture opportunity, such as, “It allows usas students to see what we did wrong and how to make our ideas stronger,” “It’s anopportunity to redeem myself. No helplessness,” and “I figured if you were doingthat, the class must have not done well on the exams,” demonstrate some of thebenefits of mastery-based assessment, but they also bring up some of the ambigui-ties inherent in the practice; e.g., does offering students a chance to revise commu-nicate an unintended message of failure? Finally, responses like, “I do remembertimes when I used to just hate the class because of a bad grade,” and “If I’m goingto get a bad grade anyway, I try not to like (the class) as much,” can help my stu-dents begin to understand why some of their future students may appear not to careabout their grades at all. These concepts are all important learning outcomes for thisweek on the psychological effects of assessment; finding and discussing them intheir own comments is far more engaging, and also more convincing, to my stu-dents than any amount of lecturing on my part.

Necessary conditions

Using students’ reflective journals about their own past experiences as an explicitpart of the classroom content in my preservice teaching classes requires that I createa context for writing in which students are both willing to look at their own experi-ences critically and trusting enough to share their experiences and thoughts with meand with other students. To achieve these goals, it is essential that I treat my stu-dents as I hope they will treat their future students, by offering them choice,respect, and agency in their own learning.

Choice

In all of my journal assignments, I offer students structured choices in theirresponses. As can be seen in the examples above, they always have a choice ofwhich experiences or responses they want to write about, and if the subject is at alllikely to be personally sensitive, I usually offer them the option of writing aboutsomeone else or some less sensitive experience (as in the assignment on gradesquoted above). I do this in order to acknowledge the diversity of my students’experiences, to enable them to target the experiences they have found most mean-ingful, and, especially, to allow them to preserve their privacy to the degree theywish. I also do this to model for them how they can, as teachers, structure choicesin their future assignments toward these same ends.

Respect

One way I show respect for the validity of each student’s experiences is by not, inthe traditional sense, grading their journals. Like me, my students are too busy todo anything they do not have to do, so they do receive points for completing jour-nals. However, these points are not contingent on whether they show a “correct”understanding of a target concept in their writing or take the “right” position on anissue (i.e., the one they think I agree with). As it says in my syllabus, “I will givethe full eight (8) points to every journal entry that thoughtfully addresses all of the

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requirements outlined above,” and most students do, in fact, earn 8’s on most jour-nals, especially after the first few.

Instead of grading their journals, I write multiple personal comments in the mar-gins. Some are short and emphatic, such as, “That must have been tough!” or “Ireally agree with you here!”; others are more thoughtful or questioning, such as “I’mnot sure what you mean here?” or “I never thought of it that way,” or the ever-popu-lar, “Hmmm …” (which I tell students means I am not sure if I agree or disagree, butI am thinking about it). Occasionally, I will write a more lengthy discourse: explain-ing, extending, or even disagreeing with a point they have made. In all cases,however, I avoid responding to their journal entries from an authoritative teacherstance. Even if I strongly disagree with something they have written, I respond in thefirst person, from the stance of a fellow learner and future colleague, saying (if appli-cable) something like, “I really disagree with you here. When I think about … ”rather than making a more common, teacher-stance comment like, “This is incorrect;please check pages xxx in your textbook …” Authoritarian responses like the lattertend to shut down students’ willingness to share their thoughts and beliefs, whereasmy departure from traditional grading/commenting seems to disarm my students’ever-present concerns about whether they are “getting it right,” freeing them to thinkand ponder and investigate new ideas and unresolved questions in their journals. Italso means that, when they get their journals back, I usually have the pleasure of see-ing them turn right past the score on the front to begin reading my comments.

Agency

The invitation to students in journal assignments to find examples, or counter-exam-ples, of class concepts in their own lives and to reflect critically on their own edu-cational experiences (including my class) recognizes that they are agents in theirown learning – that they will, and will need to, build their own understandings fromwhat is presented in the class. Taking class time and resources to share what theyhave written marks their experiences and ideas as important contributions to theclass, while my open acknowledgment that they sometimes think of ideas I havenot thought of, and even my willingness to argue with them (on paper) from a per-sonal stance, positions my students not just as learners, but as people from whom Iand their fellow students can also learn. By thus encouraging their sense of agency,I hope not only to improve their learning in my own class (Bandura, 2006), butalso to model ways they can develop agency in their future students.

Conclusion

We cannot expect preservice teaching candidates to respect their future students’lived experiences unless they experience this same respect in our classes. We cannotassume they will somehow find ways to connect their various subject matters withdiverse students’ lives, feelings, and values, unless we, as teacher educators, findways to help them make those same kinds of connections between their own livesand the concepts and theories of teacher education. We cannot urge them to learnfrom their students unless we show ourselves willing to learn from them. We canneither justly nor effectively ask our students to do as we say, but not as we do.

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Instead, we need not only to help our students reflect purposefully on their“apprenticeships of experience” in light of what they are learning, but also to be apositive part of that apprenticeship – to see them all as our apprentices, bothobserving and contributing to the quality of the teaching we do and the learning wehope to create in our classrooms. One way that I try to do this is through reflectivejournals. By using and sharing their own writing about their own lives, I invite mystudents gently to reexamine both their experiences and assumptions, to use theirhearts as well as their minds in their future teaching (McLaren, 1999), to increasetheir commitment to the learning of all their future students, and thus to begin theirjourneys toward constructing an effective, emancipating pedagogy of their own.

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