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Author: David K. Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674062787
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Ever since Socrates, teaching has been a difficult and even dangerous profession. Why is good teaching such hard work? In this provocative, witty, and sometimes rueful book, David K. Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face. Like therapists, social workers, and pastors, teachers embark on a mission of human improvement. They aim to deepen knowledge, broaden understanding, sharpen skills, and change behavior. One predicament is that no matter how great their expertise, teachers depend on the cooperation and intelligence of their students, yet there is much that students do not know. To teach responsibly, teachers must cultivate a kind of mental double vision: distancing themselves from their own knowledge to understand students’ thinking, yet using their knowledge to guide their teaching. Another predicament is that although attention to students’ thinking improves the chances of learning, it also increases the uncertainty and complexity of the job. The circumstances in which teachers and students work make a difference. Teachers and students are better able to manage these predicaments if they have resources—common curricula, intelligent assessments, and teacher education tied to both—that support responsible teaching. Yet for most of U.S. history those resources have been in short supply, and many current accountability policies are little help. With a keen eye for the moment-to-moment challenges, Cohen explores what “responsible teaching” can be, the kind of mind reading it seems to demand, and the complex social resources it requires.
Author: David K. Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674062787
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Get Book
Book Description
Ever since Socrates, teaching has been a difficult and even dangerous profession. Why is good teaching such hard work? In this provocative, witty, and sometimes rueful book, David K. Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face. Like therapists, social workers, and pastors, teachers embark on a mission of human improvement. They aim to deepen knowledge, broaden understanding, sharpen skills, and change behavior. One predicament is that no matter how great their expertise, teachers depend on the cooperation and intelligence of their students, yet there is much that students do not know. To teach responsibly, teachers must cultivate a kind of mental double vision: distancing themselves from their own knowledge to understand students’ thinking, yet using their knowledge to guide their teaching. Another predicament is that although attention to students’ thinking improves the chances of learning, it also increases the uncertainty and complexity of the job. The circumstances in which teachers and students work make a difference. Teachers and students are better able to manage these predicaments if they have resources—common curricula, intelligent assessments, and teacher education tied to both—that support responsible teaching. Yet for most of U.S. history those resources have been in short supply, and many current accountability policies are little help. With a keen eye for the moment-to-moment challenges, Cohen explores what “responsible teaching” can be, the kind of mind reading it seems to demand, and the complex social resources it requires.
Author: Nicholas Burbules
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429965516
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Teaching is a complex and challenging endeavour. Teachers are continually faced with difficult choices in which competing values are set in tension with one another. The interests of all students, and of other groups and constituencies, can rarely be served at the same time. Different educational goals, each desirable in and of itself, often place
Author: Nicholas Burbules
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN: 9780813328645
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Teaching is a complex and challenging endeavor. Teachers are continually faced with difficult choices in which competing values are set in tension with one another. The interests of all students, and of other groups and constituencies, can rarely be served at the same time. Different educational goals, each desirable in and of itself, often place incompatible demands on teachers, especially in light of the limited resources and time available to most of them. Of course, teaching does have its satisfactions and fulfillments, but increasingly those rewards must be sought in the context of challenges that reflect the competing expectations society places upon educators.These essays tackle important aspects of the complex, often conflicted contexts of teaching. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of teaching, offering candid analysis of the difficulties and trade-offs inherent in teaching practice, while suggesting ways to productively address a given conflict. Together, the chapters speak honestly to the realities and challenges of teaching, without downplaying the ideals that draw teachers into education in the first place.
Author: Judith L. Pace
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317816625
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
At a time when debate over school reform commands unprecedented attention, Judith L. Pace argues we must grapple with the underlying challenges of classroom teaching and, at the same time, strive to realize the ideals of democratic education. Building on three qualitative studies in grades four through twelve, The Charged Classroom examines the deeply embedded tensions, escalating pressures, and exciting possibilities of the contemporary American public school classroom. Through detailed descriptions and analyses of social studies and English language arts classrooms, Pace disentangles how teachers and students navigate three charged arenas: academic expectations, discussion of provocative topics, and curricular demands. In each domain, democratic learning opportunities, such as promotion of positive student identity, dialogue across differences, and exploration of conflict, are both opened up and closed down. A passionate and persuasive call for education reform, the book offers crucial insights about the realities of teaching and key recommendations for advancing democratic education in a multicultural society.
Author: David K. Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674053649
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
American schools have always been locally created and controlled. But ever since the Title I program in 1965 appropriated nearly one billion dollars for public schools, federal money and programs have been influencing every school in America. What has been accomplished in this extraordinary assertion of federal influence? What hasn't? Why not? With incisive clarity and wit, David Cohen and Susan Moffitt argue that enormous gaps existed between policies and programs, and the real-world practices that they attempted to change. Learning and teaching are complicated and mysterious. So the means to achieve admirable goals are uncertain, and difficult to develop and sustain, particularly when teachers get little help to cope with the blizzard of new programs, new slogans, new tests, and new rules. Ironically, as the authors observe, the least experienced and least well-trained teachers are often in the most needy schools, so federal support is compromised by the inequality it is intended to ameliorate. If new policies and programs don't include means to create the capability they require, they cannot succeed. We don't know what we need to enable states, school systems, schools, teachers, and students to use the resources that programs offer. The trouble with standards-based reform is that standards and tests still don't teach you how to teach.
Author: Ken Bain
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065549
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is—it’s not what teachers do, it’s what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out—but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn. In stories both humorous and touching, Ken Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students’ discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators.
Author: Mary M. Kennedy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674039513
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Reform the schools, improve teaching: these battle cries of American education have been echoing for twenty years. So why does teaching change so little? Arguing that too many would-be reformers know nothing about the conflicting demands of teaching, Mary Kennedy takes us into the controlled commotion of the classroom, revealing how painstakingly teachers plan their lessons, and how many different ways things go awry. Teachers try simultaneously to keep track of materials, time, students, and ideas. In their effort to hold all of these things together, they can inadvertently quash students' enthusiasm and miss valuable teachable moments. Kennedy argues that pedagogical reform proposals that do not acknowledge all of the things teachers need to do are bound to fail. If reformers want students to learn, they must address all of the problems teachers face, not just those that interest them.
Author: Richard M. Ingersoll
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674038950
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Schools are places of learning but they are also workplaces, and teachers are employees. As such, are teachers more akin to professionals or to factory workers in the amount of control they have over their work? And what difference does it make? Drawing on large national surveys as well as wide-ranging interviews with high school teachers and administrators, Richard Ingersoll reveals the shortcomings in the two opposing viewpoints that dominate thought on this subject: that schools are too decentralized and lack adequate control and accountability; and that schools are too centralized, giving teachers too little autonomy. Both views, he shows, overlook one of the most important parts of teachers' work: schools are not simply organizations engineered to deliver academic instruction to students, as measured by test scores; schools and teachers also play a large part in the social and behavioral development of our children. As a result, both views overlook the power of implicit social controls in schools that are virtually invisible to outsiders but keenly felt by insiders. Given these blind spots, this book demonstrates that reforms from either camp begin with inaccurate premises about how schools work and so are bound not only to fail, but to exacerbate the problems they propose to solve.
Author: Judith L. Pace
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1475851987
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Teaching controversial issues in the classroom is now more urgent and fraught than ever as we face up to rising authoritarianism, racial and economic injustice, and looming environmental disaster. Despite evidence that teaching controversy is critical, educators often avoid it. How then can we prepare and support teachers to undertake this essential but difficult work? Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues, based on a cross-national qualitative study, examines teacher educators’ efforts to prepare preservice teachers for teaching controversial issues that matter for democracy, justice, and human rights. It presents four detailed cases of teacher preparation in three politically divided societies: Northern Ireland, England, and the United States. The book traces graduate students’ learning from university coursework into the classrooms where they work to put what they have learned into practice. It explores their application of pedagogical tools and the factors that facilitated or hindered their efforts to teach controversy. The book’s cross-national perspective is compelling to a broad and diverse audience, raising critical questions about teaching controversial issues and providing educators, researchers, and policymakers tools to help them fulfill this essential democratic mission of education.
Author: James M. Lang
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674255070
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
You go into teaching with high hopes: to inspire students, to motivate them to learn, to help them love your subject. Then you find yourself facing a crowd of expectant faces on the first day of the first semester, and you think “Now what do I do?” Practical and lively, On Course is full of experience-tested, research-based advice for graduate students and new teaching faculty. It provides a range of innovative and traditional strategies that work well without requiring extensive preparation or long grading sessions when you’re trying to meet your own demanding research and service requirements. What do you put on the syllabus? How do you balance lectures with group assignments or discussions—and how do you get a dialogue going when the students won’t participate? What grading system is fairest and most efficient for your class? Should you post lecture notes on a website? How do you prevent cheating, and what do you do if it occurs? How can you help the student with serious personal problems without becoming overly involved? And what do you do about the student who won’t turn off his cell phone? Packed with anecdotes and concrete suggestions, this book will keep both inexperienced and veteran teachers on course as they navigate the calms and storms of classroom life.
