Learning to Teach Everyone’s Children Chapter 1 The Changing Face of Teaching and Learning

Primary Reasons for Teaching  A Calling…born to be a teacher  The Love of Children…works in progress  The Desire to Help…the enduring potential to construct and reconstruct both themselves and their social world

Which most describes your desire to become an educator? 1.A calling 2.The love of children 3.The desire to help

Why students go to school: the three purposes of schooling  Preserving and transmitting the past cultural heritage  Selecting and preparing students for occupational status levels  Preparing students to build a better society

Why are you at U.M.D.? 1.To get a job. 2.To learn more, become smarter 3.To make things better for the next generation 4.My parents said I had to go.

Preserving and Transmitting the Cultural Heritage  A rich tradition of enduring truths and values for each succeeding generation  A certain fund of knowledge must be possessed…cultural literacy…to be considered educated and to be successful in society  Rapid change, global market economy, multiculturalism militate against this approach, say critics

Selecting and Preparing Students for Occupational Status Levels  Certifying students for the world of work  Meritocracy…those who are the brightest and work the hardest, will go the furthest (tracking systems)  Perpetuating inequalities, critics say, based on class, race, gender

Preparing Students to Build a Better Society  Students can learn skills of social reform and to be tomorrow’s leaders  An informed citizenry is needed to have a productive society…Jefferson  Students will leave school overly idealistic and under skilled for success, some critics say

Do you think the schools you went to best prepared you to… 1.Get a good job in the future 2.Make a more just and fair society 3.Learn the rich heritage from the past

Changes influencing Teaching and Learning  Focus on teacher quality…subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of students (mainstream and marginalized)  Changes in Student Demographics…ethnic and racial, language, social class (global market economy, downsizing, service- based economy have led to the “working poor”

Students who do well in school 1.Are usually the smartest ones 2.Have unfair advantages over the rest 3.Work the hardest 4.Have the best families

Ways of Teaching  Paying attention to power  Many kinds of power: legal, administrative, economic, military  Can be seen as relations among individuals or groups based on social, political, and material imbalances or asymmetries

The most important kind of power anyone can have is 1.Legal power 2.Administrative power 3.Economic power 4.Military power

Power used in Education  Social, Political, Material  Visible and Invisible…norms, expectations, school rules and demands and expectations of individuals, institutions, and agencies  The Dominant Discourse…determines what counts as true, important, relevant, what gets spoken and what remains unsaid

Multicultural Education  All aspects of schooling address the needs and talents of a diverse population to ensure equity for all. It is both a philosophy and a process.  EMCSR…education that is multicultural and social reconstructionist to respond to changing population demographics, the influence of globalization, shifting conceptions of what knowledge and whose knowledge should influence the curriculum

EMCSR  Dramatic demographic changes, familial patterns  Globalization of the economy, environment, labor, politics, culture  Curriculum reform movements  Cultural transformation and social transformation

Six key elements in a reconstructionist approach  Connect educational philosophy to a broader social philosophy grounded in democratic values  Schools cannot be “neutral”  Not only cognitive but also moral discourse  Students participate in communal experiences  Open discussion embracing differences  Teachers as transformative intellectuals