teacher control in the learner-centered classroom: an unavoidable paradox?

1
teacher control in the learner-centered
classroom an unavoidable paradox?

• adam lefstein
• adaml_at_netvision.net.il
• navcon2003

2
at a glance

• problems at birch high school
• a selective history lesson
• traditional instruction and discipline
• progressive instruction
• progressive discipline?
• back to birch
• what to do?

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problems at birch high school
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towards diagnosis some things teachers told
me

1. staff are too permissive students think
   anything goes.
2. students import emotional problems into school.
3. teachers are inconsistent in their rules and
   enforcement.
4. school studies are irrelevant and uninteresting
   bored students disrupt lessons.

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which explanation might be the key to solving
the problem?

1. staff are too permissive students think
   anything goes.
2. students import emotional problems into school.
3. teachers are inconsistent in their rules and
   enforcement.
4. school studies are irrelevant and uninteresting
   bored students disrupt lessons.
5. other?

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could the growing discipline problems be a
product of our teaching reforms?
are proposed solutions compatible with learning
and teaching in a community of thinking?
why isnt anybody talking about the relationship
between the pedagogical reforms and power
relations?
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a short, selective history lesson
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traditional instruction

• demonstration
• recitation
• exercise
• examination

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traditional discipline...
...or its breakdown?
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its not really about prison
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
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discipline as technology of power

• distribution in space
• control of activity
• hierarchical observation
• normalizing judgment and examination

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disciplinary technology distribution in space
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disciplinary technology control of activity
Take your slates. At the word take, the
children, with their right hands, take hold of
the string by which the slate is suspended from
the nail before them, and, with their left hands,
they grasp the slate in the
middle at the word slates, they unhook it and
place it on the table.
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disciplinary technology hierarchical
observation
Can you find your way around?
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Can you find your way around? Locate the main
office? The teachers room?
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(No Transcript)
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disciplinary technology normalizing judgment
and examination
a pupil who at the end of three examinations has
been unable to pass into the higher order must be
placed, well in evidence, on the bench of the
ignorant.
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• All the pupils in the grade should receive
  instruction relative to the same points, and
  write the same words simultaneously thus all
  will attend to the same thing, at the same
  time...

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• power is not exercised actively and consciously
  by teachers

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the progressivist revolution
Now the change which is coming into our
education is the shifting of the center of
gravity... the child
becomes the sun about which the appliances of
education revolve he is the center about which
they are organized.
John Dewey 1859-1952
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progressivist instruction

• natural learning
• students interests
• active learning
• cooperative learning
• authentic assessment
• democratic experience

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traditional discipline subverted by progressivist
instruction

• cooperative learning
• differentiated learning
• active learning
• authentic assessment

• distribution in space
• control of activity
• hierarchical observation
• normalizing judgment and examination

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what about classroom control?

• a) what may seem like disorder is actually the
  noise and bustle of engaged learning
• b) student misbehavior is a sign that the lesson
  is inappropriate or uninteresting
• c) youthful rebellion against authority is
  natural and positive
• d) education for democracy means granting
  students self-government
• e) other?

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• there is a certain disorder in any busy
  workshop... and there is the confusion, the
  bustle, that results from activity.

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• When students are off task, our first response
  should be to ask, whats the task?

Alfie Kohn
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selective history lesson review

• traditional instruction and discipline coincide
• progressivist instruction subverts traditional
  discipline
• progressivist approach to the discipline
  problem denial and self-blame

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back to birch high school
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in the lesson...
traditional disciplinarian
progressivist teacher

• cajoling
• self-restraint
• corrective interjections

• angry explosion
• immediate consequences

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cognitive and discursive partition
instruction
power relations
?
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• consider redesigning the maths curriculum in
  order to alleviate discipline problems

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separation mechanisms school organization
teaching and learning
discipline

• subject areateacher
• subject leader
• facilitators

• homeroom teacher
• grade leader
• psychologist

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separation mechanisms professional development
and manuals
teaching and learning
discipline
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what should we do?
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notes toward progressivist classroom government

• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• rituals
• power sharing
• accepting the inevitable

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merging instruction and power issues

• school organization
• curriculum design
• professional development

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classroom and school designwhere would you
rather teach?
a
b
c
d
how would you organize the space?
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notes toward progressivist classroom government

• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability mechanisms
• rituals
• power sharing
• accepting the inevitable

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notes toward progressivist classroom government

• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• alternative rituals
• power sharing
• accepting the inevitable

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notes toward progressivist classroom government

• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• rituals
• gradual power sharing
• accepting the inevitable

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notes toward progressivist classroom government

• merging instruction and discipline
• physical design
• accountability
• rituals
• power sharing
• accepting the inevitability of power relations

41

• thank you
• adam lefstein
• adaml_at_netvision.net.il

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for further reading Dewey, John. 1938. Experience
and education. New York The Macmillan
company. Egan, Kieran. 2002. Getting it wrong
from the beginning our progressivist
inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and
Jean Piaget. New Haven Yale University
Press. Foucault, Michel. 1978. Discipline and
punish the birth of the prison. New York Random
House. Kohn, Alfie. 1996. Beyond discipline from
compliance to community. Alexandria, Va.
ASCD. Lefstein, A. 2002. Thinking power and
pedagogy apart - Coping with discipline in
progressivist school reform. Teachers College
Record 104 (8)1627-1655. Tanner, Laurel N. 1997.
Dewey's laboratory school lessons for today. New
York Teachers College Press.