Liberal/Progressive Pedagogy Literature Responses

1. “Teaching for joy and justice also begins with the non-negotiable belief that all students are capable of brilliance” (Christensen, “Teaching for Joy and Justice”).

Having worked for ten years with students with special needs, I know from experience that all students are, in fact, capable of brilliance. I worked with one particular student, I will refer to him here as Jim, for about two years. Before I was assigned to work with Jim, he was defiant and frequently behaved inappropriately. A common problem in special education is that staff members do too much for their students, this frequently leads to learned helplessness and behavior problems as students become frustrated in their environment. Being only vaguely aware of this problem at the time, I stepped back and encouraged Jim to try everything independently, and to always give his best effort before I would interfere to provide assistance. Jim made impressive improvements during the time I worked with him, and I attribute that growth to the simple fact that I gave him the opportunity to show his own brilliance instead of constantly getting in the way to do things for him. Jim also had a fascination with words, he had a limited vocabulary and enjoyed repeating simple words. Because he enjoyed it, I made sure that he had plenty of opportunities to say his favorite words. I was reminded of this when reading Susan Ohanian’s account of Jack, a student in an alternative school in New York who became interested in Scrabble and learning vocabulary. Ohanian allowed Jack to spend significant amounts of time playing Scrabble and as a result, Jack obtained valuable skills and knowledge (Ohanian, 16). When teachers allow their students to be themselves and to pursue their own interests, their brilliance will almost certainly be revealed and “bad” students will become “amazing” stories retold decades later by inspirational speakers at conferences for educators.

2. “Humans have a success instinct. This is what makes humans different from all other living things. They want success, and they strive for their success potential. You can accomplish anything with students if you set high expectations for behavior and performance by which you yourself abide” (Wong, 35).

Success is intrinsically motivating. When a person accomplishes a task, they feel good about themselves. However, school often provides students with bountiful opportunities for failure. As Linda Christensen points out, “some students arrive in my classroom trailing years of failure behind them” (“Teaching for Joy and Justice”). The consequence of providing students with assignments that are too challenging for them is that they will experience failure rather than success. While failure is a great opportunity for growth when experienced in balance with success, failure by itself is a great opportunity for stagnation and even regression. Students begin to approach school with the expectation that if they try, they will fail. Students, therefore, need to be given opportunities to succeed and grow as students and as individuals. What are some strategies that teachers can use to create optimism among students regarding school work?

3. “[research] suggest rather strongly that children who are expected by their teachers to gain intellectually in fact do show greater intellectual gains after one year than do children of whom such gains are not expected” (Wong, 40).

Wong cites “classic research on expectations,” revealing that simply telling teachers that they are good teachers and that they have a few gifted students in their class results in significant academic improvement among those students perceived as being gifted. This research is meaningful to me, as I do not always have the highest expectations for some students whom I have observed. I often look at struggling students and expect them to struggle their whole lives. I realize, especially in light of this research, that as a teacher I must always have high expectations for my students, even when they are radiating negativity and pessimism about school. I know that to turn their attitude around, I need to find out more about them as individuals, to humanize them, and to let them reveal their strengths and their brilliance.

4. “An invitation is a message that states that the person being invited is responsible, able, and valuable. Conversely, a disinvitation is intended to tell people that they are irresponsible, incapable, and worthless. The critical ingredient needed for people to realize their fullest potential lies in the kinds of invitations extended to individuals by the significant people in their lives” (Wong, 64).

Wong’s discussion of invitation and disinvitation is interesting, although it seems obvious enough that it does not require explanation. The bottom line here is to treat your students like people whom you actually care about, which should not be a problem if you actually do care about them. The contrast here is with traditional teaching methods, which objectify students and treat students as knowledge “banks.” A liberal/progressive approach treats students as people, explores their inner thoughts and dreams, and allows inner strengths to flourish. None of this can be accomplished without acknowledging that the student is a human being and showing the student that you actually care about them. I do not see disinvitation being an obstacle to my teaching; I cannot foresee myself telling a student things like “I don’t care what you do” (63).

5. “An ineffective assignment results when the teacher tells the class what will be covered […] an effective assignment results when the teacher tells the students, up front, what the students are to have accomplished or mastered at the end of the lesson” (Wong, 210).

This is incredibly useful advice for all teachers, do not simply tell students to read a set of pages from a textbook, tell them what they should be able to do. Wong provides example study guidelines on page 224, which function like a map for students to follow to guide their learning. I believe that students often experience failure in school due to the vagueness of teacher’s assignments, which contrast the specificity of teacher’s assessments. Students simply do not know how to prepare for a test on “chapter 7,” and according to Wong, neither do their parents. I believe establishing this explicit clarity is essential in beginning to develop an academic climate of success. When students know what the teacher expects them to do, they can begin working immediately on developing their ability to actually do it.

6. “If we could go into our classrooms everyday with the thought that these kids are tomorrow’s traffic cops, the world would be a better place” (Ohanian, 23).

This is a valuable, though somewhat intimidating, thought to keep in mind when working with students. With this perspective, a teacher is almost forced to treat her students with dignity and respect based on the possibility that one day, their own dignity will be in the hands of their former students. As with Wong’s advice to be invitational rather than disinvitational, this advice seems superfluous as I fully intend to treat my students with dignity and respect. Nevertheless, there are a great number of teachers who could benefit their students tremendously by following this advice. But these teachers are probably the types of people who do not take advice from other people because they do not respect other people. Solutions?

7. “[after speaking with a student about missing homework], the teacher discovered that one student’s family was in hiding to escape an abusive parent. The student was living in the back of a pickup truck outfitted with a camper canopy. When the sun went down, the lights went out. The teacher remarked that if he had never asked her, he would never have known how to help her” (Landau, 160).

This last quote simply puts the concept of treating students with dignity in a new light. In countless elementary school classrooms I have seen “Excuse Limit 0” posters displayed for all students to see each day.

The posters represent a trend in elementary education, that seems distinctly dehumanizing. Students are marched down hallways in straight lines, forced to stand each day and recite the “Pledge of Allegiance,” told exactly what to do and exactly how to do it. I can only speak from my personal experience in my school district, what have you observed? Landau, with this quote, insists that teachers should never treat their students as if they have no lives outside of the classroom. The teacher can never truly understand why a student is struggling academically if he does not talk to the student on a personal level, treat the student with dignity, and genuinely have compassion for the student.

Traditional Pedagogy – Literature Responses

1. “The behavioral model is concerned with the scientific modification of observable behaviors” (Hardin, 19).

Hardin advocates the use of behaviorism in classroom management. While I believe that the behaviorism model has many useful and valuable applications for teachers, it also has serious flaws that teachers must be cognizant of. Hardin states that rewarded behaviors will be increase in frequency, effectively punished behaviors will decrease in frequency, and unrewarded behaviors will cease. This very simple assumption about human behavior is based on the work of scientists from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike, and Skinner. The model is almost perfectly unconcerned about what goes on inside the “organisms” head, and is concerned only with observable behavior changes in response to stimuli.

2. “Behavioral change should focus on the here and now. Behaviorists are not concerned with past events” (Hardin, 21).

The previously mentioned flaw of behaviorism, that it ignores cognitive processes, is highlighted in this assumption of the behaviorist approach to classroom management. It seems particularly heartless to approach “misbehaving” students with a total disregard for their personal histories. The process of cognitive development is a lifelong process, beginning before birth and continuing until death. To address the behaviors of a high school student without consideration for his 13-18 years of personal developmental history seems arrogant and reckless. This assumption of behaviorism risks producing dangerously inconsiderate teachers and parents.

3. “Behavioral strategies can be harmful if used by insensitive and unethical teachers and administrators” (Hardin, 32).

Perhaps the seemingly inconsiderate nature of behaviorism is not necessitated by its design. The appropriate implementation of behavior modification techniques requires pairing of consistent consequences with behaviors in order to change the frequencies of both desirable and undesirable behaviors. The process itself requires focusing on “the here and now”; however, the teacher as a human being need not neglect the individual needs and dispositions of the student. In fact, the teacher would be at a terrible disadvantage if she did not acknowledge the personal history and characteristics of each of her students. Thus, behaviorism can be an extremely effective approach to classroom management when implemented with consistency and consideration for individual circumstances.

4. “Although poor performance should not be ignored—students need specific, corrective feedback to know what to improve—it is important that the climate for learning be positive” (Emmer and Evertson, 137).

Underachieving students pose a challenge to teachers that is somewhat more complicated than managing misbehaviors. Emmer and Evertson insist that students should enjoy learning and that school can often make the process of learning tedious and even painful. In traditional pedagogy, it is easy to tell a student that she is “wrong” because there is often only one “right” answer. However, this attitude inadvertently discourages struggling students as being “wrong” often implies being less intelligent or capable than students who are “right.” Emmer and Evertson advocate maintaining a positive learning environment for students by setting high standards for student achievement, considering imperfection as a part of the learning process, being confident in students’ abilities, encouraging students with positive motivators, and avoiding making comparisons between students. This approach maintains that there is, in fact, a “right” answer, and that it merely takes different amounts of time and effort for different students to meet expectations.

5. “Public praise that focuses on student accomplishment works better than praise for student effort. When the teacher praises only for working hard, students may assume that the teacher thinks they aren’t very able” (Emmer and Evertson, 138).

Part of a teacher’s strategy in maintaining a positive educational climate involves praising student accomplishment. Often times, however, teachers feel compelled to praise student effort. Indeed, a good effort seems worthy of praise and in many situations praising effort is an act of consolation for a student who failed to reach a personal goal. Emmer and Evertson maintain, nevertheless, that praising effort inadvertently sends a message of perceived inadequacy to the student—as if the teacher does not think the student is capable of attaining their goal. Interestingly, Emmer and Evertson allow for praise of effort in the context of praise for accomplishment, and encourage praise for accomplishment to be given for any perceivable accomplishment. For example, if a student works hard on a project, but does not receive the grade she expected; the teacher can still praise the student for her effort and the accomplishment of producing a “beautifully done” project.

6. “Extra incentives or rewards can help build a positive climate” (Emmer and Evertson, 138).

Employing the principles of behaviorism in their guidelines to maintaining a positive classroom climate, Emmer and Evertson encourage the usage of positive reinforcement to reward desired behaviors and prevent undesired behaviors. The authors caution that such incentives must be carefully tailored to meet the abilities of your students; warning that when a behavioral expectation is either too easy or too difficult to meet, the incentive loses its motivational power. They caution further that careless implementation of a rewards system can discourage students whose abilities or perceived abilities limit their chances of being rewarded. The inherent flaw with incentives is that they provide extrinsic motivation to students and do little to develop the intrinsic motivation that students will require once they enter the more demanding world of college and the workforce.

7. “under some circumstances [extrinsic rewards] may reduce students’ intrinsic motivation to engage in the rewarded activity” (Emmer and Evertson, 142).

Research cited by the authors reveals that the use of extrinsic rewards actually decreases students motivation to perform the rewarded activity once the promise of reward has been removed. It is believed that this phenomenon occurs because rewarding a behavior inadvertently sends the message that the behavior is unpleasant and that the reward received is a merely a coercive tactic. Emmer and Evertson present several solutions to this problem enabling teachers to implement incentives effectively. First, they note that praising students for their accomplishments has actually been shown to increase an individual’s “intrinsic interest” in a task. Second, that rewards can have a positive impact on intrinsic motivation when they are connected to a “standard of performance.” For example, rewarding a student for performing a task will be largely ineffective at building intrinsic motivation. Instead, a teacher should promise a reward for completing a task with a certain degree of proficiency. This conditional reward motivates the student much the way praise does, the reward says “you did a good job!” rather than “you completed the task”.

8. “Good grades are a powerful incentive for most students when they are perceived to be a direct reflection of their achievement and competence” (Emmer and Evertson, 139).

Grades are incentives, extrinsic motivators, that can be intrinsically motivating for students when the grades are a “direct reflection of their achievement and competence”. Grades, argue Emmer and Evertson, should be based on a clear standard of academic performance and should reflect student achievement with relation to the course’s learning objectives. Like with other rewards and incentives, grades should not merely indicate that a student has completed all of his assigned tasks, but should indicate how successful the student was in meeting explicit academic goals.

9. “An I-message is a statement that describes the problem and its effects on the teacher, the student, or the class; it may include a description of the feelings produced by a problem” (Emmer and Evertson, 177).

Emmer and Evertson tout as an effective tool in eliciting empathy in disruptive students the use of “I-messages” to manage misbehaviors in the classroom. An I-message describes what the undesired behavior is, what the effect of the undesired behavior is, and how it makes the teacher feel. I-messages are intended to force a student to consider the effects of his otherwise impulsive actions on others. I-messages can be effective if delivered assertively and not pleadingly. I-messages also require that a positive classroom climate has been established; as many students simply do not care how their teacher feels if they do not have any respect for their teacher.

10. “The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of [direct instruction] to become lifeless and petrified” (Friere, “The ‘Banking’ Concept”).

Friere elaborates, “The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable.” My personal interest in science is based on the fact that the universe is constantly changing, dynamic, interconnected, and full of mystery. I want to be able to teach science so that it is not lifeless to my students. Friere provides guidance, stating that “authentic thinking” occurs only through communication. That students must play an active role in their learning. Friere does not provide specific guidance on how to accomplish this paradigm shift in the classroom; although it seems obvious that students must participate in group-oriented activities to explore academic material. These activities can include debates, discussions, interviews, research, field trips, and countless other activities that go beyond the simple “banking” process of traditional teaching.