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Dailogism and its affect on classroom discourse
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Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation: A Discourse Analysis of Mentoring Talk Author(s): Deborah Bieler Source: English Education, Vol. 42, No. 4 (July 2010), pp. 391-426Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23018019Accessed: 13-03-2015 05:52 UTC
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Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation: A Discourse Analysis of Mentoring Talk
Deborah Bieler
Mentor was an old friend of Odysseus, to whom the King /Odysseus] had entrusted his
whole household when he sailed, with orders to defer to aged Laertes [Odysseus's father] and keep everything intact. (Homer, 1946, 1.43)
In
Homer's epic, Odysseus, before leaving on a long journey, asks Mentor, his old familv friend, to be in charee durine his absence. Althoueh most I his old family friend, to be in charge during his absence. Although most
common usages of the term mentor assume that Odysseus asked Mentor
to provide guidance for his son, Telemachus, and that Mentor did so with
wisdom and vigor, no evidence for this actually exists in the text. To the con
trary, a closer reading reveals that (1) Odysseus never asks Mentor to advise
Telemachus, and (2) Telemachus suffers great distress after he initially fails
to lead the kingdom well and is essentially left alone when chaos breaks out:
A son, when his father has gone, has many difficulties to cope with at
home, especially if there is no one else to help him, as is the case with
Telemachus, whose father is abroad and who has no other friends in the
place to protect him from injustice. (1946,1.68)
It is not until the goddess Athene assumes Mentor s form that Telemachus
actually receives any assistance. Later, Athene "eliminates the middle
man" by inhabiting the body of Telemachus and just doing the work of the
kingdom herself. One of Athene's legacies in modern teacher preparation is
that mentors are widely presumed to be knowers and actors, while student
teachers are commonly seen as not-knowers and acted-upon. Unfortunately,
this, too, ignores an early passage in which Telemachus insists that he is
truly "old enough to learn from others what has happened [in the kingdom]
and to feel my own strength at last" (1.45, italics added). In spite of his self
English Education, july 2010 391
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English Education ,V 42 N4, July 2010
assessment, no onegod or humangives Telemachus the opportunity to act
on his own behalf, and his role for much of the remaining text is essentially
that of a pawn. This reading of The Odyssey raises a question: How can we
create teacher preparation experiences that provide better opportunities
for new teachers to "feel their own strength," to begin their careers with
strong senses of themselves as actors and knowers? The deep mythic roots
of mentoring and cultural understanding of the term (Cochran-Smith &
Paris, 1995; Roberts, 1999) render mentoring reform difficult, as the lay
ers of hierarchy in The Odyssey (the gods, Odysseus, Laertes, Mentor, and
Telemachus) closely parallel current educational hierarchies (the federal
and state governments, teacher preparation administrators, mentors, and
student teachers). These daunting layers can inhibit the agency of student
teachers, who inhabit the lowest tier.
During the 2002-2005 school year, as a university mentor of four
English student teachers, I desired to move beyond the Homerian legacy and
create a mentoring space with student teachers. Holding a surplus view of
student teachersin contrast to a "deficit perspective" (Ogbu, 1981), I valued
student teachers' holistic identities and supported them as they sought to
effect educational change (Bieler, 2004). I strove to emphasize "problem pos
ing" and avoid "banking" (Freire, 1970/2000), and I studied our discourse
to explore what happens when such an attempt
The deficit-oriented language and is made. This study examined the complexities
images often used to describe Of' mentoring discourse and agentive teacher
Student teachers suggest that preparation. I argue that such an examination is
they are being "trained" to be necessary to better prepare student teachers to
comfortable in the role of being en8ae agentively with the powerful status quo in
"trained " schools. I begin by discussing the intersections of
current thinking about mentoring and dialogue,
and I describe how these intersections suggest productive avenues for analyz
ing mentoring discourse. I then use a conceptualization of "dialogic praxis"
to look closely at one instance of mentoring talk. Finally, I suggest this study's
implications for teacher preparation research, practice, and policy.
Putting Dialogue Scholarship in "Dialogue" with Mentoring
Scholarship
Images in the literature generally characterize student teachers as a strug
gling, somewhat uncritical, populationcertainly not as the intellectuals
Giroux (1994) argues that teachers ought to be. The deficit-oriented language
and images often used to describe student teachers suggest that they are
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
being trained to be comfortable in the role of being "trained." Character
izing student teachers as active and critical rather than merely struggling to
survive is more likely to create an activist teaching profession (Sachs, 2003)
that strives to create a more just society both within and beyond the class
room. Four metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) for student teachers' needs
and the associated mentoring roles are prominent in teacher preparation
scholarship: (1) student teachers as having deficits and mentors as remedia
tors (Rust, 1988; Slick, 1998; Tom, 1997); (2) student teachers as performers
of their knowledge and skills and mentors as coaches (Hoover, O'Shea, &
Carroll, 1988); (3) student teachers as psychologically needy and mentors
as counselors (Hawkey, 1997; Hoover, O'Shea, and Carroll, 1988); and (4)
student teachers as uncritical perpetuators of the status quo and mentors
as promoters of school reform (Borko & Mayfield, 1995; Richardson, 1996;
Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). Such characterizations of mentoring
illustrate the persistence of the banking model (Freire, 1970/2000) of "su
pervision," in which any outcomes are seen as the result of the knowledge,
commitments, or efforts of the mentor (e.g., Hawkey, 1998; Hoover, O'Shea,
& Carroll, 1988). In a sense, the persistent language of causality illustrates a
lingering behaviorism, perhaps a relic of mentoring's clinical, supervisory
roots, and points to the need for empirical work on student teacher agency,
which Murray (1997) defines as "the satisfying power to take meaningful
action and see the results of our decisions and choices" (p. 381).
Though many studies make compelling reference to the transforma
tive potential of dialogic practice in reforming U.S. teacher preparation
programs (e.g., Danielewicz, 2001; Fenimore-Smith, 2004; Roth & Tobin,
2002), the notion of dialogue is often only vaguely defined, usually assumed
to be synonymous with talk or conversation and antithetical to monologue,
lecture, and transmissionor banking or depositing (Freire, 1970/2000).
Critical and feminist theorists (e.g., Boler, 2005b; Burbules, 1993; Burbules &
Rice, 1991; Ellsworth, 1989,1997; Freire, 1997; Macedo, 1996; Sidorkin, 1999),
however, have debated the nature of dialogue. Although the scholarships of
mentoring and dialogue theory have not historically been in conversation,
useful insights can be gained by reading the mentoring literature through
the lenses these debates provide. For example, in describing how to achieve
the goals held by critical feminist educators, Weiler (1988) names as fun
damental "a commitment both to critique and analysisboth of texts and
social relationshipsand to a political commitment to building a more just
society" as well as "valuing humanity . . . recognizing the value of others
(in this case students) and of one's self' (p. 115). Other critical feminists add
to these commitments the significance of local, individual voices and lived
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English Education, V42 N4, July 2010
experiences and the need for all human beings to struggle, together, against
social oppression (hooks, 1994; Jordan, 2002). In this way, feminist theory
has complicated critical theory's traditional oppressor/oppressed binary
by emphasizing the capacity of all human beings to be both oppressor and
oppressed (Ellsworth, 1997); this complication is central to understanding
issues of power that can affect the mentoring relationship.
Interestingly, much of the scholarly critique and suspicion of dialogue
examines limitations of dialogue in classroom settings (e.g., Berlak, 2005;
Erickson, 2005), where the workings of voice and silence are highly prob
lematic for all participants. Here, the kinds of differences conceptualized
in the criticized "dialogue across difference" fantasy are most often defined
primarily in terms of race/ethnicity and culture (e.g., Boler, 2005a). Empiri
cal work on dialogue across differences of power in out-of-school settings is
needed to further develop understandings of how power functions in and
through discourse. This article seeks to help fill this need by sharing findings
of an empirical study that examined an instance of talk between a university
mentor (myself) and a student teacher (Joss), who shared commitments to
liberatory (Freire, 1970/2000), transgressive (hooks, 1994), and socially re
sponsive (Jordan, 2002; Lorde, 1984) education. (All names are pseudonyms.)
This study considers an instance of an unfortunately common phenomenon:
a critical urban educator deciding whether to leave what he perceived to
be a hostile, unsupportive environment. Joss's dilemma throws complex is
sues of power and agency into relief. In this exploration of dialogue across
differences of position and power, I hope to raise questions about and move
beyond the reification of power differences in teacher preparation research
The experiences and discourses
of English teachers, particularly those involved in mentoring
relationships, are especially fruitful sites for studying dialogic
praxis and teacher agency.
and practice in order to suggest how dialogic
possibilities can strengthen the theoretical base
of mentoring practice and promote the develop
ment of agentive educators at all levels.
onsnips, are especially The experiences and discourses of English
iS for Studying dialogic teachers, particularly those involved in mentor
tis and teacher agency. 'n8 relationships, are especially fruitful sites for
studying dialogic praxis and teacher agency. The
English language arts, broadly defined, focus on the power of language
particularly as pertaining to issues of difference or conflictand those who
teach English are often drawn to the subject due to an interest in helping
students make sense of these issues. English teachers are taught to take words
seriouslyto analyze the material artifacts that showcase them, to examine
how they are produced and received, to appreciate their aesthetic qualities,
and to ask questions about those who produce, receive, and critique them.
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
English teachers are thus likely to be attuned to the ways that language
variously affords meaning-making, character interaction, relationships of
power, belief conveyance and questioning, and conflict and resolution. This
heightened awareness of language features and affordances is likely to be
evident in their reading of the world (Freire, 1987). For example, English
teachers must choose the extent to which they will adhere to the traditional
literary canon in their courses, a choice that is grounded in beliefs about
language and is thus not as prominent in more skill-progressive fields such as
mathematics and the sciences. Mentoring relationships, particularly among
English educators, can serve as generative sites in which to investigate the
field's current emphasis on dialogic and progressive pedagogies that high
light the importance of voice and critique.
The notion of dialogic praxis is informed by Bakhtin's (1981, 1984)
and Freire's (1970/2000) theories on dialogue as well as Freire's theories
on praxis. Both Bakhtinian and Freirean theories of dialogue focus on the
possibilities for individual agency with respect to social context. Freire's
sociopolitical work focuses on the possibilities for individual agency in re
lation to "the world," the broader culture of the ruling social class. Freire
(1970/2000) posits that dialogue is "the encounter between [individuals],
mediated by the world, in order to name the world" (p. 88) as "a challenge to
existing domination" (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 99). Accordingly, his definition
of praxis"reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it"
(1970/2000, p. 51)is reform-oriented. Much of Bakhtin's literary scholar
ship, however, focuses on the interactions between and among individuals
with special attention to those with discordant worldviews. For Bakhtin, dis
course primarily offers a window to philosophical orientation, and his deep
admiration of the characters in Dostoevsky's novels stems from his belief that
these characters illustrate "a plurality of independent and unmerged voices
and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices . . . [that]
combine but are not merged in the unity of the event" (1984, p. 6), creating
"a world of autonomous subjects, not objects" (p. 7). These ideas lead me to
suggest that dialogic praxis is discursively reflecting on and working with
others to transform the world while upholding others' voices and agency (see
Figure 1). In dialectic with dialogic praxis is monologic practice, in which
one voice, or one person's practice, is dominant. Coulter (1999) notes that
"in monologue, meaning is not the product of interchange between speakers,
but the expression of one person's or group's ordering of experience" (p. 6).
My use of "praxis" and "practice" is intended to suggest the differing degrees
of self-reflexivity associated with dialogue and monologue, respectively.
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English Education ,V 42 N4, July 2010
Articulating, clarifying, and pursuing individual visions of change
Participants' discourse 2
Strengthening individual agency Cycle begins again
Figure 1. A conceptualization of dialogic praxis Figure l. A conceptualization of dialogic praxis
Dialogic praxis, then, is a careful balancing act. It is a transformative
stance that has the potential to describe and alter the nature not only of
educational spaces but also of teachers' and students' participation in out-of
school contexts. In this article, I discuss three primary findings concerning
dialogic praxis. First, in dialogic praxis, continual acts of negotiation are
regarded as central to the work of teaching and learning. Second, participat
ing in dialogic praxis affords opportunities to strengthen individual agency.
Third, dialogic praxis provides a space for participants to articulate, clarify,
and pursue individual visions for change. The study illustrates some of the
possibilities and challenges of dialogic mentoring praxis and suggests the
usefulness of discourse studies in enriching teacher preparation research
and practice.
Setting
Research Participants and Sites
This article draws from a larger practitioner inquiry study that I conducted
as a university-based mentor of four secondary English student teachers.
These student teachers were enrolled in a year-long graduate certification
program at an urban university in the northeastern United States from July
2002 to May 2003. At that time, the education school's official prospectus
listed the average age of its master's students as 26 and its student body as 63
percent Caucasian, 22 percent Asian American, 8 percent Latino/Latina, and
7 percent African American; it was also overwhelmingly female (80 percent).
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
The program s handbook stated that its mission is to produce competent,
confident, and committed educational leaders in urban school settings as a
matter of social justice." While this mission was not always made explicit
in the student teachers' daily experiences, the program routinely drew
like-minded students and teacher educators to the university's education
degree programs. The politically aware and urban-focused nature of these
programs served as a significant context for my mentoring practice. Student
teachers spent July and August taking courses and assisting in local summer
school programs. They then began a year-long student teaching placement
in September. During the fall semester, they spent half days in their school
placements and took a full courseload at the university. During the spring,
they spent full days in their placements and took two courses.
Joss, the student teacher who is the focus of this analysis, was placed at
Pare High School, a special-admissions school that, according to its materials,
seeks to "attract and challenge outstanding educators to guide students in
achieving the highest standard of academic excellence." During the year I
visited Pare, there was a banner across the inside of the school's entrance
that proclaimed "98% College Acceptance Rate," both a statement about its
past students and an incentive for its current students. Like other magnet
schools in which admission is competitive, Pare's students came from all
across the city, but according to its website, Pare was unique in its racial
composition, as African American students made up about 80 percent of
the student body.
Joss was a few years older than the other three student teachers and
was the only one married. His undergraduate majors were American stud
ies and English, and he had experience as a published short-story writer,
waiter, and stand-up comedian. I began mentoring after I had taught English
for eight years at a public urban high school, public suburban high school,
university, and college where I directed a writing center and taught provi
sionally accepted urban students. At the time of this study, I was a third-year
doctoral student and had had one year of mentoring experience. I endeavored
to align my mentoring practice with Freire's (1997) directive concerning
"authentic mentors":
The contradiction that the teacher must therefore deal with to be an
authentic mentor is that he or she needs not to be mentor. What I mean
is that to be an authentic mentor, the teacher should not adopt the role of
mentor [italics added]. In other words it is necessary that the teacher
understands that the authentic practice of the mentor resides in the fact
that the mentor refuses to take control of the life, dreams, and aspirations
of the mentee.... The fundamental task of the mentor is a liberatory task
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English Education ,V 42 N4, July 2010
. . . to transcend [the] merely instructive task and to assume the ethical
posture of a mentor who truly believes in the total autonomy, freedom, and development of those he or she mentors, (p. 324)
The notion of dialogic praxis discussed here adds to Freire's ideas about
authentic mentoring the idea that issues of power and control are enacted
through discourse.
The "moment of rupture that is the focus of this article occurred
during a conversation in which Joss and 1 struggled to determine a course
of action with regard to his classroom mentor Megan, the larger teacher
education program, and, ultimately, the prospect of an educational career.
We debated whether to disrupt a situation we perceived to be oppressive,
whether that disruption could be beneficial, and for whom. Specifically, we
disagreed about whether he should try to discuss with Megan, his classroom
mentor at Pare High School, the differences in their philosophies of educa
tion, which had become increasingly apparent and uncomfortable during
the first month of school.
The Background of Three Social Worlds:
"School is not a democracy"
Because all instances of discourse are best understood within the larger social
contexts in which they are situated (Gee, 1996), it is important to review
three primary contexts that played a significant role in this conversation.
The first social world that this text references is the relationship between
Joss and Megan. At the initial meeting between Joss, Megan, and methe
first time that either Joss or I had met herMegan described herself as the
"monarch" or "queen" of her urban classroom and saw great value in primar
ily teaching "the dead white men" (8/14/02). In the beginning of October,
an increasingly frustrated Joss began to consider seeking a different student
teaching placement for the remainder of the year in spite of his desire to
remain with this particular group of students, with whom he enjoyed a mu
tual respect. Though Joss was finishing plans for a poetry unit he was eager
to teach, a month's worth of daily interactions with Megan confirmed his
initial concerns that his and Megan's approaches to teaching did not seem
compatible. In fact, the day before our conversation, I listened as Joss and
the students discussed the importance of Black Boy's subtitle changes over
the years. When Megan reprimanded some student participants, reminding
them that they were in school and that "schoof is not a democracy" (10/8/02),
Joss and the students lowered their faces. In that moment, Megan's and
Joss's pedagogical incompatibility crystallized for me. Such interactions
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
raise the question of what happens when a student teacher committed to
transformative teaching is placed with a mentor teacher who sees no need
for transformation.
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English Education ,v 42 N4, July 2010
as a group, and conversed with each of them almost dailyin person, over
the phone, and over email. The scope of my mentoring work as well as the
number and volume of my data sources were expanded since I was also
conducting research on my practice. The data I collected included (a) over
200 daily fieldnotes taken during in-person and by-phone conferences, (b)
over 125 indexed audiotapes of weekly individual and small-group meetings,
(c) over 1,700 pages of email, (d) over 400 pages of audiotaped entrance and
exit interview transcripts, and (e) several hundred documents (e.g., jour
nal entries, lesson plans, letters of recommendation, papers for university
coursework, school artifacts, and handouts from university and high school
classes). Although the data I collected included fieldnotes that documented
both Megan's pedagogy and how the students experienced her teaching,
these were not the primary focus of my study, nor did I seek student consent.
I did seek the consent of the classroom mentors, and five of the six granted
it. Megan declined, and thus I did not include any of her verbal or nonver
bal communication in my study. I did, however, include data sources that
1 authored (such as fieldnotes) and those Joss authored (such as emails), in
which he sometimes ventriloquated her language (Wortham, 2001). Like all
discourse analyses, this study does not claim to present a complete repre
sentation of reality; instead, it explores the conversants' necessarily partial
understandings of reality. There are certainly many more sides of the story
than are represented here (e.g., Megan's and the Pare students'); however,
representing or analyzing them was outside the scope of this study.
In the preliminary phases of data analysis that led to the focus of
this article, I utilized interpretive methods for macroanalysis followed by
discourse analysis methods. I began by generating a broad list of possible
themes and codes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995; LeCompte & Schensul,
1999; Weis & Fine, 2000) that I refined as 1 wrote analytic memos and looked
closely at my data for "typicality and atypicality" (Erickson, 1992) among
these themes and codes. When prominent codes, categories, and cross-cutting
themes began to emerge, I recoded all of my data, this time looking specifi
cally for and taking note of range and variation, discrepant cases, and "key
linkages" within each category (Erickson, 1986, p. 147). At that point, 1 began
to employ discourse analysis methods (e.g., Eggins & Slade, 1997; Gee, 1996,
1999; Wells, 1999) to explore more systematically the form and the substance
of the oral and written mentoring discourse. For example, I created indexi
cal interactional positioning charts (Wortham, 2001) to analyze the student
teachers' narrative events.
Analysis revealed that the category of "negotiating circumstances per
ceived to be oppressive" was the most frequently occurring category in my
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
mentoring discourse with all four student teachers. This article looks closely
at one "discrepant instance" (Erickson, 1998) that provides a particularly rich
illustration of the data in this prominent category. Though the student teach
ers and I typically agreed on negotiation strategies, such was not the case in
this instance. Analysis of such moments of rupture is especially promising
in illuminating discursive workings of power. Because I was interested in
discursive form and function, particularly with regard to issues of power, I
drew from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodology to examine how
mentoring discourse creates and represents the social worlds of the student
teacher and mentor (Gee, 2004; Rogers, 2004). Van Dijk(2002), for example,
notes that because "dominance may be enacted and reproduced by subtle,
daily, everyday forms of text and talk that appear 'natural' and quite 'accept
able,' ... CDA ... needs to focus on the discursive strategies that legitimate
control" (p. 110). Lewis (2006) adds that a "reconstructive use of CDA" is
helpful in revealing how literacy teachers "[work] to make and remake
themselves through their talk," particularly in "exchanges in which posi
tions were not fixed, but rather tentative, exploratory, and interdiscursive"
(p. 377). These qualities are certainly evident in mentoring.
To microanalyze the workings of power and positionality in this
moment of rupture, I sought methods that were generative in recursively
representing and analyzing both the form and the substance of mentoring
talk. I used Halliday's concept of conversational "moves" (Eggins & Slade,
1997, p. 186; Halliday, 1985) to locate the speakers' "everyday" but agentive
demonstrations of power during talk. These moves served as the primary
organizing principle in producing a transcript of our discourse, and because
I was most concerned with the social dynamics, I analyzed at the level of the
clause (Rogers, 2004). I organized our talk by conversational moves, which
are grouped by number and letter according to subject coherence (so that
2a and 2b concern the same subject, for example, but 5a represents the start
of a new subject). The moves whose numbers end with an "a" (as in 2a or
5a) have special significance: these are what Eggins and Slade (1997) call
"opening moves," which "function to initiate talk around a proposition" (p.
194). These are conversational moves that are acts of power and are thus of
particular significance in examining dialogic praxis as enacted in a mentor
ing relationship; thus, I indicate them with bold type. The conversational
moves are indicators of how we exerted our power and negotiated our re
lationships with one another. To represent this, I drew from Wells's (1999)
concept of "episodes," units of discourse concerned with "perform[ing]"
a singular "task" in the activity of talk (p. 257). Synonymous with Wells's
"episodes," Gee's (1996) "sections" are "larger units" of talk that have coher
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English Education ,V 42 N4, July 2010
ent topics or themes (p. 110). My analysis was also influenced by Wortham's
(2001) notion of "chunks," or groupings of speech that "cohere as having
accomplished particular interactional positioning" (p. 45). I identified
these groupings by systematically identifying participants' indexical cues
and using them to suggest the relationships among Joss, me, and those who
are narrated in our discourse. Figure 2 provides an example of this level of
analysis and illustrates one way we performed interactional positioning in
this instance of talk.
The transcript includes seven topical sections and demonstrates a
continuous negotiation of both content and process. As is shown in Table 1,
how we expressed a commitment to dialogic praxis was sometimes in conflict
with how we enacted dialogic praxiscategories that were inspired, in part,
by Wortham's (2001) distinction between enactment and representation. An
overview of these dispositions is suggestive of the characteristics dialogic
praxis can include.
Findings
In this section, I present the study s three key findings. A statement of each
finding introduces sections of the transcript, which I then discuss with re
Mentoring conversation, or storytelling event
Figure 2. Interactional positioning indexed in the mentoring conversation Figure 2. Interactional positioning indexed in the mentoring conversation
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
Table l. Expressed and enacted dialogic praxis in joss and Deb's conversation Table l. Expressed and enacted dialogic praxis in Joss and Deb's conversation
Section Expressions of Dialogic Praxis
(The Content: What we talked about)
Enactments of Dialogic Praxis
(The Process: How we talked)
l
Desiring to create meaningful student learn
ing and to improve practice toward this end Believing that "there are things.. .[we can]
never know about [others'] experiences, oppressions, and understandings" (Ellsworth,
1989, p. 310) Desiring to disrupt oppression
Determining the initial tone and trajectory of the discursive interaction by the participant with the lesser amount of traditional power
2
Explicitlynamingofissuesof power, hierarchy, positionality
Rejecting teaching that transmits the status
quo (either actively or passively) or the
teaching of "empty things"
Identifying past obstacles and searching for
ways to overcome them Enacting agency by describing struggles to
and dissenting with the other participant Ratifying self-characterizations Aligning as allies (Re)positioning ourselves as actors/subjects
3
Desiring space to enact a transformative vision Demonstrating trust by revealing something personally significant
Expressing empathy
4
Imagining a more just world Desiring like-minded colleagues Placing importance on empowered voice and
the need to fight against silencing of voice
Creating space for sharing and interrogating participants' historical, holistic identities
Expressing support for others' wellness
5
Committing to purposeful living (i.e., "alive," not "sleepwalking" or being "dutiful")
Committing to transformative teaching, through raising the voices of people who are often unheard
Being aware of risks involved in social justice work
Reading the world critically (Freire, 1987) Connecting in and out of school worlds
6 Being aware of social justice work as a social
responsibility
(Re)affirming ourselves as change-makers
Coda Naming shared experiences and positionalities Reversing traditional "mentoring" roles
gard to dialogic praxis, using the lenses afforded by Freirean and Bakhtinian
notions of subjects and objects.
In dialogic praxis, continual acts of negotiation are central to the
work of teaching and learning.
Section i: "How did it fall on me to say these things?"
JOSS: DEB:
la Hello?
Hey, Deb, it's Joss.
I got your message.
Hey, Joss. Is there anything I can do
for you?
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English Education, V 42 N4, July 2010
No. 2c 3a I think you re right, though: the
logical next step is a conversation.
I just think she must be ignorant of
what's bothering you; I just really
don't know any other way to proceed
in this situation.
How did it fall on me to say these
things?
4a
I mean, if I were her, and someone
like me came along, I'd be like,
"Who are you?"
II)
4c 1 think that s consistent with what her response to you has been in the
past month and also what it might be
when you talk about this.
But yesterday, I gave her two
opportunities to [broach the subject
of our differences],
but she doesn't think what she's
doing is wrong.
)cl
)l>
)( I thmk you really need not to be
oppositional and make it clear that
you're not being accusatory.
You could say something like, "I was
thinking about this, and this is my
perspective ..
5d
In theory, it sounds fine. I just resent
it's a conversation I even have to
have. I can imagine it, and 1 agree, I
have to have it.
5e
In this introductory passage, in which Joss establishes the topic for the
discussion (3a), the disagreement with which Joss and I entered this conversa
tion is clear: I believed Joss should have an intentional talk with Megan, and
while Joss seemed to agree (3a, 5e), he also expressed hesitation ("though,"
3a; "logical," 3a; "In theory," 5e). When Joss began with the open statement,
"I got your message," essentially leaving the trajectory of the conversation
to me, I responded with an open question ("Is there anything I can do for
you?") that invited Joss to determine the direction of our talk. In this way,
I discursively created an opening for him to enact his agency. The majority
of my conversational moves during this introductory section, however, were
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
in the service of pushing my agenda of convincing Joss to talk willi Megan
soon. I reiterated that I thought Megan was most likely unaware of the exact
nature of Joss's discontent in his relationship with her (3b), and 1 agreed
with Joss that he was in a difficult position to initiate this conversation (4c).
In response to his use of the word "wrong," though I implicitly agreed with
his evaluation that Megan's teaching practices were oppressive, I explicitly
advised Joss to take a non-"oppositional," non-"accusatory" tone and even
boldly offered an example of the kind of tone I was imagining (5c-5d).
Evident in the language I used to push my agenda are numerous instances
of what some, such as Blau, Hall, and Strauss (1998), call "qualifiers," or
hedging language, such as "1 think" (3b, 4c, 5c), "just" (3b), "could" (5d),
and "might" (4c), which can indicate uncertainty and/or invitations to col
laboration. In spite of my qualifying language, my position seemed clear to
Joss, judging by his responses. My press for Joss to talk with Megan might be
seen as evidence of what Jones (2005) calls "a touching faith in the 'talking
cure' of dialogue" in which emancipatory educators like myself can naively
assume that engagement in dialogue is a panacea when the need to address
differences arises. As Jones and others (e.g., Berlak, 2005; Boler, 2005a) ar
gue, dialogue across differences is a complex, even dangerous, undertaking
that often involves serious risk to those participants with less powersuch
as student teachers.
Joss seemed to sense this complexity and danger and focused not on
the future meeting I imagined but rather on the potential distress involved
in such a meeting. Joss's usage of the past tense (4a, 5a) served not as social
qualifiers (as my hedgings did) but as ideational qualifiers. These conversa
tional moves in which he wondered how he ended up in this situation (4a)
and described why a recent attempt to talk with Megan was unsuccessful (5a)
functioned as resistance to my stance. However, the other striking feature
of Joss's moves here was his resignation to such a conversation. Although
he expressed exasperation over the circumstances (4a), commented on the
difficultyverging on absurdityof these circumstances (4b), and main
tained his "resent[ment|" of these circumstances (5e), he concluded this
section with "I agree. 1 have to have it" (5e). Aithough we appeared to have
reached a consensus, we went on to undermine that apparent agreement
as we considered the complexity of the resolution in the remaining discus
sion. It becomes clear that considerable social and philosophical tension,
particularly between our different beliefs about how dialogue is possible
across difference, lay just below the surface.
The idea that "what she's doing is wrong" (5b) references an interac
tion between Joss and Megan the day before this phone call, when 32 out of
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English Education, V42 N4, July 2010
51 of their 11 th graders failed a literature test, given via Scan-Tron (a detail
discussed in the next section). Joss said that he asked Megan, "Why do you
think so many kids failed?" and that she responded, "These kids just don't
study; they just don't have the study skills." Joss concluded his narration of
this event with, "Help me. How is it possible that this woman, this teacher,
cannot see any responsibility here? That it's possible that it's not that the
kids didn't study (and I'm sure some didn't), but that she didn't teach it? It
was never made important, relevant, exciting?" (10/9a/2002).
The constant negotiation already evident in this conversation is a
hallmark of dialogic praxis. Dialogic praxis regards the social, cultural,
political, and philosophical wrestling in which we all engage as central,
not extraneous, to teaching and learning. In our conversation, for example,
conflict was present, whichliterary and discourse scholars agreenot only
advances the action but also reveals and shapes characters. Bakhtin's ideas
about the centripetal and centrifugal forces (1981, p. 272) that are always
present in discourse illuminate the multiple levels of negotiation present in
this example. While centripetal forces pulled Joss and me to follow traditional
mentoring conventions by agreeing and being acquiescent, centrifugal forces
drove us away from following fixed roles. Bakhtin's metaphor of centripetal
and centrifugal forces in discourse also sheds light on my struggle as a mentor
who wanted not to be a "mentor": I had conflicting hopes both to encourage
my student teachers to embrace my philosophies but also to develop their
individual agency. These hopes are evident in my discourse and illustrate
how the centripetal often overpowers the centrifugal (Coulter, 1999), making
sustained dialogue difficult. This kind of continual negotiation is, however,
an important feature of dialogic praxis. In the foilowing sections, the tension
between competing forces becomes clearer.
Section 2: "I think the other problem is that she's in a position of power"
On Friday, we [the students and Joss]
talked about the first hundred pages
of Black Boy, and we talked about
the idea of approving something
"either actively or passively" (p. 71),
so that was good.
Well, it was my last class on Friday,
and she had a class immediately
afterwards.
JOSS: DEB:
So could that have been a lead-in to a
possible conversation with Megan?
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
But I think it helped me realize that
there are things that we're complicit
in if we do nothing. 6e So what did you do during fifth period
[the planning period before the class
he taught]?
I smoked a cigarette outside and read.
It's just that any conversation I have
with Megan feels empty;
she sees empty things as teachable
things, and then her job is done.
6i Like teaching you how to use the Scan-Tron machine the other day?
Yes. b] 7a Well, maybe you could tell her at the
beginning of the day that you'd like
to sit down and talk with her during
fifth period.
I think the problem is making the
link between that passage of Black
Boy and this problem.
71)
7c 8a
Right,
and 1 think the other problem is that
she's in a position of power.
Exactly. 81)
She thinks that she has more
knowledge and experience and is
here to teach me, not be challenged
by me.
8c
8d mm hmm .. .
In this section, Joss made a series of moves to familiarize me with the
challenges he was negotiating: scheduling time to meet with Megan (6c),
disagreeing with Megan's approach to mentoring him (6g-6h), and liken
ing the complicity in Black Boy with his complicity in her classroom (7b).
With these examples, Joss not only provided a rationale for his reluctance
to meet with Megan, but he also referenced a considerable struggle over
his agencyhis ability to act. Joss's use of the word "complicit" implies at
once his feeling of powerlessness (since being "complicit," by definition, is
being an accomplice) and his negative opinion of Megan's teaching (since
"complicit" references negative action, usually crime). With his repeated
use of the word "empty," Joss drew a parallel between Megan's teaching
and mentoring and implied that "empty" practices position learners as
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English Education , V 42 N 4, July 2010
passive recipients.
My talk in this section also focused primarily on Joss s agency as I
imagined possibilities in which he could have chosen (6b, 6e)or could
choose (7a)to initiate talk with Megan. These three conversational moves
positioned Joss as agentive, having the power to determine a course of action.
Though I emphasized Joss's agency more explicitly later in the conversa
tion (20a-20b), I began to deemphasize my press for him to act in the way I
imagined he should. My move in 7b-8a, in which I agreed with and took up
Joss's language of "the problem," was an important one: It evidences both
my sense that I had made my position clear to Joss and that I understood
his position and needed to tell his story. At that point, I positioned myself
"with" Joss differently, acting less as an adviser and more of a colleague
or empathetic listener. In my final two moves (8a, 8d), I ratified Joss's
characterization of himself as being silenced, and in doing so, attempted to
reestablish our alliance.
My performance of the mentor role in the conversation highlights
how difficult it can be for a mentoror any teacherto "[refuse] to take
control of the life ... of the mentee" (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 324). As I began
to relinquish control (8a), the fagade of unity faded as Joss immediately took
up the opportunity to refocus the conversation. In its place, a more genuine
negotiation between differing voices emergeswhich, as Bakhtin (1984)
notes, characterizes a relationship between two autonomous subjects (p. 7).
In the next section, Joss transitioned from lamenting the past to pondering
the future. The transition, because it was made by Joss, suggests that my in
sistence during the first two sections of our conversation may have initially
prevented Joss from taking our discussion where he intended or needed it
to go. Though Joss implied a tentative decision to act in spite of what he
perceived to be impossible circumstances (6d), he did enact agency in the
act of describing these circumstances. Engaging in description and even
dissent during this conversation provided Joss immediate and important
opportunities to position himself as an actor, an agent, amid otherwise silenc
ing circumstances. This kind of engagement is a form of dialectic inquiry,
an "individual ized pursuit of the inquirer's own questions via methods and
toward objectives that he or she designates"; it is both "motivated by the ex
perience and identification of tension and ... oriented toward changing the
circumstances that cause this tension" (Bieler & Burns Thomas, 2009). That
the university mentor/student teacher relationship can provide a space in
which student teachers can enact agency, even as student teachers rhetori
cally negotiate tensions, suggests a significant role for mentoring to play in
developing student teachers' ability to engage in dialogic praxis.
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
Participating in dialogic praxis can afford opportunities to
strengthen individual agency.
Section 3: "I'm articulating this for the first time right now"
JOSS: DEB:
I m excited about teaching Black
Boy, but it's depressing too. And I'm
also excited about the poetry unit.
But it's just not clear what my role
will be after that, for the rest of the
semester.
9a
9b I thought you would become the
lOth-grade teacher.
Me too. 9c
10a And the other thing is that l m
thinking of the poetry unit as mine. I
don't want to show it to her.
10b
11a
I understand.
Well, have you made arrangements
to visit Cornell High yet?
Yeah, for this coming Tuesday.
1 really think I'll either switch to
Cornell High or leave the program
entirely.
lib
12a
I'm articulating this for the first
time right now;
it's just been so difficult philo
sophically, emotionallyfor lots of
reasons.
12b
12c
It s been popping up at weird times,
like when Sharon (the fieldwork
coordinator] waved to me, and I felt
so much resentment toward her.
12e I know, Joss.
The ratifying conversational moves I made at the end of Section 2 (7c,
8a, and 8d) appear to have effectively indicated my support to Joss and cre
ated an opening in which Joss demonstrated his trust in me. He moved to a
more personal level and articulated his fearsof the future of his teaching
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English Education ,V 42 N4, July 2010
role at Pare (9a) and, more immediately, ot Megan s response to his poetry
unit (10a), in which student critique and creation were placed at the center
of the classroom. When I moved quickly from expressing empathy to opening
a space again for him to be agentive and focusing on a possible placement
site change, though (10b-lla), Joss made a similarly abrupt shift. After he
responded to my question (lib), he quickly noted the extent of his fear and
frustration by revealing that he was considering dropping out of the program
(12a), a revelation that greatly surprised and concerned me; my repeated
expression of empathy at the end of this section (12e) demonstrated the grav
ity I heard in his disclosure (12b-12d). The coincidence of Joss's revelation
with my opening of space suggests that my initial press for dialogue was,
ironically, monologic.
Although I eventually began to hear and understand Joss s historied
positionality, I initially fell into the snares of critical pedagogy that Ellsworth
(1989) notes, perhaps because I entered the conversation confident of my
philosophical alliance with Joss. Essentially, I assumed that I knew Joss; I
assumed for too long that he would agree with the path I suggested, so truly
hearing and responding to Joss's protests took me longer than it should
have. My faulty assumption here is reminiscent of Weiler's (1991) critique
of Freirean educators, particularly their "assumption that the teacher is 'on
the same side' as the oppressed, and that as teachers and students engage
together in dialogue about the world, they will uncover together the same
reality, the same oppression, the same liberation" (p. 454). I believe that my
initial contributions, sadly, provided an empirical example of some of the
characteristics Ellsworth and Weiler critiqued.
1 his section ot our dialogue can be thought of as the dramatic climax,
recalling a term literary scholars use to refer to the moment of greatest
emotional tension in a literary text, or what Gee (1999) calls a crisis, which
"builds the problem to the point of requiring a resolution" (p. 112). Joss's
weighty revelation about considering withdrawing from the program marked
a turning point in the conversation. As Joss described why he needed either
to "switch" schools or "leave the program entirely," he located his frustration
not only within Megan's classroom at Pare (the geographical "location" of
our talk before 10b) but also more broadly within the teacher preparation
program. Joss's revelation and acts of location indicated that space had
become available in which he could be an agentive participant and thus
marked a transition to a more polyphonous interaction (Bakhtin, 1984).
IflO
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
Section 4: "I'm sick of it, feeling, like, alone"
JOSS: I) ' : 15a But at this point, what would make
the program right?
The last thing 1 want to do is leave; 13b
leaving is so typical in my life. 13c
But none of my questions "fit" the 14a
situation I'm in.
I'm sick of it, feeling, like, alone. 14b
1 want to start a charter school, you 14c
know?
I mean, what I'm going through is
just like being a high school student;
I felt like my voice was constantly
being silenced.
You know, being a stand-up comic
was me attempting to re-empower
my voice, and coming to a teacher
education program felt like an
extension of that. But it has ended up being a complete 14f
silencing!!
I just don t want to play anymore. 14g
I'm exhausted. 14h
Joss's response to my invitation at the beginning of this section also
illustrates a pattern in this conversation that was similar to the exchanges
in 5d-6a, 6b-6c, 6e-6g, and 7a-7b. In essence, whenever I suggested or
implied possibilities for talking with Megan (as in 13a), Joss responded by
describing obstacles (as in 13b). Perhaps Joss intuitively knew, better than
I, what Jones (2003) concludes: "desires for shared communication must be
mediated more by cautious critique and limited expectations than by urgent
and ultimately self defeating optimism" (p. 67). My question in 13a provides
an important example of the beliefs about dialogue that undergird this con
versation: here, I conflated reconciliation, or "meeting," with "dialogue."
With my question, I was advocating for not only a meeting between Joss and
his classroom mentor, but a "meeting" between Joss's goals and the teacher
preparation program's provisions; my question was an attempt to realize
a more just teacher preparation program. The emergence of this pattern
demonstrates the extent to which I initially placed hope in the panacea or
4ii
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English Education , V 42 N4, July 2010
"talking cure" of dialogue (Jones, 2005). Perhaps, as Jones's work suggests,
my hope was, in some ways, a result of my privileged position: I personally
had little to lose as a result of Joss's conversation with Megan; it was of little
risk to me. The same was not true for Joss.
The autobiographical turn Joss took m this section was an instance of
self-authoring (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, 1998), a highly agentive
activity that suggests his participation in dialogic praxis. In the next sec
tion, Joss shifted the focus of our conversation from the past to the present.
Joss's dilemma about whether to leave Pare and/or the teacher preparation
program illustrates a problem faced by many critical educators: whether to
stay in an oppressive environment and work for changeor leave and work
for change elsewhere.
Dialogic praxis provides a space for participants to articulate,
clarify, and pursue individual visions for change.
Section 5: "I just want to be alive!"
JOSS:
You know, on TV last year, one of the
Buffy episodes was a musical, and
I was just reading the lyrics to the
first song, called "Going through the
Motions," which they all sang while
they were in a graveyard.
Some of Buffy s lines are: "I go out
and fight the fight / Still I feel the
same estrangement / Nothing here is
real / Nothing here is right.. . / I've
just been going through the motions
.. . / Sleepwalking through my life's
endeavor . .. / And 1 just want to be
alive!"
Right,
so one option is just to play the
dutiful student.
But at the same time, I can't.
It's against all that I believe in.
I5a
15b
15d
16a
161)
16c
17a
17b
ORB:
Wow, that really does sound similar to
what you're experiencing right now.
So how do you not "go through the
motions" and stay in the program?
Or are you saying those things are
mutually exclusive?
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
No, I don't think they re either/or. 17c
17d
18a
I think you re right.
But what is it you want or need to
accomplish here? Do you need an
education degree or certification to
do what you want to do? I think 1 11 be trying to walk through
an educational minefield.
181)
18c
18d
18e
You want to stay in education.
Yeah, I think so.
1 want to be doing this with kids,
getting their voices out there too.
Yeah, but they are going through the
motions right now.
Joss was and is a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a philosophi
cally rich TV series that ran from 1997-2003. He often expressed a special
admiration for Buffy, the main character, who devoted her life to fighting
evil, primarily in and around schools. In his quoting of Buffy song lyrics,
Joss aligned himself with the main character of the show, Buffy Summers,
and also, implicitly, with the sentiment of her lyrics; he may also have been
suggesting the song's graveyard setting as a metaphor for his current situ
ation. Joss's impassioned reference to a TV show at an extremely difficult
time demonstrates his skill in making illuminating connections between
words and worlds (Freire, 1987, p. 3). Through the lyrics and the remainder
of his comments in this section, Joss outlined two possible paths to take,
following the opposition of death and life in the song "Going through the
Motions." The first possible path, "play[ing] the dutiful student" (16a), is a
passive stance in which he would "[go] through the motions" (15a), "feel
. . . estrangement," and "[sleepwalk] through [his] life's endeavors" (15b).
This path parallels his description in Section 4 of "being silenced" (14d). The
other path is an active or even activist stance, in which Joss would "fight the
fight" and "be alive" (15b) in alignment with Buffy; this path represented
a commitment to intentional, purposeful living (i.e., not "sleepwalking"
or being "dutiful"). When he suggested that his purpose included fighting
for a more just world by "doing this with kids, getting their voices out there
too" (18e), Joss demonstrated his awareness that, by pursuing this path, he
would incur significant riskor, as he put it, "walk through an educational
minefield" (18b). By likening his silenced positionality to those of many high
school students (14d, 15b, 16a, 18e, 18g), Joss articulated and clarified his
dilemma and thus took an important step toward resolution.
That doesn t sound like "sleepwalking
to me.
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English Education ,V 42 N4, July 2010
My clarifying question, "So how do you not 'go through the motions
and stay in the program?" (17a), paralleled my earlier question, "What would
make the program right?" (13a). In both, I asked Joss to imagine what a
positive teacher preparation program experience would look like, consistent
with my advocacy for reconciliation or "meeting," as previously described.
Joss's statement that his situation was not "either/or" is significant as a mo
ment in which a student teacher articulated that his reality was much more
complex than the binary his mentor was using to frame it. When we agreed
that passive and active stances were not necessarily "mutually exclusive"
(17b), I shifted our focus to his long-term goals (18a). My comment "That
doesn't sound like sleepwalking to me" (18f) attempted to acknowledge
Joss's struggles and to support his goals. The intertwining of past, present,
and future was indicative of Joss's self-authoring of his vision for change.
Here and in the next section, Joss mined the past for direction for the future
as he articulated, clarified, and pursued his individual vision for change.
Section 6: "You have the power"
JOSS:
It s just that this would be completely
easy to hang up.
I didn't wait tables for the hell of it; I
retreated into this world where I had
no responsibilities.
After I did my 9/11 joke on 9/19
[2001], I quit doing stand-up and
went back to waiting tables, you
know?
And now l m here, and moving here
shattered my family.
I made my wife move, and it's
terrible; I detonated a nasty
emotional bomb.
I'm so upset with Sharon because her
hand forced mine.
19a
19b
19c
I9d
19e
L9f
19g
20a
201)
DEB:
Right.
I'm thinking now, though, of what
spaces there are for you now where
you can enact your agency.
It seems to me that you have the
power to have a conversation with
Meganand you also have the
power to change your location if
that's what you decide to do.
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
The form and substance of Section 6 parallel and illuminate those of
Sections 4 and 5, when Joss recounted and analyzed the active choices (when
he didn't "leave") and passive choices (when he did "leave"). This segment
powerfully illustrates Joss's ironic dilemma: though he chose to attend this
teacher preparation program, enacting his agency and making a life-altering
decision to take a stand and live a purposeful life of social justice work, Joss
found himself, once enrolled in the program, as powerless, at the mercy of
someone else's agency. Paradoxically, Joss's agentive decision to attend the
program rendered him without agency, and he began to imagine "leaving"
the program as a way of regaining his power to act and to make decisions
that affected his life.
Our conversation included numerous references to and examples
of "staying in" and "leaving" sites of perceived oppression, as well as less
obvious references to "active" and "passive" ways of engaging with such
sites. A continuum of the four resulting possibilities (active staying, active
leaving, passive staying, and passive leaving), as shown in Figure 3, suggests
a framework for understanding the range of actions that might be taken in
response to perceived oppression. For example, not taking action is often
intentional, as is illustrated by Joss's choice to wait tables (19b). All four
responses do not, however, provide examples of engaging in dialogic praxis
with the site of perceived oppression since, as the "passive" examples show,
the commitment to transform is not always present. While it appears that
"active staying" is most similar to dialogic praxis, at issue in Joss's and my
disagreement is to what extent "active leaving" is appropriate for critical edu
catorswhether and why "leaving" can be transformative. The line between
"active leaving" and "passive leaving" is particularly blurry. For example,
whether Joss would switch placement sites as an act of resistance or escape
is a question of intentionality, and neither easily discernable nor necessarily
constant. The question we considered here"Can truly progressive, critical
educators leave oppressive environments for greener pastures?"is one of
the most complex, difficult questions I have encountered as an educator.
At the end of this section (20a-20b), I tried to suggest that Joss should
not settle for a passive stance in his student teaching experience. I reminded
him of his power to choose what to do next, whether talking with Megan or
requesting a placement site change. My counsel in 20b starkly contrasts my
counsel in 3b, when I presented only one option for Joss to consider. The
difference between these examples of mentoring talk powerfully illustrate
that when mentors engage in dialogic praxis, they can open up space for
student teachers to determine and to pursue their own goals.
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English Education ,V 42 N4, july 2010
V \ Dialogue
Change Voice
Active
(taking action)
Passive
(not taking action)
Staying
(remaining in a situation
perceived to be
oppressive)
Active Staying
Fighting perceived oppression front within situation; engag ing in intentional disruption of perceived oppression
Examples: discussing differences with
Megan (5c-5d) creating and implementing
his poetry unit (lba) being a stand-up comjc
(lAe) enrolling in the teacher \
preparation program (14e)\
Passive Staying
Being complicit in perceived oppression; participating in situation but not interrupting perceived oppression
Examples: not raising questions
about Megan's use of Scan-Tron tests (6g-6j)
"playing the dutiful stu dent" (16a)
Leaving
(not remaining in a situation
perceived to be
oppressive)
Active Leaving
Removing oneself from per ceived oppression as a form of resistance
Examples: withdrawing from the
teacher preparation pro gram (12a)
changing his field place ment site (12a; 20b)
\ Passive Leaving
Retreating from perceived oppression due to desire to
escape and/or not to take
responsibility
Examples^ smoking outside and read
ing during fifth period (60 waiting tables (19b-19c)
Monologue Stasis^ Silence1.
Figure 3. A framework for identifying the range of possible agentive choices in
response to oppression
Figure 3. A framework for identifying the range of possible agentive choices in
response to oppression
4i6
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
Coda: "I am experiencing the same kind of feelings right now, too
JOSS: DEB:
21a I mean, I am experiencing the
same kind of feelings right now too,
questioning whether to stay or not,
even though I've already spent three
years here.
Some bad things happened to me just
last week, and I've been crying since
Wednesday night.
21b
21c but I think I've decided to finish my
program because I've invested so
much in it already, you know?
What do you want to do after you re
finished?
11a
What was your original intent? 22b
22c I wanted to be a teacher educator, to
work primarily with people learning
to teach.
2 hi But right now I'm not sure about
much of anything at all.
You can have a job at my charter
school.
22e
22f
22g
25a
23b
Right. 1 hanks.
All right;
I gotta go. Bye.
All right. Bye.
When I understood Joss s imminent decision in the broader context he
provided, and in an attempt to support Joss and indirectly share my hope that
he would not "leave" the program, I shared a vague personal parallel about
my own struggle about "whether to stay or not" (21a). In this conversational
move I shared a story to suggest that being "already... invested" in a gradu
ate program was one possible reason for Joss to stay (21c). The sharing of my
story provides depth to my prior empathetic expressions (e.g., 10b and 12e)
as coming not from a place of somewhat distant, cerebral comprehension
but rather from a place of alliancea place of "I'm with you" (Joss, email,
3/10/03; 3/17/03)that can result from the naming of shared experiences
and shared positionalities. Additionally, my vague phrase "some bad things"
(21 b) revealed just enough information to express empathy but kept the focus
of the conversation on Joss, though an opening did exist for Joss to probe for
specifics if he had desired to do so.
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English Education ,V 42 N4, July 2010
At the conclusion or coda (Labov, 1972) of this conversation, Joss
and I reversed traditional mentoring roles as well as the roles we'd been
enacting in much of this conversation: I described a personal educational
struggle (21a-21c); Joss asked me about my career goals and my intentions
(22a-22b); my response paralleled Joss's clarity of purpose but uncertainty
of direction (22c-22d); and Joss expressed support for meeven positioning
himself as agentive in the fictitious role of charter school founder (14c, 22e).
Though Joss's job offer was a light-hearted attempt to begin "wrapping up"
the conversation by referencing a prior topic (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), and
though my personal story of struggle lacked the depth and detail of Joss's,
the closing moments seemed to reestablish our alliance and offer comfort
for the journey ahead.
Discussion: Conceptualizing Dialogic Praxis in Teacher
Preparation
I wouldn I have made it through this year without you. ... I knew who
supported me, and that was you. . . . My favorite moments in Buffy are
when they do the slow-mo . . . , everyone lines up in a bowling alley pin
thing, where there's like five people, and they start walking down a hall
way. It's like the superhero moment. That's how I felt that day. Going in
there together meant a lot to me. That's huge. That was huge. (Joss, final
interview, 5/14/03)
Joss eventually chose not to meet with Megan, and he completed
his student teaching at another high school. Before he left Pare, though, I
accompanied him as he entered Megan's classroom to say good-bye to the
10th graders. Here and elsewhere, Joss's language and stories reveal an
illustrative continuum between dialogic praxis and monologic practice,
the distinctions between which are not always clear-cut (see Table 2). This
continuum demonstrates possible points of tension in educators' livesnot
only in the contexts in which they teach but also within themselves. Joss wove
a storyline about his long-term struggle with agency and how his current
circumstances lit into a pattern; in doing so, he illustrated how his struggle
with agency resulted from a tension between his desire to engage in dialogic
praxis and the choices he made, at times, toward a more monologic practice.
1 hese tensions are also evident in the different ways that Joss and I
operationalized our ideas about dialogue during this conversation. Although
I thought my solution was more dialogic and Joss's more monologic, Joss
saw my solution as impossible. In retrospect, I recognize that, actually, my
idea might have led to continued monologue, while his idea might have
418
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
Table 2. Dialogic praxis in dialectic with monologic practice
Dialogic praxis Monologic practice
problem-posing (Freire, 1970/2000)
How do 1 situate myself in rela tion to knowledge?
banking (Freire, 1970/2000)
yielding to centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981)
How comfortable do 1 want, or
need, to be in order to thrive?
yielding to centripetal forces (Bakhtin, 1981)
developing and sup porting individual voice (i4e, i8e)
How am 1 positioned as a
subject or an object? How am 1
positioning others?
silencing/being silenced
(i4d)
fighting perceived oppression (15b)
To what degree do 1 think
change is needed? How much do 1 want to effect
change?
being complicit (6d)
being alive (15b)
How much engergy do 1 have, or want, to expend on effecting
change?
going through the
motions, sleepwalking (15b)
staying (17a) Where can 1 do the most good? leaving (13c)
enacting agency (20a)
What risk is involved ifl take action?
How much risk am 1 willing to take?
playing the dutiful student (16a)
avoiding responsibility (19b)
Table 2. Dialogic praxis in dialectic with monologic practice
allowed him to engage in dialogic praxis. The presence of these competing
ideas and interpretations is characteristic of a dialogic mentoring relation
ship that is not monopolized by one person's views. As Nystrand, Gamoran,
Kachur, and Prendergast (1997) argue, "Discourse is not dialogue because
speakers take turns, but because it is continually structured by tension,
even conflict, between the conversants, between self and other, as one voice
'refracts' another" (p. 8). Though Joss and I imagined different responses to
perceived oppression, a shared commitment to dialogic praxis enabled us
to embrace the tension and focus on his agentive choices. As Palmer (2007)
notes, "mentoring is a mutuality" in which "the qualities of the mentor [are]
revealed ... and the qualities of the student are drawn out in a way that is
equally revealing" (p. 22). At the same time, as this study suggests, just as
in classrooms, mentoring relationships are characterized by inescapable
power differences that can "perpetuate relations of domination" (Ellsworth,
1989, p. 298).
41Q
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English Education, V 42 N4, july 2010
During the "moment of rupture" presented here, my desires to engage
in transformative mentoring, to participate in dialogic praxis with Joss, and
to avoid interfering with Joss's agency were in conflict. Although 1 considered
urging Joss to speak with Megan, or even meeting with Megan myself, to
engage Joss's agency, I concluded that following either of these paths would
have silenced Joss rather than honored his agency. In the latter portion of
our conversation, I engaged in what Nystrand et al. (1997) claim "matters
most," which is "taking students' input seriously, so that a context for the
kind of dialogue that leads to learning can take place" (p. 88). It could be
argued that, although I was unaware of it at the time, my own learning as
a mentor is observable in this transcript as I began taking Joss's input more
seriously by moving along the continuum away from monologue and toward
dialogue. As Table 5 demonstrates, before the conversation's dramatic climax
in which Joss revealed that he was considering leaving the program, he made
twice as many "opening moves" as I did. After the climax, however, Joss
and I made a similar number of opening moves. Though the total number
of Joss's opening moves exceeded mine, the shift suggests that the power of
initiating talk was shared more equitably in the second half of the conversa
tion and that, therefore, our talk more closely approximated dialogic praxis.
Future longitudinal research is needed both to determine the effects
of new teacher agency on student outcomes and to establish how engage
ment in dialogic praxis can equip and sustain new teachers who desire to
work for change in our schools. Are, for example, agentive new teachers less
vulnerable to teacher attrition?
Creating a teacher preparation model that prioritizes the growth of
student teacher agency would help us reclaim teaching as a transformative
profession (Sachs, 2003) in which "new forms of work organization are es
Table 3. Frequency of opening moves before and after discursive climax
Joss Deb Total
Opening moves made 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, 6a, 9a, 10a, 12a,
14a, 15a, 16a, 19a, 22a, 23a
la, 7a, 8a, 11a, 13a, 17a, 18a, 20a, 21a
23
Frequency before 12e 8 (75%) 4 (25%) 12 (52%)
Frequency after 12e 6 (55%) 5 (45%) 11 (48%)
Total 14 (61%) 9 (39%) 23 (100%)
Table 3. Frequency of opening moves before and after discursive climax
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Bieler > Dialogic Praxis in Teacher Preparation
tabhshed between teachers, in particular that... teacher privatism, isolation
and individualism [are] dispensed with" (p. 15). Mentoring may, in fact, be
a key site from which to promote this "new professionalism" (Hargreaves,
1994). For example, returning to the lines from The Odyssey with which this
article opened, Odysseus's primary objective was to "keep everything intact,"
a goal shared by many classroom mentors who cautiously hand the classroom
rei ns over to student teachers. The findings of this study indicate that student
teachers are likely to benefit when both university and classroom mentors not
only are open to the possibility that student teach
ers might make different choices than they would "'"^e findings challenge
but also embrace the opportunity to negotiate, educators to consider I
together, the inevitable moments of tension that cnaracierisiics or mgr
will result from such differences. This study's fied" mentors, and the
findings also suggest (hat programs take mentor of mentoring, might in<
hiring and development more seriously and in agency, criticality, and
keeping with their goals and philosophies. The
findings challenge teacher educators to consider how the characteristics of
"highly qualified" mentors, and the outcomes of mentoring, might include
agency, criticality, and listening.
Dialogic praxis in mentoring relationships can provide an important
space for both mentor and student teacher to i magine and rehearse agentive
action in contexts outside the mentoring relationship. Acknowledging and
providing opportunities for the strengthening of agency can create an experi
ence in which student teachers are understood to be contributing colleagues
rather than students in need of evaluation, thereby helping mend what
some perceive to be the artificial nature of the traditional student teaching
experience (Cochran-Smith, 1991) and creating a smoother transition from
student teaching to first-year teaching (Fecho, 2000). Although mentoring
conversations may appear to serve as places to pause from action and reflect,
this study suggests that significant meaning making and agentive identity
making can occur. When both student teacher and mentor work to position
and keep the student teacher as agentive as possible, such work is in the ser
vice of "people [being] able to influence their own lives[,] ... to have access
to tools and technology, and to believe in their own present capabilities and
imagined futures" (Hull & Katz, 2006, p. 73). When mentors and student
teachers enact commitments to fostering agency, they re-create and affirm
their identities as agentive educators (Holland et al., 1998).
This study addresses a case of an English student teacher facing a
decision about whether to leave a teaching situation that he perceived to be
oppressive. While such grueling decisions are not uncommon, they should
The findings challenge teacher
educators to consider how the
characteristics of "highly quali fied" mentors, and the outcomes
of mentoring, might include
agency, criticality, and listening.
421
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English Education, V 42 N4, July 2010
not happen during student teaching, when it is incumbent upon teacher edu
cators to provide a supportive, agentive experience characterized by dialogic
praxis. In one-on-one mentoring relationships, student teachers make mean
ing about their earliest teaching experiences and make decisions about their
practice, which, as illustrated here, can profoundly shape their pedagogical
development, view of the profession, and agency as educators. It is time to
pull the deep roots of the Homerian legacy out of student teacher mentoring,
once and for all, by explicitly and transparently cultivating dialogic praxis
oriented mentoring relationships so that the newest members of our field
can "feel their own strength at last," as Homer's Telemachus aspired to do.
Acknowledgments I would like to offer my deep gratitude to Joss for his assistance with this project and continued frien
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