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This article was downloaded by: [Uppsala universitetsbibliotek]On: 04 October 2014, At: 23:09Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Journal of Education forStudents Placed at Risk(JESPAR)Publication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjsp20
Book Review of Telling aDifferent Story: Teaching andLiteracy in an Urban Preschoolby Catherine WilsonAnne ChamberlainPublished online: 16 Nov 2009.
To cite this article: Anne Chamberlain (2002) Book Review of Telling a DifferentStory: Teaching and Literacy in an Urban Preschool by Catherine Wilson, Journalof Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 7:3, 357-360, DOI: 10.1207/S15327671ESPR0703_5
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327671ESPR0703_5
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BOOK REVIEW
Telling a Different Story: Teaching and Literacy in an Urban Preschool.Catherine Wilson, New York: Teachers College Press, 2000, 105 pages, $44.00(hardcover), $18.95 (softcover).
Reviewed by Anne ChamberlainSuccess For All Foundation
Compensatory education, perceived intervention between the nation’s “at-risk”students and “cultures of poverty,” remains a model of choice for addressing vastdiscrepancies in privilege and education according to race and economic status.Head Start is arguably the most prominent of the early intervention strands of com-pensatory education. Its well intended goals are made concrete through policiesthat govern everything from program funding to classroom activities. Many ofthese policies have evolved with our knowledge of child development and theoriesof emergent literacy that suggest, for example, how exposure to narrative conven-tions of text will help young children become readers. However, despite the goodintentions behind deficit-driven compensatory preschool education models, andthe potential of emergent literacy-based curriculum, critical inquiry into the effectof such policy and theory on the lived experiences of children, families, and teach-ers exposes assumptions and reveals questions that merit further attention.Catherine Wilson’s Telling a Different Story: Teaching and Literacy in an UrbanPreschool equips readers with some insight to begin this dialogue.
The insight that Wilson offers is provided by a case study of a single urbanHead Start classroom, in which a teacher and assistant teacher were willing toshare the tensions and uncertainties that are part of reflective and, as Wilson callsit, against-the-grain teaching. Within this classroom of 4- and 5-year olds, story-telling, a focal point of early childhood development theory and related policy,was also a focal point for teachers. Wilson explores the meaning ascribed to storyreading, which and whose stories were read, how the current knowledge base ofearly childhood education defined the teachers’ roles, and how a compensatory ed-ucation model structured the teachers’ readings. Wilson’s work is intended neither
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS PLACED AT RISK, 7(3), 357–360Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Anne Chamberlain, Success For All Foundation, Department400, 200 West Towsontown Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21204. E-mail: [email protected]
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as a critique of Head Start policy per se, nor as a study of a typical Head Start class.Rather, her work provides a look at how the kinds of policies typical in a compen-satory preschool model affect the lives of those in the classroom.
The product of Wilson’s study is a straightforward description of problemsthat are not so straightforward. Over the course of four chapters, we are brieflyimmersed in the world of the classroom and the teachers’ daily struggles with is-sues of time, physical space, and their own teaching practices. These strugglesare examined in light of the policies that affect them, policies that reflect centerand district concerns, as well as current thinking in early childhood developmen-tal theory. Long excerpts from transcripts of storytelling, and subsequent discus-sion about the underlying culture, politics, and policies of those exchanges,allude to the complexity of issues embedded in this activity that is so central toclassroom life. Telling a Different Story is not a book of solutions to these strug-gles and issues. It does, however, encourage teachers, teacher–educators, andpreservice teachers to think more critically about these issues. Furthermore, re-sponsibility for fostering this examination is placed with education faculty andpolicymakers.
Wilson uses detailed descriptions of day-to-day life in the classroom, as well asreflections on her own experience working in a very different setting, to revealconstraints and tensions in this context and their connections to various levels ofpolicy. The second chapter provides observations on getting to school, the schoolschedule, the classroom environment, the curriculum, the support staff, the staff-ing and enrollment, and the paperwork. In addition, the notion that Head Start is aprogram for “other people’s children” is addressed. Threaded throughout the de-scriptive information are accounts of how the two teachers navigated this contextand how, when, and why they resisted the inherent constraints. For example, indiscussing the teachers’ use of the prescribed (High Scope) curriculum, Wilsonobserves that
knowledge of the developing and learning child did not encompass all the issues[these teachers] took into account in their deliberations about the curriculum. Nor didthe image of teachers envisioned by High Scope address [the teachers’] understand-ing of their complex roles. (p.23)
Similarly, the two teachers in this study had an understanding of the meaningand benefit of storytelling that extended beyond the commonly acknowledgedacclimatization of children to print and narrative. Story reading in their class-room was also intended to build community. It provided an opportunity for chil-dren to gain a sense of agency by hearing from each other as “commentators” on“important topics” (p. 2). The strategy of large-group readings, used by theseteachers to achieve this sense of community, opposed what is thought of as de-velopmentally appropriate practice.
358 BOOK REVIEW
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Evidence that these teachers resisted constraints is perhaps most present in thebooks that were selected for reading in this classroom. One teacher chose, for ex-ample, to read the children stories about Martin Luther King, and to use MayaAngelou’s Life Doesn’t Frighten Me as a catalyst to activities about fear. The reac-tions among her coworkers to her doing what was not uniformly considered appro-priate were varied. Some colleagues felt that as a White teacher, she wasill-equipped to teach about Martin Luther King. Others felt that the subject matteraddressed in the readings that she selected was too difficult, or too negative. Un-fortunately, opportunities for dialogue amongst staff about how and whether to ad-dress issues like racism, poverty, and social injustice in the classroom were,Wilson reveals, often undermined by policy. At the school level, teachers were dis-couraged from visiting one another’s rooms or taking between-session breaks to-gether. In addition, a lack of more formal meetings ensured that “multiculturalsensitivity training” was avoided because there was no chance to reach consensusabout what that training might mean.
Wilson prompts readers to think about how developmentally appropriate prac-tices are defined. She points out that although there has been debate in early child-hood circles about how cultural, economic, and political factors might informchildhood development knowledge, these factors are not aptly addressed at thefederal policy level. She argues that much developmentally appropriate practicecontinues to be accepted as such, and made into policy, based on a particular set ofmiddle-class values that do not recognize “nonmainstream” child-rearing prac-tices. Wilson acknowledges the importance of Piagetian and Vygotskian theories,which scaffold current knowledge about the developing child and the making of areader. However, she cautiously suggests that the flip side of this type of theoreti-cal framework is the deficit-based view of at-risk children and nonmainstreamcommunities. She criticizes the position statement of the National Association forthe Education of Young Children, which “omits the more volatile economic andpolitical implications of cultural differences” (p. 73).
Wilson exposes other tensions between policies or accepted practice and theclassroom she observed. The teachers’ configuration of classroom space, their de-sire to maintain the same students for more than 1 year, bringing the children’sbreakfast into the classroom, and maintaining one large reading group, were all con-tentious issues. Unfortunately, in acknowledging these various tensions, Wilson’sattempt to foster an approach that includes multiple perspectives falls somewhatshort. Readers are left with second-hand accounts about those who disagreed withpractices in the classroom understudy. Wilson herself laments the absence in herstudy of perspectives from other teachers, and cites district-level upheaval as thecause of this. If individuals with contrasting views had been given a voice, the diffi-cultyandcomplexityof thesituationsexaminedmighthavebeenbetterhighlighted.
Wilson urges further critical dialogue about why we educate and what the rolesof teachers and literacy are in a democratic society. She advocates teachers that
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question the process of knowledge construction and legitimization. She is aware ofthe task that lies ahead in prompting the rigorous practice of recognizing, question-ing, and perhaps going against the grain. The scarcity of opportunities for teachersto explore ideas about literacy and programs is only one barrier. There are addi-tional problems with complacent early childhood preservice education programs,and a general lack of respect for teachers (especially early childhood teachers) asparticipants in an intellectual pursuit. This last issue is particularly troubling be-cause, as Wilson points out, this lack of respect even emanates from within theranks of teachers.
Although Wilson’s study seems, at times, to be straddling two sets of ques-tions—one about policy impact and the other about the use of storytelling in theclassroom—there is enough overlap to bind the study. Glimpses of importantclassroom practice and Wilson’s sensitive reflection on what was seen and heardthere make this book inspiring. Wilson sets her recommendation for challengingany notions of nonpolitical or neutral teaching against a backdrop of preserviceteacher and teacher demographics predominated by middle-class, Euro-pean-American women. For this reason, Telling a Different Story will be a usefultool in provoking dialogue among education faculty, graduate students, teachers,and others involved in the field of early childhood care and education.
360 BOOK REVIEW
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