Powerful pedagogy: Learning from and about teaching in an elementary literacy course

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Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 194–204

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Powerful pedagogy: Learning from and about teaching inan elementary literacy course

Clarissa S. Thompson�

School of Education, University of Colorado at Boulder, UCB 249, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0249, USA

Abstract

Pedagogy is an important aspect of teacher education, and the teacher educator’s pedagogy can help the preservice

teacher understand the complexities inherent in teaching. This study examined one elementary literacy course in a master’s

level teacher education program. Data collection involved classroom observation and interviews with the professor and

two students. In this course, the professor models good teaching and designs valuable projects and experiences for her

students. Her thoughtful and continual consideration of pedagogy serves to make this an exemplary teacher education

course and highlights the powerful role that pedagogy can play in teacher education.

r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Pedagogy; Teacher education; Literacy education

I know that she’s a great teacher and I know thatshe’s one of the best and so I look at what shedoes and how she’s successful and just the factthat she is such a great teacher models for meapproaches that I might take with my students.

(Ben, a preservice teacher education student)

1. Introduction

The sentiments of this student fly in the face ofmuch that is written about teacher education. Citingpast studies, Lampert and Ball (1998) comment onthe lack of impact of teacher education, noting twoproblems in particular. First, they refer to the effectsof teacher education being ‘‘washed out’’ and theconcomitant difficulty beginning teachers have in

e front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

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transferring what they learn in teacher education tothe classrooms in which they will eventually teach.

Ball and Cohen (1999) also note that a recurrentproblem in teacher education is ‘‘uninspired peda-gogy’’ (p. 24). Given that a major charge of teachereducation programs is to teach prospective teachersabout teaching, the notion that such programs arecharacterized by uninspired pedagogy is a seriousconcern. The student quoted above indicates that helooks at what his teacher does as a teacher, and seesmodeled there ‘‘approaches that I might take withmy students.’’ This comment highlights the power-ful role that a teacher educator’s pedagogy can playin the preservice teacher’s experience, and suggeststhat students in teacher education courses can learnvaluable lessons not just from the content of thosecourses, but also from the pedagogy.

My argument that prospective teachers canlearn about teaching from the pedagogy of their

.

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Table 1

Preservice teachers’ contexts and projects during the course

Time Location Focus

September (3– 4 weeks) Observing in elementary school

classrooms

Begin Literacy Portfolio Project involves

� Assessing one child’s reading and writing abilities

� Providing some instruction

� Analyzing the child’s progress

� Making recommendations for future instruction

Late September–October (4 weeks) University coursework Design multi-day writing project

October–November (3 weeks) Return to the same elementary

classrooms from September

Continue work on literacy portfolio

Teach multi-day writing project

November–December (3 weeks) University coursework Critique, refine, and reflect on literacy portfolio and

multi-day writing project

C.S. Thompson / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 194–204 195

teacher education coursework is informed by socio-cultural theories of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991;Wertsch, 1981). Wertsch suggests that the contextsin which learners participate play an important rolein shaping individuals’ understandings and prac-tices. In this case, the classroom is the context, andthe pedagogical practices unfolding within thiscontext will shape novice teachers’ understandings,particularly their understandings of teaching. Laveand Wenger’s (1991) notion of legitimate peripheralparticipation, wherein novices learn through gra-dual participation in and exposure to the socialpractices of a community, is particularly importanthere. As they move towards becoming teachers,students in these classrooms have access to variousapproaches to teaching—as performed by theteacher educator—and will learn about teachingfrom their participation in this community.

In this article, I tell the story of one exemplaryteacher education course and the professor whoteaches it.1 Part of a Master’s in Teaching programat a large university in the Northwest United States,this is the last in a series of three courses about theteaching of reading and writing for preserviceelementary teachers. By the time the students takethis course, they have been in the teacher educationprogram for almost 1 year, they have alreadyworked with this teacher for one academic quarter

1I would like to thank the professor and the teaching assistant

for this course, for welcoming me into their classroom and

sharing their thoughts about pedagogy with me. I am also

grateful to the two students who spent time talking with me about

their experiences in the course. All names used in this article are

pseudonyms.

(10 weeks), and following this they will embarkupon their full time student teaching experience.

The goals of the course are to ‘‘review and expandon the diagnostic and teaching skills [learned in thefirst two literacy courses]’’ and to ‘‘learn how tomotivate and teach writing in the elementaryschool’’ (course syllabus). Table 1 provides anoverview of the course structure and focus, indicat-ing how students’ time is divided between theuniversity and field experiences and noting theprojects that they work on throughout the course.

Data collection for the analysis presented in thisarticle took place during the November–Decemberblock of university coursework. During this time, Iobserved the course on three occasions. In additionto observing the class and collecting documents(e.g., the course syllabus, class handouts, over-heads), I conducted one semi-structured interviewwith the instructor, as well as individual interviews(one each) with two students from the class.Interviews lasted approximately 1 h in length andwere audio-taped and transcribed.

I organize my analysis around two concerns orchallenges for teacher education, and teachereducators more specifically: making connections

between theory and practice and helping students

make the transition from being a student to being a

teacher. Because novice teachers spend time learningabout teaching (theory) in one context, but actuallywitness and engage in teaching (practice) in adifferent context, making connections betweenthese two elements of teaching and these differentlocations represents a significant challenge forprospective teachers and teacher educators(Korthagen et al., 2001). The other challenge faced

ARTICLE IN PRESSC.S. Thompson / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 194–204196

by teacher educators comes primarily from the factthat students have spent years in schools, experien-cing an ‘‘apprenticeship of observation’’ (Lortie,1975), and moving beyond their prior experiencesand understandings, that is, trying to learn aboutteaching from the perspective of a teacher ratherthan that of a student, can pose problems.

In this course, the professor’s pedagogical movesare intended to address these different challenges.While I organize the paper around these two broadthemes, and offer specific examples for each theme,much of what the professor in this course does (andthe examples that I offer) could fall into either ofthese categories. Similarly, much of what she doesaddresses more than one challenge at a time. In fact,part of what makes her pedagogy so powerful is theartful way she designs it to speak to many thingsat once.

Throughout this article, I use the term pedagogyto encompass two aspects of the professor’s class-room teaching activities. First, her pedagogy can bethought of as the actual ‘‘stand up in front of theroom’’ teaching that she does. On a different,though sometimes interrelated level, pedagogy isalso the experiences—projects and assignments—inwhich she engages students. I turn now to the firstchallenge I have outlined: helping students makeconnections between theory and practice.

2. Making connections between theory and practice

Ball and Cohen (1999) allude to the longstandingtension between theory and practice in teachereducation when they argue that ‘‘much of what[preservice teachers] would have to learn must belearned in and from practice rather than inpreparing to practice.’’ (p. 10). Their focus, however,is on an expanded understanding and subsequentuse of the term ‘‘practice.’’ They do not believe thatpreservice teachers should simply immerse them-selves in the daily life of schools and attempt to learnwhat they can from being there. What is critical isnot that preservice teachers have practice (i.e., acomprehensive student teaching experience), butthat they learn ‘‘in and from practice.’’

Learning in and from practice means that novicesexplore the particulars or specifics of teaching infocused ways. Rather than trying to go out andteach day after day in a live classroom, planning newlessons every day, moving forward in accordancewith the typical structure of the school day andweeks, but not necessarily having time to analyze all

that happens in those lessons, days, and weeks,novices might work on elements of one lesson oractivity, examining it from a number of angles,enacting it, reflecting on it and then revising it. Inlearning in and from practice novices use smallpieces of the broader terrain of teaching and learning(examples of practice) to understand more deeplywhat happens in teaching and learning. Through thiskind of focus on practice, novices can both deepenand sharpen their knowledge of the complexity ofteaching, in ways that often elude them when theyare charged with ‘‘having practice’’ in the context ofa typical school day. When novices explore practicein the way Ball and Cohen advocate, they are notjust getting practice with aspects of teaching, but areunderstanding practice and its relation to theory,how it can grow from or lead to theory.

Here Ball and Cohen (1999) echo Dewey (1904),who writes that ‘‘we may propose to use practicework as an instrument in making real and vitaltheoretical instruction’’ (p. 142). Dewey highlightsthe importance of uniting theory and practice, ofhelping teachers understand the role that theoryplays in practice. He distinguishes between thetraditional notion of practice, and his own under-standing of it.

The professional school does its best for itsstudents when it gives them typical and intensive,rather than extensive and detailed, practice. Itaims, in a word, at control of the intellectual

methods required for personal and independentmastery of practical skill, rather than at turningout at once masters of the craft. (p. 144)

The intellectual methods of teaching involve thethinking and reflecting that surround the action ordoing of teaching. While novices can observe andthen even mimic the actions of the teachers theywatch, it is critical that they also go beyond theobservable, beyond the act of teaching and alsocome to understand, and be able to executethemselves, the thinking that is a central aspect ofteaching. According to both Ball and Cohen, andDewey, in learning from ‘‘practice,’’ preserviceteachers are able to step back from the world ofschool where everything happens quickly and thereis no time to reflect; they are able to look deeply—intensively—at a particular incident or phenomen-on. They do not try to look at everything(‘‘extensive and detailed’’), but rather try to lookat that which is in fact typical in schools. In sodoing, rather than amass an array of activities,

ARTICLE IN PRESSC.S. Thompson / Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2006) 194–204 197

strategies or tricks for teaching, they master adeeper understanding of the underlying intellectualwork of teaching, an understanding which willsubsequently allow them to, over time, become‘‘masters of the craft,’’ as Dewey puts it.

Helping students make connections betweentheory and practice, and between the universityand the field, can happen in a number of ways and,in the following two sections, I present examples ofhow Vicki, the professor of this elementary literacycourse, tries to make those connections. In the firstsection, I discuss the assignments Vicki creates,assignments that are examples of pedagogy intendedto facilitate students in making connections betweentheory and practice. In the second section, I describea particular moment in time: the day that thestudents return to the university—and their course-work—after a 3 week intensive practicum experi-ence. Here I look closely at Vicki’s pedagogy,particularly what she does ‘‘in front of the class,’’how she manages and orchestrates the class’s focusand conversation and uses this opportunity to createconnections between those often dichotomous con-texts in which preservice teachers learn aboutteaching, contexts which are often characterized asrepresenting theory and practice.

2.1. Course projects and assignments

I begin this section with Vicki describing theteacher education program in which she works andher thoughts about the challenges of uniting theoryand practice.

One of the major structural things that we triedto do in the elementary program, when weplanned it, at least from my perspective, wasjoining field and coursework to try to figure out‘‘how what I’m learning looks like in real life.’’And ‘‘what does it feel like for me to try thosethings.’’ It’s the classic teachable moment, andit’s a way for them not to dichotomize theuniversity and the field, it’s a way to keep theseideas alive in the face of realityy. You learn toproblematize teaching, you learn that teachingisn’t formulaic, you learn that it’s continualproblem solving.

Vicki designs several projects for her students,projects that serve as one concrete way to fosterconnections between theory and practice. Thestudents focus on two things while they are out inthe field for the second time: working with the child

they have chosen for their literacy portfolio andteaching the multi-day writing project that theydesign in the course.

Vicki believes that a positive feature of the multi-day writing project is that the students see theirefforts there as particularly meaningful, since theygenuinely want to ‘‘get them right’’ before teachingthem. Also, the different steps that it involves (afterteaching the project, they are asked to reflect on itand to revise it) forces them to problematizeteaching. She hopes that she is helping them toacquire both ‘‘pedagogical and conceptual tools,’’and that they are learning to approach teaching in a‘‘thoughtful problem solving sort of way.’’ In thisway, Vicki appears to be helping them develop‘‘control of the intellectual methods’’ to whichDewey (1904, p. 144) refers.

For Danielle, one of the students in Vicki’s class,the projects stand out most prominently and tie thefieldwork and the coursework together. When askedwhat she was learning about teaching from the class,Danielle chose to answer by talking about theprojects. While the substance of her answer wasinteresting, equally, if not more interesting was theway in which she framed her answer. She describedthe shape of the course, as she perceived it, and therole that the projects played in pulling it alltogether.

This is how the quarter has gone: I was in thefield for four weeks and then I was in class forfour weeks and then I was back in the field forthree weeks and then now I’m back in class. Andso it’s hard to think, what did we do every dayyI learn in doing. It’s not until I do it and apply it,like assessing our student for writing, it’s notuntil I really sat down and picked it apart anddecided what I need to teach my girl, y if wewere taught in class, a two day class session ofhow to do the QRI [Qualitative ReadingInventory], by just her telling us and maybe we’llbreak up into jigsaw groups and do that, youdon’t know it until you go and do it. And sothat’s the reason why I picked out the twoprojects is because that’s what Vicki wants us toknow and that’s where I’ve learned the most.

While Danielle does distinguish between the fieldand the university, and she does admit to ‘‘learningin doing,’’ a comment that, if taken at face value,could support the position that teachers learn toteach simply by being in the classroom and by‘‘having practice,’’ clearly her ‘‘doing’’ is guided in


large part by what she has learned in the universityclassroom. Danielle does not just come in with aready made plan and then attempt to plow aheadwith it. She refers to sitting down and ‘‘picking itapart’’ before figuring out what she needs to do interms of working with this particular child. She isattempting to exercise her growing ‘‘control ofthe intellectual methods’’ rather than apply a settechnique or strategy with no thought for thesituation as a whole.

The project that she starts in the university andthen tries to make sense of in the field shapes andguides her learning. This is what Vicki thinks of as‘‘keeping the ideas alive in the face of reality’’ andshe was very intentional in designing projects likethese. That is, her goal was to use the projects as atool for creating connections—for students—be-tween theory and practice. By engaging in andcompleting such projects, students necessarily makesome of the connections that are so important incoming to understand the complexity of teachingand in coming to understand both theory andpractice. In doing the project, Danielle is takingthe ideas she has learned about in the universityclassroom and figuring out what they mean for andin an elementary classroom, she is making sense oftheory and practice. Also important is Danielle’sconviction that this is indeed what she needs to belearning. While she says that ‘‘this is what Vickiwants us to know,’’ she also says that ‘‘this iswhere I’ve learned the most’’ and obviously valueswhat the project has given her. That Vicki’sintentions and purposes for the project are thisclear to Danielle is a powerful comment on Vicki’spedagogy.

A number of people argue for the use of cases inteacher education. Cases help preservice teacherslearn to ‘‘think like a teacher’’ (Kleinfeld, 1992);they foster reflection and help teachers constructuseful knowledge (Kleinfeld, 1992; Richert, 1991);and they help connect theory and practice (Parker &Tiezzi, 1992). The literacy portfolio that Vickiassigns her students embodies many of these sameprinciples and serves similar purposes. Richert(1991) describes how, in addition to examiningcases together, she also has her students constructtheir own cases. While she will go on to use thesecases, she points out that use is

only one aspect of my intended outcomey Anequally critical piece of the assignment concernsthe learning opportunities embedded in case

construction. Case construction involves study-ing a situation and learning enough about it todescribe it accurately in a way that otherscan understandy Preparing cases involvesdeveloping skills central to reflective practiceyto prepare a good case the case writer mustwatch and listen carefully—skills essential togood teaching in general, and to good reflectiveteaching in particular. (p. 138–139)

In discussing the process of working with herliteracy portfolio child as well as the surroundingreflection, Danielle shows evidence of benefiting inmany of the ways Richert describes.

2.2. Bridging field experiences and university

coursework

I turn now to my second example of how Vicki,through her pedagogy, works to make connectionsbetween theory and practice. I provide the followingvignette as a way to see the other type of pedagogy Ioutlined earlier in this article: Vicki’s ‘‘stand upteaching,’’ that is, what she does with the studentsduring one specific class period and how sheorganizes and orchestrates a lesson.

The students have been in elementary schools forthe last 3 weeks. Now they are back in their cohortgroup, a group that has been progressing togetherthrough this teacher education experience for thebetter part of the last year. The classroom isessentially in a basement; the windows do not startuntil almost six feet up the wall and a glance out ofthem reveals only the feet of people passing by thebuilding. Even so, the atmosphere is positive. Thestudents talk cheerfully amongst themselves andthere is a sense that they are excited, both aboutwhere they have been and about where they aregoing.

Student work is posted all over one of theclassroom walls. Closer examination reveals photo-graphs of the students in this very class and it turnsout that they are the authors of these pieces. In thesefeature articles, each student interviewed and wasinterviewed by a classmate. The articles recount theprospective teachers’ own prior writing experiencesand their related feelings as well as their visions ofthemselves as future writing teachers. The ‘‘pub-lished’’ products are colourful and diverse in theirpresentation.

Vicki welcomes them back and begins by readinga poem. She tells them the title of the book,


Rainbows, Head Lice, and Pea-Green Tile: Poems in

the Voice of the Classroom Teacher and then readsaloud a poem called ‘‘The Threshold.’’ The narratorof the poem stands outside the door of theclassroom, fresh from ‘‘four years of college,/10 000 pages of instructional text,’’ feeling over-whelmed and unprepared and yet, at the same time,thinking ‘‘After all, they are just children./Whatcould possibly go wrong?’’ Vicki asks the group infront of her if they have any of those feelings. Shethen asks about their field experience: positiveresponses and comments come from around theroom and Vicki replies that she wants to hear more.

At this point, she directs their attention to theoverhead and tells them to look at the list of wordsup there and think about their experience in theclassroom in terms of one of those. She then readsfrom the list on the overhead: ‘‘colour, smell, taste,sound, object, animal, food, beverage, place orsetting, weather. I just want to hear a phrase fromeach of you about what it was like to teachLanguage Arts in your class, using these senses.’’

Students chime in immediately. One says ‘‘thesound of silence;’’ another refers to the setting of thelibrary. Vicki asks for a colour, and a student repliesthat she has a food, saying it was like ‘‘biting intosomething you expect to taste one way and having ittaste completely different.’’ The images and meta-phors continue. One student says it was likeshowing up with the tools to put the finishingtouches on a house and discovering that the housewas not built yet. Another says it was ‘‘refreshinglike iced tea on a hot day.’’ The depth and the detailin their responses vary. Some of the students prefacetheir contributions with disclaimers, ‘‘mine is not asgood as so and so’s,’’ but then offer fine descrip-tions. Throughout, Vicki responds positively andsolicits responses from as many people as possible.

While many of them convey a sense of profoundexcitement and pleasure about the experience, theyalso comment on how difficult it was. Furthermore, incommenting on the difficulty, some refer to the multi-day writing project they taught while in the field, andhow something that had originally seemed simplewas actually ‘‘really hard, like pulling teeth.’’ Vickicomments that it is ‘‘hard work teaching writing.’’

Throughout this discussion, Vicki tries to bringdetails and difficulties from their field experienceinto her classroom so as to make that content partof her own course content, to help students bringtogether the reality they are seeing in one world withthe ideas they are learning about in another. Not

only is Vicki thoughtfully and artfully weavingtogether elements of theory and practice, but thisquick debriefing sets the students up for a more in-depth debriefing of their time in the field (which Idiscuss in the next section), and also serves asforeshadowing for subsequent work with poetry.

In both of the examples that I have just presented,Vicki’s pedagogical moves, and the intentionsbehind them, are significant. She has clearly thoughtabout the struggles that students have—how hard itis for them to create connections between the theorythat they read and hear about at the universityand the practices that they see and participate inclassrooms. She has thought through these issuesfor students and masterfully designed pedagogy thatwill help students create meaningful links betweenthese two contexts and, more broadly, betweentheory and practice. I turn now to the secondchallenge I articulated at the beginning of thispaper: the challenge of helping preservice studentsmake the transition from student to teacher.

3. Making the transition from student to teacher

One of the challenges of becoming a teacher ismaking the transition from seeing teaching from theperspective of a student to understanding teaching

from the perspective of a teacher. Preservice teachereducation students come to teaching with years ofexperience in classrooms, what Lortie (1975) callsthe ‘‘apprenticeship of observation.’’ These years ofobserving teaching can lead to preservice teachersassuming that teaching is easy, that because theyhave been watching it for years they are capable ofdoing it. ‘‘Still, they know little of the deliberationsinside their teachers’ heads, of the decisions made,of the dilemmas managed. They have not been ableto observe their teachers think, figure things out,reason’’ (Lampert & Ball, 1998, p. 25).

In the following sections, I describe two of theways that Vicki addresses this problem of making thetransition from student to teacher. The first exampleI discuss is Vicki’s work with dialogue journals.While earlier in this article I discussed course projectsand assignments as they supported making theconnection between theory and practice, here Idiscuss this particular course assignment in itscapacity of helping students make that transition tothinking like a teacher and understanding teaching.The second example I discuss is Vicki’s efforts to helpstudents learn to think like teachers through makingher own thinking public and visible to her students.


3.1. Working with dialogue journals

Ball and Cohen (1999) note that for new teachersto use reform-oriented instruction in their class-rooms, they will need opportunities to engage insuch reform-oriented instruction themselves, inorder to truly understand it. In this elementaryliteracy course, Vicki has students do a sequence ofactivities focused on dialogue journals, somethingshe advocates them using in their own futureclassrooms. She begins by engaging them in thepractice as students and, throughout the process ofworking with the assignment, shifts their participa-tion so that they are, in the end, working withjournals from the perspective of teachers. Thisprocess extends over several days and ultimatelytakes them through many different steps and aspectsof journal writing. One of Vicki’s goals here is tohelp the students come to understand what purposesjournals might serve and how, as teachers, theymight use them in their elementary school class-rooms. The second important feature of thissequence with journals is, as I mentioned earlier,Vicki’s use of the journals and the surroundingactivities as a vehicle for more in-depth examinationof their field experiences and as a way to help themmake further sense of what they encountered there.

As she begins their work with journals, Vickiintroduces the notion of ‘‘thinking before you talk.’’She suggests that one way to use journals is to havekids organize their thoughts before they discusssomething with each other. At this point, she asksthe class to spend about 5min writing down phrasesor ideas about issues, questions, and concerns thathave come up about the teaching of writing. Afterthey have done this writing, they get together ingroups and talk in more depth about what they sawand what their current concerns are.

At the end of class, having finished the discussionof their field experiences, they return to journals.The homework assignment related to journals is asfollows:

In a dialogue journal (that is, it will be read andresponded to by Vicki or Catherine2, so write itwith that purpose and audience in mind), addressthe following question: What did you learn aboutteaching writing in your field experiences?

Some discussion follows, with emphasis on thepoint that this is not a personal journal, but rather a

2Catherine is the teaching assistant in the course.

dialogue journal. Students should think of it as aconversation: they should keep their audience (inthis case, Vicki and Catherine) in mind as they writeand should ask questions.

Two classes later, students get their journals backwith comments from Vicki and Catherine andstudents move into a new phase in this process ofworking with dialogue journals: the response phase.Class begins with discussion about possible differentpurposes for journals (e.g., journals in literature,dialogue journals, etc.). During this class, thestudents will assume two roles. First, they willassume the role of a student: having read thecomments in their journals they are now going toquickly ‘‘jot down thoughts about the followingquestions.’’

1.
Reactions: How did you feel? Why? 2. Do you know where to go next in the conversa-
tion? (If so, why, what in our comments helpsyou know where to go?)

3.
Specifics or categories that promote dialogue. 4. Specifics or categories that shut down commu-
nication.

Vicki notes that they are being put in a positionthey are not normally put in, being asked howsomething felt, but that it is valuable to considerhow it feels to be a student and to get feedback onwork.

The students take a few minutes to respond tothese questions individually and then move intosharing some of their reactions in a whole classformat. As they respond, Catherine writes down keywords as well as probing and seeking clarificationon their comments. Responses range from ‘‘enligh-tened’’ and ‘‘pleased’’ to ‘‘gypped’’ and ‘‘confused.’’One student says she liked the way her name wasincluded in the response she received and that itmade her feel motivated to write more. Anotherstudent comments that he felt attacked by thequestions that he was asked in response to hisjournal entry. After getting a range of responses,Catherine points out the wide variety of waysstudents reacted to the feedback they got back,saying ‘‘keep in mind [Vicki and I], tried to respondevenly, but look at the wide range of responses.’’The class also talks briefly about the role that therelationship between the teacher and the studentmight play in the type of feedback that occurs andhow students respond to that feedback.


After this, class continues with discussion of thenext questions. Throughout this time, in response tostudent contributions and questions, Vicki andCatherine bring up issues such as the role of theteacher in journal writing, different ways to usejournals, and the importance of setting up appro-priate relationships and making expectations clear.Also, during this conversation, they offer examplesof both positive and negative experiences that theyhave had working with journals in elementaryclassrooms. While their main goal is to helpstudents imagine the different possibilities for howstudents might react to response in journal writing,they are also trying to introduce a variety ofstrategies, issues, and substantive information aboutjournals to these preservice teachers.

This part of the discussion of journals andresponse takes about 45min, after which thestudents get to ‘‘put the shoe on the other foot’’and assume the second of the two roles they workwith during this exercise, that of the teacher. Vickiand Catherine next hand out examples of journalentries that they have written and ask the studentsto take about 5min to respond to them. Theyencourage the students to ‘‘write all over’’ thesejournal entries, at the same time explaining thatafter they respond individually, they will talk intable groups about what they choose to respond toas well as come up with one guideline for respond-ing to dialogue journals.

The focus of the class has now shifted andstudents are getting practice in actually givingfeedback to ‘‘students;’’ they now become the‘‘teacher.’’ Not only do they learn about thedifferent steps involved in doing dialogue journalsby actually going through them (as opposed to justreading or hearing about them), but they also get tothink about the experience from the perspective ofboth the teacher and the student. In planning thissequence of activities and tasks related to journals,Vicki has again been both purposeful and masterful.Through the pedagogy that she designs and models,she has created a variety of learning opportunities,opportunities that, in clear and concrete ways, helpstudents understand journals at the same time thatthey work on making the transition from student toteacher, while also helping them further debrief andmake sense of the field experiences they justcompleted.

As they finish responding to the journal entriesand begin to talk as tables, Vicki asks them tothink about what they chose to respond to, what

they wanted to accomplish with their responses,and how it felt to be on the other end. Afterthey have had time to address these questionsand come up with guidelines for responding topeople’s journals, Vicki asks each table to shareits one guideline. Students indicate that it isimportant to make sure that the writer knows theresponder is interested and curious; that theresponder should find something that they canrelate to and then comment on (e.g., ‘‘I can relatetoy’’); and that the responder should find some-thing to agree with.

An important element of Vicki’s pedagogy herewas her decision to have the journals entriesthat she and Catherine wrote differ significantlyin style and substance. This pedagogical moveserves as a catalyst for discussion about howdifferent types of journal entries may requiredifferent types of responses. Some who had readVicki’s entry remark that it was quite challengingfor them and that they were confused by parts.Vicki uses this as an opportunity to giveexamples of how one might address the issue of‘‘confusing parts’’ in a student’s journal entry,indicating that they can try phrases like ‘‘couldyou tell me some more?’’ or ‘‘I don’t think I get thiscompletely.’’

A student then points out that that would be‘‘appropriate for Vicki’s entry, but not for Cathe-rine’s, since Catherine is talking about feelings.’’Vicki agrees that this is true and an excellentpoint, but that in the same way that the responderwould not want to push or question Catherinetoo much, the responder also should not just goalong with Vicki’s comments without questioningthem at all. She suggests that she wants morethan just an affirming response; she wants herthinking to be taken seriously and perhaps evenchallenged. By asking the students to respond tojournal entries, and starkly contrasting entries atthat, Vicki and Catherine manage to surface manyof the dilemmas that teachers will face when theyare responding to student work of all kinds, not justjournal entries.

Vicki concludes this section of the class bythanking the students for taking the process soseriously and commenting that it is very hard torespond to students’ work in a way that is respectfuland useful. She collects the students’ responses toCatherine’s and her journal entries, adding that shelooks forward to reading them and inviting studentsto comment more if they wish.


3.2. Students’ perspective

What instructors intend for students to learn andwhat students end up learning are not always thesame thing. When considering pedagogy and whateffect it might have on students and their learningabout teaching, it is necessary to also consider howstudents see and understand the pedagogy theyexperience. I turn now to discussion of the twostudents I interviewed and their reactions to thissequence on journals.

Danielle, who had never done dialogue journalsbefore, enjoyed the opportunity to do these. Shenoted feeling free to write whatever she wanted, tojust put her thoughts out there, and that there wasno pressure involved due to formal grading, afeature that she appreciated. In considering whetherthe experience with dialogue journals gave her amore clear picture of what they were, Daniellereplied that in the context of a college levelclassroom, she did now have a more clear idea,but not in the context of a third grade classroom.Here, for Danielle, the connection between what sheis doing in her university coursework and what thatmight mean for her work in a classroom is not soreadily apparent.

Talking about the responding that the classengaged in, Danielle commented on the big differ-ence between responding to a third grader’s journaland responding to Vicki’s journal. However, as shewas talking, she actually went on to make someconnections between these two seemingly differentendeavors and in so doing she was in fact seeing alink between what she was learning here and whatshe might eventually do in a third grade classroom.

If it weren’t at that level that we were at—thehigher level—and looking at very intellectualwriting, then the issues would not have come upthat did, and so in looking at something that’sabove even high school level, is reading some-thing and evaluating and questioning and prais-ing something at the highest level, and then fromthere you can go down. If we were to just look ata first, second, third grade example, then it wouldbe harder to say, you know, what would you doin sixth grade?

Even though what she experiences in the literacyclass can never mirror what will happen in herelementary classroom, the ‘‘issues’’ that get broughtup can lead to thinking that will inform her practiceas a teacher. Furthermore, she realizes that in doing

something at a ‘‘higher level’’ she will in fact be ableto transfer that, whereas if they had not worked atsuch a high level that transfer might not have beenpossible.

Ben, like Danielle, noted learning somethingabout the various ways of giving feedback tostudents and the importance of ‘‘considering stu-dents’ positions and how they feel about certainfeedback.’’ On the whole though, he had quite adifferent experience than Danielle with the dialoguejournals, primarily because he came to it with asignificant amount of knowledge and prior beliefsabout the subject. While in college, Ben becameinterested in dialogue journals and subsequentlyengaged in a long-term research project aboutjournals. As a result of this project, he developedparticular beliefs about journals. When the responseto his journal entry did not conform to what hisprior experience had been, he felt quite frustrated.

How I studied dialogue journals was differentthan how it was presented by Catherine. y HowI researched and my feelings about how youreport back—how you put comments on thepaper was different than how they responded toit—so when I read mine, I felt, ‘‘Oh, I was beingattacked.’’

Specifically, Ben felt that journals should alwaysbe responded to with praise and that askingquestions (e.g., the ‘‘how so’s’’ and the ‘‘why’s’’that Vicki and Catherine included as margincomments) is not appropriate. Ben shared thisopinion in the class discussion about response, atwhich point Vicki talked about the idea of purposein writing and responding to journals, stating thatone of her purposes in this particular assignmentwas to raise questions and to push them in theirthinking, hence the margin comments and ques-tions.

Ben’s prior knowledge and beliefs played a strongrole in what he took away from this lesson, and atsome level hindered him from considering all of thepossibilities and dilemmas that Vicki and Catherinetried to bring up. Yet he also talks about having hada productive conversation with Catherine, theperson who responded to his journal, after the classon response. Furthermore, he indicates appreciationthat he was given the opportunity to respond to oneof their journal entries in the way that he wasaccustomed to and believed was best.

Prior knowledge and beliefs shaped Ben’s under-standing of what Vicki was trying to do in a way


that was different from her intention, yet in spite ofthis, he does have a fairly sophisticated under-standing of journals. He describes how teachers,through using journals with students, can modelcertain things. For example, by responding specifi-cally to what the students wrote and using thecorrect spellings of the words that the studentsoriginally misspelled, teachers can model correctspelling. He also mentions issues of structure andhow certain writing structures (e.g. the paragraph)can also be modeled in journals. He furtherillustrates this point by describing how he saw thishappening in the case of the child he was workingwith for his literacy portfolio project in just the fewweeks that they kept a dialogue journal together.While not all of Vicki’s intentions were clearlyrealized in Ben’s case, he does display a seriouscommitment to using journals in the elementaryschool classroom, and this is certainly one of theprimary lessons that Vicki hopes students will takeaway from her pedagogical efforts throughout thissequence on journals.

Teaching preservice teachers how to engage incertain teaching and learning practices as teachersrather than as students—as I have just describedVicki doing—is one element of making the transi-tion to teacher. One component of this larger effortis helping prospective teachers learn to do thethinking that is required of a teacher. This is arecurring theme for Vicki, and an important goal ishelping students learn what teacher thinking lookslike. One way that she does this is by making herown thinking public, and I turn now to discussionof this element of Vicki’s pedagogy.

3.3. Making her thinking public

A number of researchers document the impor-tance of teacher educators making explicit the kindof thinking that they want their students tosubsequently engage in as teachers, or demonstrat-ing and modeling for preservice students the natureand complexity of teacher thinking (Ethell &McMeniman, 2000; Loughran & Berry, 2005;Smith, 2005). This is an aspect of pedagogy thatVicki endeavours to make a central part of herpractice. In the examples I have previously dis-cussed here, making thinking explicit has been arecurring, though perhaps not central, theme. Forexample, while working on dialogue journals, Vickidiscusses why she and Catherine wrote differenttypes of journal entries and how that was designed

to help students understand the possible range ofentries as well as the differing nature of responsedepending on the type of entry. When Vicki engagesstudents in the quick debrief of their field experi-ences upon their return to class, she shares withthem how this exercise is a foreshadowing of, andwill tie into, subsequent work with sense poetry. Inso doing, she gives them a window into her largercurricular planning process and shares with themhow different elements of the course tie together.

This effort to expose her students to the multiplethings that go on in a teacher’s head at any onetime, so that they understand the complexity ofteaching and how her pedagogical decisions fittogether and what their purposes are, is an ongoingpart of Vicki’s pedagogy.

The other thing I try to do, in teaching, if I canmake it work, is to try to make my thinkingpublic, so, if we engage in an activity like thejournal writing, I try to put them in the role ofthe learner, if I can, and then try to step back and[talk] about what I think about as a teacher, myconsiderations.

When Vicki makes her thinking public, and usesit as a site for discussing teaching and the complex-ity of teaching, she not only helps them learn tothink like a teacher, but she also addresses onecommon problem faced by teacher educators, theproblem of the ‘‘common referent.’’

Lampert and Ball (1998, p. 41) write that ‘‘with acommon ‘text,’ participants have a shared referentin which differences of meaning or interpretationcan be uncovered’’ (p. 41). They see potential forsignificant learning opportunities in such commonreferents. Unfortunately, such common texts orreferents are not often found in teacher education(especially when students each have individual fieldexperiences, away from the context of the uni-versity). Vicki provides a common referent when shetries to make her thinking public or steps back andhas the class as a whole examine her teaching. So, inaddition to modeling certain types of thinking andapproaches to teaching, she is also creating sharedinquiry among the students, creating a space wherethey can, together, consider a specific piece ofteaching and learning.

4. Conclusion

Pedagogy is a powerful aspect of teacher educa-tion and Vicki’s thoughtful and continual consid-


eration of pedagogy serves to make this anexemplary teacher education class. Her pedagogyis an important part of the course from severalperspectives. As a teacher, she models good teach-ing; both Ben and Danielle comment on this andfeel strongly that Vicki’s qualities not just as ateacher educator but as a teacher are an importantpart of their learning experience. In her work as ateacher educator, Vicki does a number of things thatincrease the learning opportunities for her students:she makes her thinking public, examines herdifferent teaching moves together with the class,logically connects all of the different elements of theclass and, on a daily as well as long term basis, paysattention to what her students want and need. Bensays, ‘‘just her mannerisms and how she teaches andhow she communicates with the students, I meanshe’s teaching me those things too.’’

Vicki’s pedagogy is important not just from theperspective of the teaching she does ‘‘in front of theclass,’’ but also from the perspective of the‘‘educative experiences’’ that she constructs, speci-fically the projects that she has the students do.These experiences, these investigations into practice,serve to connect theory and practice and helpher students take what they are learning in theuniversity out into the schools. Ben says, ‘‘Sheteaches us the strategies and then she backsteps withexamples after examples and she also has us go outand live these things that she’s teaching us so weunderstand them from pretty much every differentarea.’’ Danielle echoes his sentiments when shedescribes getting to work with her literacy portfoliochild.

Pedagogy is a critical and complex aspect ofteacher education; it can be thought of as both oneelement of the content of teacher education, as wellas the process of teacher education. However onethinks of it, though, it must become an explicitlyconsidered aspect of teacher education because, asthis story of one elementary literacy course reveals,pedagogy can have both a powerful and a positiveeffect on what preservice teachers come to under-stand about teaching.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues Susan Jurowand Ben Kirshner for their helpful feedback on this

paper. Thanks also to Pam Grossman and to theanonymous reviewers who provided feedback onthe manuscript. Finally, I am most grateful to theprofessor and the teaching assistant who welcomedme into their classroom and spent time talkingwith me, as well as the students who took time outof their busy lives to talk with me about theirexperiences in the course.

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Documents

Powerful pedagogy: Learning from and about teaching in an elementary literacy course