Today, I’d love to share one of the presentations I had at USC Rossier. In the course EDUC 700_Research and Practice in the Preparation of Teachers for Diverse Populations, we were required to present in Pecha-Kucha style. Pecha-Kucha is a form of presentation that uses 20 images, each of which lasts 20 seconds.
Given my linguistic background, I decided to combine conceptual metaphor, something I am familiar with, with teacher education literature so as to stand out from the rest of my classmates. Oh, by the way, these beautiful pictures and images were taken from unsplash.com.
Today I want to share with you all what I know about teaching and provide a strategy that teacher educators can use.
Looking back at the process of my teacher training, I wish I could tell myself to worry less, because learning to teach is a complex process. And from a constructivist perspective, teaching practice and teacher learning are fluid and culturally scripted (Hibert et al., 2002, as cited in Wang et al., 2008).
According to Capps et al. (2005, as cited in Garcia et al., 2010), students attending schools are growing in their diversity, culturally, racially and linguistically. This makes culturally appropriate interactions and instructions matter (Garcia, 1990, as cited in Garcia et al., 2010).
To teach in multicultural environments, teachers need to embrace the existence of multiple realities and work toward understanding alternative perceptions and perspectives.
They need to be willing to acknowledge the credibility of other perspectives, particularly those that challenge comfortable, long-held assumptions (Gordon, 1991) so that they can “develop a broader sociopolitical consciousness that allows them to critique the cultural norms and institutions that produce and maintain social inequities (p. 162)” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, as cited in Garcia et al., 2010).
Before that, research has shown that understanding their own histories/biographies (Grant, 1991) is key. Teachers’ initial conceptions and prior knowledge serve as compasses or filters in shaping what and how they learn, their teaching practices (Pajares, 1992, as cited in Garcia et al., 2010; Thompson, 1982, as cited in Wang et al., 2008) and their own professional growth.
Sleeter (1992) pointed out that teachers should explicitly address and examine their ideology so they might be more receptive to multicultural thinking. However, teacher candidates enter with a wildly different array of experiences, knowledge and skills (Wilson, et al. 2011) and their deep-seated ideologies can be impervious to change.
Here’s the question: How do we as teacher educators intentionally create spaces and offer deliberate opportunities that invites pre-service teachers to “critically examine and interrogate their ideological orientations” (Bartolome & Trueba, 2000, p. 282, as cited in Bales & Saffold, 2011) and learn about the experiences of people different from themselves (Garcia et al., 2010)?
The past literature showed that the use of autobiographical storytelling (Gomex & Tabachnick, 1992; Jackson, 1992) and reflective journals give teacher candidates an opportunity to understand their own & existing ideologies and help them “consciously re-experience their own subjectivity” (King & Ladson-Billings, 1990).
However, the journal entries have its limits when teacher candidates know what the teacher educators want to see. They want to be good students and might adopt “impression management” so that changing what they think might not influence their professional practices in today’s urban classrooms.
Therefore, I propose using metaphors as a medium of reflection (Black & Halliwell, 2000; Perry & Cooper, 2001, as cited in Saban, 2006) to demystify and makes explicit teacher candidates’ personal knowledge and beliefs about teaching. Through metaphor, we can see the internalized image teachers hold of themselves and their work.
What is metaphor? You might ask.
Metaphor is a mental construct that shape human thinking about the world and reality. We use metaphors in “understanding one kind of thing in terms of another (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 5). In fact, “a large part of self-understanding is the search for appropriate metaphors that makes sense of our lives” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).
It can also act as lens in understanding about teachers’ tacit referential system and serve as a filter through which teachers can uncover and clarify their implicit assumptions about teaching, learning, and schooling.
It can also reveal our subconscious educational beliefs and underlying consciously held opinions (Gillis & Johnson, 2002, as cited in Thomas & Beauchamp, 2010).
Metaphors can serve as “master switch”(Tobin, 1990, as cited in Saban, 2006) or offer us an “imaginative leap” (Johnson, 1981) to facilitate deeper understanding of how learning to teach is conceived and experienced by teacher candidates (Santa Ana, 2013).
It helps teachers stretch their imaginations to consider alternative conceptions of teaching and self as a teacher (Bullough & Stokes, 1994).
Here are some metaphor elicitation methods:
We can invite teacher candidates to complete in writing these two stems, or we ask question like “What metaphor would you use to represent yourself as teacher?”
I’m going to provide you with 4 conceptual metaphors and think about what you most readily associated with and why? (Can you identify various elements entailed by their metaphors?)
In this metaphor, EDUCATION IS PRODUCTION, schools are factories; teachers are factory workers or technician (Apple, 1986); curriculum are assembly line; students are products.
In this metaphor, EDUCATION IS CURE, schools are hospitals; teachers are doctors; curriculum as prescriptions, and students are sick patients.
In this metaphor, EDUCATION IS BUSINESS, schools are companies, teachers are producers of products, administrators are managers, and students are investments as human capitals. Do you agree?
In this metaphor, EDUCATION IS a JOURNEY. Teachers are tour guides, students are travelers, curriculum are guide books. Some research problematized NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND policy based on this metaphor. What do you think?
How about EDUCATION IS GARDENING; EDUATION IS CONSTRUCTION; EDUATION IS COMPETITION (Hui, 2005)?
What rings true for you?
Metaphors can be effectively used as a pedagogical tool to open dialogues to assist prospective teachers in examining their personal values, teaching philosophies, and increasing their critical awareness (Guerrero & Villamil, 2002, as cited in Saban, 2006; Saban, 2006).
Besides challenging teacher candidates to examine their assumptions, teacher educators should provide critical, coherent, differentiated and learning-focused feedback that support teacher candidates to reconstruct meaning and to seek reinterpretations to their past knowledge (Garcia et al., 2010).
I hope my presentation offers you some food for thought. Thank you!
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