Tensions Of Teaching

This book captures the excitement – and the difficulties – of self-study of teacher education practices, placing it at the forefront of approaches to practitioner inquiry. It offers insight into the relationship between teaching about teaching and learning about teaching that emerged through the author’s own self-study project. The book illustrates how tensions can act as a means for both analysing practice and articulating the professional knowledge that comprises a pedagogy of teacher education.

In recent years, international efforts to improve educational quality in sub-Saharan Africa have focused on promoting learner-centered pedagogy. However, it has not fl ourished for cultural, economic, and political reasons that often go unrecognized by development organizations and policymakers. This edited volume draws on a long-term collaboration between African and American educational researchers in addressing critical questions regarding how teachers in one African country—Tanzania—conceptualize learner-centered pedagogy and struggle to implement it under challenging material conditions. One chapter considers how international support for learner-centered pedagogy has infl uenced national policies. Subsequent chapters utilize qualitative data from classroom observations, interviews, and focus group discussions across six Tanzanian secondary schools to examine how such policies shape local practices of professional development, inclusion, gender, and classroom discourse. In addition, the volume presents an analysis of the benefi ts and challenges of international research between Tanzanian and U.S. scholars, illuminating the complexity of collaboration as it simultaneously presents the outcome of joint research on teachers’ beliefs and practices. The chapters conclude with questions for discussion that can be used in courses on international development, social policy, and teacher education. “This volume, written by a multi-national team of scholar-practitioners, makes an important contribution to our understanding of learner-centered teaching and collaborative educational research. Based on an intensive investigation in Tanzania of a professional development program and teachers’ efforts to conceptualize and implement a globally-promoted pedagogical approach, the authors illustrate – and critically analyze – how these practices are enabled and constrained by cultural lenses, power relations, and material conditions. Importantly, they also examine refl exively how cultural, power, and resource issues shaped their struggle to engage in a collective praxis of qualitative inquiry. The tensions referenced in the title sparked valuable insights, which will be useful to educators, researchers, and policy makers.” — Mark Ginsburg, FHI 360 and Teachers College, Columbia University.

This book captures the excitement – and the difficulties – of self-study of teacher education practices, placing it at the forefront of approaches to practitioner inquiry. It offers insight into the relationship between teaching about teaching and learning about teaching that emerged through the author’s own self-study project. The book illustrates how tensions can act as a means for both analysing practice and articulating the professional knowledge that comprises a pedagogy of teacher education.

Teaching with Tension is a collection of seventeen original essays that address the extent to which attitudes about race, impacted by the current political moment in the United States, have produced pedagogical challenges for professors in the humanities. As a flashpoint, this current political moment is defined by the visibility of the country's first black president, the election of his successor, whose presidency has been associated with an increased visibility of the alt-right, and the emergence of the neoliberal university. Together these social currents shape the tensions with which we teach. Drawing together personal reflection, pedagogical strategies, and critical theory, Teaching with Tension offers concrete examinations that will foster student learning. The essays are organized into three thematic sections: "Teaching in Times and Places of Struggle" examines the dynamics of teaching race during the current moment, marked by neoconservative politics and twenty-first century freedom struggles. "Teaching in the Neoliberal University" focuses on how pressures and exigencies of neoliberalism (such as individualism, customer-service models of education, and online courses) impact the way in which race is taught and conceptualized in college classes. The final section, "Teaching How to Read Race and (Counter)Narratives," homes in on direct strategies used to historicize race in classrooms comprised of millennials who grapple with race neutral ideologies. Taken together, these sections and their constitutive essays offer rich and fruitful insight into the complex dynamics of contemporary race and ethnic studies education.

The central theme of this book is the ambiguities and tensions teachers face as they attempt to position themselves in ways that legitimize them as language teachers, and as English speakers. Focusing on three EFL teachers and their schools in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, it documents how ordinary practices of language educators are shaped by their social context, and examines the roles, identities, and ideologies that teachers create in order to navigate and negotiate their specific context. It is unique in bringing together several current theoretical and methodological developments in TESOL and applied linguistics: the performance of language ideologies and identities, critical TESOL pedagogy and research, and ethnographic methods in research on language learning and teaching. Balancing and blending descriptive reporting of the teachers and their contexts with a theoretical discussion which connects their local concerns and practices to broader issues in TESOL in international contexts, it allows readers to appreciate the subtle complexities that give rise to the "tensions and ambiguities" in EFL teachers' professional lives.

Addresses the challenges of meeting national accreditation requirements, including designing assessment instruments and making data-driven decisions. This book explores and shares tensions created as teacher education programs experience changes because of accountability requirements related to the accreditation process.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume discusses the effects, models and implications of history teaching in relation to conflict transformation and reconciliation from a social-psychological perspective. Bringing together a mix of established and young researchers and academics, from the fields of psychology, education, and history, the book provides an in-depth exploration of the role of historical narratives, history teaching, history textbooks and the work of civil society organizations in post-conflict societies undergoing reconciliation processes, and reflects on the state of the art at both the international and regional level. As well as dealing with the question of the ‘perpetrator-victim’ dynamic, the book also focuses on the particular context of transition in and out of cold war in Eastern Europe and the post-conflict settings of Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine and Cyprus. It is also exploring the pedagogical classroom practices of history teaching and a critical comparison of various possible approaches taken in educational praxis. The book will make compelling reading for students and researchers of education, history, sociology, peace and conflict studies and psychology.

Addressing the critical issue of teacher identity tensions, this edited volume looks at the tensions between teachers’ instructional beliefs, values, and priorities, and the contextual constraints and requirements. It examines how teachers deal with these tensions to avoid demotivation and burnout, which play a significant role in identity construction. Tensions are inseparable from growth and transformation but have the potential to disrupt teacher identity construction. Therefore, continual efforts to resolve tensions in teaching are inevitable. The process of resolution or reconciliation might be extended, and teachers could need support in that process to minimize the possible negative impacts on their identities. This process can simultaneously generate positive outcomes for teachers’ growth and learning. Therefore, how teachers perceive, respond to, and grapple with tensions are critical experiences that offer windows into the complexities of teacher identity negotiation. The volume paints a picture of the personal, professional, and political dimensions of teacher identity tensions in various international contexts. The chapters draw on empirical studies with clear pedagogical implications to illustrate what identity tensions language teachers face in and outside the classroom during their career trajectory, how language teachers cope with identity tensions in their professional life, and how teacher educators can integrate identity tensions into teacher learning activities. This book is beneficial for students and lecturers in applied linguistics, educational linguistics, and educational psychology. It will also be helpful of interest to teacher educators, teacher education researchers, teacher supervisors, and MA and doctoral students interested in research on language teacher identity.