and feminist critiques of Freire (Ellsworth, 1992; Gore, 1993; hooks, 1994), ...... per presented at the Louise McBee Lecture on Higher Education Series at the.
Journal ofhttp://jlr.sagepub.com/ Literacy Research
In Rehearsal: Complicating Authority in Undergraduate Critical-Inquiry Classrooms Bob Fecho, Michelle Commeyras, Eurydice, Bouchereau Bauer and George Font Journal of Literacy Research 2000 32: 471 DOI: 10.1080/10862960009548093 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/32/4/471
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IN REHEARSAL: COMPLICATING AUTHORITY IN UNDERGRADUATE CRITICALINQUIRY CLASSROOMS Bob Fecho UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Michelle Commeyras UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Eurydice Bouchereau Bauer UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
George Font UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
If we in teacher education want emerging teachers to inquire into the complexities of authority and to reimagine how it might operate in schools, then we need firsthand experience troubling it in our own classrooms. To this end, we - three reading education professors -problematized our classroom authority as we sought to enact critical inquiries with preservice teachers. In this qualitative study, our contention is that preservice teachers, in addition to eventually having to manage curriculum, must also face the reality of having to function as authority figures while still maintaining a classroom conducive to meaning making. However, in order to interrupt their traditional images of teacher as authority figure, they need to experience contrasting images. This article provides three lenses through which to explore how authority can be reimagined in critical-inquiry reading education courses.
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coupling authority and critical inquiry may seem oxymoronic. By critical inquiry, we mean the kind of teaching that springs from transactions with Bakhtin's (1981) sociolinguistic dialogic theories, Dewey's (1938) theories of experience and education, Rosenblatt's (1938) transactional literary theories, Freire's (1970) theories of critical dialogue, and feminist critiques of Freire (Ellsworth, 1992; Gore, 1993; hooks, 1994), which encourage multiple and contradictory perspectives in the same classroom. Such pedagogy enables teachers to take an inquiry stance on their classrooms so that students and teachers become an interpretive community that inquires into and reflects upon both course content and pedagogy. Such classrooms routinely urge all participants to interrogate the world around them as well as to hold up their own beliefs for interrogation. Using such counter-hegemonic theory as a basis for learning together, teachers and students enter into a process of social construction of knowledge that encourages critique, diversity, rigor, and meaning making, especially in terms of considering individuals in their relationships to mainstream authority. To some, this could be seen as an antiauthority stance or as a stance that denies the need for authority. However, the relationship between critical inquiry and authority is not as simple and certainly not as dichotomous as either of those perceptions would make it out to be. Instead, as Foucault (1980) suggested, power is not a possession to be had by some and used against others, but instead can be seen as a productive force that "circulates through institutional practices and the discourses of daily life" (Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998, p. 18). AT FIRST GLANCE,
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It is our contention that critical-inquiry classrooms make problematic much that is either assumed or ignored about authority in traditional classrooms. Therefore, how authority exists and is played out within criticalinquiry classrooms is our concern here. Teachers in such classrooms need to reimagine authority by putting it under constant interrogation, something easier said than done. Preservice teachers, in addition to having eventually to manage curriculum, must also face the reality of having to function as authority figures while still maintaining a classroom conducive to meaning making. However, in order to interrupt their traditional images of teacher as authority figure, they need to experience contrasting images. Reading and talking about such paradigm shifts is not enough. Quite simply, we cannot expect teacher candidates to enact the complexities of critical inquiry if they have not experienced it in their teacher education courses. The same applies to the methods educators of these emerging literacy teachers. They, too, need a better understanding of not only how to reimagine authority, but what such reimagining means in terms of pedagogy and teachers' relationships to students, colleagues, and the institution. If we in teacher education want emerging teachers to inquire into the
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complexities of authority and to reimagine how it might operate in schools, then we need first-hand experience troubling it in our own classrooms. To better this understanding of the ways authority transacts in criticalinquiry classrooms, we - three reading education professors - problematized our classroom authority as we sought to enact critical inquiries with preservice teachers. By doing so, we came both to embrace and be mindful of the power and complications of authority and how those considerations resonate within inquiry-based literacy classrooms. Consequently, by reconsidering and reimagining authority in our own practices, we helped our students reimagine it for themselves. Through mutual experience that challenged existing notions of authority in our classrooms, we created spaces that allowed all participants to imagine authority in new ways, hopefully ones that move toward more symmetrical relations of power.
Theoretical Frameworks Within traditional literacy classrooms, authority resides as a silent unexamined assumption. We see evidence of expert/novice relationships in the teacher-dominated discourse (Mehan, 1979) and in the widely established hierarchical factory model of organization of most schools (Teitelbaum, 1995). In addition, the full weight of the authority of the dominant culture is frequently brought to bear on the student. Educators with sociocultural concerns (Brodkey, 1989; Delpit, 1995) argue that literacy classrooms in particular seem more bent on reifying what Gee (1989,1996) calls capital-D Discourse - the customs and values, as well as language - of the dominant culture than entering into dialogue around language issues. The upshot is that traditional classrooms - because they specify lines of authority, reify asymmetrical power relations, and sanctify inflexibility - rarely deem it necessary to address these issues of authority. To this end, they typify what Quantz, Rogers, and Dantley (1991) have characterized as authoritarianism or a legitimization of power that tends to establish and maintain asymmetrical relationships. Critical-inquiry classrooms, however, interrupt both these assumed notions of authority and the organizational hierarchy that supports them. In the words of Quantz et al. (1991), "Authoritarianism creates alienation; authority creates community" (p. 102). However, the process of moving toward this kind of community makes for many volatile moments - emotionally, intellectually, culturally - in the rehearsal halls we call classrooms. If we push this rehearsal-hall metaphor, we begin seeing the classroom not as a static place where knowledge is arrived at, but instead the classroom as a place of becoming, where knowledge and pedagogy are under construction. So, too, our knowledge about authority and how it relates to
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that literacy classroom is in a transactive process of being made known to all participants. As Freire (1970) suggested, critical-inquiry classrooms must be places where the teacher dialogues with the learner and moves beyond sloganizing and seeing learners as repositories to be filled with ever increasing bits of discrete knowledge. This shifting of roles and purposes blurs and challenges lines of authority, creating new relationships in the classroom dynamic. It is not that notions of authority are either completely assumed or completely dismissed in critical-inquiry classrooms quite the contrary. Such notions are negotiated and complicated. Reimagining authority, therefore, takes place in this perpetual state of rehearsal. It is not unlike an interpretive dance where one learns to be more and more graceful all the while uncovering more of the infinite nuances still to be grasped. Regarding their reimagining of authority, students and teachers should be in acknowledgement of the leaps and slips, steps and missteps, strides and falters as they seek to make meaning of the text of the world beyond this classroom and the text of the world that is this classroom. It is in this movement, as hooks (1994) suggested, boundaries are transgressed and such transgression of traditional borders allows much to occur that can be exciting and empowering (see Christensen, 1990; Fecho, 1998,2000; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1998; Shor, 1992) as well as threatening and anxiety inducing (see Bauer, 1999; Ellsworth, 1992; Fecho, 1999; Gore, 1993; hooks, 1994). We argue that issues of authority account, at least in part, for the struggles and anxiety prevalent in all classrooms. However, for the teacher trying to imagine a more democratic classroom, the strategy is not to deny authority. As Quantz et al. (1991) noted, authority is a constant and does not disappear merely by one's wishing it away or attempting to ignore it. Authority is not embedded in the individual or the organizational position, but is located in social relationships. Authority is not something which an individual can dismiss, ignore, or shun for it is characteristic of particular relationships and will exist whether consciously used to dominate others or not. The point is that those who work to construct democratic institutions use power to work towards symmetrical relations, (p. 103) Nor is the strategy either to abdicate totally or assume totally all authority. As Shor (1996) has indicated: In short, I cannot act as if I have no authority, am not an authority, and cannot use authority fairly and democratically; and I cannot act as if [the students] are ready to assume authority.... So I must acknowledge and establish my various kinds of authority while distributing some power by inviting students to negotiate the curriculum. The power that uses power to share and transform power is the power I am seeking, (p. 20)
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Instead, the strategy seems to be to acknowledge and reconsider authority. In essence and somewhat ironically, no move can be made to share authority without acknowledging one's own authority to make such a move. In our three self-studies, we did just that - reconsidered our own authority with the intention of understanding better what such reconsideration means for preservice literacy education. If authority is pervasive and transactive (Foucault, 1980; Quantz et al., 1991), what is there to be learned from and about those pervasive transactions? More specifically, we sought to understand what occurred when we forwarded issues of authority in our preservice literacy classes. What did it mean for us as professors, for our students as future teachers, and for the field in general? In doing so, we sought to exploit what Anderson and Herr (1999) have argued as being a singular strength of teacher research: the opportunity to raise and examine the public transcripts, or what Gee (1989,1996) might call the Discourse, of educational institutions through access to and analysis of hidden transcripts. By looking at our own hidden transcripts - the way we as teachers transact authority with our students - we intended both to model a way of knowing about authority within and without classrooms and to provide insight into that process and what that process reveals.
Method Researchers
We - Eurydice, Bob, and Michelle - teach undergraduate courses for a department of reading education and want to support each other's undergraduate teaching in an academic setting that rewards grant seeking and published research. In recognizing the importance of academic inquiry, we chose to respond to Shubnan's (1998) call for those in the academy to document their pedagogy as well as they document their research. Our regular E-mail, lunch, and office conversations about our pedagogy have occurred primarily because we value each other and the frank conversations we have based on our diverse histories. Eurydice emigrated from Haiti at the age of 10 to live in the United States, where she was taught in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that she was a "minority." Bob was born into a White, working-class Pennsylvania community where he developed a consciousness for the marginalized that helps explain his 20 years of high school teaching in urban schools. Michelle emigrated from France at the age of 3 to live in Massachusetts, where she learned the ideology of White Northeast liberalism that has made possible her personal challenges to societal and institutional norms. During the writing process, the three of us invited George, a doctoral student, to join the collaboration because of the
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outsider perspective he could offer in writing about the strengths, limitations, and implications of our three examinations of authority in the critical-inquiry classrooms. George brings his own dimension of diversity in that he is fluent in Spanish with family ties to Cuba. He is concerned about the educational opportunities and experiences of students for whom English is a second language, and soon he too will be a teacher educator pursuing liberatory and emancipatory pedagogies. Context The University of Georgia is a state institution that largely serves a White, middle-class student body, despite demographics that indicate African Americans comprise 30% of the population and a growing Hispanic population that is projected to exceed the number of African Americans in the state by 2010 (Stroer, 1999). In recent years, the university has made goodfaith efforts to diversify the faculty and students; however, the institution remains predominantly European American. At the time of the study, Eurydice taught the first reading methods course in a two-course series designed for preservice elementary teachers. She had 31 European American students from the suburbs of Atlanta and rural counties in Georgia. Michelle taught the second reading methods course in the two-course series for elementary students. She had 22 students with similar demographics as that of Eurydice's class. Bob taught a middle school reading methods course to 21 European American students. His students were a mix of Middle School Education and Communication Science and Disorder majors. The students in the three courses were all toward the end of their degree program. On the completion of the reading methods requirements, most of the students would begin their student teaching experience. From Data Collection to Data Analysis Describing methods of data collection and analysis for this paper presents a bit of a challenge in that three self-studies of teaching are involved. Here we will provide what is generally true across the self-studies with additional details showing up in the individually authored examinations of authority in our critical-inquiry literacy classrooms. In December 1998, Eurydice, Bob, and Michelle met to discuss the undergraduate reading education courses we would teach spring semester. We shared drafts of course syllabi, gave each other advice, and clarified objectives in pursuing critical inquiry. Important questions emerged. How could we lead students to inquire in new ways on issues of injustice, prejudice, and inequality? How would that affect children's educational experi-
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ence? How could we entice students to inquire into alternative ways of viewing knowledge acquisition in the teacher/student relationship? We shared the belief that the teacher candidates we teach would benefit from experiencing as students the concept of critical-inquiry pedagogy. We further thought it important for them to observe their teachers as inquirers inquiring into their own practice. All this seemed potentially significant to their future work as teachers. Given the exploratory and generative character of our self-studies, we agreed that normal observation, teacher/student sessions, conferences and interviews, responses to assigned readings, and written coursework would become our data set and subject to analysis. In each course syllabi, we included a statement about the teacher research we were undertaking. Students had the option of removing their coursework from data analysis at anytime during the semester. No student chose to do this. The data collection link that enabled our three self-studies to be an ongoing collaborative endeavor was the reflective notes we committed to writing following each class session. At least once and often twice a week throughout the semester, we E-mailed to each other our reflective notes. They varied in length from one to five single-spaced pages. In these messages, we recorded our thinking about events that had occurred in our class (e.g., teacher/student interactions, responses to our attempts to critically read the classroom, ways students were approaching their understanding of literacy) that seemed important to document. Data analysis began with these notes in that they were written with reflection as the goal. We never intended these E-mail communications to be like traditional descriptive field notes; rather, we wrote to learn something about incidents that struck us as perplexing, troubling, frustrating, or exciting given our focus on critical inquiry. These regularly shared E-mails provided a common reference point for the conversations over lunch or during the day, as our offices are along the same hallway. The questions we asked of each other and of ourselves became the lenses for analyzing our data. We challenged each other to consider alternative interpretations for events. We speculated. We hypothesized. We imagined. We sought to understand more about what was happening in our teaching and learning with our students. At the end of the semester, Eurydice, Bob, and Michelle met again for an entire day of group data analysis. In preparation, we had each reread our own and each other's E-mailed reflective notes (approximately 150 pages in all). As we read the three sets of reflective notes, we made analytic notes to share at the meeting. During the meeting, each person's self-study was considered in turn. As we did this, we invariably found issues and questions that were important across the self-studies (e.g.,Is feeling silenced always a negative educational experience? How can we teach precise language
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usage? What is the significance of gathering and using oral assessments? What is the role of humor in the classroom? How is authority established in the classroom? How did we examine the concept of reading?). As we reflected on our initial goals for the semester and the issues that we raised in our E-mail communications, we settled on a question Bob had raised, "What does authority look like in a critical-inquiry classroom?" agreeing that each one of us would analyze all our data sources to write about authority issues. Writing is a way of knowing. It is a method of discovery and analysis (Richardson, 1994). In keeping with narrative inquiry, we wrote stories from our data on authority in our classrooms. Connelly and Clandinin (1990) explained, "It is important that the researcher listen first to the practitioner's story, and that it is the practitioner who first tells his or her story" (p. 4). In our situation, there was a complexity in that we were both practitioner and researcher. As researchers, we were familiar with writing as an analytic process. We valued how it forces issues of specificity, coherence, and some form of internal logic and knew that in examining our data with an eye toward authority issues and writing in a storied way, we would come to think in ways not available otherwise. We wrote stories from our data sources to find out about the inevitability of authority, our uses of authority, and the problematics of authority, as well as to allow our stories to gain their own textual authority (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Later, our practitioner/researcher stories would be considered through the researcher lens of the others. In September, Eurydice, Bob, and Michelle met and shared our stories on authority. Together, we considered the written representations and analyses of authority, reimagining once more our notions of authority in a critical-inquiry classroom. George later agreed to critique our analyses and to contribute to the concluding section, adding his perspective to ours on what, collectively, the three examinations of authority had to offer teacher educators. For the next 4 weeks, we engaged in a cycle of individual revision and group consultations. We revised individually to understand ourselves reflexively, and we consulted and collaborated to understand ourselves collectively, always revisiting and reimagining the issue of authority in classrooms. Our individualized uses of writing freed us from trying to write a single text from one voice representing a "we" perspective. And yet, through our consultations, the four of us have been informed by each other. Writing as a way of knowing and method of discovery became, as Richardson (1994) promised, "a dynamic, creative process" (p. 517). We each have written in different ways to learn about authority and to represent what we have learned. Eurydice used the literary device of metaphor.
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Richardson noted that metaphors organize and affect the interpretation of facts, and those facts make sense in terms of their place within a metaphoric structure. Bob employed evocative writing through the narrative of the self. Richardson viewed this writing as "highly personalized, revealing text in which an author tells stories about his or her own lived experience" (p. 521). Michelle used poetic representation, another form of evocative writing. Richardson wrote that poetry more than prose works to remind us that all text has been constructed. It also "helps problematize reliability, validity, and truth" (p. 522). Richardson credited poststructuralist perspectives on language as the theoretical basis for writing as a method of inquiry. Poststructuralism links "language, subjectivity, social organization, and power. Language does not reflect social reality, but produces meaning, creates social reality" (p. 518). In our text, the intention is not triangulation. Instead,"the central image is the crystal, which combines symmetry and substance with an infinite variety of shapes, substances, transmutations, multi-dimensionalities, and angles of approach" (p. 522).
Eurydice's Classroom As I read and reread student journals and my notes on our classroom discussions, I reflected on my attempts to maintain a sense of balance around issues of authority in the classroom. The students and I were constantly in flux, trying to find our center. I began to see this constant motion as a dance, because, as students created and expressed their understanding of a topic, I attempted to respond with flexibility and adapt to each student's learning need by following their lead and establishing new direction. In my ideal classroom, this apparent paradox of following and leading would be dissolved in the fluid communication and synchronous relationship between my students and me. As in a dance, we would anticipate each other's moves and use our understanding of each other's intentions to move our learning forward. The concept of ownership of learning is central to my inquiry classroom as are leadership, self-expression, fluidity, and synchrony. These central elements of an inquiry classroom are also components of a dance. For example, in a dance, there is a very clear authority structure, but the structure does not hinder self-expression. In a dance, there is acceptance of leadership; however, leadership does not imply a lack of ability on the part of the person following. In particular, graceful leadership in a dance is revealed in subtle ways that provides the context necessary for both dancers to make the dance their own. The ownership of the dance represents an understanding of what the dance is really about. In the same way, critical
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understanding of literacy is manifested when students understand the complexity associated with literacy and the components necessary to make it their own. JLR Fecho et al.
Dance Stories In general, what the students and I engaged in could be best captured as a dance of inquiry that allowed each of us the opportunity to display our footwork, in this case, our interpretation and understanding of the course content. However, this dance of inquiry is unique for every student, is always improvised, and is never confined to set routines. The moves created represent the story of our learning, a form of storytelling much like the tango. And like that dance, most of what an inquiry classroom does is make the familiar less familiar, thereby establishing a new vantage from which to examine and learn. Dancing the tango. I had begun writing about authority as dance when Bob told me about the movie, The Tango Lesson (Potter, 1997). When I watched it, I focused on the negotiation between the partners, the stories they told in their tango, and how this dance style paralleled the dynamics of my classroom. The tango, as a story, replicates the relationship of power between dancers. These issues of power are not hidden; they are central to the dance. The intricate footwork in a tango requires that the dancers read each other well or they risk interrupting the flow of their synchronous movements. One goal of dancing a tango is to move with great fluidity, to not focus on "dancing," but to communicate a story through their movements. But, what is that story? In The Tango Lesson, Potter (1997), the director and lead actress, used 12 tango lessons to represent how two dancers learned to lead and follow each other through complicated twists in their relationship. In particular, Potter makes clear that synchronous communication in their dance occurred when both dancers acknowledged the need for leadership and self-expression. The need for synchronous communication is not limited to just dancers. Educators evolve tango-like communication in their classrooms. Classroom tangos, like other tangos, are replete with issues of power. In this section, I examine the way I danced inquiry with three students - Katy, Jessica, and Jerry. The power issues revolve around who should lead, when to follow, and how synchrony is created. All three students were selected because they provide different entry points into my classroom and different lenses from which to examine authority and literacy learning. Starting the dance: The teacher takes the lead. The dances began with me as the authority figure in the classroom. This was an intentional move
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that reflects my previous teaching experiences at my current institution. Like other women of color, I have found undergraduate students approach their interactions with me in a manner that subtly and overtly suggests that I prove I deserve to be their instructor (see Bauer, 1999). I therefore use my credentials to establish a clear boundary line of authority. I began my reading methods course by announcing, "I am Dr. Bauer, and I will be your instructor for the course." This statement creates a paradox. On the one hand, I want students not to depend on parameters drawn by me and to openly inquire into their learning. On the other hand, my race and ethnicity create for me the need to set and enforce boundaries. This tension between my teaching philosophy and praxis is one with which I continually struggle. Leading through my responses. Once I established my authority, I shifted attention to our inquiry. My attempts to provide encouragement for critical reflection were evident at the beginning of the semester. Much of my efforts centered around students'journal entries. As I examined my comments in the students' first journal reflections, it became apparent I had clear intentions for the direction of the course and in subtle ways established my authority. Across these journal entries, I expected students to question their understanding of what it is to be literate. For example, in response to Katy"s description of her rich literacy home environment, I wrote: Given your rich literacy home, I find it interesting how you describe your early reading development... [reference to the impact of her mother's actions]. Why do you think the things she did which focused on sounds explain your early progress in reading? Did she also read aloud to you? What role might other literacy actions have played in your learning?... What issues do these questions raise for you?
This questioning established an inquiry-oriented discourse for the class. Namely, we would have a classroom where questioning what we understand was central. The questions posed and the directions suggested came from what students struggled to understand. In responding to Jerry, I acknowledged his interest in critiquing the authors he read, while I also encouraged him to examine the issues more deeply. For example, in response to his criticism that the authors that he read were wrong and lacked support for their positions, I wrote, "On what basis do you feel their findings were unsupported? I would welcome and support your investigation into this topic. Perhaps this can be your independent project?" Each of the above situations reveals a push to get students beyond their comfort zones by questioning themselves. It shows my position as the
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authority figure. I take the stance of the more knowledgeable other who knows what other dimensions my students need to consider. My questions were an expectation to explore issues and to get them to set their own direction for further investigation. Through my analysis of the data, I came to realize and dislike that my leadership role at the beginning of the semester reflected what Ellsworth (1992) called "emancipatory authority." That is, I provided students opportunities to explore their own thinking, but I was in charge of the path they needed to take. I therefore made their voices subordinate to mine. Practicing the Dance: When the Teacher Follows I have been following you in the tango. But to [reach our goal], you must follow me. {Potter, 1997)
As students began to find their own meaning of what literacy learning is about, they periodically redirected the dance to give voice to their ideas. The dance then was no longer about the learning I imagined, but what they found meaningful. I needed to follow to better assist their learning. Katy and Jessica, on some occasions, directed the flow of the interaction. They asserted their authority as they caused me to take notice of their quest for understanding. As Katy wrote in February, Although your evaluation of my entries did not change a great deal (you thought they were pretty good)... I feel I have discovered my true strengths and weaknesses in my journal.
My comments were simply a piece of the puzzle that needed to be considered. In many ways, her comments revealed the true limitation of my authority. In the final analysis, she is the one who can convincingly argue what she knows and what she continues to grapple with. In this respect, she was the knowledgeable other and I followed her cues, providing her with the direction she wanted in order to address her self-identified weaknesses. Jessica's way of making sense of our classroom and her own learning reflected where she entered the inquiry dialogue. Unlike Katy who found inquiry-based learning to her liking from the onset, Jessica taught herself how to reflect on her thinking. An indication of this emerged most evidently 6 weeks into the semester as she analyzed her writing and my comments in her journal. For example, as she reread her writing on grouping of students for reading instruction, she reflected on a comment that I posed in the margin of her entry. I asked, "What type of criteria would you use to assign students to groups?" To this she replied, "Good question. I should
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have incorporated this aspect into my entry." Other times, her notes seemed to be to herself. For example, in one entry she underlined and responded to her own writing. She had originally written,"This book brought my attention to past things understood." On reconsideration, she wrote in the margin,"Not saying anything - didn't reference my actual beliefs."These types of comments to herself and to me marked a turning point for her. She began to move away from my comments per se toward a closer examination of what she wanted to say, the extent to which it pushed her to think more critically, and how it linked to her overall goal. The classroom structure and the interaction she and I were having on paper provided the scaffold for her self-expression, but most importantly she discovered for herself the necessary steps toward her learning and in essence maintained our dance of inquiry. My role was to read the situation, follow her, and provide her with the support she needed. Over time, I followed more of her moves. Creating Synchrony The most important element of dancing is to dance to the music not just the steps that you learned. The partners must read each other and anticipate each other's moves. The best dancers display their communication as a seamless exchange between the partners and the music. In the process, each partner presents his or her interpretation of the dance. The role of each partner is to respond to each other's moves in a fashion that continues the bodily communication. In the same way, my students and I took turns interpreting the tempo of the class. With each interpretation, there would be a display of that understanding and the partner had to respond in a creative but predictable way for the dance to continue. Katy and I took part in fluid communication that represented our goal for understanding the complexities associated with literacy instruction. As the semester progressed, our ability to read each other well and to follow and respond to each other became evident. Katy's willingness to openly dialogue with me in her journal and in the classroom, and my willingness to accept her periodic redirections, led to a mutual trust, which gave us the freedom to critically explore literacy issues. In the following example, Katy and I discussed her experience with the Accelerated Reader test. When I was working with my struggling reader, we would often read, discuss, and then take an Accelerated Reader test. I knew the child understood the meaning of the story through our discussion and his drawings, but he would miss the test questions. Some kids just can't reiterate the information word for word; they need another means to express their understanding. My response reflected my own questions regarding what the results of these
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tests provide teachers: "I find your observations quite interesting. Your example calls into question how well the test accomplished its goal, namely to check comprehension. I, too, question this definition of comprehension." My position on the issue is certainly present in my response, but the focus is not to convince her. We are simply two people interested in literacy. Much of our comfort in sharing with each other is the result of us learning to lead each other and follow each other. Although Katy and I established synchrony, this was not true with all of my students. I do not want to dance: Asynchronous dance. In The Tango Lesson, the two protagonists clash over the issue of leadership. Pablo wants Sally to follow and to assume her traditional role in the dance. When challenged he says, "You should follow, follow, otherwise you block my freedom to move ... I can't do nothing." To which Sally responds, "No, I have done nothing but follow - badly. Because it doesn't suit me to follow. It suits me to lead and you cannot deal with that" (Potter, 1997). With some of my students, our tango of inquiry reached a similar impasse. Jerry resisted synchronous dance the most. His actions seem to say, "I am not suited to this role nor do I want to learn" in this way (Potter, 1997). His rejection was not limited to my verbal suggestions, but to all that encompassed the classroom. These tensions were clear in Jerry's negative response to what I was asking students to consider. For example, in a journal entry on why he did not appreciate the readings on diversity, he said: I will be faced with a multitude of diversity issues in the classroom.... At the present time I need to learn the skills that will be necessary to actually teach the children in the classroom because no matter how cognizant I am of diversity it will mean nothing if I can not teach the subject matter the children need to know. He took a strong critical line on the topic of diversity, yet did not want to investigate his position. He established his desire to start the dance, but did not always provide me with the scaffold necessary to move the dance forward. My response was to initiate critical self-reflection through dialogue. For example, I asked, "Is there more to learning and teaching than subject matter? Piaget said,'Every time we teach a child something we keep him/her from inventing it.'What are your thoughts?" My attempts to redirect Jerry's inquiry into his own understanding were not successful. Most of the semester, we engaged in discussions that were neither productive nor conducive to an inquiry-based classroom. After my efforts to engage him in inquiry failed, our interactions were reduced to power struggles. For example, in an attempt to help me conform to his point of view, Jerry wrote:
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I hope in the future you can read my journal with an open mind. For the most part, my journals have been excellent. In each I made detailed references to the readings and gave my opinions related to those references. I have done all of the readings and taken from it what I can... You have failed torecognizethequalityofmywork,andlfeelsorryforyoubecauseofthat.
. . . In Rehearsal
I was certain this type of discourse would not move us forward to developing the sensitivity needed to learn to read each other well. I reverted to a more didactic style of leadership in an attempt to establish boundaries. My frustration with this situation was evident in an E-mail I sent to Bob and Michelle. I have decided not to accept anymore papers or entries that are focused on trying to highlight my shortcomings indirectly or directly. The fact that [he] disagrees with me is not the issue. There is a way to express [one's dissatisfaction] in a professional manner. The struggle for power reduced our opportunities to learn how to achieve synchrony. We did not know how to read each other well, develop the art of subtle communication, or use what information we received to improve subsequent interactions. These elements are crucial to an inquiry-based classroom and are central to establishing synchrony in a dance. My asynchronous dance with Jerry was very different from my dances with Katy and Jessica. He and I never went beyond the steps of the dance. In his last journal entry, Jerry analyzed his resistance to the course and his understanding of literacy. Regarding resistance, he commented that he could not "help but feel a little sheepish." He found that he spent his time mostly nit-picking instead of "spending the time expanding on the larger interrelated issues." He also realized that he vacillated too far to the other side when he commented, "I stopped nit-picking extraneous details in the articles, but I pulled out so far to look at the big picture that I wasn't looking at any of the details in the readings." In his own description of the course, it is clear that the balance associated with "dancing" was clearly missing. Regrettably, what was central in our tango was not a common quest for understanding literacy instruction, but a struggle for control. Lessons for the Teacher
As I reflect on my teaching during this semester, there are four points that will guide my subsequent work with students. The first is that teachers cannot liberate students' thinking, but can only aide the process. Second, to liberate their thinking, the students have to challenge the teacher's authority
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as the vessel of knowledge. Third, students have to be open not only to discuss and critique the course topics, but also their own perceptions and preconceptions. That means that students have to be willing to have authority over their personal beliefs challenged. Fourth, the student/teacher relationship is most productive when the teacher and student take turns in leading in a synchronous fashion. In this way, authority does not become a stumbling block. Although ownership, leadership, fluidity, and synchrony are all important aspects of learning, it is the synchronous dialogue between teacher and students that moves our learning forward.
Bob's Classroom Issues of authority have been at the core of my praxis from the start. My work as a secondary teacher has aided me in seeing authority as something developed through transaction, as being individual in conception, and as being dynamic in process. Making the shift from high school to university teaching, I have grappled with issues of authority as they relate to my new classroom. Of note, my student population has changed from being almost completely low-income African and Caribbean Americans, with females slightly outnumbering males, to being almost exclusively White females, most of whom come from middle and higher income families. In addition, the concept of professor as authority is more deeply embedded in the culture of the university and its students than the concept of teacher as authority was ever embedded in the cultures of my former high school and its students. Having successfully used critical-inquiry practice at the secondary level, I was determined to bring that pedagogy into my university classroom. However, I harbored doubts about how it would be greeted by students who were very successful at fact-based learning, were only in this course for 15 weeks, and were somewhat accepting of syllabi-dominated, lecturebased classes. In addition, I was concerned that many of my students mainly viewed a professor as an information giver and evaluator rather than a supporter of individual and group inquiries. Finally, I was also concerned how my students would react to social contextual issues of literacy, particularly issues of race and gender. Trying to meet the general perception of undergraduate expectations of what constitutes a course and my own commitment to enact critical inquiry, I constructed what I called a class frame rather than a syllabus. Its purpose was to provide enough structure that students could gain a fairly accurate sense of workload and order, but to remain open enough so that parts of the curriculum could be negotiated as we moved into the course. Accordingly, I set up activities for meaning making like reading logs, individual inquiries and a portfolio that were intended to frame our work, but 486
to provide room for the personal interests and input of each student. In essence, I hoped this frame would seem familiar enough so that I could be seen as having a base of authority, yet unfamiliar enough to authorize another way of conceiving learning in an undergraduate classroom. As Shor (1996) suggested, I had acknowledged my authority by taking it on myself to view the class as a mutual inquiry into issues of middle school literacy and to negotiate curriculum. To this end, student questions about literacy affected what we read, in what order, and to what depth, and individual inquiries conducted by students filled personal learning gaps. I also saw it as part of my authority to take responsibility for framing the activities of each session and to do it in such a way as to invite greater student participation and ownership of the issues. Additionally, I authorized myself to nudge class participants to call their own beliefs and those of others into question. The bottom line is I assumed the authority to foster an inquiry stance in my classroom and used this stance to delve into what happened when we discussed issues of race. Specifically here, I focus on a pivotal event that occurred and what that meant for the way conceptions of authority became complicated as a result. As we have noted, a critical-inquiry classroom is one under a kind of improvisational rehearsal, as both students and teachers try on roles and means of working in various and ever-changing situations. One aspect of this dynamic concerns the ever-fluctuating nature of discussion. Students are urged to deepen and qualify their thinking, and ideas are challenged as part of a quest for making meaning more complex; as this occurs at the same time that a sense of community is being fostered, things get said. Authoritarianism This complexity was all brought back to me in vivid reminder as my students and I entered into discussions centered around issues of race as they relate to literacy. The class had read pieces by Delpit (1988) and Skelton (1998) that challenged some of their assumptions. As we began to talk in class, I sensed a certain undercurrent that seemed resentful. Still, the talk remained civil, if somewhat distanced and academic. At one point, a student said that she understood the issues of minorities, but could not see the need for looking specifically at the literature of each group. It was enough for her to integrate these readings across the English curriculum. In order to push our thinking, I asked, "Why are Whites so willing to accept this integration argument?" After the usual pause as students considered their options, one student offered her response, "Maybe because WE don't have CHIPS on our shoulders." It had been a long time since I had heard firsthand in an academic setting 487
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a comment so tinged with acrimony toward African Americans. Nor could I detect in the speaker any trace of the irony I was finding so glaring. A glance at the graduate student who was taking notes on the class at my request indicated she had interpreted the remark in much the same way as I had. This had become a moment on which hinged future dynamics of the class.
My first response was to wait to see how other students would react, hoping that one or some of them would call the remark into question. But no one did. On top of that, far too many nodding heads of students indicated a general acceptance of what had been said. If the comment were to be challenged, I would have to do it. Having enacted many such inquiries into many difficult subjects across many settings for the last decade, I feel that I have become capable of responding to fluctuations in the direction of discussion and at keeping my challenges as inquiries designed to raise multiple perspectives. I have even grown to understand, difficult as it maybe, how comments I find distressing or even repugnant need to be acknowledged and entertained during the course of classroom inquiry (see Fecho, 1999). I have a right and responsibility as teacher to show my values and even declare some stances counter to my belief system, but have an equal responsibility not to impose myvalues (Dewey,i938;Rosenblatt,i938) no matter how right I think them to be. Therefore, the rational part of me argued for a response such as, "I'm struggling with understanding your comment. Tell me what you mean when you say,'We don't have a chip on our shoulder."' But the comment had brought an image of my high school classroom before my eyes. Students I loved and respected were being painted with broad strokes. Stereotypes of an irrationally angry African American community were being resurrected and I remember thinking how unfair this was that my high school students could not be there to present their views. Not that many of them did not harbor anger and resentment, but that life in urban White America gave them good reason to do so. There was nothing irrational about their anger. Threats to their social, moral, intellectual, psychological, and physical well-being via White animosity were too present in their lives. I have no record of my exact words. But I did not ask a question. What I did was argue. Instead of getting students to self-interrogate their assumptions, I summoned all my institutionally conferred authority and, although not in so many words, essentially said,"How can you say and believe that?" And the more I pressed my argument, the more clear it became that the dynamic in the room changed from one of multiple views being left open to scrutiny to one in which it was I arguing against them. One vocal student spoke of multiculturalism being "rammed down their throats" and
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feeling as if they were "choking" on it. Another said that her experience of working with Black adolescents on a summer job had convinced her that African American parents instill a disrespect for education in their children. Whatever range of opinion had fluctuated in that room at the start of class had disappeared the moment I used my authority to impose belief
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Rather than creating a dynamic of dialogue, we had fallen back to a dynamic of debate. The class was no longer about deeper scrutiny into all ideas, but was now about taking sides, ganging up, self-silencing, and airing uninterrogated opinion. The first step toward resurrecting our ethos of dialogue was my realization that I had painted all of us into our respective corners. Although all participants in a critical inquiry have a responsibility to see that questions get raised and views get challenged, the teacher needs to take the lead and, especially early in a semester, set a tone of inquiry. If we were to ever come out of our corners again, I had to initiate the steps toward that end. Authority I resolved to reestablish dialogue among us by rebuilding community and reinviting multiple perspectives. Specifically in terms of discussion around issues of race and literacy, I felt the best way to bring that dialogue back into the classroom was to use our reading logs as a way to nudge students individually into questioning. If I could rekindle dialogue around race in these weekly discussions of reading, then hopefully I could reintroduce it into our small and large group discussions. Sensing the need for further dialogue, I again exercised my authority and told students that I wanted part of the next log to be a response to what I had written in reply to them. Because I knew I would be raising issues related to race and literacy, I felt it important that the students mull my questions and that I get some indications of what that would yield. Again, I was directly acknowledging and exercising my authority; however, my intention was to reestablish dialogue where no dialogue existed. In the case of Alison, this dialogue - across four logs in October - gives a fair representation of the ways these written discussions proceeded. In Log #5, dated October 8, Alison began by referring to the class session I have described and noted: [Skelton] may have a little chip on her shoulder as we discussed in class on Tuesday because she is an African American woman and I think she sees herself as a minority ... Angel and I also discussed that she may only teach African American literature to her students because she feels that her
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students will get everything else from other teachers ... This is truly a disservice to the students because they may not be getting other varieties in their other classes. J LR Fecho et al.
In this excerpt, Alison raises some valid questions about Skelton's work, but cloaks those questions in some generalities that seem unexamined. In responding to Alison, I urged her to consider the ways crimes by and against minorities are reported in the media, the way minorities need to learn the dominant culture even though the dominant culture can ignore knowledge of minority culture, and the phrase "they have a chip on their shoulder." I asked her to think how that phrase "implies that African Americans are angry, but really have no reason to be," and to consider the various ways racism still works in overt and subtle ways to restrict access to mainstream education and other power venues. In Log #6, dated October 18, Alison focused on issues related to critical literacy, but did so in a way that challenged some of her previous assumptions about reading. In response, I noted, "I get a sense that you are on the verge of a real breakthrough in your thinking. You are taking time to interrogate and challenge some suppositions you came with." The theories she was questioning were about literacy practice and not racial attitudes, but I wanted to support any self-reflection that might be occurring. Racial issues resurfaced in Log #7, dated October 22, as Alison responded to a Delpit (1988) piece, one she characterized as being "offensive" and "rude." She went on: I also don't buy her "culture of power" either. I think that classrooms today have a sense of equality. They have not always been this way, but I feel the teaching profession has progressed along with the country on this issue. I don't think any one culture has the power over another... I also don't think that classrooms today are directed toward the White middle class. In this stream of short declarative sentences, Alison is taking a defensive position as she feels attacked by the Delpit article and is looking for ways to refute Delpit's ideas. In response to this log, I began by acknowledging my own experience with this article: I was angry when I first read [Delpit] many years ago. Not as angry as you, but angry. But I think when we get that angry, we should ask ourselves why. Very often, it's because some truth has been told and we really don't want to hear that truth. At least that was my experience. The intent was to first reassure Alison that anger can be an appropriate
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response to what we read, but to then get her to go beyond the anger and to consider why she had reacted so strongly. I went on to suggest that reading Delpit was like stepping into another culture, being in a place that was not supported by her own perspective on the world. I ended by asking, "So if you feel uncomfortable in an Afrocentric culture, how do you think African and Asian and Native Americans feel in Eurocentric classrooms?" Alison began Log #8, dated October 29, admitting that her previous log was a knee-jerk reaction and that "I still don't agree with everything in the article, but I am not angry anymore because I have given it more thought." She went on to write that "I don't know if the truth was told and I didn't want to hear it or if I just didn't agree with everything that she said." Having started this tone of reconsideration, she moved forward by identifying how she was beginning to interrogate her beliefs: When I read the last two paragraphs of your response, that is when it really hit me. I got offended by Delpit's article because I probably belong to her "culture of power," and I didn't even realize it until now. I do feel comfortable in the classrooms that I observe in because they are mainly White classrooms. Thinking back, I can remember visiting my mom in her old classroom where she was one of few White people in the whole school. I don't recall feeling uncomfortable, well maybe just more out of place. I never knew it until now. I guess that African Americans and other cultures probably do feel out of place in the classroom today. This is not about acquiescence. Alison did not give in to insistent arguments. Instead, by being invited to consider her motivations and her own experience, she was able to reflect on her position using new evidence in a manner that supported evolution rather than reification. She still had her differences with Delpit, which is as it should be, but she was now dialoguing with Delpit's issues rather than dismissing them wholesale. The written dialogue I had with Alison is typical of the perspectives many students were sharing and also of my attempts to raise questions that would lead to self-interrogation of diose perspectives. However, Alison's eventual reinvestigation of her own beliefs to such an extent in such a short space of time puts her at one end of the continuum in terms of how willing students were to reshape thought. But, regardless of degree of shift, all students authorized themselves, essentially gave themselves permission, at my invitation, to self-interrogate their reactions. The intent was not to use my authority to create a classroom of students in my image, but instead, as I wrote to Alison, to use authority to create a dynamic where students "thought about the questions I [or others] raised, reread the work and came away with a newperspective.but still had the courage to disagree."
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Michelle's Classroom What Kind of Teacher Am 1? j
With anonymity my students (preparing to be teachers) wrote
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You're knowledgeable and clear but you start class slow and in that monotone. Repeating yourself - repeating yourself. What kind of teacher am I? You're organized and prepared but you need to give more details, directions, and expectations. What kind of teacher am I? You're nice and personable but you need to respect all of us. One student had no voice. Another felt left out. What kind of teacher am I? You're flexible and understanding but you grade too harshly and don't give enough A's. "My GPA will suffer!" What kind of teacher am I? You're helpful and reasonable but you need to make class more exciting, interesting, engaging, and and MORE exciting! I wrote the poem from evaluation comments given to me by a cohort of 22 teacher candidates in an early childhood and elementary education degree. Their criticisms were distressing. Usually I place the course evalua-
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tions in a folder with a sigh of resignation and get on with teaching as best as possible. This time I treated the comments more formally as data and used poetic representation to convey what I learned from analyzing them. Richardson (1994) offered that "poetry may actually better represent the speaker than the practice of quoting snippets in prose" (p. 522). Writing a poem from course evaluations helped me get beyond my initial defensiveness and annoyance to think more about the tensions between what students' appreciated and disliked. I experienced some control over the criticisms that threatened to demoralize me. In writing the poem, I found both support and reason for caution regarding the inquiry-based journey I would take these teacher candidates on as we entered a second course focused on assessment. On the first day of our second semester together, I sat among my students instead of standing before them. I intended to signal that something new - possibly even exciting would happen this semester. I felt nervous anticipation as I feigned casualness chatting with those nearby about their holidays. Eventually I raised my voice and said, "I'd like to tell you about a book I've just finished reading." Trying not to speak in a monotone I continued,"! read Mary Catherine Bateson's (1994) memoir about her parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who were famous anthropologists." I read three passages and talked about the significance of each one. One was Bateson describing her father's teaching: [His] students used to complain to him that they did not know what his courses were about. There were dolphins in them, but they were not about dolphins; there were New Guinea rituals and schizophrenics and alcoholics and Balinese child rearing, woven together with quotations from Blake or Jung or Samuel Butler and the challenge to students to look at a crab or a shell and say how they recognized it as produced by organic growth, to look at a sacrament and say what on earth was going on. (p. 130) I explained that I liked this description of teaching, because it challenged the idea that a course is about content as opposed to developing ways of thinking about life and phenomena. I was foreshadowing that in this course I would be using my authority to promote the thinking of intellectuals reflexive, critical, precise, and creative. I had no illusions that the students would, at first, understand the differences in teaching I was enacting. I knew that their comfort zones were being challenged and I needed a way to monitor the pulse of their experience as I led, nudged, and pushed them into unfamiliar territory. I adopted Bob's reaction sheet idea. I told my students, "I need your reactions, whether they be good, bad, or indifferent, because that will help me know what is going on and how to plan for future classes." The reaction sheets could be
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signed, unsigned, or signed with an alias - whatever was necessary to be candid. The reaction sheets were useful in a way I had not anticipated. I returned summaries and analyses of the reaction sheets in order to extend our communication and allow them to see beyond their individual perspectives. I used students' supportive and enthusiastic responses to speak indirectly to those students who were resisting the new responsibilities for learning I was asking of them. Avoiding, Redirecting, and Reclaiming Authority When I had finished talking about Bateson's memoir, I asked the students to write anonymously about their reactions. I was curious to know about anything they might share while wondering if anyone would relate my talking about Bateson's memoir to reading assessment. None did. I had considered directing them to write about ways in which what had happened could be viewed as assessment information about one reader. But I chose to avoid that directive. It seemed more important to allow them the authority to write whatever they wanted on this first day. Then I redirected authority to the students in response to Lisa when she asked, "Are we supposed to exchange papers with a partner?" This was something I had them do the previous semester on several occasions. But on this day, when my goal was to signal a pedagogical paradigm shift, I responded, "If you would like to share what you wrote or are curious about what someone else wrote - do that. You decide what seems helpful and appropriate." I wanted to see what they would do when I turned the authority for knowing what was educationally useful back to them. They did share and talk among themselves. I sat and listened to the hum and wondered how long they would talk before someone would turn to me with a "what next" look? Minutes passed - and passed some more. I could tell that the talk had moved to other topics. I waited a little longer living with a growing anxiety that they might never stop talking if I did not reclaim my authority as leader. I did speak up and confessed the small experiment in waiting I had been conducting. They laughed and agreed that they would have chatted the class time away. Over done authority. In the first 2 weeks of the course, there was a student's reaction sheet that irked me in particular. When I read the full page of criticisms signed "Honesty?" I bristled. I found myself eager to respond to Honesty in a way that would garner more support for my authoritative expectation that they should assume more responsibility and authority over their own learning. Working with Honesty's reaction sheet in the context of analyzing all the reactions was analogous to what I had experienced in
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creating the empirical data poem from student comments on the prior semester's course evaluation. I matched my wits against Honesty in crafting a five-page analysis of the class's reaction sheets. Using my expertise in analytic thinking, I reclaimed authority as leader and expert. Honesty wrote that "we haven't accomplished anything ...and we need to start making decisions so that we can start learning the material for this class." I responded with, "I can understand that some students might not yet see how the thinking we are doing about the course relates to learning about reading assessment. That should come. But don't you see how the activity we did on recording observations and drawing inferences relates to assessment? I was glad to read in some reaction sheets that several students found value in the assessment activity we did today with One Frog Too Many by Mercer and Marianna Meyer." Honesty acknowledged that she liked "the freedom we have been given," but she thought we were "spending too much time trying to figure it out," and she did not "want to spend a lot of time on 'busy work.'" In response, I quoted Olivia, another student: "It seems like there won't be a definite solution to this syllabus. By looking at the splitbetween people who like it, don't like it, and are unsure of it. I wish we would come to a consensus ... it seems we will always be divided and will never actually start learning! Well I take that back! Thanks for starting our learning process." I added, "I think Olivia might be seeing what I see ... you are learning something. You are being asked to think about what you can do to facilitate your learning. What kind of assignments you can do to engage in that learning? So if Honesty wants freedom I think she'll find herself spending time deciding what is best with regard to what she wants to learn, how she wants to learn it, and how she can demonstrate her learning to me, the person who ultimately assigns a course letter grade." Honesty was indeed honest when she let me know, "I want to see high grades on assignments I spend time on...." I responded with, "It is important for Honesty and other students to know that I do not accept the idea that spending time on an assignment necessarily means the work is going to be worthy of the letter grade A. I want our evaluation processes to always include criteria that considers quality." I closed with, "Thanks Honesty. You will be one of the greatest challenges as a student for me. I don't know who you are. I depend on you to seek me out for assistance in helping you find value in the course. It will take the two of us." After I had given the students this response to their reaction sheets, I sought the opinion of Anne Sullivan, who has more teaching experience
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than I. Her reply led me to see undesirable ways in which I had relied on my authority.
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Honesty is scared to death. You're shaking the foundations of the safe world inwhichshehaslearnedtobesuccessfulbyfollowingdirectionsand"spendm S time"... I hope you'll focus on her terror and not on the anger it produces. She has completely internalized the hierarchical judging structures of school. She knows that you have power over her and she's not sure it's a benevolent power. She really wants to do well. The only way she knows to "do well" is the way that has been consistently rewarded through her school career. This is a whole new world you're asking her to enter ... If you can take her down this road patiently, it may be the most important learning experience of her life. In your responses to Honesty, you seem a little defensive. The tone has a tinge of accusation (couched in gentility, arriving from a superior position). It's subtle, but it's there. Is this coming from your own fear? (Anne Sullivan, i
