Facilitating Preservice Teachers' Recognition of Ideology in Everyday Practice Through Scenarios

• In Event: 41.044 - Developing Practices to Recognize and Address the Political and Ideological Aspects of Educators' Everyday Work

Abstract

Objectives: This paper examines the potential of scenario-based activities to engage pre-service teachers (PSTs) in recognizing the ideological nature of everyday teaching practices and the need for micro-political literacy in transforming them.

Theoretical framework: Teaching is an inherently political process that reproduces and/or challenges existing relationships of power, both in the classroom and in society (Anyon, 1981; Freire, 1970). However, it is difficult for PSTs to recognize dynamics of power in their everyday teaching practices, particularly through social foundations courses that are often critiqued for being overly abstract (Beadie, 1996). For theories taught in social foundations to be meaningful to PSTs, such courses must facilitate opportunities to examine seemingly benign everyday practices as “sites of ideological contestation” (Gramsci, 1971; Hall, 1996). By closely analyzing and simulating scenarios of everyday practice, PSTs can develop important dimensions of micro-political literacy (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002) to transform these practices.

Data/Methods: Data were collected in a 10-week social foundations course. The PSTs worked in groups on scenarios of everyday practice that were meant to surface the multiple assumptions and consequences of various classroom and school practices (e.g., school tardy policies, the inclusion of LGBTQ issues in elementary school curriculum, classroom bullying, school-wide celebration of Thanksgiving, and high school student protests). Each team was required to interactively present the scenario. Collected data included field notes from presentation planning meetings with the instructor and class presentations in addition to reflection responses by the PSTs after each presentation.

Wetherall and Potter’s (1992) approach to discourse analysis was used to identify assumptions, particularly variations and shifts, in how students recognized the ideological dimensions of the scenario situations and the micro-political literacy that might support new teachers in such contexts.

Findings: The PSTs invariably approached each scenario presuming that there was a correct way to address the issue at hand. Through their deliberations, however, they recognized how each proposed change in practice both privileged and marginalized different stakeholders in the scenario – processes that are deeply ideological as they reproduce or challenge existing relationships of power. The use of interactive presentation techniques (e.g., Theater of the Oppressed) provided participants with the opportunity to better understand the perspectives of other stakeholders in the scenario, such as students, parents, experienced teachers, and administrators, and to identify, extend, complicate, and rehearse micro-political strategies to productively engage these potential allies. Through planning, enacting, and reflecting on these scenarios, PSTs were able to recognize the ideologically contentious nature of teachers’ everyday practices and the need for micro-political literacy in navigating associated situations. Given real and perceived pressures to focus on student test scores, some pre-service teachers expressed concern about the feasibility of examining their practices so closely as full-time teachers.

Significance: This study elucidates how PSTs begin to recognize and address, in ways that are immediately meaningful and consequential to their work, the ideological dimensions of teaching. Because increased accountability measures narrowly focus on standardized academic performances, current school environments risk obscuring the political dimension of teaching.

Author

• Thomas M. Philip, University of California - Los Angeles