Un-naturalizing time and observation in teacher development

• In Event: Doing Curriculum History Research Otherwise

Abstract

Observation in teacher education is the common strategy to discover the problems of teaching practice, for the purpose of continuing development as a professional teacher. In the paradigm of reflective teaching, the process that a teacher thinks over his/her teaching practice becomes the object to analyze how the practice might be improved. It makes the teacher observe teaching practice by distancing teacher-self from teaching practice. In this mechanism, teaching experience exists in the past to be analyzed; reflection in the present, to find the problems and solutions; and development is expected to occur in the future. Here, it should be assumed a particular kind of time, past-present-future, to become a "professional teacher". By accumulating time and experiences, it is believed that a novice teacher can develop towards a professional teacher. This paper aims to problematize the linear notion of time, which has influenced on the understanding of teacher development. By investigating the cultural notion of time, entangled with scientific, moral, social, and political calculations, this study discusses how "observation-reflection-development" became the strategy to make the professional teacher. Historicizing observation and time as the methodological strategy of this paper will lead to unpack the unquestioned philosophical and ontological basis that has shaped teacher education. By unpacking time as the key element that stabilizes human experience and produces the subject as the object and origin of knowing, this paper provides the critical arguments on how "more experienced, more professional" naturalizes the professional teacher as a particular kind of human to become.

References
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Author

• Sun Young Lee, University of Wisconsin-Madison