Talking about a revolution: the languages of educational reform

TALKING ABOUT A REVOLUTION

SUNY series,

TEACHER PREPAR ATION AND DEVELOPMENT Alan R. Tom, editor

SUNY series,

RESTRUCTURING AND SCHOOL CHANGE H. Dickson Corbett, Bett y Lou Whitford, editors

TALKING ABOUT A REVOLUTION

THE LANGUAGES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM

JACQUELINE COSSENTINO

S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y

OF

N E W YO R K P R E S S

S TATE UNIV ER SIT Y

Published by O F N E W Y O R K P R E S S , ALBANY

© 2004 State Universit y of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State Universit y of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cossentino, Jacqueline, 1964– Talking about a revolution : the languages of educational reform / Jacqueline Cossentino. p. cm.—(SUNY series, teacher preparation and development) (SUNY series, restructuring and school change) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6019-3 (alk. paper) 1. School improvement programs—United States—Case studies. 2. Teacher effectiveness—United States—Case studies. 3. Teachers—United States—Attitudes—Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. III. SUNY series in teacher preparation and development. LB2822.82.C67 2004 371.2'00973—dc21 2003052612 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Keith, a revolutionary of a different sort, and for Jack, just one reason it’s worth the effort.

Contents Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xiii PART I. INTRODUCTION

1. Teaching and Meaning 2. How Reform Means

3 21

PART II. THE LANGUAGES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM 3. Exhibition as Test

35

4. Exhibition as Pedagogy

49

5. Exhibition as Curriculum

67

6. Exhibition as Rite of Passage

79

PART III. TEACHER AS COACH: REVISING ROLES, TRANSFORMING PRACTICE 7. Teacher as Designer

99

8. Teacher as Manager

107

9. Teacher as Critic

117

viii

CONTENTS

10. Conclusion: Policy, Practice, and a New Role for Language

127

Appendix A: Methodology

135

Appendix B: Rubrics

145

Notes

155

Bibliography

157

Index

167

Preface The current era of educational reform calls for nothing less than a “revolution” in expectations for student learning and teaching practice (Cohen, McLaughlin, and Talbert, 1993; Elmore, 1990; Graham, 1995; Guthrie, 1990). This call is issued with a powerful and prescriptive (if not always coherent) rhetoric. Instruction should be student centered as well as direct; content should be accessible to diverse student groups and also standardized; assessment should be both authentic and reliable; and outcomes should feature deep understanding and high test scores. “Easier said than done” has been the refrain of scholarly thinking on teacher behavior for more than a decade. The confounding gap between the rhetoric of instructional reform and its enactment in real classrooms has prompted researchers to assert that the revolution is, at best, partial and, at worst, fictitious (Cohen, 1990). Talk about change often substitutes for change itself; the vocabulary may be new, but, as Tyack and Cuban (1995) suggest, the grammar of schooling persists. And teachers are more likely than not to translate reform into a language they already speak. This book examines how that translation occurs by introducing the voices of teachers into the discourse of reform. As the title suggests, reform discourse is best understood in the plural. There is no single language used by policymakers or practitioners to either represent or construct the meaning of reform. Rather, reform arises out of multiple—often competing—interests; and through the process of compromise those interests are distilled in policies. Reform, in other words, represents multiple agendas and the rhetoric of reform announces those agendas in a chorus of—often cacophonous— voices. When teachers talk about revolutions in their practice, they join that chorus, and in so doing, they participate in shaping the very meaning of change. The central argument of this book is that teacher talk about reform both ref lects and contributes to the multiple discourses of reform, and analysis of that talk illuminates the complexit y of a teacher’s role in transforming policy into practice. My empirical referent is an ambitious reform known as “exhibition.” As one of nine “essential principles” espoused by the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), I treat exhibition as a lens through which to view the culture of this national engine of school reform, which itself is nested within a wider culture of reform. In theory, exhibitions are public performances in which students ix

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demonstrate mastery. They are meant to provide students a venue to “earn their diploma” (Sizer, 1984) and schools a mechanism by which to assess their curriculum (McDonald, 1993; McDonald, Smith, Turner, Finney, and Barton, 1993). In practice, I found that teachers ascribed multiple understandings to the term exhibition. The exhibitions I witnessed were indeed public performances, and, at times, they were occasions for students to demonstrate mastery. Just as often, however, teachers used exhibition to fulfill other purposes. They ensured accountabilit y, they anchored the curriculum, and they celebrated completion. Exhibition also seemed to call teachers to assume multiple roles in their attempt to work through the contradictory agendas embedded in the reform. These multiple purposes and roles, I argue, both ref lect the multiple discourses of reform and constitute a powerful means of engagement with reform. Blending phenomenological, biographical, and ethnographic traditions of qualitative research (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997; Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Stake, 1995), I feature the voices of teachers engaged in designing, teaching, and evaluating exhibitions. I also feature the exhibitions themselves. Analysis draws on in-depth interviews, classroom observations, and documentary material collected over nine months in 1997 and 1998. My aim is to probe how teachers construct and revise conceptions of practice. In analyzing the sources of those conceptions, I look closely at the space between the policy and practice of reform. The ten chapters fall into three parts. Part I introduces the t wo primary issues of this book. The first concerns how teachers construct meaning related to their teaching. The second focuses on the varieties of meaning that f lood their discourse, drive their practice, and, often, complicate their understanding of practice. In chapter 1, I put forth the premise that teachers expect teaching to be meaningful, and that they pursue multiple strategies to ensure this expectation is met. This chapter also introduces Al, Brian, and Camille, the three teachers whose practice is the subject of the book. Chapter 2 elaborates on how reform is made meaningful by both policymakers and practitioners. In examining the array of movements and agendas that give rise to the languages of reform, I focus on the form and function of “discourse communities,” concentrating especially on the social and constructive properties of language. In exploring the ideological and rhetorical sources of these discourse communities, I show how the multiple discourses of reform can produce both inspiration and confusion for policymakers as well as practitioners. Part II, “The Languages of Educational Reform,” examines the multiple, and often contradictory, interpretations teachers ascribe to the concept of exhibition as well as how they construct those interpretations using discernable “languages.” Chapters 3 through 6 explicate four major interpretations: exhibition as test, exhibition as pedagogy, exhibition as curriculum, and exhibition as rite of passage. I link each of the four interpretations of exhibition with a distinct purpose for schooling and a distinct role for teachers. Throughout part II, I argue that the multiple understandings of practice evident in the teachers’ talk suggest formidable

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strains in their attempt to make sense of the concept of exhibition. Because teacher talk about reform is so rarely noted by researchers or by the teachers themselves, the strains are also, largely, invisible. Conf licted understandings are often clouded by the very language teachers use to construct and refine their understandings. Views from the classroom, however, bring these difficulties into sharper focus. These visible strains are the focus of part III, “Teacher as Coach: Revising Roles, Transforming Practice.” This section examines the various roles teachers assume in an effort to make reform real. Chapters 7 through 9 deconstruct the role of “teacher as coach.” In their attempts to enact a coaching pedagogy, Al, Brian, and Camille engaged in three distinct categories of teaching activit y: designing, managing, and critiquing. In focusing on the interplay of discourse, identit y, and expertise (Danielewicz, 2001; Gee, 1990; Shulman, 1987), I present rich descriptions of the teachers’ work with curriculum, students, and student work. My aim in these chapters is t wofold: First, is to show what developing practice looks like. From that description I move toward a theory of action for teachers who aspire to become coaches. Second, I propose that talk may be an underrated and underdeveloped means of achieving real revolutions in teaching practice. Noting that the teachers depicted in this book used language to engage with the meaning of reform, I argue for more intentional use of language as an instrument for teacher development. Just as important, I propose that researchers and policy analysts understand language as a means of transforming the space between policy and practice from a gap to a site for making reform meaningful. Though the argument stretches across all ten chapters, the book may also be digested in smaller chunks. Part II, for instance, will likely be of greatest interest to researchers of the anthropology of education, instructional reform, and policy enactment. Part III, by contrast, is pitched toward teacher educators, professional developers, and teachers who themselves may be engaged in transforming their practice from a transmission to constructivist orientation. The chapters that follow illuminate the complexit y of that engagement and the elusiveness of reform itself. By focusing on how teachers construct, use, and revise their conceptions of reform, I render a subtle and multidimensional picture of how practice develops, which, in turn, illuminates how policy is actually implemented within classrooms.

Acknowledgments Writing a book can be a profoundly lonely experience, but I would not have been able to do it were it not for many people who contributed their time, expertise, and love. I am grateful, first, to the students, facult y, and administrators of Oakville High School. Most especially, I am indebted to Al, Brian, and Camille for allowing me access to their lives as teachers. Their candor and generosit y made it possible for me to learn much more than I anticipated. Though this book is meant to tell a larger story of educational reform, without the individual stories of these remarkable teachers, there would be no book. Scholars near and far have inf luenced this work from its inception to its fulfillment in this volume. The early stages of research and writing benefited from the expert guidance of Susan Moore Johnson. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot provided a skillful blend of challenging critique with warm and caring support. It was Richard Elmore’s exhortation to “help us understand a single practice” that led me to focus on multiple dimensions of exhibition, and Howard Gardner urged me to concentrate even more sharply on language as an instrument of reform. More recently, colleagues at the Universit y of Maryland have provided a vibrant intellectual communit y in which to refine both the ideas and the prose. In particular, I am grateful to Bett y Malen, a remarkably astute editor and exceedingly compassionate mentor, to Barbara Finkelstein for her commitment to the big ideas of this project, and to Kenneth Strike, who offered stimulating discussion about the philosophy of language and practical advice on the exigencies of academic publishing. Many of my graduate students in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership have encountered this work, and all have responded with thoughtful, intelligent critique. Shannon Bramblett and Philbert Aaron both provided substantial research assistance, and I am happy to be able to acknowledge them here. Colleagues at other universities have provided nothing less than a phalanx of support and encouragement. I thank, especially, Susan Eaton, Joe McDonald, Donna Muncey, Judy Pace, Reba Page, Dirck Roosevelt, and Jennifer Whitcomb. I am grateful to Linda Valli and Alan Tom for championing the work and for helping it find a home at State Universit y of New York Press. Like many young scholars, I have been the fortunate beneficiary of Priscilla Ross’ sensitive guidance as an editor and adviser. Laurie Searl shepherded the book’s production xiii

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with intelligence and efficiency. In addition, I thank the t wo anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and Jocelyn Swanson for proofreading. Their input has produced a stronger book. Associates of the Coalition of Essential Schools were generous with time and feedback throughout the study. Both Ted Sizer and Joe McDonald offered advice and encouragement at important moments. When I appeared, literally, on his doorstep one afternoon in search of an unpublished memorandum, Arthur Powell entrusted me with his only copy, which proved to be a significant piece of data. Other principals and teachers, who must remain nameless, led me to the school and teachers I studied, and cheered me on throughout fieldwork. This book has both tested the patience and revealed the generosit y of my family. My parents, John and Carmen Cossentino, supported this work in countless ways, even though they never fully understood what I was doing. My husband, Keith Whitescarver, has seen me through the ups and downs of this project with grace and good humor. As both colleague and companion, he has cajoled, comforted, and celebrated as needed. And when I most needed it, he gave me the gift of solitude. The seeds for this book began to germinate just as our son Jack was born; and their development has been so synchronous I cannot imagine one without the other. Together, they signify the link bet ween love and work that makes possible most things that matter. And with gratitude, I dedicate this book to two who matter most.

PART I

Introduction

ONE

Teaching and Meaning This book is about the role of symbolic action, particularly language, in educational reform. It tells the stories of three teachers, all self-described reformers, all in the midst of revolutionizing their teaching, all straining to transform the public call for reform into the private practice of their classrooms. I characterize this strain as a quest to make reform meaningful; it is a quest that is both revealed and shaped by language use. For these teachers, talk is action. Talk provokes new ideas about teaching, it masks partial or misunderstandings about reform, it bridges the often-elusive gap between the actual and the possible. At the center of these teachers’ stories is the question of meaning: how they construct it, express it, and enact it in their teaching. Al, Brian, and Camille are real teachers in a large, comprehensive high school in a suburb of a major midwestern cit y. Theirs is a story of resistance and resilience as much as it is a chronicle of revolution. Buffeted by persistent calls to change their practice, they labor to decipher the meaning of reform for their students, for their communit y, and for themselves. Drawn to the rhetoric of reform, they aspire to create “essential” curricula, to educate students who are able to “demonstrate mastery,” and to transform themselves from transmitters of knowledge into “coaches.” Through it all, language is these teachers’ ally. They use the languages of educational reform to inspire new ways to think about practice, to shield themselves from the confusion of contradictory understandings of reform, and to construct a shared understanding of what reformed teaching might mean. Al, Brian, and Camille use the languages of educational reform to “talk into existence” (Page, 1991) a new and better way to teach. How they do it is the subject of this book. In focusing on the language and practice of three teachers in a single school, my intention is to offer a deeper, more multidimensional analysis of the complex, culture-bound links bet ween policy and practice than is possible in aggregate studies. I do not explain why the reform succeeds or fails. Nor do I offer a solution to the problem of implementation. While I do examine the challenges—both conceptual and technical—confronted by these teachers, this is not a book about 3

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deficits. Rather, it is a book about relationships: between policy and practice, between thinking and talking, and between talking and doing. In concentrating on how those relationships are forged, nurtured, and revised by Al, Brian, and Camille, I hope to illuminate how teachers construct what Geertz (1973) called the “webs of meaning” that constitute the true nexus of reform.

M E A N I N G F U L P R AC T I C E Most of the talk described and analyzed in this book revolves around an ambitious practice known as “exhibition.” Like most teachers who use exhibitions in their teaching, Al, Brian, and Camille became acquainted with the concept through their school’s involvement with the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). Al was among the group of teachers who initially pushed for the school’s connection to this national engine of school reform. The school, Oakville High School (OHS)1 joined CES in 1991, nearly seven years after the organization’s inception. In 1991, joining CES meant, chief ly, making a commitment to find ways to adapt and to ref lect on the set of nine “essential principles”2 devised by CES’s founder and then chairman Theodore Sizer. Among those nine principles was diploma by exhibition. The conviction behind this principle is that students should “earn” their diploma. Rather than basing the credential on “time spent” in classes, students who earn their diplomas demonstrate that they “can do important things” (Sizer, 1984). While the definition of what exhibitions actually are is relatively oblique in CES literature, in practice most are public or semipublic events in which students present completed work to a panel of judges whose task is to determine whether the performance meets a specified standard. On its most basic level, then, an exhibition is a substitute for the final exam. For Al, Brian, and Camille, it is that and much more. My chief aim for this study was to learn what Al, Brian, and Camille thought they were doing when they made exhibition a feature of their teaching. If exhibition was really meaningful for them, what made it so? If exhibitions are more than mere substitutes for the final exam, what else are they? I expected to find a link between the ideology of CES and the theories espoused by Al, Brian, and Camille. Since the ideology of CES, as it is articulated in the nine essential principles and in other literature published about or by CES, is distinguished by a distinctive lexicon, I also expected to discover links bet ween the language of CES and that of the teachers I studied. And to varying degrees I did find alignment in ideas and rhetoric. More interesting however, and, I think, more instructive, is the complexit y of that alignment. While each of these teachers was attracted to CES rhetoric, each also brought to his or her practice a unique set of principles linked with its own set of terms. The manner in which each assimilated CES concepts into his or her existing cosmology varied based on a constellation of factors. Here I use the term cosmology deliberately. When Al, Brian, and Camille talked about teaching, they were

TEACHING AND MEANING

5

concerned about more than theories of cognition or philosophies of curriculum design. They were expressing a belief system that blends pedagogical and universal questions: What do my students need to know? How do I know when they know enough? What is the purpose of this knowledge? What is my role in helping them grow? Why am I here? Exhibition is certainly not the only practice that helps teachers confront these questions. Indeed, any number of practices and reforms might be subject to a similar analysis. However, because exhibition is so explicitly tied to outcomes and ideology, I argue that it offers unique insight into the reform process. Exhibition is worth examining closely as an example of the complex process of making reform meaningful, first, because the word exhibition itself accommodates multiple connotations. This f lexibilit y invites teachers to ascribe personal meaning to the term, which therefore allows them to use it as a tool for guiding practice. As a concept, the f lexibilit y of exhibition is most evidently signaled by its grammatical usage: All three teachers used it as both a noun and a verb; sometimes they referred to “the exhibition” and sometimes they referred to “exhibiting.” Flexible meaning is enhanced by a second special propert y of exhibition: It empowers teachers to define outcomes and standards. In this way, exhibition stands in stark contrast to many current reforms aimed at prescribing (and often limiting) a teacher’s role. Unlike reforms such as high-stakes testing or vouchers or even lengthening the school day, exhibition invites teachers to address those very questions central to their cosmology: What should students know? How will I know if they know enough? In other words, exhibition sparks consideration of what is meaningful about teaching. And in so doing, it offers access to researchers and teachers seeking a deeper understanding of how reform is made real. At the time of the study (1997–1998) exhibition was meaningful to a small but significant subgroup of teachers at OHS. While diploma by exhibition was not yet a policy at the school, teachers who taught with exhibitions understood that each time they incorporated an exhibition, particularly a final exhibition, into their courses, they were informing an important policy debate. Were OHS to formally adopt the principle of diploma by exhibition, the process by which students graduate would change dramatically. Graduation would no longer be a matter of cumulative grade point averages and credit hours. Instead, seniors would likely undergo a battery of public demonstrations designed to show that they have met a set of competencies deemed necessary to graduate. Even on a small scale, exhibitions present logistical, pedagogical, and cultural challenges. They require the recruitment of judges to serve on panels. They require the formulation of standards or “rubrics” against which to judge student work. They require the development of curricula to support the outcomes specified by the rubrics. All of these requirements assume that teachers are prepared to formulate, judge, and teach with exhibition rather than a final exam. And this requirement makes demands on the culture of the school as well as on individual teacher’s expertise. Not all teachers, not all administrators, and not all parents

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believe that exhibition is a better alternative to the final exam, and part of Al’s, Brian’s, and Camille’s job was to test the waters. The following brief portraits introduce Al, Brian, and Camille, and they provide an impression of each teacher’s talk as well as a glimpse into his or her classroom. They foreshadow questions that I will address in greater detail in subsequent chapters: What does exhibition mean? How is meaning expressed verbally as well as in action? How is exhibition meaningful to these teachers’ teaching?

AL Alexander Jefferson Kaline chose his pseudonym3 in part to highlight aspects of his personalit y and his approach to teaching. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson are two of his favorite characters from American history, and Al Kaline, the great first baseman, is one of his athletic heroes. Al has been teaching in the Oakville school district for twent y-five years, and for twent y of those years he also coached football at the college as well as the high school level. When he talks about teaching generally, he draws liberally from images of athletics, referring to his class as his “team” and his curriculum as a set of “practices.” When he talks about the practice of exhibition, he focuses more sharply on what students ought to “get” from his class: “Bottom line for me, what I want my students to get out of my class, is that they have the abilit y to look at an issue, to research that issue, learn about that issue, look at the sides, and, in a logical manner, come up with a conclusion. That’s the purpose of my course. And that’s why I teach history.” His course, Thesis in History, is offered twice a year to eleventh graders. Passing this course has just been made a requirement for graduation from OHS, and the section of eighteen students I observed contained one senior as well as one nontraditional student who was back at OHS after several years in the workforce to complete his graduation requirements. In the spring of 1998, Al is teaching Thesis for the fourth time. Four weeks into the semester students have selected topics, most having to do with contemporary events and issues such as the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the Waco incident, the circumstances surrounding the Jeffrey Dahmer murders, and the significance of the Roswell, New Mexico, controversy. Their first substantial assignment related to their topic is the preparation of a newspaper. On March 5, Al’s classroom has been turned into an exhibition hall, with the back wall covered from top to bottom with these newspapers. While the sophistication with which these projects are presented varies widely, all feature headlines, news stories, graphics, and either photographs or cartoons about their topic. The newspaper is an innovation he and his teaching partner, Neil, have introduced this semester. It is one of the many building blocks of the course meant to lead students toward the final requirement: a “defense” in which students present their theses and field questions from a panel composed of parents, peers, and an expert in the field. Defenses will take place on the evenings of May 27, 28,

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and 29. Between March and May, students must develop an “essential question,” attempt to answer that question using evidence from several sources, write a position paper explicating their answers as well as a rebuttal, and present their work to their peers in a preliminary defense. But first, they must finish their newspapers and give a background presentation. On March 5, Al says that he is “not happy” with the first presentations he has seen. I meet him in the corridor as classes are changing and he announces that he’s “going to go over everything, again.” He is shaking his head and muttering as he walks slowly but purposefully toward his classroom. This is as agitated as I will see him all semester. Closely cropped blond hair frames a soft, round face; when he is smiling, he looks a lot like the comedian Drew Carey. As his third period section files into his classroom, he saunters to his desk, sighs and says “Okay. Listen up. Couple of things.” Then he begins one of the few lectures he will give this semester. “Mr. Kaline doesn’t give Fs. You get an incomplete. You’ll do it until you get it right. Newspaper is not going to go away. Don’t fall behind. There will be more and more things coming at you and they will be coming more and more rapidly. By next week you’ll need five more references, which will put you at somewhere close to fifteen. Continue to work.” He explains that he was not pleased with what he heard last period and will explain, again, the purpose and requirements of the background presentation. “Take out a sheet of paper so you can take some notes.” He begins to pace back and forth in front of the room and gradually the classroom starts to feel like a locker room. Students sit in rows and quietly scribble as Al talks. “What is the purpose of the presentation? Number one, to demonstrate and share with the class knowledge of your topic; that you know enough to move on to phase two: the essential question. Number two, to give the student practice. You need to be able to stand in front of people and deliver your message. The essence of Thesis is to be able to stand in front of people and deliver your message and support it with evidence. You’re saying ‘I know my stuff and I’m not afraid to talk in front of people.’” Students stare blankly as he emphasizes this last point, and I suspect it is because they are afraid to stand in front of people. They are not at all certain that they know their stuff. Al continues, “What are you gonna tell me? First you need an intro. What makes a good intro? It has to be an attention getter; you need a hook. Think of TV shows, The X-Files. They tell you what’s coming. Right?” Finally, he asks if there are questions. Immediately a student asks, “What if you’re too afraid?” Al pounces as if he has been waiting for this, “Great question. We’re all afraid. I was like that. But that’s why we’re doing this in small parts. No one will laugh at you in here. You will do it. If you fall off the wire, we’ll catch you.” Mitchell, whom Al has identified to me as “a challenge” insists he will not be able to do it. Al turns to Mitchell, pauses, and looks directly at him as if to say “You’re forcing me to reveal this”: “Three years ago I had bypass surgery. I was terrified. Did I want to do it? No. I had to do it if I wanted to be here. This is not heart surgery. We’ll all be there to catch you. We’re just gonna get you ready for it.” More

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sighs and protests and a final admonition: “Twent y years of coaching football, I never once said to my team ‘We got a game next week. We’re not gonna practice until then.’ You know how this works. You’ve all been in band or choir or drama or sports. You gotta practice.” There is silence. Al pauses a beat and changes the subject by saying “Go to work.”

BRIAN For almost as long as he can remember, Brian Smith has wanted to be a teacher. This is his fourth year teaching tenth-grade geometry at OHS, the high school from which he graduated eight years ago. Brian never heard the terms exhibition, performance assessment, cooperative learning, or teacher as coach when he was in college, but now his vocabulary is peppered with these words and phrases, and he considers their impact on his teaching “profound.” As a member of one of a growing number of OHS teams—self-contained units of teachers and students situated within a grade level—Brian views himself as both a beneficiary of and a contributor to the local work of the Coalition of Essential Schools. His team is a tenth-grade cluster known as “World Connections,” usually abbreviated as “Connections.” He associates work on his team, as well as the coalition, with “the changes that have gone on at OHS since I was a kid.” He refers to “incredible opportunities” such as “mentorship, disciplinary work, double-blocking.” Structural innovations like double-blocking (reconfiguring the school day to accommodate longer blocks of time) are well-established at OHS, and Brian’s team exemplifies many of those changes. Connections functions, in effect, as a small school within a school. The four teachers responsible for the Connections team teach in adjacent classrooms. Every day they share a common planning time. They are authorized to adjust the schedule based on what they determine to be team needs. And they design and deliver interdisciplinary curricula. Chief among these curricula are the exhibitions that cap each semester. When I first met Brian, he was in the final stages of rehearsing students for the first exhibition of the year. This project, on “argument and evidence,” required small groups of students to research an issue, to construct a position, and to present their position to what Brian calls “an authentic audience.” Like Al’s panel of judges, the audiences were mostly composed of one or more parents, a teacher, and a peer. The audiences for the final exhibition of the year are to be similar. Brian rarely sits in on his students’ exhibitions. Like the other participants in this study, Brian serves primarily as host to his students’ guests, and finds the whole process “nerve-racking. It’s just as much my performance on the line as theirs,” he explains. On exhibition nights (what at OHS is called the “Celebration of Learning”), Brian will do a lot of “pacing the lobby.” Unlike Thesis in History, Brian’s second semester exhibition does not grow out of any one discipline. Rather it is conceived as a product of the entire Connec-

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9

tions team. It is meant to draw on essential skills and understandings that supersede whatever disciplinary goals may drive the geometry, biology, English, or global issues courses that make up the team. The team, for Brian, is a primary vehicle for both determining and expressing what teaching means to him. When he talks about his students’ exhibitions, he nearly always links his goals to the team’s: “As the team as a whole, one of our focuses is lifelong learning. . . . As a team, we’ve all agreed that the Coalition of Essential Schools is an excellent piece of school reform, and we try to implement principles in terms we think we can handle.” In Brian’s—as in his three teammates’—classroom are posted five “Habits of Mind,” as well as four of the nine essential principles advocated by the Coalition of Essential Schools. According to Brian, it is these habits and principles that serve as the nexus of the interdisciplinary work undertaken by the team. While I never heard him refer directly to any of the habits or principles while he was teaching, he frequently used terms like backwards-building curriculum or specificity or relevancy when discussing his goals for his students. He suggested in conversation that essential principles and habits of mind prompted him to think about his teaching in a new way. He thinks the focus on habits of mind like “argument and evidence” helps give his geometry curriculum coherence: “It’s more than just finding the antecedent of a condition. It is how does that skill of looking at the comparison of the antecedent and the consequent carry all the way through? Why is that so early in the geometry text? What’s the purpose of it and how does it apply later?” Again, he links this insight to his role on his team: “Had I not been on the team and not done the unit like that, I never would have reinforced that through the entire year.” The culminating exhibition for the Connections team is known among students and teachers as “Resumé.” The Resumé project requires students to research a potential career, and based on what they learn about that career, to construct a personal resumé that provides evidence that (1) they understand what skills and knowledge are required for this career, and (2) they either possess those qualities, demonstrated by their work in and outside of school, or they are working toward developing those qualities. Between February and late May, students will undergo a series of personalit y tests, shadow and interview a practitioner in the field they think they might want to pursue as adults, develop their resumé according to standard formatting procedures, and present their resumé along with the evidence that supports it to their audience. When I visit in early April, less than t wo months before the Celebration of Learning, Brian’s Resumé group is about to begin to put their resumés together. Work on resumés occurs during small blocks of time carved out of the schedule by the team. Each team member has a resumé group, which Brian tells me has been handpicked for compatibilit y bet ween students and teacher. Early in the semester, resumé groups meet once or twice a week for approximately thirt y minutes. By April, the frequency increases, but the block remains the same. In the final weeks prior to the exhibitions, Resumé will assume a much larger role in

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the team’s day, meeting for between fift y and sevent y minutes three to four times a week. At 10:45 on a Tuesday morning, Brian’s Resumé group files into his classroom. One by one they walk over to a milk crate in one corner of the well-lit, immaculately organized room, pull out manila envelopes, and take their seats in neatly arranged rows. On the board is today’s agenda for Resumé. Today in Resumé • Write Career Objective Example: To pursue a career in law enforcement where I can utilize my physical fitness and take a leadership role along with working with others. . . .

“You are mine for a half hour,” Brian announces as students take their seats. “We have t wo goals that need to be accomplished by tomorrow. Half by the end of today and the other half tomorrow. We are going to start drafting your resumé.” For the next fifteen minutes, Brian conducts a whole-class discussion based on an analysis of four examples of career objectives—the one on the agenda plus three others he hands out. Throughout the discussion, which consists primarily of prompting from Brian (What’s important to this person? What else besides the job does the objective include?), he focuses on the language of the objective statement. Brian wants his students to use “profound” language. He does not want students to say “to get a job.” He wants them to say “pursue a career” because it “sounds more profound.” He personalizes the discussion by referring to himself: “In a few years, when I apply for an assistant principal position, I’m not gonna say, ‘I wanna be an assistant principal.’ That’s not very profound.” After analyzing examples of career objectives, Brian asks for a volunteer who will allow the class to construct his or her objective. He selects two students who want to be veterinarians. Brian prompts with an opening phrase, “To pursue a career,” after which a quiet controversy, again about language, erupts. Is it better to use fewer or more words to describe the career? The students seem to have absorbed Brian’s call for profundit y, when they agree that “a career in veterinary medicine” is better than “a career as a veterinarian.” Next, what skills can they bring to the job? One of the students, Adam, struggles to identify skills. Brian asks the whole class to brainstorm, and they come up with four: decision making, problem solving, taking chances, and patience. Brian, mindful of the time, suggests that four skills are too many: “I’d narrow it down to three. Four is too many.” Another student suggests eliminating “taking chances,” and Brian agrees: “I’m not sure I want a vet ‘taking chances’ with my dogs.” Adam mutters, “That’s not what I mean.” Without acknowledging Adam’s comment, Brian moves on to drafting the next sentence on the board: “To pursue a career in veterinary medicine, where I

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can demonstrate my problem-solving skills, make strong decisions, and exhibit patience.” He steps back and admires his handiwork: “This is an excellent career objective. It uses strong verbs like demonstrate.” He pauses, looks at the class, then puts down his chalk as if to signal a new segment of the class: “Now you have fifteen minutes to draft your career objective. Write the first draft, then trade with someone and get feedback.” He asks Adam (whose objective is already written) to walk around and help students draft. Tomorrow they will work on the next piece of the resumé.

CAMILLE Camille Rogers and Brian Smith came to OHS as teachers the same year, but their respective journeys to the school represent vastly different origins and trajectories. Brian always knew he wanted to be a teacher, and he nurtured his dream while a student at OHS, followed by a sterling college career at a selective state universit y. Camille, by contrast, came to teaching indirectly, following a series of educational experiences punctuated by a successful career in banking. Oakville is a “test market” communit y (predominantly white, middle class and suburban), and as a product of that communit y, Brian is—has always been—at home at OHS. Camille, on the other hand, grew up in the predominantly African American east side of the state’s capital cit y. As one of only three African Americans in a facult y of over ninet y, Camille stands out. She also stands out in the way that many tall, attractive, gregarious people stand out. She is immensely popular with students. Her classroom exudes laughter, warmth, a constant f low of students and teachers of various hues, the occasional whiff of food brought in from the local Chinese restaurant, and the remarkable sense of convivialit y associated with teachers who are loved. She has made herself a home at OHS. Like Brian, Camille is a member of a team. Her teaching partner, Carole, shares classroom space with her, and for two years they have cotaught the twelfth-grade interdisciplinary elective Senior Political Studies. SPS, as it is known, was originally conceived by Carole to be a double-blocked, thematic class that examined political issues from the perspectives of government and English. Carol is the government teacher and Camille is the English teacher. Also, as originally conceived, the second semester theme was “utopia,” and the year culminated in a lengthy project in which groups of students read and critiqued political as well as fictional literature related to the concept of utopia, and presented their work at a final exhibition. This year, the Utopia unit has been scrapped, and the exhibition totally reconfigured. Early in the school year, Camille and Carole noted “problems with responsibilit y” in SPS. “We just weren’t seeing the level of maturit y we had seen with other groups,” Camille explained, detailing the reasons why the Utopia unit was redesigned. Instead of collaborating on a group project, students will compile and present individual portfolios indicating the completion of a variet y of tasks assigned by Carole and Camille. Camille regards the portfolio as a “kinder” version

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of an exhibition. “It’s more about process,” she explains. As for the change in content, Camille describes the project largely as “career exploration.” “In changing the program,” Camille explained, “the intent was for them to see what they’re gonna be faced with as college students. What they’re gonna be faced with if they choose not to go to college. What are these jobs? What are they paying? What are the requirements for these jobs? What’s the next level that you would move up to in this particular job?” When she talks about the design of the portfolio, at first she sounds a lot like Brian, but then her tone shifts, and she draws on images of vision: “We were trying to get them to look in themselves. The point of this is to get them to look in themselves and see what they were doing. Look at where they want to go.” The project links the political process and the students’ futures by requiring students to sit in on school board hearings, to visit a college class, and—recalling the resumé project—to shadow a professional whose career they may want to pursue. Carole has recently become interested in technology, and several of the requirements involve using computers: designing a Web site, searching the Internet for information on various topics, and preparing the final exhibition using the software program Powerpoint. During the semester in which the students were preparing their portfolios, I rarely saw Camille “teach,” at least not in a traditional sense. I rarely saw her stand in front of her class. I rarely saw the entire class assembled in her room. I rarely saw students engaged in what I would have normally called “curriculum.” I was never exactly sure what the plans for any given class were. The only long-term design was indicated on the rubric designed to guide students’ compilation of their portfolios. On most days students work independently, and on Fridays they check in with Camille and Carol in a ritual known as “portfolio check.” Students take turns presenting their works-in-progress, and Camille, with her grade book open, gives students a 冑 for completed work, and a 冑⫺ for incomplete work. Portfolio checks are brief, and relatively private. Fridays are double-blocked, which means SPS lasts for nearly t wo hours, and time not spent in portfolio check belongs to the students. Often students disperse, but just as often, they linger. It was during these “hanging out” times that I saw Camille teach. On one of these occasions, an afternoon in late April, after a majorit y of the class had gone to points unknown, a group of six remained to chat with Ms. Rogers. Gill, a loquacious African American student, sidles up to Camille’s desk to discuss the colleges to which he has been accepted. Mostly Gill talks. He explains his dilemma: He was accepted by two colleges, but his parents will only contribute financially if he attends their choice. Camille nods, then notices another student wandering into the room: “Suzie, are you working on the computer? Do you want me to do something for you?” Suzie glances over to Camille, smiles—without breaking stride—and says “You know I like you Ms. Rogers.” Everyone in the room laughs. Camille smiles back and turns her attention back to Gill. But the

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energy, which had previously been dispersed among the students in the room, now centers on Camille. Gill’s private concern of life after OHS is actually shared by everyone in the room, and Gill widens the conversation by bringing up a topic everyone can relate to. “Ms. Rogers,” he bellows in his class-clown voice, “please tell my mother not to cry when you talk to her.” Camille looks at him, narrows her eyes, and with a mischievous grin, says “Who? Me?” One of her hallmarks as a teacher is the frequency with which she calls parents to keep them apprised of student progress. She calls when assignments are incomplete, when students have missed too much school, when their attitude concerns her. Often the call is a gesture—she leaves a message on an answering machine—but it is a powerful gesture, one that students refer to regularly when they talk about Ms. Rogers. On this occasion, she is in the process of calling the parents of all her students who are in jeopardy of not graduating. By late April, students have all received notice from the OHS administration, but Camille follows up with a phone call. This notice, what the students call the “jeopardy letter,” becomes the subject of the day; and Camille listens as students chime in, each with the story of his or her letter: “My mother cried.” “My father woke me up at 5:30 this morning to tell me that my teacher said I wouldn’t graduate.” “Mine came when I wasn’t home.” I am struck by their openness. They are almost lighthearted as they reveal this information, wearing it as a badge, not of honor, but of belonging. And Camille encourages the exchange, shaking her head at some moments, chuckling at others. Never does her demeanor suggest disapproval. She wants them to tell their stories, to express themselves. Later, when I share my impressions, she tells me conversations like the one I witnessed are an example of “what I do versus what I’m supposed to do. They’re scared to express themselves. It’s more important that they feel competent and confident than that they can analyze Animal Farm.” When Camille talks about the meaning of her teaching, she almost never brings up exhibition. Despite the fact that nearly all of Camille’s classes feature exhibitions, her teaching revolves around what she considers to be a deeper quest for engagement, expression, and success, “whatever that means to the student.” When pushed, she, like Brian, links exhibition to her teaching by focusing on the meaning of display, the prideful, public nature of the work of learning: “I think as a teacher you wanna be proud of your kids. I mean, like a parent. This is a product of me. This is someone I’ve worked with, someone I’ve helped, someone I’ve tried to encourage and this is the end result of what they’ve done.”

VA R I E T I E S O F M E A N I N G Al, Brian, and Camille are three out of approximately ten teachers at OHS who, at the time of the study, had chosen to incorporate exhibitions into their teaching, and while each does so in remarkably individual ways, these teachers’ decisions to

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make exhibition a feature of how and what they teach marks them (to colleagues, administrators, themselves, and me) as innovative and reform minded. They hold in common a number of beliefs about teaching and learning that can be traced to their involvement with the practice. They believe that exhibiting is more demanding for students than other forms of assessment, such as paper-and-pencil tests. They believe that teachers should do more than lecture if they are to teach effectively; that guiding, facilitating, and structuring learning is more important than transmitting knowledge. They believe that exhibitions should serve as a central focus of the entire curriculum. And they believe, perhaps most insistently, that exhibiting is a meaningful experience because it is public and ceremonial, and because it requires students to accomplish something they are rarely asked to do: to “stand up” before an audience to present and defend a position. As one of nine essential principles guiding the Coalition of Essential Schools, exhibition, particularly as it is discussed and practiced in CES schools like OHS, both belongs to and contributes to a tradition of schooling. This tradition is an extension and reinterpretation of progressive reforms of nearly a century ago (Perrone, 1998; Sizer, 1984; Tyack and Cuban, 1995). This era of educational reform is frequently associated with the child-centered, experiential, and democratic philosophies of John Dewey, and exhibition as promoted by CES alludes directly to this constructivist approach to curriculum and pedagogy. But progressive reforms aimed for much more than curricular change. Though rarely invoked explicitly, the inf luence of the sweeping social agenda of progressivism, an agenda that included social reconstruction, social efficiency, and vocationalism, hovers over the CES agenda generally and these teachers’ understanding of exhibition specifically. CES is, furthermore, identified by a coherent ideology, culture, and language; and all three of the teachers I studied engaged with these in one way or another. The varieties of this engagement comprise a central theme of this book. While all three teachers are engaged in the practice of exhibition, each interprets it differently. Al likens it to the Friday night game, highlighting the practices leading up to the game. For Brian it is a more “profound” test, a task that prompts anxiet y with a focus on the “relief” that comes after the final performance. In Camille’s version, the final performance is a ceremony in which the ideals of her teaching— responsibilit y, confidence, and expression—are acted out. Each understands exhibition in a different way. Each teaches exhibition in a different way. And each uses exhibition differently to construct as well as to enact the wider meanings of teaching and the purpose of school. These wider meanings and purposes—what I understand to be teachers’ cosmologies of learning and teaching—find some expression in the practice of exhibition; but what is more remarkable is their breadth, their dynamism, and their variet y. While it is easy to trace connections between what teachers say and do about exhibitions and the ideology, culture, and language of the Coalition of Essential Schools, it is clear to me that CES is only one of many sources inf luencing teachers’ thinking. Al, Brian,

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and Camille came to OHS with beliefs of their own. These beliefs are far ranging, often tacit, at times contradictory, and ref lective of multiple traditions.

LEARNING TO BE HISTORIANS When Al says “I used to teach kids history. Now I teach them to be historians,” he is ref lecting one aspect of the progressive tradition out of which CES grows and to which it aims to contribute. This is a tradition that aspires to be both intellectual and democratic. Building consciously on Dewey, Sizer (1984) focuses on skills and competencies necessary for thoughtful and responsible involvement in civic life. As a history teacher, Al also thinks about larger purposes, and he supports the goal of participation in democratic societ y. But, over the years, his focus has narrowed. I was becoming a better lecturer and I knew history well, I thought. But all the time I was doing that, I couldn’t lose this one question: Why are kids in my class? And I kept coming back to, all I’m doing is preparing them for Jeopardy. You know, how are they ever going to use what I’m teaching them? And I said, well they can work crossword puzzles, they could go to Jeopardy, and those types of things. I wanted history to be more than that. . . . My view is, I don’t teach history anymore. I teach kids to be historians and I think that’s what historians do. They look. They analyze. They research. They draw conclusions. And so that’s essentially what I’ve been trying to do with this whole thing.

Like Sizer, Al wants students to learn to do important things. And, of the three teachers, he is most explicit about what constitutes important things. Looking, analyzing, researching, and drawing conclusions are all important to Al because these are the “things” historians do. His view of what his teaching means aligns with current pedagogical trends built on constructivist learning theory; and he resonates with other CES slogans such as “teacher as coach, student as worker,” and “less is more.” Those terms, Al tells me, “made sense” when he first heard them, because they expressed what he already “had been trying to do.” Of the three teachers, only Al consistently expressed concern with disciplinary understanding. His was the only exhibition deeply connected to his discipline, and his was the only exhibition that dominated every moment of his semester-long class. Al came close to transforming the slogans into concrete guides for his practice, perhaps because he had concrete referents for the metaphors so central to CES rhetoric. I suspect that having been a coach invited him to use the metaphor as a tool for comparing the way he taught athletes to his approach toward his history students. Coaching was meaningful to Al long before CES told him that teachers should be coaches. And the meaning of coaching clearly extends further than the athletic connotations of the metaphor. But talking about coaching in

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the context of his teaching is what made the comparison useful to him. And without the metaphor, the conversation may have never taken place. When I first met Al, I asked him to tell me how coaching affects his teaching and he said, “Well, I’ll tell you. I never once in my twent y-some-odd years of coaching football put a play up on the chalkboard, told the kids how to make the play, then passed out a test.” When, the very next day, a version of that explanation appeared in his speech to his students, I was alerted to at least one of the ways Al made reform meaningful. He was engaging in a reciprocal relationship between the language of coaching and its practice in his classroom.

LEARNING TO BE STUDENTS All three teachers want their students to succeed at school. The exhibition as a public display of achievement, a test of a student’s abilit y to stand before an audience and present himself/herself, was taken as an indicator of a student’s readiness to move on to the next phase of schooling. This view of exhibition as a gateway also recalls progressive reforms. Only these reforms were not aimed at elite, intellectual echelons of society. Rather, they were designed to address the needs of students who would not go on to college, but would enter the workforce. Here the assumption of all three teachers seems to be that high school functions, in part, to sort students. For some, high school leads to college and college leads to productive adulthood. Others will be directed into vocational tracks leading to productive adulthood of a different type. In either case, the teachers suggest a keen awareness that the quality of that adulthood will hinge largely on the school-based experiences that precede it. Learning to be a student involves public presentation, but it also carries with it a moral imperative. Good students are responsible, self-motivated, well-organized, and able to think critically as well as follow instructions. Exhibition offers more subtle lessons about learning to be a student. Brian consistently emphasized the “nervousness” he associated with the public performance, and he believed that nervousness is one of the lessons of exhibiting because “that tension is causing them to push forward.” He compares his students’ experiences with exhibition to his own as a member of the high school band: “The same thing happened growing up in a band program. The nerves caused us to play better; the nerves caused us to listen more and I think when our kids get nervous before an exhibition, it causes them to listen to each other a little more as well.” In this utilitarian view of schooling, the teacher is a pragmatist and acknowledges the status of power holders, such as the “experts” who sit on exhibition panels (Labaree, 1997). Exhibition serves as a tool to celebrate the moral order (Metz, 1987), and to prepare students to preserve it.

LEARNING TO BE ADULTS Camille certainly wants her students to be successful, and holds many of the values expressed by Brian and Al, but her long view of the relationship bet ween

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schooling and adulthood blends critical and utilitarian perspectives. Even though she distrusts the system that defines success, she wants her students to have access to it. School is a means to an end. It is not necessarily a logical or fair means, but it is the one that everyone must use and, therefore, her students, she reasons, must get to college, must be poised and confident and expressive, because with those qualities comes access to successful lives as adults. She constructs her view of what kind of adults her students should be from her own coming-of-age experiences. The daughter of a close-knit, middle-class African American family, Camille cites the Baptist church, “where my whole family went, where we grew up,” as a significant inf luence in her life. “I think as far as respecting other people’s opinions,” explaining what she learned at church, “it was a place [where] you’re allowed to express yourself and ask questions.” She came to teaching reluctantly, despite the discouragement of family members who felt that teaching represented professional and economic status beneath Camille. Proving herself in banking, however, emboldened her to pursue what she considered to be a more meaningful career as a teacher. Why is teaching meaningful? “My goal is to get students to think on their own. From within,” Camille responds. She recalls her upbringing in the church, and also negative experiences from her own public education: “In high school, with teachers who spit out this information and all you had to do is memorize and you never came back to revisit or make any connection with anything. You learn this long enough to take a test and you’re done with it.” Throughout this study Camille made it evident that her teaching is, above all, an attempt to right that wrong: “And so I try always to make these connections, to show just this big picture.” While the “big picture” as she calls it, revolves around free-f lowing expression, she is also concerned with the little picture, the details that determine what impression students make and how that impression will inf luence their future. Again, her own experiences as a student validate this belief: “In college, the transition from high school was a struggle for about two years because for you to tell me to write what I think is absolutely foreign. Because I had never been asked what I thought.” Camille wants her students to be prepared for college, and for her, that means primarily two things: First, that they be able to express what they think and, second, is what she calls “responsibilit y.” Again and again, she emphasizes the importance of students “taking responsibilit y” for their success. Exhibition, she explained at our first meeting, appeals to her because it “makes students more responsible. All of these kids want to go to college. And so the fact that you can’t turn a paper in late in college meant nothing to them.” She teaches students to be more responsible most visibly by holding them to their responsibilities. Using what Swidler (1979) calls a “therapeutic” model of teaching, Camille takes care of her students (Noddings, 1984), aiming to “break down barriers” preventing students from developing (Dennison, 1969) into adults. One of her hallmarks is calling parents to apprise them of student progress. Often she shares stories of calls home, but always there is the coda: “I’m not gonna be there in college to call your parents.” She also tries to serve as a role

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model. “My thing is, I understand. I’m here full time,” referring to the fact that she is enrolled in a master’s program in education, “I bring my books in. . . . And I think it makes it more real to them. They know I’m not bluffing them.”

M E A N I N G , E X P E RT I S E , A N D C H A N G E : B E C O M I N G A C OA C H At the time of the study, both Camille and Brian had been teaching for less than five years, and as relative novices, they shared some similarities with regard to the way they talked about teaching and also the challenges they encountered in the classroom. They were both concerned with authorit y as it relates to their students. Brian asserted his by demanding order and providing clarit y and explicitness. Camille, on the other hand, cultivated the consent of her students through personal appeal and used ambiguit y as a lubricant for potentially sticky situations with students. How deliberate each was about the choices he or she made in the classroom is less clear. Camille was eloquent in expressing her belief that confidence is more important than analytic skills, but I suspect that part of her certaint y about what she should emphasize was determined by what she was able to emphasize. How Camille, Brian, and Al interpreted exhibition (and, by extension, teaching) was inf luenced by a constellation of factors, including where they grew up; what their parents did for a living; where they went to school; what they read; other experiences they may have had with exhibiting, such as athletics, music, or theater; what they believed about education generally; and what they knew about teaching specifically. In all three cases, I found both meaning and expertise to be significant—and interactive—inf luences in the ways these teachers understood and practiced exhibition. In other words, what they thought they should be teaching was both determined by and limited by what they knew about teaching. Brian’s and Camille’s emphasis on management at the expense of planning or assessment bares the hallmark of the novice. By contrast, Al displayed many of the characteristics of the expert pedagogue. His confidence among students and his focus on both curriculum and student performance suggest an emerging commitment as well as a capacit y to organize his practice according to a constructivist orientation. Al’s emphasis on education for disciplinary understanding grew out of twent y years of ref lecting on his job as a history teacher and a coach combined with his involvement in school reform at Oakville High School. It was perhaps serendipitous that the reform mechanism selected for Oakville was the Coalition of Essential Schools because it was through this connection that Al was introduced to the metaphor of teacher as coach. It was also through CES that Al was encouraged to deliberate about the meaning of coaching and was afforded a communit y in which to do so. The combination of experience, communit y, and ref lection served to sharpen what he knew how to do as well as what that know-how meant to him.

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Camille and Brian were in the midst of developing a coherent technical repertoire, even as they attempted to make sense of what it means to change it. For them, the idea of being a teacher seemed much more closely aligned to being a coach. The practice of coaching, however, remains more elusive. While all three teachers talked about coaching and its relationship to teaching, only Al pursued the metaphorical possibilites in any depth. Through the construction of extended metaphors and elaborated narratives, Al constructed form for his theories or schemata (Livingston and Borko, 1989). In other words, Al used language to construct his cosmology of teaching; and when he put that cosmology into practice, he made explicit the link between action and intention. This is not surprising in that only Al had a concrete referent for the concept. It is, however, useful to note what seems to be a need for an experiential referent. That is to say, Al’s resonance with the image of teacher as coach seemed largely a function of the fact that he had real experiences as a coach with which to compare those suggested by this changed image of a teacher. As hoped for by CES, the metaphor of teacher as coach provoked Al to think about his teaching in new ways. And, as his practice attests, he thought systematically about teaching students to understand. Of the three teachers, his pedagogical content knowledge was most sophisticated, and his practice alone approached the ideal of demonstrating mastery described by exponents of exhibition and other coaching pedagogies. The cases of Al, Brian, and Camille are complex and multidimensional. Each takes on the challenge of reform in unique ways, and each ascribes distinctive meaning to his or her teaching. The chapters that follow explore the uniqueness as well as the commonalties of their experiences and understandings. I rely on the portraits presented here to lend focus to my discussions of how these teachers construct and express the meaning of their teaching through interpreting and enacting the practice of exhibition.

TWO

How Reform Means In concentrating on the role of language in making reform meaningful, I am positing a dynamic and developmental relationship bet ween the public social languages of reform and private, pedagogical action. For well over a decade research on policy and practice has attributed the halting progress of instructional reform to teachers’ failure to grasp the “inner intent” (Sykes, 1990) of reforms aimed at changing practice. But this explanation offers little insight into what is really going on when teachers “resist” (Muncey and McQuillan, 1996), “def lect” (Ball, 1990), and “tinker” with (Huberman, 1995) reform. The central argument of this book is that symbolic action, including acts of resistance, def lection, and tinkering, is central to the process of reform. Such action delineates the space bet ween policy and practice, a space which, too often and too simplistically is characterized as a gap. By contrast, I view the space between policy and practice as a site for making sense of the complex, multidimensional, and situated meanings of reform. In arguing that talking about revolutions in one’s practice can be considered a valid and useful means of reforming one’s practice, I draw on three premises of sociolinguistic theory, all of which revolve around the concept of meaning. First is that the meaning of reform is socially constructed; meanings are always multiple, never self-evident, and frequently mutable, depending on the context and circumstances of those interpreting the reform. Second is that there exists a reciprocal and developmental relationship between what we say (language), and what we mean to say or do by saying it (intentionalit y). Put another way, language does not merely represent thought, it helps us constitute those thoughts. Third is that the question of what reform means must, if it is to be a useful question, be posed alongside the question of how that meaning is constructed. Even more than what reform means to various actors (most especially teachers), this book examines how reform comes to have meaning. The remainder of this chapter elaborates on how the meaning of reform is constituted, constructed, and contested in both public and private contexts. 21

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TA L K A S A C T I O N : D I S C O U R S E , R H E T O R I C , A N D L A N G UA G E My focus on how reform means grows out of an increasing trend in research on policy and practice that asserts that practical change must be tied to conceptual change (Ball, 1993; Huberman, 1995; Spillane, Reiser, and Reimer, 2002; Thompson and Zeuli, 1999). Increasingly, scholars are turning to language data as a means of analyzing teacher thinking (Connelly and Clandinin, 1988; Elbaz, 1991; Freeman 1996; Munby, 1990) as well as the culture of reform (Burroughs, Schwartz, and Hendricks-Lee, 2000; Cochran-Smith and Fries, 2001; Hill, 2001). And, increasingly, scholars are situating the study of language use within complex social and cultural contexts (Wortham, 2001). As Freeman (1996) notes, much research on teacher thinking has tended to rely on what he calls a “representational” approach to language data. Talk is treated as a window into the minds of teachers, making visible what they think. Drawing from structural and sociolinguistic theory (Bahktin, 1981; Gee, 1990; Saussure, 1986), Freeman asserts a more complicated relationship bet ween language and thought. He contrasts the representational approach’s static focus on what is said with the more dynamic, “presentational” focus on how it is said. He views language as a social system within which individuals participate, and he advocates an analytic approach that makes explicit the relationship between the content and the context of speech. Central to my own analysis is also a focus on relationships: between thinking and talking, and also between talking and doing. Like structural linguists and sociolinguists, I view language use as a complex cognitive and social phenomenon. I also view language as action (Austin, 1975; Levi-Strauss, 1967; Searle, 1969). My focus on symbolization, or the power of language to construct, as opposed to merely convey, meaning, casts the teachers as central actors and speech as a central act in the process of reform. Al, Brian, and Camille used the languages of educational reform to “talk into existence” (Page, 1991) a new and better way to teach. And they did so within what Talbert and McLaughlin (1993) have called “multiple and embedded contexts.” From the microscopic realm of interactions bet ween teachers and individual students to the wider organizational climate of the school, the district, the communit y, and all the way out to the broad and diverse culture of reform, each of the various contexts within which teachers operate inf luences how they make sense of their work and, therefore, how they respond to reform. Each of the contexts also constitutes its own social system, which is, in part, constructed through language use. Here I identify three levels or categories of language use: Discourse, rhetoric, and language. Drawing from Gee (1990, 2001), I define Discourse (as distinct from discourse) as the sociolinguistic enactment of ideology. In turn, I define ideology, also drawing from Gee, as the tacit formulation of values, beliefs, and ways of being by particular people in particular contexts. Within particular Discourses (such as the

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Discourses of capitalism or environmentalism or communitarianism), we locate ourselves in terms of both ideology and identit y. When we use Discourses, we are articulating belief systems, which, in turn, define us as certain kinds of people. Discourses, or social languages, are evident in public as well as private speech events. They are often revealed in linguistic artifacts of popular culture, such as newspapers, magazines, and television programs, as well as in everyday conversation. Anyone who participates in culture (including teachers) uses Discourses to communicate, though individuals may be more or less conscious of how they do so. Discourses are social phenomena; they are omnipresent fixtures of culture, and they are in constant f lux. Reform Discourses inf luence the development, adoption, and adaptation of reform rhetoric. Rhetoric, which I define as language intended to communicate coherent messages, moves language, ideology, and identit y from the tacit to the explicit. Often, those messages are designed to persuade, and, in seeking to appeal to broadly defined audiences, rhetoric draws from and ref lects multiple Discourses. In this way, rhetoric may function as a codification of Discourse. For instance, since at least the mid-1980s the rhetoric of reform has drawn from the Discourse of economic viabilit y. Talk of correlating inputs and outputs, stimulating productivit y, and enhancing capacit y dominates a good deal of the rhetoric of policymaking as well as policy analysis. Rhetorical codes of educational reform are often framed in terms of problems and solutions, and Discourses inf luence the definition of both sides of the problem/solution equation. Within the Discourse of economic viabilit y, for example, reforming education is framed, rhetorically, as a solution to the problem of a weak economy. From that overarching problem/solution scenario, endless correlates may be developed. The problem of poor education can be associated with the solution of increased accountabilit y. The problem of weak accountabilit y can, in turn, be associated with the solution of high stakes testing, and so on. In the current reform culture, accountabilit y constitutes its own Discourse, which is distinct but overlaps the Discourses of economic viabilit y as well as high-stakes testing. The concept of incentives, for instance, is a feature of all three Discourses, and its meaning varies depending on how it is elaborated within each. Within the Discourse of economic viabilit y, incentive is a naturally occurring dimension of competition, which is a key feature of market activit y. By contrast, within the Discourse of accountabilit y, incentives are instruments of control; they may be set and monitored by policymakers as a means of inducing compliance. In high-stakes testing, the focus on control extends beyond compliance to coercion; here incentives are deployed as either punishment or reward for achieving the desired ends of the reform. In other words, incentives are framed not just as a mechanism of compliance, but as the chief strategy of improvement. Clearly, the meaning of incentives varies significantly depending on the Discourse in which it is used. But when it is codified in rhetoric, the term links all three Discourses in a way that both broadens the appeal of the concept and conf lates its various meanings.

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As a singular concept, accountabilit y’s meaning is limited and neutral: To be accountable is to be able to explain a situation. But, as both a social language and a central feature of reform rhetoric, accountabilit y has come to mean much more. Freighted with not only economic but moral associations, the term has come to stand for a recognizable portion of conservative ideology. To be accountable is to be rigorous, equitable, and forthright, as well as transparent. So prominent is the social language of accountabilit y that it is now shared by reformers of all political stripes. It is recognizable as a code for change. And it seeps into the everyday talk of practitioners as well as policymakers. Where rhetoric is essentially a public phenomenon, I take language to mean private, personal speech events. When I refer to the “languages” of educational reform, I am talking about speech uttered by Al, Brian, and Camille as opposed to the public calls for reform generated by the wider reform culture. The languages that Al, Brian, and Camille use when they talk about reform ref lect both the Discourses of reform and the rhetoric that arises out of those Discourses. Because Al, Brian, and Camille always talk in cultural context (even an interview has a context), the vocabulary, syntax, and themes of their language also contribute to the very Discourses their talk ref lects. In articulating three levels of symbolic action, I mean to portray Discourse, rhetoric, and language as overlapping and interactive phenomena. Each category of action is both social and personal. Each involves the construction as well as the contesting of meaning. Each inf luences the other. And, perhaps most important for this study, negotiating these three dimensions of meaning making involves human agency, which situates the teachers as key actors and speech as a key act in the work of reform. In distinguishing the tacit social languages of reform from the more explicit rhetoric of reform, the ways in which one impinges on the other may be identified and examined. When Al, Brian, and Camille negotiate the multiple Discourses of reform or they attempt to work through the, sometimes competing, agendas embedded in the rhetoric of reform, their language reveals the complexit y of that process. Furthermore, because the content of the reform in question entails changing not only what one does as a teacher, but how one thinks about the practice of teaching as well as what it means to be teacher, language use becomes much more than a window into teachers’ thought processes. Rather, language use serves as a structure to support thinking, a tool for constructing both the meaning of reform and the shape of reformed practice. Al, Brian, and Camille used the languages of educational reform to make sense of the multiple Discourses of reform they encountered as participants in the culture of reform. My analysis of the teachers’ talk together with reform rhetoric led me to identify four distinct but overlapping Discourses. These Discourses are accountabilit y, transformation, disciplinary understanding, and fulfillment. Surely there are other Discourses inf luencing the teachers’ ideologies and identities; I do not claim that the totalit y of these teachers’ thinking about reform can be reduced to these four clusters of ideas and discursive patterns. However, I concentrate on these four as examples of the subtle ways in which participants move

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between Discourse, rhetoric, and language within the complex and multivocal culture of reform. For Al, Brian, and Camille, an important point of entry to the culture of reform was the Coalition of Essential Schools.

P RO B L E M S A N D S O L U T I O N S The brainchild of Theodore Sizer, Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) was born in 1984 and rose to rapid prominence among reformers searching for a progressive response to the era’s signal policy statement A Nation at Risk (ANAR; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The report laid out a laundry list of educational deficiencies wrapped in rhetoric linking educational failure to economic jeopardy, and catapulted education to the center of the American political agenda. That education was a pressing problem seemed clear. Less certain was how to solve the problem. An array of solutions emerged in response to A Nation at Risk’s portrayal of the “crisis” (Berliner and Biddle, 1997) in American education. Solutions attached to personal visions, such as “Core Knowledge” (Hirsh, 1987, 1996) and “Success for All” (Slavin, Karweit, and Madden, 1989, 1994), mingled with more diffuse “movements” for accountabilit y, standards, and professionalization. Amid the clamor of solutions, Sizer’s (1984) streamlined vision of “essential schools” guided by “essential principles” was distinguished by its remarkable capacity to address many of the key precepts of competing approaches to reform even while standing apart from them. The rhetoric surrounding the essential principle of exhibition demonstrates how a single idea emanates from multiple, at times competing, Discourses, which merge to form an ostensibly coherent and appealing message. In this early articulation of the essential principle of exhibition, Sizer draws liberally from what was then an emerging Discourse of accountabilit y. Aiming to prescribe a form of assessment that would require students to “earn” their diplomas, he sketches both the form and function of exhibition: The diploma should be awarded upon a successful final demonstration of mastery for graduation—an “exhibition.” . . . As the diploma is awarded when earned [italics added], the school’s program proceeds with no strict age-grading and with no system of “credits earned” by “time spent” in class. The emphasis has shifted to students’ demonstrating that they can do important things. (pp. 226–227)

In this passage, the reciprocit y bet ween rhetoric and Discourse is apparent. “Earning” serves as a rhetorical code for a version of reform grounded in a particular notion of accountabilit y. The generic notion of accountabilit y as a commitment to measuring success in terms of outcomes was emphatically promoted by the rhetoric of ANAR (“Excellence characterizes a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to reach them.”). This Discourse was also visible in the popular culture of the time. Throughout the 1980s, in fact, earning became prominent as a code for

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accountabilit y in a celebrated advertising campaign for a brokerage house in which a distinguished actor, posing as a chief executive officer, intoned, “At Smith Barney we make money the old-fashioned way, we earn it.” Applied to the problem of education, earning expresses deference to traditional corporate culture, as well as disdain for faddish or trendy solutions. There is more to Sizer’s rhetoric than simply a call for old-fashioned virtues, but the code, nonetheless, situates his message within a discernable (and popular) Discourse. Sizer’s call for reform is embedded in a critique of the factory system, t ypified by Carnegie units, which he calls “time spent” in class. The factory system, which here frames the problem of failing high schools, houses still other problems, including dubious credentialing, meaningless learning, and rigid, depersonalized interactions between students and teachers. Sizer presents the solution as a shift in emphasis from passing through classes (social promotion) to demonstrating mastery. Demonstrating mastery, however, entails the construction of understanding, and the capacity to “do important things” suggests problem solving, reasoning, and other higher order skills associated with constructivist and transformative pedagogies. These, however, are overshadowed by the predominant Discourse of accountabilit y. Within that Discourse, both demonstrating mastery and doing important things are cast as features of the overarching goal of earning one’s diploma. The reach of the Discourse of accountability extends well beyond contemporary calls for corporate style disclosure, hard work, and incentives. In developing the concept of exhibition, Sizer relied on an antecedent found in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury American schooling. There, exhibition referred to an exit event in which students performed publicly as a form of accountabilit y to local authorities (Sizer, 1964). In these exhibitions students recited verse, gave speeches or otherwise reproduced knowledge valued by the communit y. By invoking this early American term and its referent, Sizer achieves the important rhetorical goal of emphasizing rigor and accountabilit y. By linking contemporary discussions of performance or outcome-based assessment to traditional education, he situates exhibition as a means of earning a diploma the old-fashioned way, rather than yet another passing trend. But, the final, declamatory event evokes only part of what it means to exhibit; and other articulations of the concept both elaborate the Discourse of accountabilit y and draw more overtly from other Discourses. When Sizer first promoted exhibition as a form of assessment, he couched it in terms of “incentives.” The diploma, he reasoned, is the carrot, the goal, the “passport to [a student’s] next stage of life” (1984, p. 63). Why not attach the diploma to exhibition as an incentive for students to work hard, to develop mastery, to earn this rite of passage? As CES matured as an organization, so did Sizer’s conception of exhibition. Still grounded in the Discourse of accountabiit y, this later (1992) rationale for the practice continued to emphasize incentives. But now, the notion extended beyond individual student accountabilit y to include the entire school: Exhibitions present the facult y with a basis for deciding how to design and apportion the resources of the school. . . . Finally, Exhibitions provide a

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basis for accountabilit y, especially to the student (How am I doing?) but also to the teachers (How are my pupils doing?), to parents, and to the public. (pp. 160–161)

Here it is clear that exhibition serves t wo distinct purposes. The first is to be a means of assessment, here defined as a “basis for accountabilit y.” A second, equally important, function is as a ref lective tool, “casting a shadow backward” (Sizer, 1990, cited in McDonald, Smith, Turner, Finney, and Barton, 1993, p. 154) to show how best to design a program that will enable students to meet the standards set by the exhibitions. In its allusion to the content as well as the process of change, Sizer’s rhetoric merges the Discourse of accountabilit y with those of both transformation and disciplinary understanding. Like the Discourse of accountabilit y, ideas related to both disciplinary understanding (Bruner, 1977; Cohen, McLaughlin, and Talbert, 1993; Gardner, 1991, 1999) and transformation (Friere, 1970; hooks, 1993; Jackson, 1986) were percolating in the reform culture at the time of the release of ANAR and they inf luenced the principles underlying CES. At roughly the same time ANAR articulated the “problems” of American education for a political audience, a series of scholarly reports (Hampel, 1986; Powell, Farrar, and Cohen, 1985; Sizer, 1984) examining the state of the American secondary school appeared. Authored by prominent scholars, these books were widely read and almost instantly became inf luential in defining the reform discourse of what has been called the “second wave” of educational reform (Elmore, 1990). Sizer’s Horace’s Compromise (1984) was certainly among the most inf luential. The language and logic of his critique of the American high school contains the first articulation of the nine essential principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. It was also the first in a series of three books that, together, comprised what became known as “A Study of High Schools.” And the principles themselves—with their call for smaller, more personalized schools; highly qualified teachers who work together in teams; curricula that aim for depth rather than breadth; and students who focus on demonstrating mastery rather than passing through school—served as a kind of manifesto for the then burgeoning “restructuring” movement. But Sizer was not the only inf luential voice to emerge from A Study of High Schools. Powell, Farrar, and Cohen’s The Shopping Mall High School (1985) leveled a similar critique on the size and scope of the comprehensive high school, in which breadth substituted for depth as students focused just as much, sometimes more, on negotiating the complex social organization of school as on intellectual learning. Hampel’s The Last Little Citadel (1986) offered a historical slant on the challenges of contemporary schooling. Though not part of the series, Lawrence-Lightfoot’s The Good High School (1983) is often considered part of the cohort. Her portraits of “goodness” in a range of American high schools begged the questions that seemed to be on everyone’s minds: Why were so many schools failing? What were students learning in school? How might school be made more rigorous, engaging, and meaningful?

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The nearly simultaneous appearance of Gardner’s Frames of Mind (1983) seemed to hail a parallel development in educational discourse, one that offered a companion solution to the structural problems outlined in Sizer’s Horace’s Compromise. The so-called cognitive revolution with its focus on multiple intelligences, critical thinking, performance-based learning, and authentic assessment helped make the case for a reformed vision of the very structure of learning. This vision, often called “teaching for understanding” (Cohen, McLaughlin, and Talbert, 1993; Elmore, Peterson, and McCarthy, 1996; Wiske, 1998) was based on constructivist theories of learning and called students to engage in an updated version of “learning by doing” (Dewey, 1959) grounded in the “structure of the disciplines” (Bruner, 1977). Teaching for understanding placed renewed emphasis on depth versus breadth and called teachers to act as facilitators of learning rather than transmitters of knowledge. When the rhetoric of exhibition concerns the action of teaching and learning, the discourses of both disciplinary understanding and transformation are evident. The codes for this rhetoric include terms like critical thinking, coaching, and authentic assessment. Consider the following description of an exhibition requiring students to analyze a segment from a Supreme Court decision: Extract from the segment its enduring constitutional principle, cast it in the form of a hypothetical case that might reach the Supreme Court today—a case arising from today’s particular social realities—and assess how you would act on such a case if you were an associate justice of the Court. (Sizer, 1992, pp. 98–99)

Here the task is placed within a context that a constitutional lawyer would easily recognize and, no doubt, find challenging. To structure learning in this way is to “invoke real-world applications” (Newman and Wehlage, 1995), in which students engage in “worthy problems of importance” (Wiggins, 1993). A student who performed successfully would have demonstrated mastery of the skill of textual analysis, the construction of a legal argument, and the abilit y to transfer principles from one setting to another, among other things. Gardner (1991) distinguishes this view of performance from those rote, ritualized performances in which “the exact dimensions of a desired behavior, response or answer have been prescribed” by calling them “performances of understanding” (p. 116). His elaboration on the concept of understanding clarifies the definition of “disciplinary understanding”: Each domain or discipline features its own forms of understanding. . . . Theories that purport to explain the mind and theories that seek to illuminate matter are quite different from one another, and both differ from understandings about living organisms or understandings of oneself as an agent. (p. 117)

Drawing from Bruner (1977), Gardner looks deep within the culture of the universit y to locate not only the forms of understanding characteristic of that venue, but the substance of that understanding as well. Disciplinary understanding, the

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kind sought in graduate schools, is produced and mediated by those who run graduate schools, disciplinary experts. While the key requirement for authenticit y may be the real-world relevance of the task, the demonstration of genuine understanding carries the additional burden of disciplinary expertise. That is, in this view of understanding, “[o]ne who understands can exhibit at least some facets of the knowledge and performances associated with an adult master-practitioner in that domain” (Gardner, 1991, p. 117). Though primarily concerned with school restructuring, CES is committed to improving not only the conditions in which education takes place, but also the way teachers teach. To this end, theorists have articulated an interpretation of exhibition as a move that links disciplinary understanding with accountabilit y. McDonald’s (1991a) definition lays out the essential components: “[Exhibition] measures valued knowledge directly rather than indirectly; demands performance, the application of knowledge, and metacognition; happens in some public setting, and guards the gate to graduation” (p. 1). Again, links to the early declamatory practice are clear in the emphasis on public performance and accountabilit y, but here McDonald prescribes a particular t ype of performance. Students must do more than reproduce knowledge. They must be able to apply it, and they must understand how they came to be able to apply it. In explaining how exhibition can be made an exemplary form of authentic assessment, Wiggins (1993) similarly likens the exhibition to the dissertation defense. Drawing from the model of the oral examination, he imagines the exhibition as a performance in which the student “justifies” his opinions. To be certain, such a performance puts the student on the spot, but the relationship between exhibitor and assessor is similar to that of a doctoral candidate and her thesis adviser. The exhibition is a discussion in which the assessor “is meant to probe, reframe questions, and even prompt an answer” (p. 48). The view of the assessor as ally (Wiggins, 1993) is consistent with CES’s celebrated metaphor of teacher as coach. And Sizer, McDonald, and Wiggins have much to say about the role of coaching in exhibition. Sizer (1992) is adamant that “[t]here should be repeated opportunities and expectations for students publicly to deal with serious material” (p. 160). McDonald (1993) goes further to stipulate the “provision of models” that demonstrate what students should aim for (p. 3). Wiggins (1993) focuses even more on the student–teacher relationship by calling the student an “apprentice liberal artist. . . . Students should be required to recognize, learn from, and then produce qualit y work in unending cycles of modelpractice-feedback-refinement” (p. 49). Performances that transcend mere assessment strategies or rote learning also suggest a deeper, more meaningful approach to learning. Here the Discourse of fulfillment comes into play. In reaching for a transformative and meaningful description of exhibition, McDonald (1993) developed the metaphor of exhibitions as moving images. In so doing, he evokes the condition of embeddedness in both performance and assessment. But he takes a further step toward capturing what actually happens when one demonstrates mastery:

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The discourse of exhibitions as moving images of what students might become . . . has several advantages over the static discourse on outcomes. It honors the recursiveness of human knowledge—the fact that intellectual achievements are never more than personal points of reference in the continuing struggle to maintain intellectual power. (p. 156)

Here the critical change in perspective is signaled by the transformation of the singular exhibition to the plural exhibitions. McDonald means to distinguish between an outcome and an exhibition. While outcomes are usually equated with products, scores, or tasks to be completed, checked off, and forgotten, here exhibitions are living provocations as well as records of excellence. Because excellence or mastery is a moving target, dependent on the development of new knowledge at the highest levels, as well as the abilit y to analyze, generalize, and otherwise use that knowledge at the apprentice level, this articulation suggests that mastery is an evolutionary process. McDonald places exhibition within—rather than apart from—the instructional process. Moreover, the process itself is portrayed in terms of “what students might become.” Becoming, in turn, is a “struggle to maintain intellectual power” and knowledge itself is both “human” and “recursive.” Embedded in this rhetoric are solutions to multiple problems. The Discourse frames the problem, which, in turn, frames the solution. Both earning, and the capacity to do important things embody multiple codes. As an instantiation of the Discourse of accountability, earning, as enacted in the practice of exhibition, refers to a more rigorous and public means of gaining a valued credential. Within the Discourse of transformation, exhibition solves an array of problems associated with pedagogy itself. It stands for a transformed conception of teaching and learning, as well as transformed relationships with students. Within the Discourse of disciplinary understanding, exhibition helps define what students “do” to construct disciplinary understanding (important things) and also how they do it (exhibiting). And within the Discourse of fulfillment, exhibition solves the problem of meaningless education by serving as a rigorous, personal, and culture-bound rite of passage.

C O M M U N I T Y, I D E N T I T Y, A N D T H E L A N G UA G E S O F R E F O R M Though parts of the CES agenda may be mirrored in disparate approaches to reform (core knowledge, at first glance, seems a lot like essential curriculum), the sum of those parts adds up to a distinctive approach to schooling and, even more, to school change (Muncey and McQuillan, 1996). The nine essential principles, what McDonald (1992) calls the “scaffolding” of CES, offer no prescriptions for what or how to teach. They outline no policy or structure for governance. They endorse no test to measure student achievement. Instead, the Discourses of accountabilit y, transformation, disciplinary understanding, and fulfillment merge to form a

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vaguely progressive ideology imbued with references to ideals such as child centeredness, learning by doing, democratic education, and accountabilit y. And these ideals are captured in aphorisms such as less is more and teacher as coach, student as worker. In CES schools, these terms, and others like them, become part of the fabric of the school. They are memorized by teachers, posted in classrooms, incorporated into mission statements, and enacted in practices like exhibition. As an organization that encourages members to share specific habits, values, and norms as codified in principles, I consider CES an exemplary “discourse communit y” (Swales, 1990). CES participants engage in distinctive shop talk, such as teacher as coach, student as worker, and they associate (with more or less specificit y) those terms with distinctive practices, such as exhibition. CES generates and distributes a range of discursive products—newsletters, occasional papers, books—which have the effect of extending and nurturing a global discourse communit y, within which members who may never actually meet may, nonetheless, recognize one another as “coalition people.” Through this wide net work of discourse, both oral and written, CES ideology is elaborated, the slogans are extended and interpreted, and shared identities are formed among people who speak the same language. The presence of a discernible lexicon is only part of what makes CES an exemplary discourse communit y. Along with conceptual structures such as metaphors and aphorisms, CES endorses more formal structures designed to foster communal deliberation about the practice of teaching. In this way, in its localized configuration, CES functions as both a discourse community and a “community of practice” (Burroughs, Schwartz, and Hendricks-Lee, 2000; Wenger, 1998). The organization sponsors national and regional meetings at which participants gather to share stories, to learn about CES developments, and to form and maintain personal networks. More localized formats, such as “critical friends groups,” “Trek,” and school-based retreats, are also features of membership in CES, and Al, Brian, and Camille each participated in these communal aspects of their work at OHS. This strategy of improvement—this “scaffolding”—bows to the power of language to construct the meaning of reform. It also locates teachers squarely at the center of the enterprise of change. Scholars have long identified language as a tool for defining organizational culture and articulating the meaning of change (Anderson, 1998; Reid, 1987). But CES does more than acknowledge culture as context; it aims to provoke conceptual change through participation in that culture; and a good deal of that participation takes place through language use. What Sizer (1984) calls “governing metaphors” enter the culture of CES schools and the vocabulary of CES teachers. Teachers use the terms as “platforms” (McDonald, 1993) for design, ref lection, and assessment of practice. And as teachers use this language, they engage with the theory it suggests, ascribing their own meaning to abstract concepts such as mastery and coaching. Even as the free-f lowing restructuring movement has given way to the viselike grip of testing and standards, the inf luence of discourse communities like

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CES remains visible in reform culture. The staying power of CES rhetoric suggests that language can be deployed as a critical instrument in both articulating a rationale for reform and providing support for deliberation and enactment. Even more, the constructive and communal dimensions of CES rhetoric suggest that discourse communities might serve as more intentional contexts within which to make reform meaningful. Part II of this book looks even more closely at how that process unfolds. Concentrating on the reciprocal actions of talking and doing, chapters 3 through 6 examine how Al, Brian, and Camille construct their own languages of reform within discernible but overlapping Discourses.

PART II

The Languages of Educational Reform

THREE

Exhibition as Test For many teachers, understanding the concept of exhibition begins with the interpretation of exhibition as test. The literature most prominently defines exhibition as an “exit event” (Sizer, 1984), and for many, this image aligns with the traditional final exam. Al, Brian, and Camille made this connection as well. They often compared exhibitions to tests or exams and, in the classes I observed, all three substituted exhibitions for final exams. When Al, Brian, and Camille talked about exhibitions as tests, they almost always did so by way of contrasting exhibitions with more traditional examinations. Brian focused on the “performance” aspect of the practice. Al emphasized the manner in which exhibitions prompt students to demonstrate wider ranges of knowledge, thereby providing more evidence of achievement than traditional paperand-pencil tests. And Camille was most concerned with the way in which exhibition “makes students more accountable.” For all three, exhibitions were “alternative” assessments, meaning they perform the same function as tests—only they are better. This chapter examines the various renditions of these teachers’ interpretations of exhibition as test, and more specifically, as a better test. In analyzing those interpretations as they were expressed by Al, Brian, and Camille, I delve primarily into the theme of accountabilit y, highlighting the varieties of meaning each teacher ascribes to it, and the way it is enacted in the classroom. Finally, I consider links bet ween these interpretations as expressed by the teachers and discourses emanating from the wider reform culture.

A L A N G UA G E O F A C C O U N TA B I L I T Y The vocabulary of educational reform, particularly as it relates to assessment, is surprisingly limited. Words like performance, assessment, portfolio, outcome, demonstrations and understanding do indeed suggest alternative meanings to words like evaluation, examination, or proficiency. And these connotations are almost all associative. That is, policymakers design initiatives and—just as important—attempt to 35

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promote those initiatives based on their reading of what is “current” in the social and political climate. As Reid (1987) notes, the social and political climate within which American education is situated is at once convinced that schooling needs to change and is deeply resistant to change. Acknowledging the tension between the need for and the suspicion of change, policymakers use rhetoric to ease this tension (Anderson, 1998; Edelman, 1977). Through both formal policy reports and published research, key words, such as those listed above, enter the vocabulary of professional education. Reid notes that thirt y years ago a key word was innovation. Since the onslaught of standards-based reform initiatives, a key word has been accountability. Seeming to be acting on cue, Al, Brian, and Camille also expressed a deep concern with accountabilit y, and they articulated this concern most fully when they interpreted exhibition as test. The following passages, taken from transcripts of our first conversations, are each teacher’s response to my request to “define exhibition.”1 Ok. Um, at the very minimum, an exhibition, to me, is allowing the students to share what they have learned about a given topic. As opposed to, for instance, teaching a unit, giving a test and allowing the students to respond to what I think was important in that particular unit. [In] the exhibition, you, as a teacher, say “Okay here is the topic, show me what’s important, show me what you have learned.” And I think that word show, show me, don’t tell me, is a phrase we use to write essays, and I think that really pertains to what an exhibition is. (Al, November 18, 1997) I see it as a demonstration of knowledge. Being able to physically demonstrate, verbally demonstrate to someone what knowledge you have acquired, what knowledge students have acquired or even just improved on. Maybe they didn’t acquire new knowledge but they have gone beyond what they already knew. (Brian, November 18, 1997) The showing or sharing of a work that has been produced by an individual or group of individuals. Exhibition plays a major role in my view of teaching and learning. Through exhibitions, students can “show off” their work to others besides me. (Camille, November 20, 1997)

Though assessment and accountabilit y are evident themes in all three passages, other concerns are also discernible. As opening statements, these excerpts establish speech patterns that remained distinctive for each teacher. I note, for instance, how Al frames exhibition as something a teacher “allows” a student to do, and how that framing, though at first glance overshadowed by his repetitive emphasis on “showing,” suggests to me a palpable interest in transforming his role with regard to students. By contrast, Brian announces his concern for external measures of accountabilit y by emphasizing the abilit y to demonstrate “to someone.”

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Camille’s claim that exhibition is a chance to “show off” to others besides her foreshadows subsequent conversations related to her desire for students to be more expressive, confident, and responsible. Each teacher’s private take on the definition of exhibition ref lects, among other things, multiple versions of the public Discourse of accountabilit y Overlapping interpretations combined with limited vocabulary highlight both the power and the limits of language in guiding practice. For the most part the teachers’ understandings of exhibition were tacit, and for the most part, those understandings remained so. Still, in analyzing their language in the context of their classroom practice (here I define classroom practice as interactions with students as well as course design and evaluation), I was able to distinguish layers of interpretation. To analyze those layers, my treatment of the language of accountabilit y starts with a close look at the vocabulary and syntax that tend to appear in this interpretation. Next, I discuss how Al, Brian, and Camille use diction to explore themes related to accountabilit y. Finally, to demonstrate the overlapping, sometimes contradictory, and often tacit nature of these teachers’ ideologies, I analyze passages of extended talk.

DICTION: “SERIOUS EVENTS” The image of the test usually emerged first because teachers associated exhibition with a concrete practice: the final exam. In elaborating on how exhibitions differ from regular exams—the causes as well as the effects—the overlapping and sometimes contradictory understandings of exhibition as test, pedagogy, curriculum, and rite of passage began to emerge. With regard to vocabulary, certain terms appeared repeatedly. Al, Brian, and Camille often refer to exhibitions as performance assessment, “authentic” assessments, or “demonstration(s) of knowledge.” They also agree that exhibitions are “large, culminating, and serious” events. I noted the linkage of the words assessment and event as a signal of the interpretation of exhibition as test. When teachers used exhibition as a noun, or when they told stories that featured exhibitions as events, as in “You don’t want them [students] going into an exhibition unprepared, ” they were usually thinking of exhibitions as tests. Al’s use of the term final defense distinguishes the final exhibition that “counts” from the “preliminary defense,” an occasion to practice or to get ready for the event. The analogue to preliminary defense is Brian’s and Camille’s term rehearsal. It also is meant to suggest preparation for the final exhibition, and the use of distinct terminology for each event highlights the special status of both. In realit y, the rehearsals and preliminary defense also count, but, as terms, they serve to signal the primary importance of exhibition as a summative versus a formative event (Scriven, 1967).

THEMES: SHOWING AND AUTHENTICITY But what makes exhibitions tests? More important, what makes them better tests? When Al, Brian, and Camille refer to exhibition as an alternative form of

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assessment, they are usually referring to ways in which the practice serves as a form of accountabilit y. At its most basic, the exhibition counted. For Brian, it was the “ticket to junior year.” For Al, it was the “final defense.” And for Camille, it had the power to “keep students from graduating.” Exhibitions were “worth points.” What makes an exhibition a better test? In various ways, each offered a version of Camille’s reply: “It makes them [the students] more accountable.” When Al, Brian, and Camille compared exhibitions to other tests—final exams, chapter tests, even term papers—exhibitions always benefited from the comparison because they are large and public as well as culminating. All three teachers focused on the public nature of the event, but when I asked them to parse the meaning of public event, the theme that dominated was “showing.” Al explains as he elaborates on what makes the performance unique: “As a teacher, I say ‘Okay. Here is the topic; show me what’s important, show me what you have learned.’ And I think that word show—show me, don’t tell me—I think that really pertains to what an exhibition is.” Camille, perhaps not surprisingly, emphasizes the personal investment assumed by public performance: “This is going to be a ref lection of you come exhibition day. This is going to show what you have done, what you have not done, and how prepared or not prepared you are.” For these teachers, showing carries more weight than other forms of assessment. Students who exhibit, they reason, are held to a higher standard because the exhibition is by its very nature more demanding than traditional paper-andpencil tests. Brian insists that exhibitions are “very difficult” because they require students to “do something they’ve never done before.” That “something” is difficult to describe, but all three teachers were emphatic in their conviction that showing, whether it is understood to be performing, sharing, or fielding questions, offers a more legitimate way to assess student work than traditional measures. Partly that is due to the fact that exhibitions are events. They occur at particular times, in particular places, and, most often, they are designed to be final. And finalit y carries its own set of meanings. “An exhibition is a major task,” Brian explains, “when I use the term exhibition—I don’t use it often—I use it to represent something very large and culminating.” Students, in turn, are meant to absorb the gravit y of the event. Brian continues, “I think just the word exhibition has a little prestige to it so they think they’re doing something very important here. It’s inherent to them, that word, that there’s some importance attached to it.” Exhibitions that serve as culminating “performances” might easily be considered features of a teacher’s pedagogy rather than mere tests. And in this case they are both, and more; but the fact that these exhibitions count is what makes them such effective forms of accountabilit y for these teachers. “This is their ticket to their junior year,” explains Brian, commenting on what motivates students to work in his class. That exhibitions count as the final exam is only the most obvious way in which accountabilit y is linked with showing. A more pervasive concern is the way in which exhibitions purport to merge authenticit y with accountabilit y. Al and Brian talk consistently about the impor-

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tance of “authentic audiences.” For both, panels of judges were composed of peers, parents, teachers and, most important, “outside experts.” It is the “outsider” perspective that supposedly lends legitimacy to the exhibition. Brian elaborates on how exhibitions differ from other performance assessments. I can easily craft a good test question that I would consider performance assessment, where a student has to show me what they know and apply what they know. But an exhibition is for an expert out there in the field, for them to evaluate and question and get the students to then go back and even think about what they’ve learned and how they would apply the next step. So exhibition is much more authentic for me than the other assessments.

Al also distinguishes bet ween performances for him and those for an authentic audience: Certainly you have the exhibition that requires an awful lot of work and an awful lot of time and carries a great deal of importance, and that exhibition requires an authentic audience—not just sharing what you know with me, but actually getting an audience out there and demonstrating the knowledge and fielding questions and answering questions from that audience.

Authenticit y, in this context, suggests satisfying individuals or groups outside the sphere of the classroom or even the school. Authentic means public and also real. Students are showing real experts what they know about their field. In theory, the source of authenticit y is in expert status. To be able to stand before an expert and field questions serves as evidence that the student had mastered the material. In practice, however, the expert was less important. Ironically, the expert seldom materialized, and the focus of authenticit y was transformed from demonstrating mastery to a panel of expert inquisitors to being able to stand before the audience—any audience—and field questions. All three teachers talked about outside experts sitting in on panels, but of the exhibitions I observed, only Brian’s included such a person, and more often than not the consultants I observed assumed the role of advocate rather than objective judge or adversary for the student. Students and parents tended to ask the majorit y of questions. Still, the outsider was consistently mentioned whenever teachers referred to exhibitions, to me as well as to students; and the concept of the expert viewpoint dominated all three teachers’ views of exhibition as test. When Camille says “You’re going to have people coming in questioning you on this, ya know, cause they’re going to have experts in their different fields. You wanna make sure you got this right, ” she is using the possibilit y that an expert might be among the judges to enhance the status of exhibitions as forms of accountabilit y. The emphasis on public performance as a form of accountabilit y—an image that harkens back to the early American forerunner of exhibition, the event from

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which Sizer (1984) adapted the concept—also extends to teachers. While exhibition is certainly understood as an assessment mechanism that benefits students, Brian and Camille also highlighted the ways in which they are on display when their students’ work is made public. Camille describes exhibitions as “ref lections” of her work and her course, and Brian talks consistently about “nervousness” associated with “[his] work as much as the student’s on the line.”

EXPOSITION: AMBIVALENCE Teachers’ exposition about exhibition as test reveal their deeper understandings and also their misgivings related to the concept of accountability. When they expound, in the ways that they do here, they link the themes of authenticity and showing with wider concerns of the purpose of the school and their roles as teachers. Themes such as authenticit y and demonstration are, of course, central to the public Discourse of accountability. And part of the power of that Discourse lies in its implications beyond the immediate scope of practices like exhibition. Camille, for instance, recounts an interaction with a student’s parent. As one of several similar stories she told about students, grades, and responsibilit y, this anecdote demonstrates the manner in which Camille experiments with the multiple meanings of accountability and the multiple ways she can enact those meanings in her teaching: I was talking to a student . . . she’s a sophomore. She got an A the first grading period. She missed quite a few days the second grading period and they were excused; she has problems with her back. And, so she got an incomplete the second grading period and the third grading period because she still had some carry over from that. And I had talked to her mom and her mom was like “thank you for being understanding.” Well, she had more than ample time to make up the work and she didn’t do it. And so, those grades changed to Fs. Ya know, and her mother, I thought, I’m gonna hear it from her mom now because, ya know, I’ve prett y much been supportive and have given her all these chances and her mom was fine. I mean, ya know, it’s like, she knew, I mean, there was no reason she should’ve been trying to make things up from the second grading period in the fourth grading period, ya know.

In this passage, Camille’s practice of calling home may be read as double edged. On the one hand, she presents it as a proactive demonstration of her concern for the student. She emphasizes this by recalling the mother’s gratitude to Camille for “being so understanding.” On the other hand, it may be read as a defensive strategy, aimed at satisfying what she considers to be an authorit y figure: a parent. The concern Camille expresses relative to displeasing the mother, “I’m gonna hear it from her mom,” is mitigated by what Camille seems to feel is an obvious moral right: “there was no reason she should’ve been trying to make things up from the second grading period to the fourth grading period.” The final “ya know?” underlines the moral correctness of her position, implying that I, as audience, know

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that she was, in fact, right to fail this student. Camille wants her students and their parents, and also me, to know that she holds students accountable. Her version of accountabilit y seems to call her to play the roles of gatekeeper and facilitator. And her language suggests tension between these two roles. Brian also offers a response to the matter of competing goals. Only his ambivalence centers on the role of the exhibition itself rather than on his teacherly stance: I had the conference yesterday, [with the parent of a student] who this exhibition is going to bring him up so he can pass all of our classes. This is a young man who is not going on to the next level, in any of our classes but English. And he’s gonna struggle with junior English. He is going to the career center; he is not going to be taking any more math. He’ll get the credit so his graduation credits are met and that’s all he needs. Um, social studies, he only has one more requirement; American government, it’s a senior requirement for everybody. That’s all he needs. . . . This kid will not go to college. He, um, ya know, he already has a family to support. He needs to get a uh, . . . a skill in a job so that he can, upon graduation, get a job and start supporting his family. So this isn’t a kid that I worry about stuff like that with.

By opening his discussion with a reference to parents, he, like Camille, highlights his responsiveness, but unlike Camille, his focus is squarely on his accountabilit y to both his client and his standards. Parent conferences, as opposed to the conversations more characteristic of Camille’s parental interactions, are designed to inform rather than to discuss. Before he fails a student, Brian wants it on record that parents have been warned. In this case, he was the bearer of good news: The student will pass all four of the World Connections classes, which will enable him to pass tenth grade. Brian is not troubled by the implication that, were it not for the exhibition—a test that does not measure mastery of any of the skills central to the four Connections classes—the student would fail. The exhibition gives Brian a legitimate means of preventing failure for this student, and this is an outcome that satisfies Brian because this student is not “going on to the next level,” meaning he is not going to college. Here Brian’s role as gatekeeper is starkly practical: Since this student will be going to “the career center [the vocational track],” whatever skills and understanding he obviously lacks will be irrelevant to him in his future life. What this student “needs” is to pass tenth grade so he can get on with his life, a life that Brian, in part by virtue of this exhibition, has been significant in enabling.

V I E W F RO M T H E C L A S S RO O M : E V I D E N C E While all three of the teachers expressed concerns with accountabilit y, with the impact exhibition has on standards, and with the special role of exhibition in satisfying experts, Brian’s exhibition, Resumé, most vividly demonstrated the

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interpretation of exhibition as test. And exhibitions that are tests—as opposed to pedagogies or curricula or rites of passage—demand particular roles for teachers. More than Al or Camille, Brian valued order, consistency, and predictabilit y in his interactions with students. His immaculately kept classroom, his insistence on posting daily agendas, even the carefully pressed and coiffed manner in which he composed himself, all demonstrated an insistent concern with clarit y, order, and standards. Brian wanted students to know what is expected of them, and he believed the Resumé project helped them learn to do that. Two weeks prior to the Celebration of Learning, Brian’s students have drafted their resumés and begun to turn their attention to preparing for the event. Brian has walked them through each step of the drafting process. From career objective to academic skills to work habits, in thirt y-five-minute blocks of class time, students have composed and turned in sections of their resumés for Brian to approve. Students who have missed any one of the steps are considered “incomplete.” That is, students themselves are associated with unfinished work and their names are listed on the board under the label Incomplete. Each section or “step” of Resumé (including the final product and presentation) is worth a number of points; and for each day a student’s name remains listed, they lose points. Brian has lists of incompletes for all his classes, and a ritual of every period involves checking newly completed work and allowing students to erase their names from the board. I have been watching Brian teach Resumé for three months and now that the project is nearing its climax I notice a palpable surge of energy in the class. I cannot tell if the source of that energy is Brian or the students, or both. Brian has told me over and over again throughout the semester that he is nervous for his students. He fears they will “fall behind,” and urges them to stay on top of their work instead of “letting it build.” He wants them to “accomplish what they need to accomplish.” The class begins, as it always does, with Brian going over the agenda he has just written on the board: “Okay let’s take a look at what we’re doing this morning.” 1. Hand in drafts 2. Go over rubric 3. Compile evidence

“Those of you who turn your drafts in tomorrow morning, I’ll try to have them graded by the time we meet in Resumé.” He is standing in front of the board, calling and erasing names as students hand in their drafts. “Those of you who turn in the resumé by the end of today will get your ten points.” “Now I want to pass out the rubric so you’ll know how you’ll be evaluated.” He distributes a white sheet of paper, labeled “Educational Resumé Rubric.” The rubric is a box chart explaining the criteria judges will use to evaluate each student’s work. The rubric addresses three categories of student work: the resumé, the portfolio,

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and the presentation. Brian refers to the first two as “the products.” Headings read from left to right. To the right of the category heading is a box labeled “descriptor.” Here are listed the criteria each judge will be looking for (see appendix B). “Let’s just talk about the resumé. It will be evaluated based on neatness, proper format, completeness.” Brian reads directly from the sheet, and students follow along silently. “Many are very neat. . . . Some look like they’ve been lying on the bottom of your book bag.” To the right of the descriptor column follow four standards: distinguished, very good, satisfactory, and substandard. Brian elaborates on the criteria for each level, focusing almost exclusively on presentation. “Distinguished. High-qualit y, unlined paper.” He offers suggestions about where to purchase resumé paper. “It should be higher qualit y then the stuff that comes out of the Xerox machine.” “Anything missing and you’re bumped to the next category.” He refers generally to the manner in which requirements are subtracted as the standards descend. Most criteria for evaluation focus on neatness and proper format. For example, all acceptable resumés must be t yped on unlined paper, and a distinguished resumé may have no grammatical errors, while a very good resumé may have only one. Completeness is an inf lexible standard, and Brian makes this clear as he turns his attention to the substandard criteria. “If you’re missing any one of the six categories [categories are the headings on the resumé: Heading, Objective, Career Exploration, Work Habits, Academic Skills, Learning Outside of School, you’re already bumped to substandard.” He turns to the portfolio, the loose-leaf notebook students will use to collect and organize all the documents that have until now been stored in manila envelopes in a milk crate. The portfolio will be evaluated according to: neatness of product creativity of product

“The only difference between distinguished and very good is originality or creativit y of the portfolio.” He does not elaborate on what constitutes original or creative work. Instead, he moves quickly to a discussion of evidence, highlighting the fact that the rubric devotes more than one-half of its space to presentation, and two-thirds of the criteria for judging the presentation are devoted to the compilation and explanation of evidence to support the claims made in the resumé: “If you’ve said you’ve achieved perfect attendance, you have to have evidence of that.” As he moves through the rubric, reading verbatim from the bulleted criteria—“explains with specificit y and detail, offers well-thought-out answers to questions; evidence profoundly supports each skill or habit”—the students are silent. Finally, Mike calls out “Who’s gonna grade our resumés and portfolio?” Brian does not seem to understand the question. He answers, “We’ll do two rehearsals,” referring to the practice performances leading up to the presentations at the Celebration of Learning, “so you can develop poise and confidence.”

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Rather than address Mike’s question directly, Brian acts as though Mike were asking about the presentation. He wants students to know that he will not be grading the presentations (though he will grade the resumés and portfolios); and he wants them to know that how they perform, including how they present themselves, counts for the audience that will make up each student’s panel. To emphasize the point, he offers, “You have a choice not to dress up in a suit, but you will be graded down for that.” With t went y minutes left of the fift y-minute class, he sets his students to work on finding evidence to support their claims. Then, he seats himself at a long, rectangular table devoted to “conferencing,” and waits for students to approach. He reminds students that they should not ask for a conference unless they have work to show him. He does not want to see or hear anything that might suggest they want him “to do the work for them.” Sally steps up. She wants to know how she can use a geometry test as evidence of her “problem-solving skills.” Brian says, “Fine. Where do you have evidence that you have problem-solving skills?” Her jaw drops and she squints her eyes in confusion. Brian tries another tack, “How did you demonstrate problemsolving skills? What did you use to solve the problem?” “My brain!” Sally nearly shouts. “That’s not a problem-solving skill,” Brian calmly admonishes. He pauses for five seconds, then adds, “You can do this.” Finally, Sally begins to describe a process of trial and error. “That’s a problem-solving skill,” Brian says as Sally nods. Brian repeats in what sounds oddly like an accusation, “You can do this,” as a signal that Sally is dismissed, and she continues to nod.

SOCIAL EFFICIENCY AND T E A C H E R A S G AT E K E E P E R At various times in conversations, all three teachers addressed the utilitarian purpose of school as a gateway to some other, presumably better, destination. And for all three, at various times, exhibition was seen as an excellent tool for meeting that goal. Al, Brian, and Camille all perceived themselves to be preparing students for college; and learning to “field questions,” to “demonstrate for the public,” and “to be more responsible” were all understood to be skills necessary for success as students at whatever awaited them as the next level of education. “College is just a continuation of education,” Brian declares in explaining his goals for Resumé, “so I’m gonna assume that they understand that this level of expectation comes from there.” The emphasis on greater accountabilit y hints at deeper beliefs about the purposes as well as the sources of accountabilit y. Beliefs about accountabilit y hint at deeper assumptions related to teaching and schooling. Satisfying powerful groups such as parents, the school principal, and the school board is the mandate of teachers whose own merit, increasingly, is measured by proficiency scores. Increasingly, those in power demand evidence of student achievement. Brian is trying very hard to provide that evidence. More particularly, he is trying very hard to teach students the importance of being able to deliver that evidence.

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Brian is teaching his students to be students. In both form and content, Brian’s exhibition ref lects two traditional purposes of American schooling: vocationalism and credentialing. These goals were first articulated nearly a century ago, when the U.S. Bureau of Education issued the Report of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education of the National Education Association. The report enumerated seven “principal aims in education,” and in so doing articulated the nation’s most inf luential statement of educational purpose of the twentieth century. The “seven cardinal principles,” as they came to be known, were memorized by aspiring teachers, incorporated into official curricula, and used as a standard against which schooling was measured for decades. These seven aims are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

health command of fundamental processes worthy home membership vocation civic education worthy use of leisure time ethical character

The linking of what Labaree (1997) refers to as “private goods” (worthy home membership, worthy use of leisure time, health) with “public goods” (vocation, civic education) suggests a social role for education. And the first sentence of the report—“Secondary education should be determined by the needs of the societ y served, the character of the individuals to be educated, and the knowledge of educational theory and practice”—makes the case for what came to be known as education for “adjustment” (Graham, 1995, p. 13). Adjustment, furthermore, was couched largely in terms of vocation: “As a citizen, he [the student] must to a greater extent and in a more direct way cope with problems of communit y life, state and national governments, and international relationships. As a worker, he must adjust to a more complex economic order.” The rhetoric of contemporary school reform invokes remarkably similar purposes. To help citizens adjust to a “more complex economic order,” the Clinton administration endorsed “school-to-work” initiatives. Similarly, Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” agenda aims to provide students with “increasingly complex skills” as members of the nation’s “workforce.” Closer to home, two of the three teachers I studied made vocation the explicit subject of their exhibitions. While both Camille and Brian expressed deep concerns for adjustment, each approached this goal using different methods. Camille aimed to facilitate students’ movements toward adulthood, “whatever that means to them,” but Brian believed he knew what it meant. He viewed his role as helping his students grasp that meaning. While the Resumé project purports to look beyond schooling toward students’ futures as professionals, the message implied by the activities of the project is that getting to be a veterinarian or an architect is arduous. Students should not assume that any career is open to them. They should, at the age of fifteen, be

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carefully considering what they need to do to move toward their future. And what they need to do is satisfy authorities.

THE RUBRIC AND THE EXPERT: SYMBOLS OF ACCOUNTABILITY Brian’s careful, almost reverent, treatment of the rubric is t ypical of how he interacts with students; but in the context of exhibition, what first appears to be his regular manner of going over material takes on new significance. For Brian, the rubric is more than a guideline or set of criteria for student performance. It is a symbol of his role as a teacher. The degree to which students adhere to the requirements described (however cryptically) provides evidence of what they know. The rubric objectifies the task of evaluation. It is a mirror of the daily agenda and the routinization of his teaching. For Brian, its greatest value is that it makes explicit what is required. He wants students to know exactly what is expected of them so there will be no excuse for failing. The rubric states the rules of the game, and Brian believes that if they know the rules, they will be able to play. Brian wants as many students as possible to win his game, but he is a realist. He knows there will be both winners and losers, and part of his job is to make that process of winning or losing a little more orderly, a little more explicit, and a little more fair. The rubric stands for explicit (and in Brian’s mind) “objective” standards; and in that sense, it serves as a powerful tool in his quest for accountabilit y. It is important to note that while Brian does want the game to be fair, he has no interest in changing the rules. The game, here, is what Metz (1978) refers to as the “moral order.” She developed the concept of the moral order in conjunction with her study of authorit y relationships in diverse high school settings. Authorit y, she argues, is negotiated bet ween superordinates and subordinates. Both parties’ allegiance to the moral order is what holds the relationship together. If the subordinate rejects the moral order or seeks to define a different one, authorit y breaks down. For Brian, the moral order is academic success with the eventual goal of productive adulthood, which is delineated by both vocation and credentials. Learning to be a student is a key way of maintaining the moral order. Maintaining the moral order is also a method of social reproduction (Giroux, 1983). The rigorous public exhibition prepares students for the next stage of their education. For students destined for college as the next stage of education, Resumé served as a realit y check and a glimpse of what their futures as professionals might entail. For others, however, Resumé served as a sorting mechanism. Willie wanted to be an auto mechanic, and he planned to leave OHS to attend a local vocational school at the end of the school year. I watched Willie struggle with every stage of Resumé. Ultimately, he did not turn in a final product, and failed all four of the courses for which Resumé served as the final exam and, as a result, he was forced to repeat tenth grade for a third time. Near the end of the preparatory stage of Resumé, I asked Brian what he thought Willie was learning:

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If Willie’s gonna get anything, its gonna be how a big job like this would have been easier if he’d kept up from the beginning. He’s gonna at least understand the basics of resumé format. He’s gonna at least understand what t ypes of things have to go on a resumé and what’s expected, um. But hopefully, . . . I can reiterate to him how this was a major job to do . . . and just to keep up with the steps rather than allow yourself to always be a little bit behind is a lot easier.

Brian’s aspirations for Willie are limited to task-oriented, organization skills. He refers to “basics,” and “keeping up.” He does not allude to Willie’s career or to the talents he should develop or the accomplishments he should highlight in looking toward his future. The moral order, as interpreted by Brian, and as enacted in both the subject matter and pedagogy of Resumé, decrees that students not destined for college demonstrate different needs. Sorting, of course, is an effective way to achieve accountabilit y if the moral order accepts that only some can win. As Goodlad (1997) has pointed out, there has almost always been a gap between what we think schools should do and what they actually do. Our romantic vision of schooling has almost always emphasized the goal of equit y and achievement for all, but in realit y schools have always sorted. Graham (1992) extends this argument even further, asserting that achievement for all represents a radically new purpose for schooling, and one that places great strains on the current mechanisms of public education. As a feature of CES ideology, exhibition is one strategy aimed at addressing this new goal. In claiming that all students should be able to “do important things,” that all students can achieve, CES redefines the goal of adjustment. And in enumerating its own set of principles geared toward structuring schools equipped to realize that goal, CES enacts a vision of school improvement driven by this ideology. Using exhibition as a means of accountabilit y highlights the tension introduced by this goal. For Camille and Brian, talking about exhibition as a form of accountabilit y inf luences how they enact the practice. As they experiment with the multiple meanings of accountabilit y, their conceptions of exhibition as test grow more complex. Exhibition is a test for both showing and sharing. It challenges students to demonstrate knowledge and teachers to make it possible for students to perform in cumulative and public ways. The teachers’ language both ref lects public concern for external measures of achievement and suggests a desire to make exhibition more than merely a test. Chapter 4 also addresses a revised version of the goal of adjustment. Only this version relies on a significantly different set of assumptions and methods, and it replaces the languages of accountabilit y with those of transformation.

FOUR

Exhibition as Pedagogy The interpretation of exhibition as test is closely tied to that of exhibition as pedagogy. For Al, Brian, and Camille, assessment is an important piece of their teaching, and they found that exhibition brought the two even closer together. When they thought of exhibition as standing for the whole of their teaching (as distinct from their approaches to assessment or the content of their courses), they were almost always highlighting ways in which their practice was new, had changed, or differed from the way they were taught. Just as exhibition stands for a new and “better” method of assessment, so does it stand for a “better” method of teaching. But the links between these two interpretations reveal an important point of tension in the teachers’ understanding of the meaning of exhibition. Both interpretations are meant to stand for a “different” and “better” way to teach, but the ways in which they differ are diametrically opposed. Exhibition as test emphasizes the need for accountabilit y and prescribes the role of gatekeeper for the teacher. By contrast, exhibition as pedagogy emphasizes the abstract goal of transformation and prescribes the role of facilitator for the teacher. Both interpretations are political; but the former aims to preserve the status quo while the latter aims to change, even subvert, it. Looking closely at the ways in which Al, Brian, and Camille constructed the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy uncovers some of the subtle ways in which they strained to reconcile these conf licting understandings of practice. Focusing on commonalities as well as differences among the three teachers’ language, I highlight the distinguishing features of the language of transformation. The pedagogy of exhibition is one of construction, expression, emancipation, and, above all, change. Perhaps not surprisingly, gaps between teachers’ talk about exhibition and their practice are greatest when the talk is about exhibition as pedagogy. Here, terms that have few referents in the concrete experience of teachers, like cooperative learning, critical thinking, and coaching, function largely as jargon. They camouf lage the difficulties teachers face as they attempt to enact a constructivist and transformative pedagogy. 49

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I begin by analyzing the diction, themes, and stories that herald the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy. Much of the vocabulary of exhibition as pedagogy overlaps with that of exhibition as test, but the meanings of words like performance, responsibility, and authenticity were altered when the language of accountabilit y gave way to talk about critical thinking, cooperative learning, and coaching. In addition, more than any other interpretation, the understanding of exhibition as pedagogy prompted Al, Brian, and Camille to tell stories about their teaching and their learning. These stories featured climactic metamorphoses that dramatized the difficult y of constructivist teaching as well as the rewards that accompanied commitment to pedagogy. In explicating the language of transformation, I highlight the abstract and sometimes contradictory nature of the teachers’ language. Next, I demonstrate the manner in which those contradictions are enacted when teachers attempt to coach guided by language that obscures more than it clarifies practice. Finally, I consider the gaps between language and action, speculating on how those gaps fit into wider theories of schooling and societ y.

A L A N G UA G E O F T R A N S F O R M AT I O N The language, and particularly the vocabulary, of transformation stood out because it was marked by phrases such as critical thinking, cooperative learning, studentcentered teaching, and teacher as coach. Because these phrases often represented abstractions rather than concrete experiences or knowledge, when asked to elaborate on their meaning, all three teachers tended to engage in free-form, discursive exposition, linking one murky term with another, searching, it seemed, for examples from their teaching or images from their past to give life to the words. When teachers interpreted exhibition as test, they defined. When they interpreted exhibition as pedagogy, they narrated. Mostly they talked about principles and strategies aimed at motivating students to perform, to “do the work.” Themes such as choice, thinking, and change all appeared repeatedly, and those themes were linked, alternatively, with moral fervor—talk about what students “need” and what is “right”—and practical mandates—keeping students “on-task,” getting them to “keep up,” and managing “eighteen different projects.” This concern with personalized, student-centered learning, in which the teacher is a guide rather than a transmitter of knowledge, corresponds with one of t wo overarching themes of exhibition as pedagogy: constructivism. Constructivism is a learning, rather than a teaching, theory. Since well before the term entered common usage, theories of teaching based on experience (Dewey, 1959) and expression (Parker, 1896) have been a feature of American education. Adherents assert that all knowledge, from infancy on, is constructed by learners themselves rather than transmitted by some outside intervener, such as a parent or a teacher. The construction of knowledge takes place in social and cultural context, and individuals such as parents and teachers and peers are important factors in

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how knowledge is built; but when all is said and done, the learner is the primary agent (Vygotsky, 1978). Most advocates of pedagogies aimed at responding to the constructivist impulse acknowledge the importance of teachers in “scaffolding” the development of understanding, but they emphasize that the role of the teacher in constructivist classrooms is significantly different from that of the teacher who believes that knowledge is something to be transmitted from teacher to student (Gardner, 1991; Resnick, 1987; Sizer, 1984). Constructivism and transformation (Freire, 1970; hooks, 1993; Jackson, 1986) are closely aligned in this formulation in that one goal of transformative pedagogy is for learners to change or transform their understandings and perceptions through the construction of new knowledge and skills. The concept of transformation extends beyond this cognitive definition, and I will address those extensions at the close of this chapter. The themes of constructivism and transformation, while implied whenever Al, Brian, or Camille used the language of transformation, were never explicit features of their talk. Al, Brian, and Camille never used the terms.1 Still, they all expressed conviction that this “new” way of interacting with students was better than the old ways in which they, themselves, had been taught. “Newness” or “change” were much more overt themes in their discourse. I call this theme “negation” because of the manner in which all three teachers attempted to articulate their understanding of what it means to “coach” by negating or “denunciating” (Burke, 1966; Freire, 1970) old ways of teaching. They characterize the old ways in terms of “lecturing,” “reviewing,” “giving quizzes,” and “showing videos.” Alternatives to these strategies include “journaling,” “cooperative learning,” “conferencing,” and of course, “exhibiting.” Through both exposition and narrative, the teachers explored the relationship among these strategies and the theories in which they are grounded. The stories they tell are moralit y tales and parables of conversion, infused with moral authorit y, struggles between good and evil, and the quest for enlightenment for themselves as well as for their students.

DICTION: “LEARNING PROCESS” The most notable distinction in language use evident in the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy is the appearance of the verb to exhibit. Brian describes the exhibiting as “being able to physically demonstrate, verbally demonstrate to someone what knowledge you have acquired.” Elaborating on how exhibitions allow students “to show what they know,” Al describes exhibiting as “another way for kids to reach teachers.” Exhibitions were no longer bounded events. Instead they were ongoing “experiences.” Camille talks about students “having the experience” or a “course where they have had to exhibit.” Exhibiting is an ongoing, f luid “process.” Al commented, “I am trying to teach processes to get the students to the content.” By exhibiting or “practicing” the set of skills Al had prescribed for his course, the process became the method. Brian simply called it

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“coalition work”: “When you’re doing coalition work . . . you can’t follow your old routines.” Whether they used the verb exhibit, or synonyms such as work, experience, process, or method, what is significant is that all these words connote action. Understanding exhibition as pedagogy means seeing it as something larger, more f luid than a single event. Unlike the summative event suggested by exhibition as test, exhibition as pedagogy is not a one-shot deal. It characterizes an ongoing approach to organizing content as well as a way of interacting with students. It also represents a different way of teaching. Chapter 5 will focus on the differences inherent in organizing content, or curriculum design. Here I concentrate on the ways in which the teachers interpreted pedagogy as a different way of interacting with students. Al, Brian, and Camille were all exhilarated by the idea that they were participating in something large and something different. They were clear that this work was “important.” But when it came to detailing the specifics of why it was important, more often than not, they were vague. All three grasped at words—teaming, creativity, expression—in an effort to capture their ideas of pedagogy. But, often, they seemed to insert those words into sentences that offered little to clarify their meaning. Camille’s language reveals two ways in which this strain is suggested. The first is a reliance on allusion when talking about aspects of her pedagogy she associates with exhibition. Another is the tendency to describe reformed teaching in terms of what it is not. Elaborating on her role “as someone, who’s there to help and guide [students],” Camille veers into the topic of critical thinking: And one of the things . . . we always talk about is critical thinking. And how you don’t just take things off the surface. You gotta look beyond the surface information. And so, in writing “why are you saying this?” Ya know, “where is your evidence of this?” And so [I’m concerned with] discipline in that sense, in that I don’t go in the classroom and at the end of every class day say, “Okay, this is your homework for tonight.” I give them a class schedule for the whole grading period. And unless something changes, they know when they’re gonna have quizzes. They know when they’re gonna have tests. They know when papers are due. . . . But they kind of kick it in gear as they get used to that process.

As she free-associates around the themes of discipline and guidance, Camille provides a thumbnail definition of critical thinking: looking “beyond the surface.” She indicates that critical thinking is related to discipline, but seems less certain about how. She attempts to make the link using t wo examples: writing and selfmastery. She first equates thinking critically with “evidence,” the abilit y to back up statements. When she shifts her attention to discipline, she indicates a relationship bet ween her students developing the capacit y to self-monitor and the abilit y to “look beyond the surface information.” This link between critical think-

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ing and self-mastery (as evidenced by the abilit y to keep a schedule) alludes to one of Camille’s overarching goals: teaching students to be more responsible. Al’s exposition also meanders in a similar free-form fashion. He tosses in words as if he were experimenting with how they sound as well as what they mean. Elaborating on what it means for teachers to be coaches, he says: Well, it’s our old adage about guide-on-the-side, you know. I think one of the big things is that if I lecture on a topic, that’s all I have to know at that particular time. The realit y is I’m gonna lecture on the Emancipation Proclamation, that’s what I know. But if I’m doing an exhibition on the Civil War, I need to know an awful lot. It forces the teacher to be broader. It also forces you to talk, ’cause there will be questions you can’t answer, or may not have the skills to answer. In a sense, I’m not teaching content as much as I am trying to teach processes to get the students to the content. And I think that’s the big change.

He begins and ends this discussion with a focus on process, noting, finally, the general “change” in his teaching. But in bet ween he shifts the emphasis to content. He takes an almost defensive position, asserting that coaching is more (not less) demanding of teachers. Here he bows to the press for accountabilit y. Recalling the language of exhibition as test, he uses terms designed to persuade a skeptical audience. Words like knowledge and breadth imply old-fashioned virtues associated with traditional, transmission-oriented teaching. Even though Al means to explain how his teaching is anything but old-fashioned, his diction belies his own education as well as an awareness of his audience. These confusions highlight the complexit y of the process of change as it relates to the challenge of constructing meaning. While the vocabulary and grammar associated with exhibition as pedagogy are distinctive, words or phrases alone were rarely sufficient to deal with the themes these teachers explored. When teachers used words associated with the pedagogy of exhibition, they quickly moved into larger discussions of relationships among ideas such as choice, power, and change.

THEMES: CHOICE, POWER, AND CHANGE Teachers who are coaches value personalization, choice, and democracy. Camille comments on the impact of modifying the Utopia unit without consulting her students: “My concern with that was we’d given the students a choice and if we don’t hold to that, what is that gonna tell them or give them the impression of us as teachers in a decision-making process.” Choice was understood as a way of motivating students, as a way of getting them to do the work. Camille’s reference to the “decision-making process” invokes another tradition associated with American schooling: democratic education.

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Citizenship has been a pervasive concern of policymakers and philosophers since the founding of the republic. So central is the notion that democracy and education should be linked, that many assume that American education is, in fact, democratic education (Barber, 1992; Kerr, 1997; Sennett, 1980). Likewise, the rhetoric of democratic education finds its way into the discourse of conservative as well as liberal ideologies, and it lingers above all four of the interpretations of exhibition examined in this book. When this theme appears in the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy, democracy is associated with choice, which is understood to be a function of power. Al directed me to Joe, a nontraditional student who had returned to OHS to complete his high school education. He used Joe as an example of someone who seemed to thrive in Thesis in History, despite the fact that he was “someone who doesn’t do school very well.” Al linked Joe’s success to choice: “I felt he would enjoy this class because he got to choose what he was gonna learn. Not the system choosing what he was gonna learn. And he bought into that.” Al’s use of the term the system suggests both an oppressive role for education and a subversive role for exhibition as pedagogy. Al acknowledges that Joe views “the system” as an antagonist; he uses the theme of choice to communicate his stance as facilitator rather than gatekeeper. He and Joe are allies. All three teachers had designed their exhibitions to be personalized; that is, students pursued individualized projects that required them to define their topic, keep track of their own progress, and synthesize their work in the final exhibition. Making choice a hallmark of their pedagogy assumed that choice would lead students to be personally invested in their work. Choice was also a significant factor in shaping teachers’ use of time and space in the classroom, as well as their approach to assessment. Brian equates choice with creativit y, suggesting an approach that makes learning more “meaningful”: “I think that’s a little more meaningful when they create the learning rather than my giving them the learning.” For Al, choice also meant that expertise was distributed among the students. “And I’ll tell them,” he assures me, “I’ll say, ‘when you get up and talk to this class, you’ll know more about your topic than anybody else in this classroom, including me.’” When spoken to his class, a statement like this is meant to appeal to students’ desire for power, for voice. It authorizes them to take charge of their own learning. When it is spoken to a colleague or a researcher, it underscores a deeper assumption about the teacher’s role with respect to students. Here choice is associated with power, and in this context, Al was explicit about his desire for his students to share power. When Camille explores the theme of choice, she also emphasizes her role as it relates to power, and her logic extends beyond the practice of exhibition into the whole of her teaching. She wants to be among her students, and she wants her students to feel empowered by her presence among them. Camille’s understanding of the relationship bet ween power and choice even extends to where students

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choose to sit. When I ask her why she rearranges her room so frequently, she tells me it is a way of teaching her students to be spontaneous. To have sense of creativit y, to know that you can be in different places and still get things accomplished. Um, it doesn’t have to be this structured setting. You can still learn with the desks all over the place as opposed to them in these nice neat straight rows. Um, ya know, I sit in with them. I’ve sat on the f loor. I sit on the desktops, I mean, I just try to fit, blend right in with them so that they’re not intimidated that I’m standing behind that podium up there or that I’m sitting behind this desk talking to them. It’s like, you wanna be in the mix and you want them to know that you’re right there with them.

For Camille, the organization of her room symbolizes her role as facilitator and her value of freedom. When she gets “in the mix” so that “they know” (emphasis mine) she is “right there with them.” She is also symbolizing, through gesture rather than language, a role that is different from that of traditional teachers who “stand behind podiums” and “intimidate” students. Being spontaneous means being able to make choices quickly and freely. Choice, for Camille, begins with politics and leads to pedagogy. This emphasis on distinguishing traditional from coaching pedagogy amplifies the overarching theme of transformation. All three teachers highlighted the degree to which practices like exhibition represented a “change” in their teaching or a change from the way in which they were taught. Often, they focused on the ways in which their practice differed from that of colleagues. Al often told me that he thought all history teachers should be teaching “at least one” section of Thesis because it would give them a chance to see how students really learn. Just as often, however, he paused to note that many of his colleagues “couldn’t handle it”: “Some couldn’t handle coming in here and having kids over here at this computer and kids over here.” As he elaborates on why they could not handle it, he seems to be expressing a dualit y: It’s great, but it will “drive teachers nuts.” When you come into the room . . . there’s a lot of conversation in our room. Uh, you have to listen carefully because there are some conversations that, yeah, are about what we’re doing this week. And there’s a lot of conversation about “Guess what I found out?” “Guess what I’m trying to find?” “Where’d you find that?” “Can you tell me about this?” There’s an awful lot of kids teaching kids. But they don’t even know they’re teaching. You know, and they don’t even know they’re learning. They’re just having talks about their topics. And so, that’ll just drive teachers nuts.

The dualit y—great, but crazy making—is a constituent feature of this changed approach to teaching. It is also mysterious. Not being able “to handle” it suggests

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that “it” is somehow a larger, more unwieldy force than most teachers—including Al—may be used to. Mystery often accompanies change, and it is one of the appeals of coaching. Camille also talks about the abilit y to handle classes characterized by a high degree of choice, but her focus is on students: “A lot of them don’t know how to handle it, which causes a lot of people talking or getting off task because they’re not used to someone giving them this time and saying, This is what we’re gonna work on.’ They’re not used to that.” Similarly, Brian notices “more frustration right now because they’re having to do something harder than they’ve had to do before. They’re having to create their own statements, themselves.” Getting students used to handling themselves is a large part of Camille’s and Brian’s agendas. But the frustration all three express seems to imply a deeper level of unfamiliarit y. When Camille talks about students who are “not used” to coaching pedagogy, and when Al says that all the running around and the chaos “drives teachers nuts,” and when Brian talks about students’ frustration at doing what they have “never done before,” all three are expressing their attraction to and also befuddlement by the vagaries of coaching. Learning how to coach is, itself, a process. It puts the teacher in touch with students’ experience as learners; and learning, all three imply, is a deeply puzzling enterprise. Part of the mystery, if it is indeed a mystery, may stem from the abstract nature of the language of transformation. Like Al and Camille, Brian also engages in free-associative discourse, often as a way, it seems, of making sense of the abstractions. In elaborating on how different coaching is from other pedagogies, he expounds on his own growth: I remember that first year, I was very apprehensive as to my students, my work compared to my teammates’ student work. Um, but that takes a year of learning how to be a good coach. Learning how to ask the right questions. Learning how to push the kids to go to the next level. Um, and again the team modeled that behavior for me so that now I can do it really well.

Though learning to be “a good coach” is boiled down to asking “the right questions,” and “pushing” students “to the next level,” Brian makes the experience of learning his central subject. He also alludes to learning as elevation or enlightenment, highlighting once again the elusive, arcane qualit y of true learning, and also suggesting that when teachers think about exhibition as pedagogy, they are thinking about the process of learning. All three teachers use talk to translate the abstractions of transformation in meaningful practical action. In their quest to understand what transformative and constructivist teaching is, teachers frequently turn to what Kenneth Burke (1968) calls a language of “the all important negative” (p. 268). When they lack concrete examples of what they are doing, they focus on what is not a feature of coaching pedagogies. Camille is the most fervent in her use of this strategy: “I think there

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is more to school than standing in front of a class . . . reading information or just lecturing off of notes. And giving a test or a quiz every Friday.” In explaining what she would do as an alternative, she lists a number of ways in which students can “show what they know.” Not surprisingly, she falls back to the language of exhibition as test, perhaps because that language is most concrete; she knows what students can do to show what they know. But, in this passage, she imbues her rhetoric with the larger concerns of pedagogy rather than simply assessment: You may have to have students create a portfolio showing their work. And, not all students test well and so you may have to write some essays, you may have to have students create a notebook or you may have students do an exhibition. Um, you may have to have students give a presentation and use visuals to show what some of the key points were so that you can address everyone’s style of learning. And, expose them to some different ways of learning.

Here the goal goes beyond mere accountabilit y. She wants to “expose” students to “some different ways of learning” in order to “address everyone’s st yle of learning.” Exhibition, as one of many coaching pedagogies is an instrument of equit y. Choice and expression are factors in constructing that instrument. She means to evoke all of these themes as ingredients in her pedagogy, and she signals that she is talking about pedagogy as opposed to testing or curriculum by blending teaching with politics. Certainly, pedagogy must involve more than notebooks, portfolios, and exhibitions. For those are merely assessment tools. But Camille struggles to make the link bet ween these strategies and her view of pedagogy, so she relies on the concrete image, a negative image, to say what pedagogy is. She is not alone in her quest to articulate a theory of teaching that is expressive, emancipatory, and, most of all, different from that which characterized her own education. Al and Brian, as well as Camille, dramatized this quest most fully when they told stories about their new approach to teaching.

NARRATIVE: CONVERSION I distinguish narrative from exposition based primarily on the narrative’s ability to dramatize, as opposed to explain, meaning. Most of the time, teachers’ exposition tended to include anecdotes and the recounting of events or scenarios, but their stories were much more carefully organized. Characters were distinctive; the rise and fall of action was traceable, and most important, themes were dramatized through interactions between character and action rather than explained by the narrator. These stories presented archet ypes: the mythic student as worker, the mythic teacher as coach, the mythic expert. They also followed predictable plot lines, which usually revolved around conf lict between a student and a teacher. For example, Al sets up the following story by telling me how often visitors came to

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OHS to see how he and his team were doing with interdisciplinary work, teaming, and exhibitions. So many came, he says laughing, that the school started to charge a fee to cover the costs of duplicating materials. They still kept coming. It was like a “field of dreams.” (Laughter) There was one particular time when, I think it was when we had won the A⫹ award and, you know, we had dignitaries from all over, and I was very, very proud. Three of my students were on this panel with the governor and secretary of education and everybody. And I thought, “wow, this is neat.” I happened to overhear a conversation. A visitor, a teacher, was asking my student questions about history: “Well do you know about this battle? When did this happen? Which president did this?” My student answered “no” to about three questions in a row. And that was really tough. And one of the other teachers came forward and tried to explain that we were teaching them [students] skills of historians and this and that. And the student put his hand on her shoulder, and he said, “Mrs. E. I’d like to answer this.” And he looked at the guy and said, “I don’t know all those facts. Quite frankly, I don’t know when I’d use all those facts. But if you’ll wait here five minutes, I’ll come back with the answer because I know how to find it.” And I thought, “yes!”

Each of the three times Al told this story, he used it to emphasize a different aspect of his teaching. He used it to illustrate the many dimensions of his pedagogy. He used it to celebrate his students’ growth as well as to celebrate his own expertise. He used it to dramatize the subversive nature of endowing students with choice in learning, and the way in which change occurs in education. And each of those times the story retained its essence, both structurally and thematically. The protagonist here is a student—not the teacher—and the antagonist is the authorit y figure, the “dignitary,” the outsider. This is a notable contrast to the status of the “outside expert” in the interpretation of exhibition as test. It also dramatizes the value of a student-centered pedagogy. The student proves his heroism by submitting to interrogation by the authorit y figure, by not losing his cool, and by demonstrating both poise and, presumably, the abilit y to conduct research. This is a subtle struggle between right and wrong, and the audience is assumed to understand the difference because the story never spells out exactly why it is better to know how to find facts than to be able to recall them. The narrator knows. The student/protagonist knows. The antagonist does not know, and he remains unenlightened even as the story ends. The story deftly explores the theme of transformation, highlighting the mystery of understanding and hinting at possible redemption. Like all good stories, moreover, it explores more than one theme. In dramatizing the struggle between good and evil, the story identifies benefits of coaching, which include student choice, skill development, and poise. As a conversion parable, Al leaves room to identify with the antagonist—a teacher—because many of us were once like he is now.

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Because the themes were so embedded in the narrative thread, their expression in stories like this one often seemed unconscious. More important, because so many different themes were explored in these stories, the narrative structure demonstrated the multiple and layered ways in which teachers constructed meaning using language as a tool for mediating thought and expression. The teachers also used language to mediate thought and expression when they taught. When Camille, in particular, enacted what I call her pedagogy of negation, she wove together the themes of power and change as she sought to reconcile the conf licting roles of gatekeeper and facilitator.

V I E W S F RO M T H E C L A S S RO O M : P O S I T I V E A N D N E G AT I V E RO L E - P L AY In the months I observed Camille, her teaching both attracted and perplexed me. Early on, she warned that her Senior Political Studies (SPS) course would not be like conventional classes: “You might come in one day and half the class will be out, because they have their own things to do.” She also expressed anxiet y about this particular group of students. Worrying that they would not provide a robust example of her teaching, she suggested that maybe I should study her tenth-grade class instead. When she assured me that her seniors would, indeed, be preparing and presenting exhibitions, I elected to remain focused on SPS. But as the semester wore on, I grew anxious about what I was—or was not—learning. I observed at OHS an average of three times a week. And each day I visited all three teachers, sitting in on classes or checking in with teachers and students, depending on what was planned for that day. SPS met from 11:15 to 1:00, which meant Camille’s class was usually my last stop. Aside from the Friday “portfolio check,” most days I found Camille and several students seated in chairs, either eating or chatting. At midsemester, Camille began supervising a student teacher, Patrick, and as the semester moved to a close, Patrick assumed more and more of her classtime. As a result, I rarely saw Camille doing what I would normally call “teaching.” In part, this was a function of her role as cooperating teacher for Patrick, and in part this was a function of the design of SPS. Students were working independently on projects; and that work often sent them out of the classroom, even out of the school. But I came to understand that it was also part of her pedagogy, and it informed how she interpreted the practice of exhibition. It was a pedagogy of negation—her practice was guided largely by images of what she did not want to occur in her classroom. She would not stand up and lecture. She would not check to see that students were completing assignments every day. She would not tell students what and how to think, because these teacherly behaviors had left a negative imprint on her own education. In the wake of the void left by all that she would not do, Camille relied on a simple, but persistent, approach to teaching: she would be with them. She

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would communicate her expectation, her faith, that they could do it. She would comfort them in adversit y, and celebrate their success. Two views of Camille’s teaching suggest some of the tensions she faced and the strategies she used to address those tensions.

VIEW 1: SEEKING, FINDING, PROTECTING Her focus on affect found expression in the content as well as the form of her teaching. During one of the few classes in which I saw her stand up, indeed, behind a podium, Camille built her lesson around reading aloud and ref lecting on t wo quotes related to character: “Okay, everyone needs to have a seat. Take out t wo sheets of paper.” She is standing in what for today is the front of the room— student desks are facing the east wall of the classroom. Camille is holding yesterday’s journal assignments, which she will hand out as soon as everyone settles. “By this time most of you should have done some prett y extensive research on your country,” she begins. “Based on what you know, what would you do if you were the leader? What policies would you implement? What would you offer this country?” By research, she is referring to an extra assignment she has added at the last minute. Students have selected a country and are writing reports on political and cultural organization. Quickly, the room is quiet, except for the muff led sounds of the People’s Court emanating from Carole’s room (OHS subscribes to Channel 1, and it is not uncommon to find televisions tuned to afternoon talk shows). Camille asks if someone “can turn that down,” and John obliges. He peeks in, notes that the television has been blaring to an empt y room, and takes it upon himself to turn it off. Camille carries on. For ten minutes there is silence and Camille passes back yesterday’s journal assignments. She moves around the room, distributing papers on which she has written either a 冑 or 冑⫹, then makes her way to the podium. At the close of the journaling time, she asks everyone to stop writing. And she launches into a discussion of the papers she has just passed back: “From reading what you wrote, it’s real obvious that you don’t have a sense of character, which is OK. But the fact remains, you need to be protecting your character, or you need to be seeking it.” She is referring to the quote that students responded to in yesterday’s journal assignment, a quote by Horace Greeley, which Camille pulled from Vanessa Siddle Walker’s Their Highest Potential (1995), a book she is reading in her graduate class: “Character is one of those preeminent spiritual commodities that cannot be bought or sold or traded on the open or closed market. One who possesses it has one of earth’s most priceless possessions. Seek it. Find it. Protect it.” Students say nothing, and Camille instructs them to “write this down.” She dictates: “Fame is vapor; popularit y an accident; riches take wings. Those who cheered today will curse tomorrow. Only one thing endures. That is character.” “Does anyone need it repeated?” she asks. After a beat, “No? I’m impressed.” Then she repeats it anyway, after which she

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admonishes, “seek it, find it, protect it.” She explains that she wants them to do another journal assignment, this time ref lecting on what I later learn is the second half of the quote she had read the day before. As they begin to write, she reads one more quote, this time from Cornel West’s Race Matters (1993): Like all Americans, African Americans are inf luenced greatly by the images of comfort, convenience, machismo, femininit y, violence and sexual stimulation that bombard consumers. These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out non market values—love, care, service to others—handed down by preceding generations. (pp. 26–27)

She reads this almost as if it were background music. Then she walks over to Carole’s side of the room, pulls back the temporary wall, and, in a gesture that seems to imply her desire to give her students privacy, takes a seat.

VIEW 2: TEACHING MS. ROGERS A week later the room is again rearranged. This time desks are in clumps, and students are seated, quietly filling out senior legacy forms. No one notices when I arrive and take my seat, except for the student teacher Patrick. He acknowledges me by announcing, “Guys, if you don’t start your portfolios, you’ll get a zero for the day. This is my one warning.” They continue undeterred. Ten minutes later, Camille arrives with a small package of Oreos. “Are you ready for me?” she asks, to no one in particular. “Where am I sitting?” Camille: Gill, are you teaching me today? Gill is scheduled to “teach a lesson to Ms. Rogers” as part of an alternative assignment for his portfolio. Six weeks prior to this date, students were offered the opportunit y to teach Ms. Rogers about American government. About six students elected to do this assignment. Today Adrienne and Nichole are the teachers. Gill: No, but I have some homework for you. Camille: Homework?! Gill: You didn’t do the assignment. So you better do it by the end of the period or I’m gonna call your mother. The room erupts in laughter. Meanwhile, Adrienne and Nichole are writing notes on the board. Adrienne: Ms. Rogers, you need paper and a pencil to take notes. Just make sure you have a lot of paper.

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Camille: Can I write in purple pen? Adrienne: No. Blue or black. Adrienne and Nichole take their places, standing in front of the board, while Camille sits in one of the student’s seats. Nichole initiates a formal start of the lesson. Nichole: Okay, we’re learning in this lesson what a bill is. Camille: Today’s my mother’s birthday. (Giggling) See, I’m gonna do like you do to me. Nichole: I’m giving the definition of a bill. (Camille raises her hand) You need to write this down. A bill is a proposal presented to a legislative body for possible enactment as a law. There are t wo different t ypes of bills; a public bill and a private bill. Nichole and Adrienne take turns lecturing while Camille takes notes silently. While one lectures, the other writes on the board: Take Home Essay: Explain a bill that you might want to change. Tell if it is private or public, whether you think it will pass or not, and the process it goes through to pass. Front/back of paper. Blue/black ink. Due Wednesday, May 20, at 2 PM

Camille: Can I go to the rest room? Adrienne: No. Breaks are when the bell rings. Nichole: Actually, since you did so good on writing notes, I’ll give you until Thursday. Camille: Ohhh. Thank you! Nichole: And you have a test Friday. You can’t procrastinate in our class. Camille: If it’s [take home essay] not a full two pages, do I lose points? What if it’s late? Adrienne: It won’t be late. Fift y percent off for every day late. The juxtaposition of these t wo views of Camille’s teaching—preaching and roleplay—demonstrates the manner in which she constructs a pedagogy of negation. Both show her attempt to coach students using a limited repertoire but an ardent moral point of view. Preaching and role-play relate only tangentially to the practice of exhibition, and the way in which these techniques dominate Camille’s teaching demonstrate the manner by which she fits exhibition into her existing understanding of teaching rather than vice versa. The first view shows Camille assuming her teacherly role. Despite her stated ill-regard for standing behind a podium, she reverts to the familiar image of teacherliness, perhaps because it is one that is concrete. That is the one she knows. I am aware that she was conscious of both my presence and the infrequency with

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which she “taught,” and in part the stance behind the podium, I suspect, was for my benefit. Still, the podium, which on this occasion functioned more as a pulpit, served as symbol: that she would be giving them knowledge. In the second view, she reverses the roles. This ritualized mockery of traditional transmission-oriented teaching dramatizes the uncertaint y Camille feels toward the pedagogical reform implied by coaching. At first glance, it appears to be little more than a silly interlude from the real work of the class. But, viewed within the larger reform context of constructivism and transformation, it is a vivid enactment of a complex pedagogy in which Camille blends power and empathy, as well as uncertaint y. Adrienne, Nichole, and Gill consciously and playfully mirror Camille’s teaching persona, which focuses almost entirely on comportment and accountabilit y. In allowing her students to play teacher, Camille is not attempting to redefine authorit y relations in her classroom. Rather, the ritual embodies a lesson about “the culture of power” (Delpit, 1988). Camille is torn between an ideological desire to resist that culture and a pragmatic desire to provide her students access to it. The ritual accommodates both desires. It is clear to all concerned that this is indeed play, good-natured and willing play, but at no point does Camille suggest that this arrangement will be anything but ceremonial. There is little, if any, critique embedded in her or her students’ actions. In fact, much of the punch of the send-up comes from how closely it resembles Camille’s actual classroom behavior. The insistence on meeting deadlines (“you can’t procrastinate in our class”), the threat to call a parent, the equation of rigor with volume (“just make sure you have a lot of paper”), and the easing of standards as reward (“since you did so good at taking notes, you can have until Thursday”) are all discernible features of her teaching. These behaviors reveal an abiding concern with control rather than her stated commitment to freedom and expression. Instead of revising the structure of teaching and learning, Camille allowed her students to practice being quite traditional authority figures by acting out the symbols of power that define the culture of her classroom and allude to what Camille understood as the wider culture of power. The temporary reversal of roles offers students access to power: They need to know what it feels like if they are ever to possess it.

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A N D T E A C H E R A S FA C I L I TAT O R Camille’s theories of teaching often seemed removed from the actual practice of exhibition. She was less concerned with how to implement exhibitions than why she should, and her talk as well as her teaching ref lect this concern. As a performance for students and as a means of promoting and demonstrating self-regulation, or what Camille calls “responsibilit y,” exhibition fits into her view of pedagogy as a transformational, emancipatory, and political enterprise. Transformation and pedagogy are both highly charged terms in current debates about the purposes of schooling and the roles of teachers; and I choose these

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words deliberately to highlight what I believe distinguishes exhibition as pedagogy from other interpretations. That is, exhibition as pedagogy stands for change or transformation on a number of levels, and exhibition as pedagogy is the most overtly political of the four interpretations. Jackson (1986) defines transformative teaching as that which accomplishes “a qualitative change often of dramatic proportion” (p. 120). When Jackson uses this term, he is referring to the manner in which individuals‘ perspectives or understandings change as a result of exercising new knowledge or practicing new skills. It is a holistic view of learning, one that encompasses cognitive and emotional metamorphoses. Jackson also locates this t ype of teaching within a tradition that extends back, at least, to the Greeks. He distinguishes the transformative from the mimetic—what is often identified as “traditional” teaching—by noting the contrasting goals of transformation and transmission: the former aims to mold while the latter to “fill up.” Still, by establishing that both are, in fact, traditional, Jackson rejects the dichotomous proposition that one must choose one tradition or the other, or that transformation is somehow a new goal of education. He provides numerous examples of teachers employing mimetic means to achieve transformative ends, and vice versa. Ultimately, Jackson’s treatment of these two traditions highlights the complexities of both, and implies a knowledge of the subtleties of methods and goals that was rarely a feature of the teacher’s language when they were interpreting exhibition as pedagogy. Instead of embracing the complexities of the multiple traditions inf luencing their practice, Al, Brian, and Camille were drawn to exhibition as pedagogy largely because of the dichotomy of old versus new. Their view of transformation emphasized right versus wrong, negative versus positive, freedom versus oppression. This view of transformation is most often, and most ardently, associated with the work of Freire. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), which has been raised as a kind of manifesto for what has come to be known as “critical pedagogy,” Freire laid the framework and rationale for a radical and emancipatory approach to education. In it he explicates a Marxist analysis of education as an instrument of domination; and advocates transformation on a number of levels. Most important is social transformation; a revised view of social relations that includes redistribution of wealth and resistance to colonizing or oppressive political structures. Schools and teachers can transform learners, and by extension societ y, through the process of “conscientization” and the dialectic of denunciation and annunciation. What I call the “pedagogy of negation,” which is evident in Camille’s language and practice, is a variation on Freire’s notion of denunciation. When Camille rejects traditional approaches to teaching, such as standing behind a podium and lecturing, she is politicizing her teaching by identifying an enemy. She equates “criticism” with denunciation, but for Camille, the dialectic is incomplete because she has no alternative pedagogy to announce.

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EXPERT AND REHEARSAL: SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION Exhibition as test and exhibition as pedagogy may be viewed as two sides of the same coin. Both express arguments for why exhibition is a better practice. Both invoke a social purpose for schooling. And both employ symbols to signify and distill the meaning of these interpretations. Where exhibition as test announces schooling for adjustment and vocationalism and values accountabilit y, exhibition as pedagogy announces schooling for transformation and values the empathic, developmental, and constructivist pedagogy of coaching. The symbols of the expert and rehearsal amplify the ways in which these interpretations conf lict with one another even as they coexist in the cosmologies of Al, Brian, and Camille. When these teachers interpreted exhibition as pedagogy, they reinterpreted the symbols of exhibition. The expert, so central to legitimating exhibition as test, is now the intruder. Al dramatizes this stance in his story of the unenlightened outsider. Camille takes the symbol of expert as intruder even further when she enacts a pedagogy of negation, expressing ambivalence toward not only experts but the very concept of expertise. Brian undercuts the legitimacy of the expert when he says that the “point value for the [exhibition] is worth very little of their final grade.” The message of this symbol seems to be that in a transformative pedagogy, experts are at best superf luous and at worst oppressive. Exhibition as pedagogy subverts the oppressive aspect of expertise by shifting the focus of teaching from the expert to the student. Student centralit y is symbolized by the rehearsal. When exhibition is understood as a test, rehearsals foreshadow and emphasize the final summative evaluation. As a feature of Al’s, Brian’s, and Camille’s pedagogy, the message of the rehearsal is that the work of students rather than teachers drives learning. Students learn by doing, through experience, and rehearsals are hallmarks of a process in which teachers are in the background. Exhibition as pedagogy expands the meaning of exhibition to include a wide array of strategies teachers may employ in the interest of helping students learn. This interpretation is inf luenced by ideological goals related to citizenship, equit y, and freedom. Exactly what is meant by learning is less clear, which in turn renders a teacher’s role in facilitating that enterprise uncertain. Teachers strain to make the process less mysterious either by drawing from concrete experiences that seem to resonate with the call for constructivist, transformative pedagogies, or by drawing from concrete experiences that represent what they consider to be the opposite of coaching. A third interpretation, exhibition as curriculum, also addresses issues related to constructivism and coaching. Here, the concrete experience is designing or constructing curriculum. In chapter 5, I explore the meaning of exhibition as curriculum as it is expressed through languages that emphasize building, movement, and development.

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Exhibition as Curriculum If the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy represents both a deeper and a more abstract understanding of the practice than that of exhibition as test, exhibition as curriculum is even more elusive, but for different reasons. Where the strain in understanding exhibition as pedagogy seems to revolve around an unwieldy array of purposes—freedom, expression, individualism, self-esteem—exhibition as curriculum prescribes a clear role for the teacher. The complexities of this role often perplexed Al, Brian, and Camille because they implied a modified view of curriculum as well as new forms of expertise. Like exhibition as pedagogy, exhibition as curriculum suggests a “transformed” notion of the teacher’s role. But here the change revolves around what Gardner (1991, 1999) calls “disciplinary understanding,” and what Shulman (1987) calls “pedagogical content knowledge.” Chief ly, the modified view of curriculum advocated explicitly by Gardner and implicitly by Shulman places the teacher at the center of the process of organizing content rather than merely implementing a predetermined course of study. Substituting the role of designer for that of implementer means that teachers must activate knowledge of their discipline (history, mathematics, English) and also knowledge of how learners learn. One of the perplexing aspects of this interpretation lies in locating the sources and applications of such knowledge. Brian’s notions of curriculum seem to be filtered almost entirely through his experience on his team, while Camille’s seem very nearly nonexistent. For Al, however, the interpretation of exhibition as curriculum dominates his talk, and it is most evident in his teaching. If Brian thinks of himself as a gatekeeper, and Camille presents herself as a facilitator, Al is a “curriculum-maker” (Clandinin and Connolly, 1992). This chapter examines the interpretation of exhibition as curriculum primarily through the lens of Al’s teaching, in which the links between talk and practice are particularly strong. Al and Brian both used CES-inspired terms like building blocks, backwards-building curriculum, and essential questions when talking about exhibition as curriculum. Brian, for instance, posted these terms (along with other 67

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CES slogans) in his classroom, and his conversation with me was peppered with these terms. Al did more. While his classroom was notably free of decoration, he used these terms to help guide the design of his curriculum. I came to understand what it means to “build” curriculum through listening to Al weave the metaphor of learning as construction through his discourse and by watching him enact his curriculum with his students. In chapter 7, I will address the difficulties all three teachers faced in designing curricula that featured exhibitions; and that chapter will take up the question of why the link between exhibition and curriculum appears to be so tenuous for many teachers, including Brian and Camille. This chapter, however, focuses more closely on how Al and Brian talked about exhibition as curriculum and how Al translated that talk into practice.

A L A N G UA G E O F C O N S T RU C T I O N In published literature as well as in the language of Al, Brian, and Camille, the interpretation of exhibition as curriculum is expressed primarily through images of construction. “You really need to build backwards,” explains Brian. “Look at the skills you want your kids to have. Coming up with the exhibition that will demonstrate those skills and then building day-to-day lessons from there, so that you’re always working towards your target.” In elaborating on the relationship between planning and the exhibiting, Brian highlights three key concepts: skills, building, and target. These concepts form the foundation of a language of construction. Al and, to a lesser extent, Brian explore these concepts through explicating themes, telling stories, and designing and evaluating curriculum.

DICTION: “BACKWARDS BUILDING” The imagery of building is a deliberate strategy on the part of theorists to make the concept of constructivism more concrete. Seymour Papert was among the first to note that constructing knowledge might best be accomplished through actual physical construction, and he coined the term constructionism to signify that theoretical refinement (see Harel and Papert, 1991). Al and Brian’s considerable reliance on images of building, designing, and constructing when they talk about exhibitions in their curriculum expresses their attempt to refine their own theories of constructivisim. They refer to themselves as “models,” and their assignments as “building blocks” leading toward the final exhibition. They apply this image both to their students’ process of “building knowledge,” and to their own experience of organizing content. Both use the CES-inspired term backwards-building curriculum to describe curriculum development. The concept of building backwards first appeared in CES-associated literature in 1993 when Joseph McDonald introduced the term planning backwards as the process of identifying outcomes first, then developing the activities and lessons

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that will support movement toward those goals.1 OHS teachers substitute the word building for planning, and in doing so they emphasize the kernel idea that curriculum is a support, or “scaffold” for student learning. This notion of developing understanding versus covering material delineated by a textbook is key to teachers’ interpretation of exhibition as curriculum, because it is through exhibiting that understanding is developed. Developing curriculum, for teachers who see exhibition as the curriculum, means designing exhibitions. Along with the ample use of building or making metaphors, teachers use language that suggests the curriculum is an experience rather than a static body of content to be covered. This view overlaps with that expressed in the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy, but here the qualit y of the experience is addressed in much greater detail. Al often talks of moving “through” his course. “You kinda have to lead them through it,” he says, explaining his approach with students who have difficult y with the building blocks of the course. Stepping-stones is a term he frequently interchanges with building blocks, suggesting again the idea of movement. Commenting on the same student, who struggled with several early assignments, he refers to (the student) Lily’s “movement”: “I don’t think there was any great evolution or revolution within her, but I think she knows where we’re trying to go now.” The destination was also a notable feature of talk about exhibition as curriculum. When teachers referred to exhibition as “the target” of their courses, they were usually exploring themes related to curriculum. And the goals themselves tended to be specific as well as skill based, which amplified the understanding of curriculum as a “process,” or something to move through.

THEMES: TARGET, SKILLS, CONNECTING Exhibition also provides a target by which teachers are reminded of goals. The use of rubrics, for example, emphasizes this subtle, constructivist shift: While it provides a yardstick by which to measure students’ performance, it also places emphasis on student accountabilit y. The theme of the target also serves as a bridge between the interpretations of exhibition as test and curriculum. The exhibition, in this case, is represented by the rubric, which serves as the teacher’s reminder of his goals. Here the link to accountabilit y is clear, but the emphasis on construction alters the symbolic impact of the rubric. Now, rather than gateway or ticket, it is a tool for organizing content. It is still a symbol of the teacher’s control of outcomes, but with control comes responsibilit y. Al comments: “If you’re talking about backwards building, it establishes for me, ya know, the groundwork, or whatever, for—this is what a student has to do for an A . . . and I establish that up front.” By distributing the rubric at the start of his course, Al makes his goals explicit. Here—alluding to exhibition as test—he presents this as a move designed for accountabilit y and fairness. Establishing standards “up front” makes it clear what students “have to do” to reach their goals, which he expresses in terms of grades.

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But Al’s choice of the word groundwork reveals a concern for the deeper logic of his curriculum. The rubric stood for that logic because it identified a clear, describable target. From the rubric everything else f lowed. And it f lowed backwards. Having identified the goal of “building a case,” for his Thesis in History course, Al used that target to assess students’ progress as well as the assignments or building blocks, designed to lead students to that target. One of those blocks is the development of “essential questions.” This is a term pulled directly out of CES literature, and it refers to those points of inquiry that “matter.” Essential questions are debatable, approachable from a variet y of points of view; they get at the essence of a particular issue (Sizer, 1992). In Al’s Thesis in History course, students develop their essential questions at approximately the midpoint of the semester—after they have consulted at least fifteen sources and collected background material on that topic. Of all the assignments in Thesis, students seemed to struggle most with this one. Referring again to Lily, Al believed this represented a turning point: “I still think that before this [development of essential questions] she just thought she was writing a report about animal rights. And, I’m hoping that she now sees that she’s building a case for animal rights.” The target is a point toward which students are always moving. And that movement is measured based on how well students are developing skills. In Thesis, the target skills are those Al has judged to be central to the work of historians: argument, evidence, research, and narrative. After students’ essential questions are approved, they move on to the development of “evidence charts.” These are documents in which students come up with several pieces of evidence that both support and refute an answer to an essential question. For instance, Carley’s research focused on the life of Eva Peron, and one of her essential questions was Was Eva Peron only concerned with selfish ends? This question required Carley to come up with evidence for both a negative and an affirmative answer. As Al reviewed her charts, his judgment was based primarily on her use of evidence: “I think she has a prett y good grasp of what Eva Peron was all about. After going through here [the charts], at least she can make some statements that are backed with evidence from research.” When I sat with Al as he graded evidence charts from all three of his sections of Thesis, I was struck by the specificit y with which he attacked those charts. He seemed to know exactly what he was looking for, and the target seemed to make that knowledge more visible to him. Many teachers’ introduction to new methods of curriculum design is through “interdisciplinary curriculum.” Though interdisciplinary curriculum has a long history of inf luence in American secondary schooling, Al, Brian, and Camille identify the strategies associated with “connecting” as new. Heidi Hayes Jacobs’s (an expert on interdisciplinary curriculum design) presence on the lecture/workshop circuit has popularized an approach to curriculum design that includes identifying outcomes and developing guiding questions, rough analogues

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to CES’s essential questions. As OHS’s involvement with CES grew, so did the collective interest in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Brian and Camille are both members of interdisciplinary teams, and Al’s initial experience with this new approach to organizing content was also through involvement in a team. Camille’s only point of resonance on the topic of curriculum is the concept of connecting. Referring to OHS’s annual, weeklong summer retreat, and describing her collaborative process of planning with her teaching partner, Carole, Camille identifies the goal of “integration”: We had that week to sit down and actually plan. And so we looked at some books. Um, I wanted to do, looked at what some of those books were about, and she looked at how they could be incorporated into government. She told me areas that she needed to cover in government. And so then I would go back and relook, and rethink some books and see how we could key those in so the students were getting an integration between those classes.

This passage demonstrates the superficial manner in which many teachers begin to learn about interdisciplinary curricula, and, indeed, about curriculum at all as anything but the course of study prescribed by a textbook. Camille identifies the process as “relooking and rethinking.” The repetition of the prefix re alludes to the process of revision, of return, and this suggests reform or change in Camille’s conception of the process. Another signal of newness is her reference to what Carole needed to “cover” in government. She does not mention specific skills or understandings. Rather she is integrating books, suggesting, again, the preeminence of the textbook in prescribing what to teach. Designing integrated or crossdisciplinary curriculum is a more complicated matter than “incorporating” books from one class into another, but for Camille, this stands for connecting. As Al has grown more skillful in identifying the skills he thinks his students should master, he has grown more committed to his own discipline—history—and less interested in integration. But he ardently attributes the growth of his pedagogical content knowledge to his involvement with CES. Neither interdisciplinary curriculum, nor exhibition, and certainly not backwards-building curriculum were features of his preparation for teaching. Instead, he traces his involvement with these concepts to his then principal and colleague, Sam Caldwell. In 1990, Sam heard Ted Sizer speak at a conference, and when he returned to Oakville, he reported to Al, “Man, I just heard this guy; and he talked about teaching just the way you and I always talked about it.” Portraying Sizer as a kind of prophet, Al attributes his message to launching OHS’s relationship with CES. Initiating that relationship—which nearly a decade later has resulted in visible structural changes such as common planning blocks, an array of interdisciplinary teams, and the weeklong summer retreat at a local college—consisted primarily of a series of visits to other schools who were connecting curriculum in interdisciplinary teams. Al participated in many of these

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visitations, and conversations on the way home were the inspiration for much of the early architecture of teams and exhibitions. Al’s desire to connect disciplines was fueled by a deeper need for connection on a number of levels. Al and his colleagues wanted students to be more connected to what they were learning. They also wanted teachers to be more intimately connected to their students. By reducing the teacher to pupil ratio and by creating common planning time for teachers to consult about students and curriculum, teams facilitated both of these goals. But, as Al points out, “Connecting four different subject areas every day was impossible. We couldn’t do it.” That realization prompted Al and his team to turn to exhibition as a mechanism for connecting. The exhibition “created a theme,” meaning a point of convergence at which all four of the disciplines could connect, not every day, but at appropriate points in the curriculum. It also provided a target, which had the effect of connecting the entire curriculum. The interdisciplinary connection might be seen as a horizontal linkage and the exhibition/target connection a vertical linkage. The following figure illustrates the cumulative links between construction and connecting:

Construction

EXHIBITION

Constructing understanding

building block

Connecting the disciplines

Connection Building Blocks: Connection and Construction

With building blocks or stepping-stones leading to the culminating exhibition, the curriculum, recalling Bruner’s (1977) celebrated image of the spiral, moves seamlessly toward a set of outcomes prescribed by Al. Those outcomes are connected by the exhibition and by selected building blocks along the way. The theme of connec-

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tion, then, turns out to be a subtheme of construction: one builds, in part, by joining. Joining, on multiple levels, is a powerful message expressed by this language.

NARRATIVE: DEVELOPMENT Stories of exhibition as curriculum, like those of exhibition as pedagogy, envelop multiple themes and employ distinct vocabulary and syntax; but they differ in at least one significant way: Where pedagogy narratives retain, even celebrate, the mysterious nature of learning and teaching, curriculum narratives chronicle and promote a systematic, rational, and collective effort to learn new concepts in the course of developing curriculum. Where stories about pedagogy focus on why teachers should change their practice, stories of curriculum focus on how. Here, Al offers an account of the origin of his course. So we said we need an exhibition. We had gone down, as I said, to Louisville, and talked to some ladies and they had one exhibition a year. I think it was at Williamson we talked to someone they did t wo in one year. So we said, “We can do that. Let’s do an exhibition.” And that was, the first thing we did was to map our curriculum and to identify what we all thought was our own essential curriculum. And then we went to the [retreat] and we said we have to have, we want to connect. We felt the best way to connect was through an exhibition. . . . We wanted to create an exhibition that would allow the students to demonstrate their abilities in all four of the subject areas. Well, at the same time, Barb had gone and I think it was a seminar with Heidi Jacobs, and came back and she said, “You know, it’s all right if you don’t connect everyday.” That was good because it kind of gave us a sense of relief. That what we were trying was really tough and what we had finally had done was Okay. But we looked at our curriculum maps and we came up with an exhibition that we called “Mysteries in American History.” And that’s the forerunner of Thesis.

In form as well as content, Al’s story takes up the matter of building or development. The step-by-step process of learning to design curriculum mirrors his own conception of backwards-building curriculum. First, he identifies the outcome. Sounding a bit like Mickey Rooney in Babes in Arms, he gives purpose to the story by announcing, “Let’s do an exhibition.” What follows is an episodic account of how the exhibition came to be. Putting on an exhibition is, to hold on to the Rooney image, like putting on a show. Not surprisingly, Al begins the story by evoking the interpretation of exhibition as test. It is an event, and, more important, a special event. But the rest of the story suggests the cumulative nature of the exhibition and, more important, all that leads up to it. Note that finally the exhibition is Thesis, not the final defense or the Celebration of Learning but the whole of his course.

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To make the exhibition truly represent the whole of his course, “we—the first person plural evokes the collective travail of the “team”—mapped the curriculum” in an effort to determine what was “essential” about it, and then decided that “connection” was “needed.” As the narrator, Al’s choice of CES-inspired vocabulary conveys the impact of the organization’s rhetoric. More important, it suggests that these are terms he has internalized in ways that guide his thinking about practice. They are necessary for advancing the plot. Why connection was needed is only hinted at through the discussion of the role of the exhibition as a catalyst for connection: “We wanted to create an exhibition that would allow the students to demonstrate their abilities in all four of the subject areas.” In keeping with the tone of the story, the question of why they should connect is couched in terms of how to connect. The climax of the story is signaled by the identification of sources of know-how or expertise. Barb, as messenger for Heidi Jacobs, the curriculum expert, delivers the comforting news that the “team” had done “OK,” and, perhaps more important, that the work they were doing was “tough.” The story ends happily, meaning everyone felt good about the work they had done. Happy endings are a consistent feature of all three teachers’ narrations about practice. The search for meaning in and around practice appears to be accompanied by the search for value, which involves feeling good about the work. This is most obvious in the interpretation of exhibition as rite of passage, but, as this and also the “field of dreams” story demonstrate, it is also present in teachers’ thinking about curriculum and pedagogy. Al and his team have worked hard to learn how to integrate their curricula and how to build backwards. As they blaze through new instructional territory, they feel like pioneers, which they find satisfying. Their language ref lects both the effort and the satisfaction, but their practice is more hesitant than satisfied. In the process of learning to build backwards, they are defining a new role for themselves as models and designers rather than transmitters. This view from the classroom reveals how subtle that role can be.

V I E W F RO M T H E C L A S S RO O M : THE INVISIBLE HAND OF DESIGN One of the hallmarks of classrooms driven by exhibition is that they often do not look like traditional places of learning. In fact, they often are not classrooms at all. Both Camille and Al presided over motley assemblages of students in a variet y of settings. While Camille was usually in her room, supervising whatever fraction of her charges chose to remain with her, throughout most of the semester, Al’s room was darkened, and on the closed door was posted a sign: Thesis in library. There, among the whirring of computers, the hushed buzz of conversation both social and academic, and the constant shuff ling of entering and exiting visitors, the Information Center, as the sign above the lintel read, was the site of the

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work of Thesis. Most mornings I arrived at 9:15, third period, and found Jerry, Al’s student teacher, circulating among tables of students, taking attendance, responding to questions, and generally doing his best to imitate Al’s casual, but anticipatory, demeanor. Often, Al was nowhere to be found. He might be off with a student, assisting with an Internet search, or responding to a question that required “taking a walk.” He nearly always made his entrance after the working rhythm of the period had been established. When he did appear, quietly surveying the clumps of casually working students, glancing at the open grade book, which Jerry ritually placed on a the short bookshelf that separates the study area of the library from the more public vicinit y of computers and the check-out desk, he kept his distance. He would wait for students to come to him. As the site of research, Al used the library as a cue that students were to be working independently, and his stance—in the background, if present at all— amplified the message. The classroom, on the other hand, was the site of “presentation.” At the start of May, classes would return to room 411, and students would assume a familiar, teacherly position behind the podium or sit at Al’s desk. “Preliminary defenses,” the rehearsals for the final exhibition, all occurred in Al’s classroom. Al, too, exploited the contrast between the two venues to emphasize different roles he wished to play. When he was in the library, he coached; when he was in the classroom, he instructed. On the surface, the roles of coach and instructor belong in the realm of pedagogy. However, a closer look at the manner in which Al enacted these roles reveals the extent to which they grow out of the more dominant role of curriculum maker. He instructed whenever he perceived the need for one of two things: inspirational praise and/or pressure and work on a discrete skill. In the course description he distributes at the beginning of each semester, Al delineates three t ypes of activities that constitute a t ypical day in Thesis. These are: Skill lessons—teacher directed lessons intended to help the student improve his or her skills needed to be successful in this class. Work days—time for you to work on research, writing, planning your project, etc. Conferencing—opportunities for students to share their work with classmates and the teacher; these days will allow the students to understand their work and will give them the opportunity to get valuable feedback.

Skill lessons were often planned well in advance, but occasionally Al would decide, spontaneously, that more practice was needed before students were ready to move onto the next phase of the course. Preliminary defenses were occasions for both practice and inspiration, but in these mini-exhibitions, students were the featured performers. When Al assumed the role of instructor, his performances were meant to demonstrate, to model, and to prepare students for the ways in which they should stand before a group and present their positions.

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On one Friday, midway through the semester, Al used his classroom to teach the skill of argument and to remind students of the logic of the course. For nearly three weeks, students have been conducting background research and drafting essential questions. They are weary from having spent so much time in the library, and Al has decided they need to come together. The following week they will begin compiling evidence in their evidence charts, and Al turns the upcoming weekend into an interlude, a pause to refresh before gearing up for a more intense phase of the course. When students arrive at class, they find evidence charts on their desks. On the board is a crude replica of the evidence charts students will begin to fill out on Monday. In the center of the board Al has written: Should Juniors have open lunch?

He stands in front of the room, reads the question aloud, then waits for someone to respond. Steve answers, “Yes.” Al replies, “Okay. What’s your evidence?” There is silence for about thirt y seconds, then Rob offers that “Renaissance” juniors (a special team of eleventh graders who do have open lunch) have better grades than other juniors. “You could compare their grades now to before they were in the program.” “Okay,” Al says, “where might you go to support this fact? Who might have this information?” Rob suggests conducting a survey. Colleen suggests consulting with the guidance office for grades. Al seizes the idea of the survey, a concept he knows several have explored in previous work: “Surveys can be great, but you’ve got to be careful. I had someone call me last night, I can’t remember who they were, but they asked me if I could answer a few questions, I wanted to know how long it would take. When they said t went y minutes, I hung up. You gotta keep ’em short, otherwise you won’t get information.” Steve and Rob listened attentively, seeming to expect more instruction on how to design a survey. But Al’s goal for this activit y was simpler than that. He wanted to remind students that taking a position and supporting that position with evidence would be the main focus of the class from here to the end. He wanted to give them a preview of what they would encounter in the coming weeks. And he wanted to keep it all brief. Reasoning that the real work of learning how to take and support a position would occur in the context of the ensuing building blocks, he framed this encounter less as a learning occasion than as an information session. What lay ahead was detailed on the annotated calendars that Al passed out as he concluded the discussion on evidence: “You should have between five and eight reasons to support your essential questions; minimum of five. I would prefer eight. And for each reason, you need a minimum of three sources and I would prefer five.” The class lets out a collective, but half hearted moan. They’re expected, evidently, to balk at the workload. But there are no overt protests. Next, Al turns to the calendars and notes upcoming deadlines: “Check-point: Essential Question on

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March 24; Check-point: Evidence Chart, March 26; Rebuttal Lesson, April 6; Outline Check, April 23; Position Papers, May 1.” He presents this litany as a warning: “I’m giving everyone a break this weekend. Don’t do anything with Thesis because we’re about to get into a very hectic time.” The calendar is a sign of his preparation for this course, of his vision of what, as well as how, students should master the skills of Thesis in History. He emphasizes this when he tells students “If your evidence chart is completed, you’ll be prepared to write your paper.” The calendar is also a cue for his students. He wants them to know why they are being asked to do these activities. While the term building blocks was reserved for conversation with me or Neil (his teaching partner) or Jerry (his student teacher), distributing the calendar was a way of communicating the big picture of Thesis.

D I S C I P L I N A RY U N D E R S TA N D I N G A N D T E AC H E R A S C U R R I C U LU M M A K E R Of the four interpretations, exhibition as curriculum presents the tightest link between talk and practice. However, this link was only evident for Al; and this suggests that disciplinary understanding is an elusive goal for teachers. It was certainly elusive for Brian and Camille, which raises the question of why. Is the goal of disciplinary understanding new and therefore alien to teachers? Does it conf lict with more easily observable goals, such as vocationalism or transformation? Have teachers ever broadly realized the goal of understanding? While disciplinary understanding is a topic that has certainly enjoyed a recent surge in popularit y, it should come as no surprise that it, like vocationalism and transformation, is not new. Nor should it come as a surprise that, like vocationalism and transformation, understanding was an item on the progressive agenda. The language of the progressive era highlighted “experience,” “integration,” and “purpose” in learning. John Dewey (1953, 1959), in particular, placed great emphasis on the child as well as the curriculum, and devoted a significant portion of his theoretical attention to the organization of subject matter, the qualit y of what he called “educative experience” (1959), and methods of criticism (1943). In other words, Dewey was concerned as much with the hows of constructivist learning and teaching as he was with the whys. While Dewey’s theories were, and continue to be, frequently quoted, they were even more frequently reduced to sound bites. And while teachers were likely to associate Dewey with terms like experiential learning or democratic education, they were less likely to have read and analyzed Experience and Education (1959) or Democracy and Education (1953). Except in small numbers of, usually small, schools, the result was what Dewey himself lamented as “watered down” and “incoherent” versions of his ideas. Some teachers did, indeed, achieve the goal of understanding, but their legacy is overshadowed by a pervasive and historic tendency to shy away from theory, and to reject the role of curriculum maker.

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As Al demonstrates through his thoughtful and thorough use of the metaphor of building, mental models can serve as effective tools for guiding practice, but only if they are recognized and used as such. Teachers who are curriculum makers must also be theorists, and Al’s singular identit y as both highlights the challenges of assuming the role. As in the interpretations of exhibition as test and pedagogy, Al’s and, to a lesser extent, Brian’s understanding of exhibition as curriculum is highlighted by their use of symbolism. Aiming to construct personal meaning of the concepts of expertise and mastery, they made symbols of the rubric and the rehearsal to enact as well as to contain their developing theories of curriculum and construction.

RUBRIC AND REHEARSAL: SYMBOLS OF CONSTRUCTION Al and Brian both treat their rubrics with reverence, but for different reasons. Where Brian sees his as proof of his objective treatment of student work, Al focuses on the manner in which his represents the logic of his course. Both are drawn to the rubric’s specificit y. Al made his rubric a symbol of his curriculum when he passed it out to his students at the start of his course with the expectation that they would refer to it as “target.” For Brian, the rubric stands between his students and him. It mediates the processes of curriculum design and assessment, and it establishes clarit y. For Al the rubric is meant to scaffold his students’ construction of understanding, and it is also a symbol of his role as curriculum maker. Similarly, the rehearsal or preliminary defense stands for Al’s interpretation of curriculum as building blocks. The rehearsal is one of many performances or mini-exhibitions all designed to demonstrate developing understanding and also to generate stronger subsequent performances. Al’s use of the preliminary defense as both a legitimate performance and an opportunit y to teach about performance exemplifies his understanding of the centralit y of performance to his curriculum. In the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy, rehearsal also stands for the centralit y of student performance, but here the emphasis is on the student rather than the performance. In highlighting performance rather than student, the emphasis, once again, rests on the hows rather than whys of exhibition. The interpretation of exhibition as curriculum assumes theoretical engagement on the part of the teacher. When rubric and rehearsal are interpreted as symbols of curriculum, they are also symbols of expertise. But because symbols are both dense and f lexible cognitive structures, the symbolized rubric and rehearsal also represent accountabilit y, coaching, and, as chapter 6 will show, fulfillment. Even Al understands that his identit y as curriculum maker is not his only role. Rather he, like Brian and Camille, sees himself performing many functions and achieving many purposes. The final interpretation of exhibition explores the ways in which Al, Brian, and Camille attempt to integrate their multiple roles within the interpretation of exhibition as rite of passage.

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Exhibition as Rite of Passage As the three previous chapters demonstrate, teachers ascribe multiple understandings to the concept of exhibition. Often, those understandings overlap, seeming to be parts of a whole rather than distinct theories. At times they are also contradictory. Each implies a different purpose for schooling and a different role for teachers. Reconciling those differences, it turns out, is a chief task of Al, Brian, and Camille. Exhibition as test suggests a role for teachers that focuses primarily on accountabilit y, on setting and maintaining standards for students and for, as McDonald (1993) puts it, “guarding the gate” to the next stage of education. By contrast, exhibition as pedagogy prescribes a much more enabling role for the teacher. Where exhibition as test bows to the authorit y of “outside experts” and presents the event of exhibition as a better way to achieve traditional aims, exhibition as pedagogy stands for an approach to teaching that, in part, negates those traditional aims. Exhibition as curriculum suggests still a third rendition of the meaning of teaching. Here the totalit y of teaching and learning is contained in the act of organizing content, as the teacher confronts the often-elusive goal of disciplinary understanding. Teacher as gatekeeper. Teacher as facilitator. Teacher as curriculum maker. Clearly, these interpretations imply conf licting ideas of the purpose of school and the role of teachers, yet they coexist within the language and practice of Al, Brian, and Camille. The strain of contradictory purposes is evident in these teachers’ talk as well as in their teaching. They struggled to design, to manage, and to critique exhibitions guided, largely, by an uncertain and often invisible array of concepts. It is difficult to be gatekeeper, designer, and facilitator simultaneously. It is especially difficult when the theories associated with those roles remain tacit, as they often did with these teachers. A fourth interpretation of exhibition, the rite of passage, emerges as an important strategy teachers use to ameliorate the struggle and to resolve the contradictions. This chapter explores the manner by which teachers constructed this interpretation, and also its function in easing the strain of contradiction. 79

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Throughout my time at Oakville, I noted how Camille, Brian, and Al expressed versions of each of the previous interpretations, and also how for each, one interpretation tended to dominate. Brian embraced the role of gatekeeper, Camille that of facilitator, and Al that of curriculum maker. But as the semester progressed, and the Celebration of Learning neared, all three shifted their focus— from accountabilit y or transformation or construction—to completion. All three were adamant that their exhibitions would be “good” experiences for students. They, along with their students, anticipated the final performances confident that they would be accompanied by “relief,” “pride,” and “satisfaction.” Exhibition was a means of fulfilling goals as well as a testament to that fulfillment. Exhibition as rite of passage vies with the interpretation of exhibition as test in terms of accessibilit y to these teachers. I suspect that this is primarily because these interpretations refer to a concrete event rather than an abstract concept. The difference bet ween test and rite of passage lies in the purpose of the event. And because of its association with purposes that transcended, while at the same time included, assessment, the rite of passage was deemed to be a more “meaningful” event than a test. Al, Brian, and Camille were f luid, direct, and animated in their explanations of the manner by which exhibitions serve as transitions for students and why these transitions are important to all members of the school communit y. And because exhibition as rite of passage encompasses exhibition as test, pedagogy, and curriculum, the teachers felt free to commingle the languages of accountabilit y, transformation, and construction with those associated with rite of passage. In other words, their notions of learning, teaching, and schooling seemed most coherent—most cosmological—when they were interpreting exhibition as rite of passage. More than as gatekeeper, facilitator, or curriculum maker, these teachers seemed at ease in the role of elder. When they interpreted exhibition as a rite of passage, they saw themselves serving a deeper purpose: initiating young people into adulthood. When they enacted that interpretation in the ritual of exhibition, they celebrated that deeper purpose.

A L A N G UA G E O F F U L F I L L M E N T The language that distinguishes the interpretation of exhibition as rite of passage is driven in both theme and diction by concepts related to fulfillment. Exhibition as rite of passage fulfills concrete course requirements as well as abstract and mysterious aspirations of teachers. The rite of passage, above all, is an affirmation that teaching is a meaningful enterprise. Meaning, further, as it is expressed in this interpretation, both encompasses and transcends the purposes and roles implied by exhibition as test, pedagogy, and curriculum. When teachers interpreted exhibition as rite of passage, they reinterpreted the three previous understandings to make celebration rather than mastery the goal. Here, the ritual of exhibition is portrayed as a special test, which stands for

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a new approach to teaching. This new approach to teaching embraces teachers’ multiple roles as gatekeeper, curriculum maker, and facilitator. In this way, the rite of passage encompasses all three previous interpretations. The transcendent qualit y of the rite of passage interpretation is signaled as much by tone as by vocabulary. This is an elevated, almost awestruck diction used to highlight the themes of completion, pride, and expression. Like stories of the pedagogy of exhibition, riteof-passage narratives preserve what is mysterious about the process of learning, but they emphasize growth, maturit y, and accomplishment more than freedom or subversion. Most important, the preeminence of the rite of passage, signaled by the language of fulfillment, suggests that, finally, exhibition is an occasion for expression and celebration rather than the demonstration of mastery.

DICTION: “STANDING UP” Exhibition, like other rituals of transition, celebrates what are considered to be significant changes in participants’ lives; and the language that surrounds these rituals is charged with what Brian calls “profound” meaning. When Brian uses this word, he means it to denote what is special about work in his classroom, and exhibition is one of the most profound activities he and his students undertake. “Even the word, exhibition, is profound,” he explains, “and I think it makes students take it more seriously.” When Al, Brian, and Camille talked about exhibitions as rites of passage, they focused on what was profound, about their teaching as well as their students’ learning. And what was most profound was students’ growth made visible both by and in the exhibition itself. Vocabulary is laden with words like pride, accomplishment, confidence, and reflection. Exhibition is a “big deal,” only partly because it is a test. More important is teachers’ belief that students do things “they’ve never done before.” And they do so with the support, encouragement, even love of their teachers. Besides vocabulary, another significant feature of the sentences teachers compose when they are thinking of exhibition as a rite of passage is the cheerfully vague tone of their discourse. “It will be good. It will be real good,” Camille quietly insists when I ask what she’s expecting of her students’ upcoming exhibitions. “This they can . . . share. This thing will keep,” Al volunteers, in predicting that students’ exhibitions are so important to them that many will continue to think about both the topic they studied and the experience of exhibiting even after the event is over. Both Camille and Al suggest a need to believe that these exhibitions will be good, and that they will linger in the minds and hearts of their students long after the exhibition itself. The search for “goodness” is a feature of all four interpretations of exhibition, but because the rite of passage is designed to celebrate completion, goodness is most fully realized through this interpretation. While words like pride and accomplishment are prevalent in teachers’ diction, exactly what they should be proud of is more elusive. The vague “something” or

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“this” that teachers refer to seems to imply both uncertaint y about goals and a concern with the intangible rewards of teaching and learning. Al, Brian, and Camille used the diction of fulfillment to construct an understanding of accomplishment that transcends knowledge of how to frame an argument or format a resumé. Teachers at OHS seem to have taken Sizer’s (1984) admonition that students should be able to “do important things” to mean that students should be able to “stand up” and present their ideas to an audience. The substance of those ideas takes second place to the fact that they have taken a stand.

THEMES: COMPLETION, PRIDE, AND EXPRESSION Though sometimes referred to as “culmination,” completion is the dominant subject of the language of fulfillment. Completion occurs on several levels. Most obviously, to complete an exhibition is to fulfill the requirements of Al’s, Brian’s, and Camille’s courses. And for all three, reaching the conclusion is evidence of success. Al explains, “I know this is the answer to every teacher’s dream but, I wish I, I could just say to them, ‘You completed it. You were successful. You earn an A, B, or C. You completed it. You did what was required of you. Go on. Go use this stuff in your other classes then. Go use it in life.’” Al’s focus on completion highlights the airy, almost mystical, qualit y of the language of fulfillment. The clipped sentences, the use of the second person, and the final exhortation to “go use it in life” all express his hope that “completing” the exhibition will, indeed, be useful in life. These elements, foregrounding as they do the big picture, what Brian calls “lifelong learning” and what Camille calls “what I do versus what I’m supposed to do,” also imply the role of teacher as elder. As persons of high status in a communit y, elders are respected for their wisdom, for their endurance, and for their knowledge of the ways of the communit y. Further, elders are invested in the endurance of the communit y—its values and customs as well as the individuals who make up the communit y. When Al tells his students to “go use it in life,” he is not talking about graduate programs in history. He is talking about the confidence that comes with being able to stand up and argue a position, and the satisfaction that comes from having accomplished something difficult. Brian highlights the “relief” that often accompanies completing something difficult: “They know that tonight’s point value, it’s worth very little of their grade. But it’s the excitement that builds and then this huge relief afterwards. That they really have been able to stand up in front of experts and say this is what I know, this is what I’ve learned.” Characteristically, Brian associates the finished exhibition with the nervousness he has felt all semester long. That nervousness builds to a crescendo, which culminates in the knowledge that they “have been able to stand up in front of experts.” As an elder, Brian stands with his students, and shares their experience by feeling that same sense of relief. For both Al and Brian, the value of standing up is associated with expressive goals of education. Com-

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pletion is equated with the transition to adulthood, and adulthood is understood to be characterized by poise, confidence, and self-reliance. A variation on the theme of completion is that of investment. All three teachers use the “incomplete” as a symbol of their commitment to the success of their students. The mark of I—for incomplete—substitutes for an F—for failure. The implied message in this action is that failure is not an option. When, early in the semester, Al admonishes his students that “Mr. Kaline doesn’t give Fs. You get an incomplete. Thesis is not going to go away,” he is expressing a fundamental tenet of his cosmology of teaching, and one that is consistent with Sizer’s goal of “earning” credit through performance rather than through “time spent” in classes. Al believes that everyone can, and should, complete his course. Success is not a matter of if; it is a matter of when. “They don’t get to do the presentation unless they’re at least a C. Most cases they’re a B. Or I say, ‘You’re not ready. You can’t do it. And you’re gonna be incomplete until you are ready.’” While the bulk of his diction—the harsh emphasis on standards, the identification of students with a letter grade, “they’re a B,”—recalls the interpretation of exhibition as test, Al’s final stress on readiness, “You’re gonna be incomplete until you are ready,” suggests the patient facilitator characteristic of the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy. Mixing languages, as Al has done here, is t ypical of all four of the interpretations of exhibition. Here, however, the effect masks rather than highlights contradictions. More overtly, Al talks about the “price” teachers are willing to pay in order for students to fulfill their goals, as in “the kids appreciate the fact that . . . that, yes they can be unsuccessful, but we want them to be successful and we’re willing to pay the price for that.” Paying the price means making the commitment that the students will, indeed, be ready to exhibit, even if it requires teachers to stay at school longer, to provide extra help for struggling students, and, sometimes, simply to wait until a student decides he or she is “ready.” When fulfillment is linked with the public display of exhibition, completion almost always is accompanied by pride. Where the focus in exhibition as test is on “showing,” here it is on “sharing.” “You’ve done all this work, ya know. Be excited that you’re at the end and share it with people,” Al exclaims to his incredulous students. Sharing, rather than showing, means feeling good about having “done all this work.” Brian is even more explicit about the importance of feeling good: When they go to do their self-evaluation, that would be a time for the “good job” because they’re about ready to ref lect on the entire process. Uh, so they need to be reminded that they did really good work before they fill out the self-evaluation so they’re not too hard on themselves. I want them to be honest but I don’t want them to beat themselves up at the same time because they did do something that was significantly harder than they’ve probably ever done before.

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He wants his students to take credit for their success, in part because they have accomplished something difficult. But difficult y is not his main focus. More important than the fact that what they did was “significantly harder” is that it was harder than anything “they’ve probably ever done before.” Brian sees the exhibition as an initiation, and he wants his students to feel good about it because initiations are occasions for celebration and pride, not just for the student, but for the entire communit y. Al also emphasizes the importance of celebrating accomplishment, but his language is tinged with doubt: “I don’t want my students to go into their exhibition with weaknesses. I know they will. I want them to, and, and you’ll see, like, my tone will completely change after we, we get through these [preliminary defenses]. I mean, . . . I’ll talk about the celebration of what they’ve learned.” Here, Al’s insistence that his students “celebrate what they’ve learned” suggests that the exhibition raises the stakes for teachers as well as for students. Much of the legitimacy of his course rides on this exhibition. One that is not “good” suggests that the whole semester was “bad.” Given the evident desire for these teachers to feel good about the completed exhibitions, it is no wonder Al is concerned about the price teachers pay when they use exhibitions in their teaching. When Al, Brian, and Camille talked about exhibitions as tests, where the guiding language was that of accountabilit y, they were concerned with making their exhibitions, and by extension, their teaching, legitimate. In the rite of passage, they are still concerned with legitimacy; only here they frame it differently. By conceiving of exhibition more as initiation than as test, Al, Brian, and Camille have created a reason to feel good about their exhibitions and, by extension, their teaching. When teachers were concerned with accountabilit y, exhibition meant evidence; when they were concerned with fulfillment, exhibition meant expression. Al views one goal as central to his course: the abilit y to stand up, express, and support a position. This he views as a skill of oral rather than written mastery. He worries as much about the lack of pizzazz in student presentations as he does the lack of evidence for the arguments they are presenting. Camille, similarly, focuses almost entirely on affect when she describes her goals for the final exhibition. “Tell them what you’ve done. Talk to them. Look them in the eye,” she tells her students. Also focusing on presentation, Brian shifts his demeanor on exhibition night. Recalling a student with whom he has locked horns over how to dress for the exhibitions, he assures me that his tone will change once the exhibition takes place: “I’ll tell him [the student] he looks wonderful, and wish him luck.” Completing an exhibition means having expressed oneself with poise and confidence. When Al, Brian, and Camille talk about exhibitions as “something they’ve [students] never done before,” they mean to highlight the expressive qualit y of the event. Early in Al’s course, Mitchell, a special needs student whom Al described as “a challenge,” said he would refuse to present before an audience. Whenever he reminded Al of his intention, Al would repeat his policy: “You won’t pass this class until you exhibit.” Still, Mitchell resisted, until, finally he

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made the sudden decision to go ahead with his preliminary defense. When he did present his project on the Roswell, New Mexico, controversy, Mitchell was nervous. He stammered, avoided eye contact, and fumbled with his notes. Ultimately, he ignored the rest of the class, focused only on Al, and completed his presentation. Al recounts the story with great enthusiasm and appreciation for whatever it was that ultimately made Mitchell “decide to go through with it.” Commenting on Mitchell’s posture and eye contact, Al emphasizes his student’s success: “I mean, that’s not the way I want him to be able to do it. But, that was the way he could succeed in getting up there and doing his presentation . . . he faced his own inquisitors.” Ever the coach, Al is empathic about Mitchell’s limitations and also the strength it took for Mitchell to overcome his nervousness and deliver his presentation. Al is also clear about his goal: “Getting up there” was paramount, and if Mitchell had to make adjustments in his delivery, that was fine with Al as long as he did his presentation. The significance of Mitchell’s accomplishment, however, is not evident until the final line: “He faced his own inquisitors.” Most obviously, Mitchell’s inquisitors were his teacher, peers, and the mythic “expert” who would question him about his topic. But, of course, there were no experts present at Mitchell’s preliminary defense. There were only students, his teachers (Al and a special education teacher who frequently sat in on Al’s class, and who worked closely with Mitchell), and me. We were a sympathetic audience if ever there was one. By “facing his own inquisitors,” Al is also suggesting that Mitchell faced a private, internal set of inquisitors: his fear of looking foolish in front of his peers and his doubts about his knowledge of the subject. In facing those inquisitors, Mitchell mastered something far greater than historical research and argument: He mastered himself. Camille’s understanding of the importance of expression also drives her interpretation of exhibition. But unlike Al’s focus on internal rewards of expression, Camille emphasizes the importance of being able to make a good “impression”: I think just the sense of their integrit y and what, what they’re about. I mean, their person and how they present themselves to other people. There is such an attitude that “I don’t care what anybody thinks about me, this is me and this is the way I’m gonna be,” and it’s like, but this societ y is very judgmental and a lot of times your first impression may be the only impression that someone has of you. Fair or not, it’s a realit y. And people judge you off of that.

Camille’s understanding of exhibition as rite of passage highlights the character of the adulthood to which she aspires for her students. Hers is a utilitarian view of the ritual. She retains the same distrust of authorit y she conveys when she interprets exhibition as pedagogy, but here she emphasizes ends versus means. Her goal for the exhibition (as for all her teaching) is for students to develop and to understand their “sense of integrit y.” Integrit y, like character, needs to be sought, found, and protected. In the context of exhibition, it also needs to be presented

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to other people. Understanding what the real world involves, including that it is not always fair, is part of productive adulthood. Learning to present or express oneself is one means to that end.

EXPOSITION: RECONCILIATION When Camille, Brian, and Al elaborate on the themes I have presented, they reveal connections among the interpretations of exhibition as rite of passage, test, pedagogy, and curriculum. Here they also reveal the strains of contradictory purposes as well as the manner in which the rite of passage (the interpretation as well as the event) eases those strains. Al demonstrates his ambivalence related to outcomes and standards when he talks about the dual products of the preliminary defense and the final position paper: The focus right now should be on their preliminary defense. They should all be prepared for their preliminary defense. Um, . . . with this [the position paper] having it due now, for some, for some of the students, the focus is still going to be on the preliminary defense but it’s also going to be on correcting this paper and making this paper go. Uh, . . . and if I have an area to back off from, I’m gonna back off on this paper. But there, I think it is essential that I teach . . . they come out of there knowing at least what an MLA paper should look like. I have to do this. Because for those who are gonna go on, they’re gonna have to use, I don’t care if it’s MLA or APA, but what they’re gonna have to use, know, is this is the way [they] have to do it if [they] want credit. Uh, and that’s one of the, one of the things students who are coming back to us now . . . ya know . . . kids I had last year are telling me, oh, this senior writing’s no problem because we were able to do this. You look at our senior proficiency and honor rate, it’s jumped tremendously since we started this course. And I’ll argue until I’m blue with the English department, it’s because of this course that it’s jumped.

Al is torn between wanting to scrap the position papers because students do not have the skills to do them well and wanting to take credit for having increased those very skills. By identifying the position paper and the preliminary defense as competing interests, he dramatizes the strain he feels as he attempts to reconcile contradictory purposes. The preliminary defense serves as rehearsal for what is considered to be the climax of Al’s course: the final defense. As the public demonstration of students’ abilit y to stand up for a position, it serves as the key event, the rite of passage, which is more meaningful to Al than the position paper. The position paper, in this interpretation, is an obstacle because it exposes students’ weaknesses. Rather than celebrating what they have accomplished, it reveals what they have failed to

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master. In the end, the position papers are submitted and graded by Al and his student teacher Jerry. But it is the defense that stands as the memorable, celebratory, and, therefore, important product of Thesis in History. Al’s ambivalence regarding the importance of the position paper relative to the oral defenses echoes Camille’s decision (along with her partner Carole) to scrap the original design of the Utopia unit. Both want their students to be successful, and they sensed that the standards implied by the original design and by the form of the final product would be obstacles rather than building blocks in students’ success. In part, this decision ref lects teachers’ reliance on f lexible standards and local knowledge in judging what is best for students. Because exhibition puts teachers in charge of determining outcomes and standards, f lexible standards, or what Kordalewski (2000) calls “co-constructed” standards (between teachers and students), gives teachers discretion to adjust course design and evaluation criteria depending on a variet y of factors. All three of the teachers I studied took advantage of this prerogative. This is partly because the stakes are so high in exhibition. Public humiliation is a high price to pay for insufficient scaffolding of student understanding or unmotivated students. And all three teachers cited these reasons as rationales for adjusting course design and standards. In other words, one reason teachers adjust standards is to avoid both students and teachers looking or feeling bad about lessthan-satisfactory outcomes. Another reason is to teach students more important lessons. A hallmark of Camille’s practice and her talk is the theme of what she does “versus what I’m supposed to do.” Based on her judgment of what students need—and also what she is able to give—Camille regularly alters curriculum and adjusts standards. She simply feels her teaching is more meaningful when she focuses on interacting with students and driving home her ever-present message: Adulthood means responsibility. Three days before the final exhibitions, Camille shared one of many anecdotes about responsibilit y. This one concerned Chris, a senior who had attempted to enlist Camille in convincing his father that, despite his mediocre performance all year, he was ready for college. As she recounts the story to me, I am struck by how she weaves themes as well as diction related to her multiple roles as gatekeeper, facilitator, and curriculum maker. I am even more struck by the emergence of the more powerful and, for Camille, comfortable role of elder: And I said, “Chris,” I said, ya know, and I have told him all along, “it’s about self-discipline in college.” I said, “You’ve got me here now to call your parents. No one’s gonna call your parents in college. Ya know, no one’s gonna.” He said, “I don’t miss that many days of school, ya know.” He said, “I probably missed two days of school this year.” And, I said, “In college, its different.” I said, “There’s an expectation for you to be here. In college, that isn’t there, ya know. The professors expect that you’re gonna be there. Someone has paid money for you to be there, but you have so many more

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choices in college and if you’re not disciplined enough to take those responsibly,” I said, “I can honestly understand where your father is coming from.” And I said, and this is something I have told him before, I was really worried about his writing skills. I told him he has yet to turn in a paper to me that he did not get an incomplete on. That he’s had to redo. I said, “You don’t get that in college. Its an automatic F, if it’s not up to standard.” Ya know, I said, “At least here, you get an incomplete, which means you have the opportunit y to redo that based on the comments that were made.” And so, some of the kids are starting to see the realit y. And that really affected him . . . the fact that his father told him last night, he just does not think . . . he’s ready. His parents are ready to pay tuition, or ready for him to go. They want him to succeed, but his father also sees that maybe he’s just not ready for this.

Camille has told me repeatedly that she considers it her task “to prepare them [students] for realit y, wherever their realit y is.” And the themes of realit y and readiness surge through her language. Here she has wanted Chris to exhibit his readiness for college, partly through academic mastery—writing skills—but even more through conduct. She cites attendance, behavior, and responsibilit y as criteria for judging readiness. She uses the language of accountabilit y when she reminds Chris of his mediocre performance: “You haven’t received anything but a C in this class,” and points to college professors as authorit y figures, “It’s an automatic F if you’re not up to standard.” But above all, she serves as counselor. Though she identifies with Chris’s father, another elder, her stance is always facilitative; she wants Chris to know that she understands “where his father is coming from,” and she serves as mediator. She wants Chris and all her students to understand realit y because that is what is best for them. She is passing on wisdom she has gained through firsthand experience.

V I E W S F RO M T H E E X H I B I T I O N S : C E L E B R AT I O N Like exhibition as test, the rite of passage is an event that occurs in real time and space. During the year I collected data at Oakville, for the first time, all final exhibitions were conducted on three consecutive evenings in late May. On those evenings, formally dressed students, their parents, siblings, communit y members, and many teachers came together to perform, to evaluate those performances, but most of all to celebrate a transition in students’ lives at the school. Besides serving as a requirement for promotion, these exhibitions demanded, above all, that students stand before a public audience and declare a position, share knowledge, and field questions from their audience. On the evenings that comprised the Celebration of Learning, the corridors and classrooms of OHS were transformed into ritual, if not sacred, spaces. The occasion was marked by an

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all-school art exhibition. This served both to adorn the school and as a deliberate reference to the multiple interpretations of the word exhibition. Public spaces were filled with visual demonstrations of mastery by students. By transmitting the visual and public message that mastery was both occurring and valued at OHS, the art exhibition referred to a more familiar version of exhibition and it underscored the purpose of the Celebration of Learning. A gathering area outside OHS’s library served as the geographic and spiritual center of the Celebration of Learning. Teachers from each class set up tables, which served as registration sites. These tables were decorated with signs identifying the names of appropriate courses, and the collective effect was somewhere bet ween an airline terminal and a science fair. Teachers planted themselves at their tables and prepared to receive students and visitors. When students arrived for their presentations, they stopped at the appropriate table, introduced their families to their teachers, picked up evaluation sheets, then proceeded to the individual classrooms where each exhibition would take place. When the exhibitions ended, students and families returned to the tables, where teachers were waiting to collect evaluation sheets and, more important, to congratulate each student as well as his or her family for having completed this milestone. There were smiles, pats on the back, and, most notably, handshakes for students, for parents, even for siblings who were anticipating their own exhibitions to come. Teachers assumed the role of host, welcoming the communit y into their realm and basking in the glow of pride for their students and also for themselves. In one classroom, Serena, a student of Camille’s, was presenting her portfolio to a panel composed of her mother, her sister, her ninth-grade English teacher, and an eleventh-grade student. Carefully made up and dressed in a black-andgreen print dress, Serena is only slightly nervous to be presenting before her family, her teacher, and a peer. This presentation marks the third time she has participated in final exhibitions, and her confident demeanor suggests experience, if not world weariness. As everyone takes their seats, Serena boots up a computer and prepares to tell her audience what she knows about local school politics with the aid of the soft ware program Powerpoint. In measured, friendly tones, she walks her audience through the presentation, cued by the graphics on the screen, uninterrupted by questions or challenges of any kind. She concludes by asking if anyone has questions. Her sister jumps up and hugs her. Her mother, who has been sitting in the back taking notes, smiles hesitantly. She does not want to brag about her daughter, but when I ask her how she feels about this event, she cannot help but say that “Serena did an excellent job. She’s very poised. She’s ready for college.” In another classroom Adam is presenting his resumé and portfolio to a panel composed of his father and his consultant, a local veterinarian whom he had shadowed and interviewed early in the semester. The trio sits in a row of student chairs, again in an empt y classroom. Adam narrates as he turns the pages of a carefully divided loose-leaf notebook.

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Throughout the presentation, Adam speaks mostly to his consultant, who nods enthusiastically as Adam recounts in vivid detail the procedures he witnessed during his day of shadowing the vet. Adam has told me that he is proud of the work he has done for Resumé: “When I do something, I do it all the way, or else I don’t do it.” He will get an A for Resumé, despite borderline grades in all four of the Connections classes. The exhibition will enable him to move on to the eleventh grade. Adam’s father, who has remained silent for most of the presentation, perks up when the subject turns to the requirements for veterinary school. “You need good marks in chemistry, right?” he asks the consultant. “Oh, yes,” she replies to Adam rather than his father, “and biology, and physics, and calculus.” This silent reference to Adam’s poor performance in science goes unnoticed by the consultant. She carries on, treating Adam as her protégé. For the moment, Adam revels in the world as represented by his resumé and portfolio, and he imagines himself following in the footsteps of his consultant. In the Information Center, Rob has just finished his final defense of his project on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Rob’s assembled audience bursts out of a nearby classroom; his smiling mother is holding completed evaluation sheets. Rob is beaming. And his father makes a beeline to Al’s table. “Now, I want to know your theory!” he exclaims. He is smiling as he as he and Al exchange a heart y handshake and Al happily launches into his perception of the controversy. “I’m a believer in the lone-gunman theory,” he says smiling. “I used to believe there was a conspiracy, but I’ve changed my mind over the years.” Each year at least two students elect to do their Thesis projects on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This pleases Al greatly because he is somewhat of a JFK buff. Rob’s project, however, is a special case for Al because early in the semester Rob had accompanied his father on a trip to Dallas. While there, father and son did some investigating. Together, they visited the site of the shooting, took photographs of the grassy knoll and other landmarks that have since been memorialized. For Rob, one of several special needs students in Al’s class, the Thesis project was one of the first times he had felt “successful” as a high school student. He looks on, barely containing his joy and his pride, as his father and his teacher exchange stories and recollections and opinions about the assassination. Al lingers with the family, seeming to want the moment to last as long as possible.

E X P R E S S I V E I N D I V I D UA L I S M A N D T E AC H E R A S E L D E R The role of elder, implied by this interpretation, encompasses the roles of gatekeeper, facilitator, and curriculum maker. It eases the strain of changing practice by de-emphasizing the goal of mastery. It gives teachers permission to change the goal, to identify a more meaningful purpose for schooling, a more meaningful role for teachers, and an occasion that celebrates rather than seeks to unlock the mystery of learning.

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I link this interpretation with what Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swindler, and Tipton (1985) call “expressive individualism.” In this now classic study of American perceptions of “fulfillment,” Habits of the Heart examined a cross section of mostly middle-class, white Americans, and reported that the search for meaning among this group revolved primarily around individual or personal fulfillment. Further, the authors argue that individualistic pursuits can be divided into two categories: utilitarian individualism and expressive individualism. These two purposes merge in the four interpretations of exhibition examined in this book. Within the mostly middleclass, white “test market” communit y of Oakville, education serves primarily utilitarian ends in the interpretation of exhibition as test, where school is seen as a ticket to someplace better, preferably a well-paying job. Camille’s emphasis on impressions students make by the way they present themselves and the need to develop and demonstrate responsibility also expresses this impulse. The expressive search for meaning is also enacted in the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy, in which free-f lowing expression is held up as a value of this student-centered approach to teaching. The performance-oriented core of exhibition as curriculum also addresses expressive individualism, but here the emphasis is on encouraging teachers to express their goals and their expertise in the act of organizing content. Expressive individualism is most vividly dramatized in the interpretation of exhibition as rite of passage. Here, the value, like the event itself, seeks to transcend race, class, and scholastic categories. When students demonstrate their entry into adulthood through exhibiting, they are earning that initiation through expressing themselves as poised and confident individuals. “Standing up” is a concrete and also symbolic way of affirming the goal of expressive individualism. The spiritual/religious undertones of the rite of passage, with its subtle reference to religious rites such as baptism or bar mitzvah, point further to the quest for meaning that seems to dominate these teachers’ conceptions of themselves and their profession.

L I N K I N G L A N G UA G E A N D A C T I O N : SYMBOLS OF EXHIBITION Like many rituals, exhibition as rite of passage is fraught with symbolism, and it is those symbols even more than stories that dominate the language and action of Al, Brian, Camille and their students. From the title Celebration of Learning, to the formal dress, the ceremonial gathering of communit y members, and finally to the handshake each student receives as he or she completes an exhibition, these symbols serve to enact as well as to construct a shared understanding of exhibition and its role at OHS. In previous chapters, I have touched on the manner in which certain concepts such as the rubric and the expert, certain events such as the rehearsal, and certain gestures such as the handshake carry more meaning than is initially

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apparent. These concepts, events, and gestures function as symbols, which, depending on the context, communicate understanding related to Al, Brian, and Camille’s interpretation of exhibition, their theories of schooling, and their roles as teachers. The following table displays these symbols to demonstrate the manner in which each is integral to constructing discrete interpretations; and also the degree to which those interpretations rely on one another and, at times, overlap. They serve as signposts that signify and distill interpretation. In the case of exhibition, these symbols serve that function for four separate interpretations.

Test

Pedagogy

Curriculum

Rite of Passage

Rubric

Objectivit y Equit y/ explicitness

Teacher’s authorit y

Target, goal

Form of the ritual

Expert

Legitimacy Authenticit y

Intruder

Content Disciplinary understanding

Transition/ projection

Handshake

Completion

Aid/support

Connection

Celebration Initiation

Rehearsal

Presentation

Student centralit y

Building blocks

Formalit y, Finalit y

Symbols of Exhibition

Analyzed vertically, each symbol serves the overarching theme of the interpretation with which it is associated. In the case of exhibition as test, that theme is accountabilit y. As a symbol of objectivit y and explicitness, the rubric both identifies and affirms those characteristics as features of accountabilit y. Similarly, the expert lends legitimacy and authenticit y to exhibitions because he or she represents that to which the teachers and students are accountable, and by anticipating the final presentation, the rehearsal reinforces its importance. Analyzed horizontally, subtle, but significant, distinctions in meaning demonstrate the power of symbols to both discern and accommodate multiple interpretations. Depending on the interpretation, the gesture of the handshake symbolizes completion or aid or celebration. Completion, aid, and celebration are, indeed, related concepts, and when they are viewed side by side, it is easy to see how they might commingle as parts of a unified cosmology rather than as signifiers of multiple and contradictory theories.

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Yet, there is contradiction. Again, a horizontal reading reveals stark contrast bet ween the symbol of the expert as a legitimating authorit y supporting the interpretation of exhibition as test, and the symbol of the expert as intruder on the pedagogy of coaching. How can a teacher both rely on and distrust the expert, particularly when the concept of the expert plays such a visible role in both interpretations? Is the rehearsal a means of building understanding or is it a sign of mastery attained? Is the rubric meant to check a teacher’s bias or to celebrate the teacher’s authorit y in defining standards? Some of these contradictions are resolvable. Theorists like Gardner (1991), McDonald (1993), and Wiggins (1993), for instance, have made a powerful case for making rehearsals and other performances central to student learning precisely because they challenge students to build understanding through ongoing cycles of demonstration and criticism. Others, however, are less easily reconciled. The teacher’s role in evaluating student work is central both to the specific instance of exhibition and to the entire constructivist approach to teaching and learning. The symbolic function of the rubric to both limit and expand teachers’ authorit y with respect to standards and critique reveals a deep tension in teachers’ theoretical understanding of the concept of exhibition. The same is true for the conf licting interpretations of expert as legitimator and intruder. This contradiction suggests troubling ambivalence related not only to the power of persons deemed experts, but also to the value and purpose of expertise. For the most part, these teachers’ theories were tacit, and, for the most part, they remained so throughout the study. It was only through analysis of their language that I was able to uncover evidence of dissonance and contradiction in their thinking about the practice of exhibition. In particular, this analysis of the symbols of exhibition demonstrates the dynamic manner in which interpretations move back and forth as circumstances dictate, and also the way in which identical terms can acquire vastly different meanings. When exhibition is ritualized as a rite of passage, all three of the previous interpretations are contained and, at least for the moment, resolved. The rite of passage is a special kind of test, but the specialness goes beyond being an alternative form of assessment. It also stands for a new kind of teaching, one in which teachers share the pride of accomplishment with their students. In this teaching, students, rather than teachers, are at the center of activit y, and teachers, rather than textbooks or curriculum guides, determine the outcomes. When teachers say their performance is on the line as much as that of their students, they are referring to the manner in which their students are ref lections of their own accomplishment, and for teachers who see themselves as curriculum makers, that performance is signified by the design of their courses as much as by the ratings their students receive. In other words, each of these teachers finds ways to fit his or her theories, even conf licting theories, into the interpretation of exhibition as rite of passage. For Camille, the leap is not very high. Her view of education as preparation for re-

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alit y blends the languages of accountabilit y and coaching with that of fulfillment in a nearly seamless manner. Brian, on the other hand, shows greater strain as he attempts to link his overriding concern with accountabilit y, expressed as explicitness and predictabilit y, with the constructivist and facilitative emphases of exhibition as pedagogy and curriculum. For Brian, the rite of passage enlarges his view of exhibition. He assumes the role of elder when he shakes hands and congratulates his students for work welldone, when he helps a young man tie his necktie, when he greets his students’ parents with the protective and loving pride that characterizes his demeanor on exhibition nights. These symbolic gestures of support, encouragement, and celebration soften Brian’s stance as the gatekeeper. Combining the handshake with the reminder that he “won’t be there next year to hold your hand” highlights his concern for supporting rather than testing his students. Brian finds the role of elder meaningful, which means he understands it and thinks it is important. And because he finds this role meaningful, he can use it as a legitimate entry point for thinking about and experimenting with roles that are less comfortable to him, such as facilitator and curriculum maker. Al celebrates exhibition nights, which he often mistakenly refers to as the “nights of excellence,” because they affirm his curriculum as well as his pedagogy. He believes his students dazzle their audiences with their knowledge and enthusiasm for the topic, and he takes this as a testament that his students are “taking something away” that they can “go use in life.” He relishes the thought that Rob’s project on the assassination of JFK brought him closer to his father. He is gratified to know that the family will continue discussing the controversy on the way home, and that they will look upon this evening as a moment in which they celebrated Rob’s excellence, his knowledge, and, most of all, his initiation into educated adulthood. Throughout part II, I have argued that one of the byproducts of multiple interpretations of the practice of exhibition is multiple understandings of the purpose of schooling, and also teachers’ roles. While the rite of passage is one strategy teachers use in an attempt to reconcile the contradictions implied by these different purposes and roles, in the end its usefulness as a strategy for changing practice is limited. Because the rite of passage, like the previous three interpretations, operates on a largely tacit or intuitive level, these teachers did not have access to their theories in ways that would have enabled them to ref lect, assess, and modify their practice. Instead, they strained to meet the expectations of all four interpretations, purposes, and roles. The strain is evident in the teachers’ talk. The diction, themes, and exposition or narrative of Al, Brian, and Camille reveal tension in their conceptions of exhibition and, by extension, their theories of action. In part III, I explore in greater detail the substance of that tension, focusing primarily on what I saw the teachers do when they attempted to teach using exhibitions.

PART III

Teacher as Coach: Revising Roles, Transforming Practice

As I hope the previous chapters demonstrate, the roles of gatekeeper, curriculum maker, and facilitator resonate for all three teachers, despite the tendency for each to gravitate toward one or another. In fact, I view these roles less as distinct identities than as dimensions of the overarching role implied by the CES slogan “teacher as coach.” In various ways, each teacher is attempting to act out a version of coaching. To say that Al’s version concentrates on the enterprise of curriculum making (Clandinin and Connelly, 1992) is to note his emphasis on the structure and goals of his discipline as well as his tendency to enact his conception of exhibition through the design of his curriculum. Brian’s gatekeeping is enacted in both the form and the function of his discussion of “objectives” and “evidence,” in which he both models and proclaims the importance of presentation to external authorities. Camille, by contrast, cultivates a rendition of coaching that accentuates the relational and transformative dimensions of the enterprise. All three tap into distinct, but overlapping, Discourses of disciplinary understanding, accountabilit y, and transformation. The teachers construct their roles in ways that ref lect these overlapping Discourses; and I think it important to note that slightly altered circumstances might produce significantly altered roles. Cued in part by the reform (and by the Discourses that are entangled in the reform), each teacher constructs an interpretation of exhibition—or what it means to teach with exhibitions—that entails a

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combination of gatekeeping, facilitating, and curriculum making. A fourth purpose, initiating, suggested by the role of elder, emerges as a means of both integrating and transcending the previous three. My treatment of the notion of role draws from Gee’s (1990, 2001) work on identit y and discourse. Citing Hacking (1983, 1986) and Taylor (1994), Gee elaborates a conception of identit y as “being recognized as a certain ‘kind of person’ in a given context” (2001, p. 99). Al, Brian, and Camille are each recognized as different kinds of people depending on the contexts in which they operate. Within the context of OHS, they share the identit y of teacher. When I refer to the roles Al, Brian, and Camille assumed to act out the meaning of the reform of exhibition, I am addressing the various ways in which each seeks to be recognized as being “a certain kind of teacher.” Recognition, Gee notes, requires an interpretive system, a context as well as mode for making meaning within which to construct and sustain identities or roles. I note that an important meaning making context for Al, Brian, and Camille was the culture of reform as exemplified by CES. Additional contexts include the teachers’ educational and personal histories, relationships each may have with colleagues and students, positions they may hold both in and out of school, and associations they may belong to. Al, Brian, and Camille rely on all of these interpretive systems to construct identities within which to act out the meaning of their work. Al, Brian, and Camille claimed that one of the chief ways in which exhibition was meaningful in their teaching was that it both represented and demanded a different kind of teaching. All three saw themselves as innovative; and to varying degrees, all three talked about the challenges of learning to teach in ways that were more student-centered, discussion-oriented, cooperative, discovery-based, handson, and critical. In short, all three endorsed the CES-sanctioned approach to teaching, which is usually summed up by “teacher as coach, student as worker.” While all three teachers claimed to embrace a coaching pedagogy, analysis of their language as well as their practice suggests that their grasp of what is actually involved in coaching was uncertain. Their conceptions of expertise grew out of a tradition of teaching that emphasized transmission over discovery, breadth over depth, and control over engagement. If coaching means discovery, depth, and engagement, these teachers were left largely on their own to discern both the meaning of those concepts and their application in the classroom. To clarify and concretize the ubiquitous metaphor of teacher as coach, I have divided my analysis of the challenges associated with the practice of coaching into a discussion of three roles. This is because I saw Al, Brian, and Camille engage in three distinct categories of teaching activit y: designing, managing, and critiquing. All three of these activities exerted impact on the evolution of the teachers’ exhibitions, and all three of these activities presented more general challenges to their teaching. In understanding both the nature of these roles and the ways in which they challenged Al, Brian, and Camille, we may see more clearly the gradual and deliberative manner in which teachers change their practice.

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The first activit y, designing, is often called “planning.” Since planning an exhibition involves envisioning an outcome as well as the intermediary steps, designing is a central, but not always understood, role for the teacher as coach. Coaching is most often associated with interactions bet ween teachers and students, and the strategies teachers use to cultivate consent among students, to pose questions and to manage unwieldy classroom arrangements, are the focus of the second role, what I call “teacher as manager.” The third central activit y is criticism. Because exhibition is most concretely understood as a test, the criteria teachers use to judge exhibitions, the confidence with which they deliver criticism, and also the frequency with which they offer it constitute the prickliest challenges for Al, Brian, and Camille. Each of these activities relies on a teacher’s mastery of a new set of skills; and these skills are associated with what I identify as a “constructivist knowledge base” (see Cohen, McLaughlin, and Talbert, 1993; Shulman, 1986, 1987). Skills such as standard setting, curriculum development, and criticism have traditionally been understood to involve expertise beyond that of classroom teachers. Specially trained curriculum developers or researchers are usually charged with performing these tasks, then translating them into applicable “guidelines” for teachers to follow. Exhibition, along with other “new” practices such as portfolios, projectbased, or interdisciplinary teaching, eliminate the specialist “middleman.” They require teachers to determine outcomes, to accommodate curriculum, and to negotiate standards. Coaching, in other words, entails much more than stepping aside to allow student performance to dominate classroom activities. It represents a substantive reconstruction of our understanding of what counts as teaching expertise. Previous scholars have documented an array of challenges associated with developing expertise (Berliner, 1986; Livingston and Borko, 1989). And when the goal is revolutionizing expertise, the challenges are even more acute (Ball, 1993; Cohen, 1990; Huberman, 1995; Lampert, 2001; Thomson and Zeuli, 1999). When thinking is at the heart of the reform, as it is in the instance of coaching, it makes sense to deconstruct the meaning of the concept so we might understand what it will take to reconstruct the attending constellation of skills and knowledge comprising a teacher’s cosmology of teaching. For Al, Brian, and Camille, these skills and knowledge were all new, and to some extent, each associated them with exhibition, which here stands for the practice of coaching. The newness of the practice, the degree to which it represented a change in both the way they thought about teaching and what they were accustomed to doing in the role of teacher, presented significant obstacles to Al’s, Brian’s and Camille’s attempts to change their practice.

SEVEN

Teacher as Designer What does designing have to do with coaching? In this chapter I argue that designing entails the foundational skills of teachers who aim to be coaches. I also propose that the role of designer or “curriculum maker” (Clandinin and Connelly, 1992; Schwab, 1969) presents special challenges for teachers because it implies both a modified view of curriculum and a new understanding of practice. Implicit in this conception of role is a practical orientation that is both constructivist and deliberative (Ball, 1993; Reid, 1999; Shulman, 1987). This orientation places student performance at the center of classroom life, which can seem to render teacher performance invisible. Relocating teaching expertise in the arena of design rather than presentation endows teachers with more control for what students learn, and also more responsibilit y for how they learn it (Connelly and Clandinin, 1988; McLaughlin and Talbert, 1993; Wiske, 1998). Many restructuring efforts, including the reforms associated with CES, acknowledge the necessary role of designing by calling for common planning time built into teachers’ workdays. Such is the case at Oakville High. Eighth period has been designated for common planning, but of the three teachers only Brian scheduled regular meetings with his teammates to plan. Camille and Carole usually shared ideas during the minutes between classes, and Al and Neil (along with their student teachers) compared notes often, but in no regular format. When I observed planning sessions among members of Brian’s team, I never saw them discuss curriculum. Instead, their meetings focused on the progress of individual students, logistical issues pertaining to upcoming events, and attendance. These sessions were used as time for the team to relax together and to keep up on common concerns, but not as times to discuss curriculum or instruction. In other words, despite the structural accommodation for design, the teachers’ use of this time suggested, at best, a superficial grasp of the relationship of coaching to the role of designer. When Sizer (1984) says that school should prepare students to “do important things” and that students should “earn” their diplomas, his concern, though 99

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notably vague, is with understanding. Where the Coalition of Essential Schools outlines the general “principles” of schooling aimed at teaching students “to use their minds well,” throughout the 1990s research organizations and consortia concerned themselves with f leshing out the specifics of broad prescriptions such as those enumerated in the CES principles. This research and development falls generally under the heading of “teaching for understanding” (Blythe, 1997; Cohen, McLaughlin, and Talbert, 1993; Cossentino and Shaffer, 1999; Elmore, Peterson, and McCarthy, 1996; Gardner, 1991; Resnick, 1987; Wiske, 1998). Teaching for understanding, along with other constructivist approaches to designing curriculum and instruction, advocates a version of “backward mapping” (Elmore, 1980). That is, the teacher/designer begins with identifying outcomes, and, working backwards, develops a series of performances punctuated by ongoing assessment all aimed toward fulfilling goals for understanding. The success of teaching for understanding hinges largely on the alignment of goals, performances, and assessment. The more tightly they are aligned, the stronger the supports or “scaffolding” for developing understanding become. This emphasis on alignment highlights both the power and the challenge of the role of teacher as designer. It authorizes teachers to determine outcomes, but that authorit y rests on command of a subtle set of skills.

PERFORMANCE: SCAFFOLDING Central to the enterprise of designing curriculum aimed at understanding is the organization of performances through which students may both develop and demonstrate emerging understanding. How those performances are structured, sequenced, and monitored constitutes a critical, though often invisible, deployment of coaching expertise. The notion that the curriculum is a cycle of performances punctuated by feedback, leading clearly and purposefully toward the final exhibition is not, in fact, new at all. Bruner (1977) called it scaffolding alluding to the subtle but essential support provided by structured performance. Bruner also shifted the emphasis from interaction to content, but kept the focus on structure in what is still widely referred to as “the spiral curriculum.” Notable forerunners to Bruner’s articulation are Kilpatrick’s (1918) “project method,” Dewey’s (1959) ideal of learning through experience or “by doing,” and Parker’s (1896) formulation of “modes of attention and expression.” The notion of learning through performance is not new, but it was, to varying degrees, alien to the teachers I studied. The strangeness of the concept of performance was evident in Brian’s and Camille’s conception of planning. Both teachers view their plan books as representations of their craft, and that representation virtually ignores student performance. Rather, they put the emphasis on “content to be covered” (Munby, 1990). Camille told me that she re-does her plan books, aspiring for them to be neat, rather than detailed. Brian was more cumulative in the design of his Resumé section, but he also saw each

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class as a set of tasks to be accomplished. Though he used action verbs like draft (career objective) or format (resumé), he rarely attended to the deeper implications of the skills of drafting or formatting, or even to the more global goal of summary evident in successful resumés. He did not necessarily want his students to understand concepts growing out of the development of a resumé. He wanted them to complete them neatly and on time. His planning was designed to fulfill that goal. Al, of course, is a notable exception in this instance. As chapter 5 discussed, his conception of curriculum design is guided by the metaphors of “building blocks” and “stepping-stones.” By envisioning the curriculum as “moving” through cumulative “steps” all leading toward the final exhibition, and by sharing his conception of how that movement proceeds with his students, Al highlights his role as designer. His strain was in worrying over the placement of a specific assignment or the timing of the preliminary defenses. This concern with the relationship between the parts and the whole is what distinguishes the activit y of designing from planning, and it was largely absent in the practice of Brian and Camille. Throughout the semester, Brian proceeded in almost lockstep predictabilit y in building the resumé. Piece by piece, subheading by subheading, students moved through the activities with little attention to why or how they were doing what they were doing. Repeatedly, I asked Brian how his planning had changed from year to year, and repeatedly he replied that there had been very little change. “One of the great things about this is we feel we’ve gotten it down,” he assured me. Why revise something that already works? Near the end of the resumé-drafting process, however, he surprised me with his attention to scaffolding his students’ learning. Three days after students had turned in drafts of the academic skills portion of their resumés, Brian returned to class with a handout (see appendix B). Over the weekend, he read his students’ work, and in preparation for this day’s task, which was to revise the drafts, Brian had transcribed and categorized the sentences each student wrote. For instance, under the category of “Creativit y,” three students had written: • Collaborated and organized ideas in the “Can You Prove It?” unit on the poster boards. • Constructed and prepared ideas while doing the two-perspective drawing project. • Organized and constructed reflection lines of symmetry.

Other categories included “Problem Solving,” “Communication,” “Writing Skills,” and “Working Well with Others.” Under each category was student work, t yped verbatim. The effect was dazzling both in its display of the unaltered language of students and in the array of talents and skills identified. In some cases, they were expressed haltingly: I have skill in problem solving and my proof is I used problem solving in a lot of conditionals in a unit in geometry. Others were more polished: Developed and critiqued an essential question pertaining to the novel Things Fall

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Apart. In either case, the handout served as a mirror, inviting the students to use it as affirmation of their abilities and as a model for evaluating, and, eventually, revising how they expressed their abilities in light of their aspirations. When Brian goes over the handout, he tells students that he wants them to “look at what you wrote and think about how to revise before you ask for a conference.” He has prepared a second handout listing action verbs students may use as they revise their statements. In addition, he has written eight questions on the board: Questions to ask yourself: 1. Does the statement begin with a verb? 2. Does the verb match the skill? 3. Is this statement subject-specific? 4. Is this statement assignment-specific? 5. Does the statement prove that you have the skill? 6. Are unnecessary words omitted? 7. Does the statement begin with a capital letter and end with a period? 8. Are the three statements distinct?

He instructs the class to consult this list before they request a conference. He concludes his opening remarks by saying “I want to see absolutely zero conversation going on because you can’t afford it. I’m not going to answer any questions for ten minutes.” He wants the room to be silent, indicating to him that the students are hard at work. He repeats the admonitions to “think,” to “prepare to conference,” and not to ask him anything from the list of eight questions he has instructed them to ask themselves, “because that tells me that you want me to do the work for you.” The concern for control and order t ypical of all interactions I witnessed bet ween Brian and his students is abundantly evident here. Moreover, he understood his use of the handout and the list of questions as strategies to enhance his efficiency more than as tools to guide student understanding. Still, on this occasion Brian demonstrated the beginnings of what, to me, looked like an unusually layered and insightful understanding of how to organize his class so that student performance was both central and supported. I suspect that my presence, both as an observer and as someone who asked him questions, inf luenced this move. I had asked him early in the process if he used models in his instruction. His answer was a vague affirmative; he could come up with no concrete examples of models. The following week, however, he produced a model resumé prepared by one of the previous year’s students, and proceeded to refer to “Paula’s resumé” throughout the remainder of the semester. Since this strategy seemed new to Brian, we never discussed reasons why a model would be beneficial or, especially, how he might use it. These were insights I waited for Brian to introduce. When I questioned him after class about

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how he developed the handout just described, he did not refer to it as a model. In keeping with his goal of efficiency, he reasoned this would eliminate “some steps” and help him manage the barrage of questions that normally follow instructions to revise. This window into Brian’s developing expertise reveals a change in how he understands the role of design in his practice. It is still very much emergent, so much so that he does not even name it as modeling or indicate an appreciation of the cognitive support the handout provided his students. Still immersed in a conception of coaching that emphasizes presentation over design, he views this revision as a strategy for classroom management. He does not fully grasp the implications of mirroring student work as a form of feedback or how his list of “Questions to ask yourself” serves to scaffold the process of revision. “It is new,” Brian tells me when I ask what made him decide to compile the list of questions, “but I’ve always had them in my head.” Choosing to articulate that list and incorporate it into his plan for the day represents a significant, albeit nascent, “revolution” in how he understands his role as designer.

G OA L S : “ B U I L D I N G B A C K WA R D S ” Along with envisioning curriculum as a series of performances scaffolded by instruction (such as Brian’s list of questions) or feedback (such as the handout composed of student work), a second important skill of the teacher as designer is that of goal setting. If the performances are the building blocks or stepping-stones of a teacher’s course, goals are represented by the “target,” which, in this case, is the exhibition. Goals relate directly to outcomes, which means they also relate to standards. Most important, they determine the nature as well as the sequence of the building blocks leading toward the target. For Brian and his team, the target seemed clear. Everything in the Resumé project led visibly and directly to the final exhibition: the presentation of the final draft of the resumé along with a portfolio that provided evidence for the claims made in the resumé. As Brian told me throughout the field study, his primary goal was to get students to “think about their futures . . . and [how] what they were doing now impacts that future.” He enacted that goal by breaking the task of drafting the resumé into smaller, more manageable parts; when each step was completed, the resumé was finished. This version of building blocks virtually ignores the cumulative development of skills so central to Al’s conception of the same idea (see chapter 5). Where Al fusses over the sequence of performances designed to give students “practice” in using the skills of historians—research, argument, rebuttal—Brian worries about finishing each step on time. Moreover, each of the steps of composing the resumé is identical. Mastering the skills of an early step is not required to complete later steps. Brian understood that he was scaffolding student performance based on the amount a time he allotted for each step. As the class moved through the drafting process,

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Brian saw himself as gradually removing scaffolding in direct proportion to the rate at which he expected students to finish the step. “By now you should understand how to do this, so you don’t need as much coaching,” he announced to his students. The goals of the Resumé curriculum emphasize knowledge over understanding. Students need to know proper formatting procedures. They need to know how to compose a sentence driven by an action verb. They need to make certain their resumés are neat, reproduced on high-qualit y paper, and represent each student in his or her most positive light. The hows of this curriculum are almost all procedural. The whys are almost all implicit. Brian’s students are not practicing skills central to the discipline of mathematics. They are learning life skills. The primary life lesson seems to be that self-presentation is important to students’ future. Students who see their futures fitting into Brian’s vision acknowledged this goal, followed Brian’s instructions, submitted their final resumés, and exhibited to their families and consultants with pride and relief. Students like Willie, the erstwhile auto mechanic, resisted the process, and ultimately did not finish, which meant they failed all four of the courses for which Resumé served as the culminating exhibition. In Brian’s case, one gauge of the success of his curriculum was the degree to which students bought into the goals. This is affected by the nature of the goals as well as how they are expressed to students. In Camille’s case, this issue dominated as well. Camille’s strain to grasp the concepts and skills that underlie a “coaching” pedagogy was evident in her tension around the goals of Senior Political Studies (SPS). Like Brian, she articulated “big-picture” aspirations for her students, such as “looking inside themselves” or developing “their sense of integrit y,” but she was uncertain about how to set up her class so that both its content and its organization led toward those goals. When she and her teaching partner, Carole, redesigned the second semester of SPS to revolve around a “portfolio” of career exploration, Camille told me that she and Carole wanted their students to have a variet y of experiences and “get a sense of the realit y versus the utopia” of life after high school. The portfolio, as conceived by Carole and Camille, would consist of a variet y of tasks: shadowing a professional in the field to which they might want to enter, attending a college class, attending a local government meeting, researching five Web sites, and setting up their own Web site. Each of these was attached to a point value. Students could, in effect, determine their grade by deciding not how well but how many of the tasks to complete. Camille and Carole referred to this list of tasks as a “rubric” and distributed it to students at the start of the semester (see appendix B). As students completed tasks, their portfolios grew thicker; and each Friday Camille or Carole would check on their progress. Camille and Carole enacted the goals of their curriculum as a checklist of tasks with no unifying theme, no clear sequence of skill development, and little

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identifiable connection to either of the teacher’s disciplines (English and government). Near the end of the semester, as Camille was anticipating the final exhibitions, I asked her if she was pleased with the rubric. On the plus side, she told me, “I think it’s a wonderful activit y. . . . I mean, because it exposes them to so much. It, it gives them a lot of opportunities to see a lot of things and experience a lot of things, which I think is great.” The portfolio and the rubric represent Camille’s goal of “exposure” and variet y, a potpourri of “experiences” and “opportunities” rather than a tightly aligned sequence of performances and assessments built around skill development and understanding. But she also recognizes the need for coherence: “You can’t just throw this paper [rubric] at these kids and say, ‘this is what you want, [I] want you to do.’ . . . If you’ve got things you want them to learn and develop, skills you want them to develop, you’ve gotta plan in your day somewhere with them how you’re gonna teach them how to do this.” Camille acknowledges that mostly “kids figured out how to do things like create a Web site” on their own. “This is not how it should be,” she told me. And she chalks it up to experience. She refers to “revising” and “fine-tuning” the rubric so that it provides more support for students and also so students can “understand the purpose.” While these insights indicate that Camille is, in fact, concerned with more than merely “exposing” students to a variet y of disconnected “experiences,” her vague descriptions also suggest uncertaint y as to how to go about revising and fine-tuning her curriculum. This uncertaint y about the relationship bet ween goals and performances represents a significant, but rarely examined, gap in teachesr’ pedagogical content knowledge. For Camille, such a gap strains her teaching even before she steps into the classroom.

MORE IS MORE The traditional shorthand in teachers’ plan books features pages to be read, topics for discussion, material to be covered, and deadlines for student work. In short, many teachers, including the teachers I studied, conceptualize planning as compiling a “to-do list” (Borko, Livingston, and Shavelson, 1990; McCutcheon, 1980; Munby, 1990). By contrast, Al’s approach to planning revolved around the continual assessment and articulation of what students will do to develop understanding. His goals were framed in terms of student performance—research, analysis, argument—which were embedded into every aspect of his curriculum. The record of the evolution of his goals and their relationship to student performance was collected in a bulging, loose-leaf binder filled with multiple drafts of assignments, descriptions, rubrics, and ideas for activities: The binder, as much as his classroom, served as a laboratory for experimenting with curricular decisions. It held, in a literal as well as figurative sense, the archive of what students should do and how that “doing” would lead to the exhibition. As such, the binder stood for Al’s continuous appraisal of not only what his students should do, but why they should do it.

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Linking goals with performance, as Al did, created a coherent and ongoing cycle of performance and feedback. Al called this “using more is more to get to less is more.” Referring to another CES slogan, “less is more,” Al commented on the need for more structure to cover less material. In Thesis in History, each stepping-stone was linked to an instance of feedback, usually from the teacher, and Al attributed this ongoing assessment to “keeping kids on track.” Keeping them on track, in turn, kept them focused on the target, which made it easier for them to “do the work.” Motivating students to do the work is the more t ypical skill associated with coaching. But, as Al’s extended metaphors related to building suggest, design is as central to the art of coaching as motivating students. Al’s extended metaphors are also t ypical of the complex schemata associated with experienced teachers (Livingston and Borko, 1989; Morine-Dershimer, 1991). Finally, the extended metaphors hint at a relationship bet ween more sophisticated conceptions of design and the abilit y to interact with students in more authentic, improvisational ways—ways t ypically associated with coaching. Implicit in the slogan “less is more” is the notion that depth of understanding is preferable to breadth of coverage. One of Al’s strategies for getting students to do the work was to, as he put it, “cover less history.” The independent nature of student work and the focus on a single, student-selected topic for an entire semester sometimes troubled colleagues, and it sometimes troubled Al. For many teachers, including Brian and Camille, less sometimes looked like less. The principle of “less is more” raises the stakes of the curriculum for teachers aiming to become coaches. In highlighting the complexit y of the design process, the slogan assumes that teachers know how to make less more. Moving student performance to the center of the curriculum in the cumulative manner demonstrated by the design of Thesis in History demands that students do more, not less, work. It makes a similar demand on teachers’ energy and expertise. What may look like less is actually more: more attention to the structure of learning, deeper command of what constitutes understanding in a given discipline, and, as chapter 8 will show, a wider repertoire for managing student performance. The challenges associated with coaching, however, begin with design. Teachers who are unable to exercise control over the curriculum or the processes by which students move through it are likely to produce a version of coaching in which less is, unfortunately, less.

EIGHT

Teacher as Manager When teaching and learning revolve around personalized “projects,” meaning most students are working independently, familiar challenges of classroom management assume new dimensions. Traditional measures of successful classroom management—time-on-task, productivit y, civil interactions between students and teachers—are undermined when the teacher is no longer the primary source of knowledge. Authorit y relationships bet ween teacher and students are changed when transmission is replaced by discovery or when the site of learning shifts from the classroom to the library. And new learning environments as well as the emphasis on student performance demand a new and expanded repertoire for teachers. Where designing constitutes what may be called the “invisible” work of constructivist teaching, the management skills associated with mentoring and motivation are frequently equated with coaching.

AU T H O R I T Y All three teachers concerned themselves with the challenge of cultivating the consent of their students to “do the work.” They experimented with a variet y of interpersonal stances—as ally, as rule setter, as therapist, as facilitator—in an attempt to persuade or to coerce students to perform. As Pace (1998) noted in her study of authorit y relations in diverse high school settings, the quest for civilit y dominated all three teachers’ interactions with students. Al, Brian, and Camille were hesitant to challenge students overtly; all three either found covert ways to persuade students to comply or they exchanged the goal of academic performance for that of warm rapport. When Camille talked about the “attitude” problem of Senior Political Studies (SPS), she was referring not to rude or disrespectful behavior. Rather, she was concerned about students’ failure to get assignments in on time, if at all. Before scrapping the original plan for the second semester Utopia unit, Camille and

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Carole attempted to reason with their students, appealing to their sense of right and responsibilit y: With the class. Um, we’re, okay, its like, “You want us to go back to the way we were doing things but, what are you willing to do to get that back?” And so, we had a list on the board of the things the students wanted and what their expectations were. We even went back to the beginning of the school year. “What did you think you were signing up for when you signed up for Senior Political Studies? How has this class met your expectations? How has it not met your expectations?” And, . . . “if you like the way we were doing things before, ya know, these past three weeks, what do you as students have to do. What’s your responsibilit y and accountabilit y in that for us to be willing to go back to that?”

In response to students’ lack of “responsibilit y” regarding work in SPS, Camille and Carole punished the class by reverting to a more “traditional” format. When students complained about the punishment, Camille used their engagement as an occasion to cultivate consent. She identified what she thought was an incentive, freedom, and offered it in exchange for responsibilit y. Ultimately, this bargain was unsuccessful. That is, Camille and Carole continued to adjust their expectations as well as the curriculum to conform to the limits set by the students rather than persuading the students to meet the demands set by the teachers. Brian pursued the more traditional tactics of predictabilit y, explicitness, and the threat of grades. By writing the daily agenda on the board, by going over the agenda verbally at the start of class, and by sticking to this format every single day, Brian made it easy for his students to know what was expected. Occasionally Brian expressed exasperation with what he perceived to be silly questions, but I never once heard him raise his voice with his students (in fact, I never heard any of these teachers raise their voices with students). There was little overt resistance to the Resumé curriculum; as most students were persuaded to complete their assignments in order to “pass” World Connections or not to appear “stupid” in their exhibitions. Al also used the exhibitions, what he called the “Final Defense,” to motivate students to do the work. Al, like Camille, established warm, personal relationships with his students. He tolerated a relatively loose code of classroom conduct, but always there was the target of the final defense, a requirement for graduation. By letting the occasional off-color remark slide, ignoring mildly disruptive behavior, and introducing tangents himself, Al demonstrated his f lexibilit y, inculcated trust in his students, and allowed room for them to choose to engage. When, early in the semester, Rob, a student who had been conversing quietly with his neighbor about the Baseball Hall of Fame, piped up with the question, “Mr. Kaline, where’s Cooperstown, New York?” Al did not chastise him for failing to work on his research. Instead, he directed him to the computer in the back of the room, and instructed him

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to look it up on the Internet. Rob cheerfully obliged. The discussion ended without incident, and Al took credit for getting Rob to practice running a Web search, a skill he needed to conduct his research for Thesis in History. Both Al and Camille tolerated a higher level of chaos than Brian. Camille’s version of tolerating chaos came with modifying her expectations. For Al, the expectations were defined by his goals of research, argument, and presentation, which were embedded into every aspect of his curriculum. Linking goals with performance, as Al did, created a coherent and ongoing cycle of performance and feedback. Al called this “using more is more to get to less is more.” Referring to another Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) slogan, “less is more,” Al commented on the need for more structure to teach less material. In Thesis, each stepping-stone is linked to an instance of feedback, usually from the teacher, and Al attributes this ongoing assessment to “keeping kids on track.” Keeping them on track, in turn, kept them focused on the target, which made it easier for them to do the work. Brian attempted to achieve the same effect using explicit and predictable instruction. Even without the personalized, skill-based foundation that drove Al’s curriculum, Brian’s clarit y and predictabilit y made what might have been a chaotic enterprise into a stable series of routines. And learning the routines seemed to authorize the students to choose to engage in the work of Resumé.

R E P E RT O I R E The use of assessment as diagnosis and the abilit y to tolerate chaos and also to rein in “off-task” behavior when necessary are functions largely of individual teacher judgment. Split-second decisions about how to respond to student questions, how to address disruptive behavior, or when students need to be shown rather than told how to do something are features of all teachers’ classroom management (Doyle, 1986). Schön (1983) called this use of judgment “ref lection-inaction,” and characterized it as professional know-how demonstrated by practitioners in a range of settings from medicine to design to business to teaching. While teachers of all stripes ref lect-in-action as a matter of course, teachers who aim to be coaches do so in even more deliberate ways (Cossentino, 2002). Varieties of ref lection-in-action constitute a revised and expanded repertoire for teachers like Al, Brian, and Camille. I noted several t ypes of interactions with students that appeared to herald a new, more ref lective approach to repertoire: questioning strategies; demonstration or modeling; the demand for practice, rehearsal, or drill; tutorial; and balancing praise and pressure. All three teachers experimented with these strategies, some more intentionally than others. Brian, for instance, came up with the “Questions to ask yourself” handout ostensibly as a method for managing his interactions with students. Both Brian and Camille attempted to “model” appropriate ways of behaving, though Brian favored predictabilit y and precision while Camille aimed to be spontaneous.

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Most overtly, all three teachers attempted to enact the performance/assessment cycle called for by CES through the use of two techniques: rehearsal and tutorial. Within these two general strategies were embedded more particular t ypes of interactions. Tutorial, for instance, offered teachers the chance for one-on-one interaction, which they tailored for individual encounters, but followed a general pattern. Rehearsals, practices, preliminary defenses, and portfolio checks all stood for the same principle: student performance; they were meant to prepare students for the final exhibition by providing formative and/or generative exhibition (Cossentino, 2002). Using Michael Scriven’s (1967) conception of formative versus summative evaluation as a starting point, I distinguish between performances that are meant to serve as intermediate steps leading toward a final, culminating performance and those final or summative events in which students aim to demonstrate mastery. Brian and Camille both used rehearsals as formative exhibitions. These were chances to try out their presentations on a friendly audience as a means of preparing for the real exhibition. In Brian’s classroom, students presented to one another while Brian circulated, offering global encouragement—“It sounds like you are all asking very good questions”—but never direct criticism. Camille sat privately with each of her students as they ran through their portfolios. She too offered praise, but also suggestions for improving the presentation: “You might want to think about explaining your career choice a little more clearly.” Where the goal of formative exhibition was to offer students reassurance that they were ready for the final exhibitions, a second t ype of rehearsal served a different purpose. If formative exhibitions provide intermediate practice, generative exhibitions are designed, specifically, to produce stronger subsequent performances. Like Brian’s and Camille’s rehearsals, these performances also look toward the final exhibition, but they assume the need for substantial improvement, and they aim to support that improvement through the use of systematic criticism and ref lection. Al’s preliminary defense was an example of such a rehearsal. The preliminary defense was the climax of Thesis in History. Many students, Al remarked, were more nervous for the preliminary than the final defenses: “Their peers are harder on them than their parents.” Al structured the preliminary defense to be largely interactive. That is, the “audience,” in this case the class, was responsible for “asking relevant questions” and was graded on their participation in each defense. Each defense lasted approximately one class period, or fift y minutes. Twent y to twent y-five of those minutes were taken up by the student’s presentation, and the balance was devoted to questions posed from the audience. Al often participated in the questioning, which in his hands became a kind of Socratic examination designed to push the presenter to think about his or her topic from new perspectives and also to demonstrate to the rest of class how to offer criticism. On May 20, midway through the preliminary defenses, and less than one week before the Celebration of Learning, it is Susan’s turn to defend her project on the Titanic. She takes her seat at Al’s desk in the front of the room, and begins

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to tell the story of the sinking of the famous ship, drawing largely from the recently released film, which she has seen upwards of seven times. Her essential question revolves around the issue of accuracy: Did the James Cameron production portray events as they had actually occurred? Armed with picture books on the making of the movie, a cross-section diagram of the ship, and an array of details she has culled from a variet y of sources, both electronic and print, she enumerates an impressive array of facts about the ship and its sinking. We learn that, although there were four smokestacks, the fourth was designated for kitchen ventilation, rendering images of all four stacks smoking inaccurate. Susan knows how much a first-class ticket costs, the exact dimensions of the accommodations in steerage, and the percentage of first-class versus steerage passengers who perished in the sinking. She concludes by saying that, despite minor details like the smokestacks, Cameron “prett y much got it right.” When she sits down, several hands f ly up, and the question-and-answer period begins. Sarah wants more clarification on the statistics regarding deaths: women versus men, children versus adults, rich versus poor. Susan addresses these questions again, going over the bar graphs she handed out during her presentation. Several more clarifying questions arise, and then it is Al’s turn. Attempting to steer her away from the film, he presses her about class disparit y on board the ship. What does she “think about the third-class people not being able to get to the lifeboats?” She answers by explaining the first-class passengers “paid more for their tickets, and were some of the richest people in the world.” Al tries again, this time pushing harder by using the word prejudice: “Do you think there was prejudice?” Susan continues to resist making the value judgment Al seems to be trying to provoke. He lets it go; then tries another tack: “What is the most fascinating thing that actually happened?” This time Susan takes his lead. “I’d focus on the owner of the White Star Line. That he went full-steam ahead even though he knew there was an ice f loe.” She admits she is troubled by the greed this decision seems to imply, and Al encourages her to look more deeply into this matter, what it might suggest about the owner himself, and also the historical time period. Al balances “warm” and “cool” (McDonald, 1991a) pictures of Susan’s preliminary defense. He knew that Susan’s research consisted primarily of multiple viewings of the movie combined with fact checking from Web sites and other publications that had emerged because of the popularit y of the film. Still, his assessment glows with a “warm sense of how far [she] has come” (p. 2). In judging the performance to be “good”, Al notes Susan’s command of a “great deal of information,” and, even more, her excitement, her poise, and her engagement in the experience. “This thing will keep,” he says, referring to the lasting power of the experience of exhibiting. Al’s cool response is enacted in his effort to coach Susan’s performance. He uses the preliminary defense as an occasion to try to deepen her thinking about the topic, to try to relate it to what he considers to be important historical issues. Embedded in Al’s Socratic questioning is an acknowledgment of the shortcomings of

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Susan’s performance, which he couches in terms of coaching. The preliminary defense is not simply an occasion for Susan to display her impressive command of facts related to the disaster—though that purpose is important to her as well as to Al. It is also an occasion to coach. In this instance, Al’s coaching entails a subtle balance of warm and cool feedback. He coaches by trying to provoke ref lection and reconsideration through probing questions. He coaches by putting Susan on the spot, giving her practice in “facing her inquisitors.” He coaches by demonstrating for the other students how such questions are asked. This version of what I call “generative exhibition” is public, and therefore filled with the aura and formalit y of an important event. Other, less public, but just as generative, performances occurred in one-on-one sessions bet ween students and teachers. For all three teachers, tutorial or conferencing formed the backbone of their repertoire. Preliminary defenses comprised a significant chunk of the time students spent in Thesis, but an even lengthier period of work preceded these events, and occurred in the library. For approximately six weeks of the thirteen-week semester, students spent almost every day working independently in the library. They conducted research. They compiled “evidence charts.” They developed essential questions and rebuttals, and they outlined their position papers. Throughout these six weeks, both Al and his student teacher Jerry moved among clumps of students, “checking in,” helping out with question formulation, approving evidence charts, and responding to crises. Strategies for tutorial varied considerably not only among teachers, but also among situations. Some interactions were choreographed. When Al checked in with students, he followed a formula based on the goals of a particular steppingstone, the problems he had diagnosed, or previous interactions with the students. After Courtney turned in a disappointing outline for her position paper, Al decided intervention was needed: Well, Courtney and I, we’re gonna have to do some one-on-one stuff. And I’m gonna have to sit down and ask her questions. For instance, I’ll, I’ll just ask her her essential question. And say to her “Why do you believe that it’s an answer?” And, I’ll write down these reasons. And then I’ll say “Okay, now you have to go out and you have to find three sources that provide evidence for that reason.” And that kind of directs, ya know, what they have to do the next few days.

Here Al links tutorial with another piece of his repertoire: inquiry. The “one-onone stuff” is necessary to provide the direct attention Courtney needs in order to move forward with her thesis. But what Al describes is much more structured than a conversation aimed at encouragement or even checking in. He will provoke her to think about her topic by asking her questions. Recalling Brian’s strategy of mirroring, he will then “write down” the reasons Courtney

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gives for her answers to those questions. Anticipating that the strategies of questioning and mirroring will clarify Courtney’s position, Al will conclude the tutorial session with direct instruction (find three sources that provide evidence) which will keep Courtney on track for the next few days. Keeping Courtney busy is part of Al’s agenda, but he uses the tutorial to provide feedback on her work thus far, to remind her of what is expected—the target—and to give her practice in both thinking about and presenting her ideas. When Al ref lects on the skills he uses to diagnose students’ needs, he often talks about listening. “You have to listen for what they’re really asking,” he tells me as though he is sharing a secret. There are really three kinds of questions. Sometimes, like when Rob came up here a minute ago, they just want to show you that they’ve done some work; they want to be stroked. So you praise them. Sometimes they’re needing help in thinking, and that’s when you answer a question with a question. And sometimes they just need information, so you give them that.

Brian echoes Al’s sensitivit y to different students’ needs: A lot of what they get from me is, um, well part of it’s a rubber stamp. A lot of them come to me with it done, and it’s fine and they can do it themselves. They don’t need me to hold their hand. Others come with just some wording things. We need to reword some things or, the verb they chose just isn’t right. So we need to think about, OK, what would be a better one.

Ref lecting-in-action about students’ needs and appropriate responses often involves thinking “with” students, which not only involves a complex series of splitsecond decisions, but is also time-consuming. Al refers to this as one of the prices he is willing to pay to get students to rise to the occasion of the final defense. Brian expresses a similar concern with the price of performance-oriented teaching by attempting to make the process of conferencing more efficient. Referring, again, to the eight “Questions to ask yourself,” Brian talks about his need to manage an unwieldy classroom situation: These [the eight questions] are the things I would be asking people when I was conferencing one on one. Well, that gets to be tiresome when you’ve asked the students the same questions. You’re on kid number twent y and you’ve asked the same questions because everyone’s doing it wrong. Well, put the questions in front of them and so, “don’t come to me until you’ve answered “yes” to all these questions. Then I’ll conference with you. I’m not gonna conference with you until you have qualit y work to show me. Okay, so, if you can’t answer yes to these eight questions, you’re not sitting with me.”

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Al and Brian both express ref lective concern for how as well as why they use tutorial in their repertoire. Both rely on tutorial as a management tactic as well as an instructional strategy, and their overt concern with the hows as much as the whys suggests that they are both in the process of assimilating tutorial into their repertoire. Al has developed a system for integrating questioning with tutorial. Brian is concerned about the structure of the conferences themselves. Camille also confers with her students, though I always saw her do this outside the normal bounds of instruction, which gave them more the qualit y of counseling sessions than tutorials aimed at developing disciplinary understanding. Still, what is striking is that all three teachers demonstrate a commitment to one-on-one interactions with students, which they understand as a logical way to “personalize” their teaching.

F RO M C L A S S RO O M M A N A G E M E N T T O I M P ROV I S AT I O N Fenstermacher’s (2002) model of expert practice as a “seamless and elegantly coherent integration of method, manner, and st yle” offers a window into some of the cosmological challenges of the role of manager. In articulating the tripartite t ypology of method, manner, and st yle, Fenstermacher aims to distinguish both the technical from the moral and the universal from the particular. He defines method as the skill or technique a teacher deploys to convey subject matter. Manner entails the dispositions or traits that reveal the teacher’s character as a moral and intellectual being. St yle, by contrast, refers to conduct that ref lects the teacher’s personalit y. Where method and manner describe behaviors that Fenstermacher calls “candidates for universalization” (p. 9), st yle remains the unique province of the individual teacher. A teacher’s st yle is his or her personal signature rather than a skill or trait that may be recognized as good and therefore applied to more global definitions of good or effective teaching. Classroom management is often associated with the moral and st ylistic dimensions of a teacher’s pedagogy. A teacher’s rapport with students, her or his abilit y to “control” student behavior, the ways in which he demonstrates care are often viewed as personal attributes of good teaching. All three teachers most visibly aimed for “goodness” in their teaching through the pursuit of management skills. And all three most visibly drew on personal attributes that were already part of their teaching identit y. Al’s coaching in the classroom resembled work with athletes. Brian’s personal discipline and neatness was translated into clarit y. Camille’s warmth and affabilit y as a person defined her manner with students. However, the cases of Al, Brian, and Camille suggest that technique is just as necessary as disposition to successful interactions with students, particularly when those interactions aim to meet the ideal of coaching. Camille’s signature move of calling parents functions as a management technique. It also communicates care for her students and, at least, the out ward appearance of rigor. But in constructivist classrooms like Camille’s the primary

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criterion for effective management is whether students do the work and whether they do it well. Even more then cultivating caring relationships with students, getting students to perform in ways that develop as well as demonstrate understanding entails designing coherent curricula that both demand and support performances directed toward understanding. When manner and st yle overtake method, coaching can quickly become “nonteaching.” But when method, manner, and style merge, coaching takes on the improvisational qualit y of a jazz musician jamming with other musicians. When moves like questioning, tutorial, and rehearsal are incorporated into a teacher’s repertoire, the focus on control that is the emblem of the novice (Brian exemplifies this focus here) may be replaced by automaticity. And once this is achieved, the teacher is then free to listen for opportunities to “riff.” At his best, Al, the twenty-year veteran, displays many of the traits of the improvisational manager. Not only is he able to listen for what students are really asking, he is able to call up appropriate responses to those questions even as he is listening. Al’s manner with his students is casual, even breezy. But his tolerance for chaos in his role as manager is balanced by a fierce commitment to order—and the knowledge of how to achieve it—in his role as designer. Coaching, in other words, calls teachers to assume multiple roles, sometimes simultaneously. Just as virtuoso teaching demands a seamless blend of method, manner, and style, so does the role of coach assume the integration of design, management, and, as chapter 9 will argue, criticism. Where design may be viewed as an “invisible” dimension of the method of coaching, management is the most obvious. I note here that, in both instances, expertise appears to be closely related to experience. That is, I attribute much of Al’s emphasis on design and the attending abilit y to improvise to his status as a veteran teacher. As one who has come to know his subject, and who, as a result of his years in this classroom, considers his curriculum to be the central focus of his teaching, Al practices a sophisticated and f lexible method. That Brian and Camille, relative novices, put more emphasis on manner and st yle, as manifest in management, is not surprising. Nor should it be read as a failing. Management is often viewed as a “survival skill” of new teachers, one that must be mastered before instruction can begin. A more illuminating dimension of the contrast bet ween Al the veteran and Brian and Camille the novices was the way in which each’s management repertoire revealed their skills as both designers and critics. Camille’s seemingly effortless abilit y to establish a warm rapport with her students was of limited use in getting them to engage in the curriculum. This disconnect troubled Camille, and she attempted to remedy it by focusing even more on management, reasoning that the problem was one of motivation rather than curriculum design. Brian faced a similar set of strains, although his stance toward his students emphasized clarit y and predictabilit y rather than warmth and accessibilit y. In both cases, I am left to puzzle over a central conundrum of coaching: How might novices who wish to be coaches refocus their energies on design when the desire to manage is so strong? This is a problem of role and skill, of method

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and manner, and it raises further questions: How much of the appeal of coaching is tied to the interpersonal skills most often associated with motivating and managing students? Would the strains of novices like Brian and Camille be eased if the technical dimensions of coaching were made more evident, or would such a shift merely diminish its appeal? How might such a shift be achieved? These are questions for teacher educators as well as for teachers themselves. In raising them, I am emphasizing my contention that coaching is much more complicated than it looks. Coaching represents a shift in both the meaning and the practice of teaching, and how teachers and teacher educators make sense of that shift will determine whether coaching is a viable alternative to traditional instruction. The complexit y of the practice is revealed, in part, in the overlapping roles teachers assume in their attempts to “be” coaches. In negotiating those roles, teachers deal with identit y as well as technique as they attempt to craft a practice that serves their students as well as themselves. A final role, that of critic, further underlines the technical as well as cultural challenges of being a coach.

NINE

Teacher as Critic McDonald opens his 1992 study of the “uncertain” profession of teaching with a brief description of coaching: “As soon as I finished teaching the first class I ever taught, I asked my supervisor what he thought. He told me he thought I had taught as if speaking from the next room through a tube. He was a good coach. With a single sentence, he oriented me toward the real thing” (p. 1). The capacit y to provide criticism that, by design, generates stronger, more masterful performances is a signal skill of coaches, and it is the element of coaching most frequently elaborated by researchers and theorists (Cossentino, 2002; McDonald, Smith, Turner, Finney, and Barton, 1993; Schön, 1983; Stiggins, 1992; Wiggins, 1993; Wolf, 1992). Usually, referred to as “feedback,” formative or generative assessment is distinguished from more traditional, summative approaches to criticism by virtue of its pivotal role in instruction. Feedback describes a technique, a stance, as well as a symbol of the learning process. For Al, Brian, and Camille, evaluating student work in generative as well as summative contexts also presented dramatic challenges to the teachers’ identit y and practice as coaches. Criticism demands expertise in description, analysis, and interpretation, and it also assumes expertise in both design and management (Eisner, 1994). The critic, as McDonald’s (1992) account suggests, must not only be able to make a coherent judgment about a given performance, he or she must be able to communicate that judgment in a way that is intelligent as well as compassionate. A teacher who is inexperienced in the art of appraisal or who misunderstands the necessary link bet ween performance and assessment in his or her curriculum will be uncomfortable in the role of critic. Perhaps more important, however, is the cultural expectation that teachers’ judgment—often referred to as “bias”—be checked. As Al, Brian, and Camille confronted the challenges associated with the role of critic, I saw them rely on three distinct instructional strategies. These strategies, rubrics, local knowledge, and the concept of the audience or experts were also ideas built into their conception of exhibition. 117

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RU B R I C S The use of rubrics (standards for judging student work) was the primary strategy for mitigating discomfort in the role of critic. All three teachers relied on them as both organizing mechanisms for their courses and tools to make their evaluation of student work more objective. In laying out as precisely as possible the features of “distinguished” versus “satisfactory” work, these teachers aimed to clarify, and in the process, legitimate the process of criticism. All three teachers determined final grades based on a point system. Individual assignments were worth a set number of points and those points were deducted based on perceived deficits in the work. Some deductions were obvious: Late or incomplete work was reduced in point value automatically. No criticism was involved in that move. Other deductions (or additions) were more complicated. Al talks about his need for “definition”: I’m not tied to the percentage necessarily, but it defines for me what the 90 percent means. Ya know, if a, if a student is showing me the depth of knowledge, if they can define and, and they understand what an expert sounds like on a topic. If they offer statistics and quotes and examples from their various sources, and can discuss specific details with authorit y, ya know. Okay. That’s distinguished in that area.

As he attempts to clarify the meaning of distinguished, Al draws directly from the language of the rubric. The repetition of the phrase ya know and fragmented syntax suggests tentativeness, even uncertaint y about exactly what an “expert sounds like” when one talks about a given topic. But he is, nonetheless, in search of clarit y. Consulting “various sources” and discussing “specific details” are more concrete measures of mastery, and Al uses these criteria to bolster his own understanding of expertise. Ultimately, the line bet ween distinguished and satisfactory is qualitative rather than quantitative, and this is what most troubled Al. Recalling Carley’s project on Eva Peron, Al is, again, vague and tentative: “I think she has a prett y good grasp of what Eva Peron was all about.” He attempts to support his judgment by referring, again, to criteria enumerated in the rubric: “At least she can make some, uh, some statements that are backed up with evidence from research.” But, finally, his judgment is subjective: “And I’m pleased with that.” Brian’s use of the rubric as a tool for making his own criteria more explicit is evident, once again, in the “Questions to ask yourself”: Ya know, even though I had those in my head, I knew, I knew which ones we really had to focus on. And so by seeing this list, and by looking at them all in one place, I’m able to say “Okay, they really don’t get the fact that these have to start with verbs or they really don’t get the fact that they have to

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be . . . assignment specific.” Ya know, so, I’m, I’m able to go back and, and, the next day concentrate on what we really have to do. So yeah, it helps narrow things down for me.

Though the eight questions were not part of the official rubric for the Resumé project, Brian used them as a guideline for judging student work and also for diagnosing students’ needs and then designing future instruction. In taking what was “in his head” and enumerating those criteria, Brian was able to be specific about what he was looking for, and by extension, where student work fell short. While the rubric was used, primarily, to ease strains caused by lack of expertise in criticism, at times it was also a source of tension. Because the rubric for Senior Political Studies (SPS) was constructed to label and quantify completed tasks rather than qualit y of work, this guideline actually distracted Camille from the goal of appraisal. It also misled students, which made Camille feel uneasy. She tells me she has a problem with saying “Well, if you’ve done this amount of boxes on the rubric, it’s an A and if you’ve done this amount of boxes on the rubric, it’s a B.” Here, Camille is indicating an awareness of the necessary relationship bet ween design and criticism. She is also articulating uncertaint y about how to make the relationship a constructive one. Near the end of the semester, in a moment of frustration triggered by a disagreement with Carole, Camille reveals to me that it was Carole, rather than she, who was the primary designer for the “portfolio.” When I ask her what she thought Carole was intending when she put the rubric together, she says, “I wish I knew.” This late revelation concerning authorship was meant to convey more than culpabilit y for what Camille may have felt was a less-than-satisfying example of her teaching. It was an indicator of Camille’s relationship with expertise—where she gets it, how she incorporates it, and her perception of its place in her teaching. Like Al and Brian, Camille identified her involvement in a team, in this case her partnership with Carole, as a primary source of her developing knowledge base about teaching. Early in the semester she identified Carole as a role model, as someone who had taught her “a lot about teaching.” Camille admired Carole’s hands-on approach, and even when she had reached a breaking point of frustration with Carole, she still referred to her as “a great teacher.” Up to the point at which she revealed that Carole had created the rubric very quickly, Camille also insisted that she and Carole shared credit for the redesign of SPS. But throughout the field study, there were hints that Camille was uncertain of her own expertise and also nervous of the impression she would be giving me as I studied her teaching. Her suggestion that I study her tenth-grade exhibition instead of SPS, her insistent focus on the affective, therapeutic aspect of her teaching (“what I do versus what I’m supposed to do”), and her tendency to “forget” to turn over student work to me as part of my data collection were all, I concluded, attempts to veil

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what she knew to be shaky command of the technical dimension of her practice. Because Camille receives notable praise from all corners of the school for her popularit y with students, her healthy collegial relationships, her work ethic, and her enthusiasm for student-centered pedagogy, Camille felt pressure to uphold her reputation by preserving the illusion that all was well with her class. That is until it was apparent that all was not well. In revealing her frustration with Carole as a colleague, Camille is also expressing disappointment in Carole as a teacher. She relied on Carole to show her how to develop a repertoire based on a constructivist knowledge base; but in the end, for a variet y of reasons mostly related to Carole’s own uncertaint y, Camille was left on her own to interpret the rubric and to try to apply it to her work with students. Her dissatisfaction with the rubric and her willingness to revise and fine-tune it also suggests that Camille is trying to learn to teach with it. But without a reliable source of pedagogical-content knowledge as well as a laboratory in which to experiment with and develop it, she is adrift in a sea of incoherent abstractions with only her intuition to guide her.

L O C A L K N OW L E D G E Even a detailed and descriptive rubric offers limited assistance in the actual act of criticizing student work. Ultimately, the teacher applies knowledge drawn from a variet y of sources, including intuition, to assign value to a piece of work. Kordalewski (2000) calls this process of factoring multiple sources of knowledge about a student and his or her work the “co-construction” of standards. Mabry (1995) calls it “inferred achievement.” Both argue that it is a constituent feature of work with exhibitions, and by extension any instructional strategy that implicates the teacher in defining outcomes. I call this source of expertise “local knowledge.” Drawing on Geertz’s (1983) understanding of the nuanced and complicated nature of “insider” knowledge borne of participation in a culture, I argue that appraisal of student work occurs within the highly “localized” context of the classroom culture. Despite efforts to standardize that context through the use of instruments like rubrics, ultimately the teacher draws on local knowledge of the culture of the classroom as well as the individuals who inhabit it in assuming the role of critic. All three teachers factored all that they knew about their students into how they assessed their work. They might give a break to a student who had been sick, as Camille did in allowing a student two grading periods to make up missed work before, finally, failing her. They might also decide, as Brian did with Willie, that a student’s future is already determined, and adjust standards or curriculum to give him what he needs rather than what the program prescribes. Brian explicates his use of local knowledge: “Well, ya know, if I graded only on this rubric and not on my knowledge of what they can do and did do, [that would be] a problem. . . . So. This is the target, ya know, the evaluation of their work still comes back to me.”

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Some teachers are deliberate about limiting their knowledge about students. Al, for instance, makes it a point not to check students’ “files,” meaning IEPs (Individualized Education Program) or disciplinary records. He does not want to be swayed by extenuating circumstances. He does not want to label students. Still, his assessment of student products is almost always couched in terms of process. He infers as much as he decodes. Here he explains why a student does not get it: Um, here’s a young lady who, who doesn’t get it. And the reason she doesn’t get it is she doesn’t have enough information. Jerry has told her that. I have told her that. Ya know. SHE HASN’T FOUND SOURCES? Right. Well, she’s found sources. But she has not analyzed the sources. If you look at her working bibliography, I imagine she has about fifteen different sources. . . . But she has a book. She hasn’t read any part of the book. Um, . . . SO WHAT DOESN’T SHE GET? . . . she doesn’t realize that she has to analyze the sources that she has and create her own . . . answers to this question. She wants to turn to a book that answers this question for her.

Al’s assessment was based on examining the student’s evidence chart, an assignment that required students to find both supporting and negating evidence for their essential question. It was a “stepping-stone” intended to aid students in developing arguments supported by both logical reasoning and use of evidence. Based on this chart, Al infers that his student has “not read the books,” and has not “analyzed the sources.” He also speculates on her perceptions and desires: “She doesn’t realize . . . she has to create her own answers to the question. . . . She wants to turn to a book to answer it for her.” He bases these conclusions partly on his interpretation of the chart. Because he is looking for evidence of analysis and argument, he knows how to f lag it when it is absent. But he also draws from his knowledge of how she behaves in class. Questions she has asked or failed to ask, her conduct in the library, her performance on previous assignments, and her response to his feedback all contribute to how Al judges this student’s understanding. Here he elaborates on his process of evaluation: When I grade these, these don’t necessarily stand alone. Um, ya know, what I’m, I’m really looking at through my discussion with the students, is, is, . . . have they really explored a topic? Do they understand? Is there a logical f low from one answer, ya know, from, from the evidence to the reason to the, to the answer. Um, . . . does that come out in our discussions? Is it evident on the page? What I’m looking at, ya know. I’m looking at . . . first of all, do you meet the parameters? Do you meet the requirements that we set up? Ya know, do you have enough, the correct number of reasons? Do you have the, the proper amount of evidence that we’ve established?

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Al attempts to address these questions for each of his students each time they generate a new product. As he enumerates the scope of his reliance on stated criteria in the context of local knowledge, the complexity of the task of criticism is revealed.

AU D I E N C E Al, Brian, and Camille were aware of audience in several ways. First, they were conscious of their own status as teachers on display. The public nature of exhibition made evident in the explicit statement of standards in the rubric, as well as ritualized in the event itself, opened their work as teachers to the scrutiny of the entire school communit y. Their stance at the Celebration of Learning, as hosts and as elders, was largely geared toward satisfying an audience of parents, administrators, and other communit y members. They also incorporated the idea of the audience into their deeper conceptions of exhibition as an assessment method. All three teachers relied on audiences to evaluate final exhibitions. This both mitigated strain related to the challenge of criticism and maintained the impression that the teacher was the student’s ally rather than his or her “inquisitor.” Part of the ritual of the Celebration of Learning involved the distribution and collection of evaluation sheets for panels. These sheets usually contained a letter to the audience from the teachers, providing general instruction for evaluating exhibitors (see Table 9.1). When students arrived at school for their scheduled exhibition, they checked in at one of the tables in the school’s lobby, introduced their audience members to their teachers, and helped distribute the evaluation sheets. When the exhibition ended, the ritual concluded with each audience member returning his or her completed sheet to the table. From the perspective of the exhibition as a ritual, the treatment of the sheets and the role of the audience offers great symbolic value. The sheets are a concrete record that the exhibitions were, in fact, critiqued. The care with which they are distributed and returned testifies to a need for these events to “count.” In realit y, however, the sheets factor only slightly into the calculation of students’ final grades. Teachers were curious about how parents rate their children, who tends to be “tough,” and how voluminous the written comments are. Students were even more interested in reading their sheets. But, finally, Al, Brian, and Camille have all designed their courses so that the final exhibition is, in Brian’s words, “worth very little in terms of point value.” Both the audience and the rubric served as symbols of accountabilit y, and they did so by emphasizing the role of an objective outsider in legitimating the exhibition. But in doing so, they also obscured the teachers’ expertise and role as critic. Criticism not only calls for new forms of technical knowledge, it requires teachers to blend those forms in ways that challenge traditional views of what it means to be a teacher. The role of critic is an enactment of all four of the Discourses described in this book. Particularly within the Discourse of accountabilit y, the role of critic endows teachers with the power to set outcomes as well as to judge

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Table 9.1 History Thesis Evaluation Form Name of Student____________________________ Name of Evaluator____________ Evaluator is a:

Peer

Parent

Teacher

Expert

Other________

Depth of Knowledge Speaks as an expert on the topic; offers many statistics, quotes, and examples from reliable sources; can discuss specific details with authorit y.

Appears to be knowledgeable about the topic, offers a few statistics, quotes, and examples; understands generalizations well, but is limited in the abilit y to discuss specific details.

Has spott y knowledge; speaks in generalizations, but cannot support them with evidence; presents inaccurate information or unreliable sources.

Representation of Multiple Perspectives Examines the topic from many different perspectives; shows all sides of the issue in some detail.

Brief ly discusses several different perspectives, but gives very little attention to other sides of the issue.

Presents only one side of the issue; fails to consider other perspectives (some involved groups would find this presentation unfair and biased).

Analysis of Research Sources Explains how the background of authors/subjects affects the perspectives and possible biases of the sources.

Gives basic background information (i.e., titles, positions, affiliations) of authors and interview subjects; mentions dates and basic background of articles and books.

Tells name of books, authors, and interview subjects, but gives little or no further information about the sources.

Reflections on the Research Process Discusses specific changes they would make in some detail; explains why each

Offers specific ideas about what they would do differently; describes the proposed changes

Offers very superficial generalities such as “I would get more research” or “I would try try to (continued)

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Table 9.1 History Thesis Evaluation Form (continued) proposed change would be necessary; discusses shortcomings and limitations of their work.

and explains how they would go about making those changes.

keep up with my work.”

Ability to Answer Questions Answers most questions with authorit y and expertise; introduces and explains new research (quotes, statistics, examples) in answers.

Answers most questions competently; introduces new research (quotes statistics, examples) in answers.

Is unable to answer many questions; answers many questions by restating information already presented; offers answers that appear to be guesses.

Engaging the Audience Speaks in a conversational voice; makes eye contact; offers visuals (and possibly audio) that are engaging and vital to their thesis defense.

Speaks conversationally but is overreliant on notes; speaks in a voice that is clear and easy to understand; offers visuals that are interesting and related to the presentation.

Reads presentation from cards; looks down or away from the audience; speaks in a monotone; offers little that is visually interesting or has visuals that are not directly part of the presentation.

Creating an Interactive Presentation Talks with the audience; engages in conversation with the audience; creates an atmosphere that is comfortable and interactive by asking questions to get audience involved.

Talks to the audience; makes a presentation but invites questions several times throughout.

Talks at the audience; makes a speech and then asks for questions at the end.

Thank you for your time in evaluating the student. In an effort to give as much feedback as possible, please use the space provided below to add any additional comments regarding the student’s work and presentation.

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them. Of all the roles examined here, this one most explicitly challenges the prevailing relationship to authorit y, to content, and to expertise, declaring the teacher authorized to judge and situating judgment at the center of the process of instruction. I have argued here that designing, managing, and critiquing exhibitions presented visible challenges to Al, Brian, and Camille as each attempted to assume the role of coach. I have also argued that these challenges represent new categories of expertise for teaching. I have examined weaknesses in repertoire and skill, gaps in understanding, and fearfulness about being exposed, all of which caused strain for these teachers. Most of all, I propose that these strains show teachers pushing themselves, however haltingly, to learn new ways of thinking about curriculum, of interacting with students, and of assessing student work. Perhaps most of all, these strains reveal the determined manner in which teachers go about constructing an identit y that will enable them to achieve these new ways of thinking, interacting, and assessing. Many of the challenges of changing practice lay in clearly articulating the nature as well as the purposes of change. Policies aimed at instigating instructional change by invoking principles or ideologies have often fallen into the trap of emphasizing the whys rather than hows of reform. Teachers attempting to implement such reforms, then, are left with vague clues for why change would be beneficial, but little idea of what a changed version of their practice would look like or how they might transform their teaching. In this section, I have attempted to provide just such a picture of practice in the midst of change. In the concluding chapter, I discuss how what is revealed in teachers’ language use offers clues for how to ease the strains presented in this and previous chapters.

TEN

Conclusion: Policy, Practice, and a New Role for Language In examining how teachers talk about the “revolutionary” practice of exhibition, I have attempted to illuminate the conceptual complexit y of the process of reform and the function of language in making sense of that complexit y. Al’s, Brian’s, and Camille’s talk ref lected the multiple agendas evident in public as well as private discourse about education. What has variously been labeled “competing schools of thought” (Kliebard, 1995), “incompatibilities” (Egan, 1997), and “muddlement” (Page, 1999) of educational means and ends was dramatized in these teachers’ talk about teaching, generally, and exhibition, specifically. Indeed, the rhetoric of exhibition calls for teachers to play multiple roles, and it alludes to multiple, at times contradictory, purposes for schooling. Is exhibition an “exit event” (Sizer, 1984), a “platform” for design and ref lection (McDonald, Smith, Turner, Finney, and Barton, 1993), a hallmark of a “coaching” pedagogy (Kordalewski, 2000), or a rite of passage (Mabry, 1995)? For Al, Brian, and Camille, it was all of these, and more. As they attempted to delineate and incorporate these competing Discourses, the conceptual challenges of reform became apparent. At issue in this book is the role of language in confronting these challenges. What can language “do” in the interest of reform? What are teachers doing when they talk about revolutions in their practice? And what does analysis of their talk reveal about their conceptions of practice and their understanding of reform? Throughout this book, the teachers’ talk responds to a simple, but endlessly perplexing question: What does teaching, especially reformed teaching, mean? Each time they ventured an answer to this question, they engaged with the meaning of reform. Each time they pronounced an answer, they engaged again; and as Al, Brian, and Camille demonstrated repeatedly, language use itself both revealed and shaped that engagement. In examining how teachers talk about revolutions in their practice, I have attempted to highlight the problems as well as the promise of situating reform in 127

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language use. A reform such as the principle of diploma by exhibition offers only the vaguest prescription for practice; and this is deliberate. Teachers are meant to interpret slogans such as “teacher as coach” and “less is more.” They are meant to ref lect on what it might mean for schools to teach students “to use their minds well” or to require graduates to “earn their diploma.” One premise of this approach to school improvement is that teachers must be at the center of the enterprise. A second premise is that deliberating about the meaning of change will necessarily lead to change. In theory, this t ype of reform celebrates the power of language to provoke, to inspire, and to foster meaningful action. In practice, as this book demonstrates, language alone is an insufficient guide for changing practice. Words alone do not have agency. Yet, when language is used in intentional ways, I propose that it does have the power to help close the so-called gap between policy and practice. That gap has been attributed to teachers’ failure to grasp the “inner intent” (Sykes, 1990) of reform. But the cases of Al, Brian, and Camille suggest a more complicated relationship between intention and action. Their talk was much more than a manifestation of their thoughts about reform. Rather, language helped them think. Talk became what Spillane and Zeuli (1999) call an “enactment zone” of reform. In discussing how language works, Searle (1998) posits a reciprocal and developmental relationship between language and intentionalit y. He uses the example of early language acquisition in children. Starting with “simple, pre-linguistic intentions . . . the child learns a simple vocabulary that enables it to have richer intentionalit y, which in turn enables a richer vocabulary” (p. 153). I note a similar progression in the language use of Al, Brian, and Camille. When they talk about revolutions in their practice, they are revising and enriching their ideas about practice. Even when the words themselves suggest foggy concepts, such as ‘critical thinking’ or ‘coaching,’ the act of using those words constitutes a step toward making the words meaningful, toward constructing, as opposed to implementing, their “inner intent.” The reciprocal relationship between thinking and talking is evident in Al’s use of the metaphor of “backwards-building curriculum.” Starting with the kernel image of building, Al elaborated by forming the metaphor of curriculum as “building blocks” leading toward the final exhibition. The elaboration was both linguistic and intentional; that is, the image of cumulative building blocks enabled Al to form a richer idea of the structure of his curriculum, which in turn, enabled him to extend the metaphor in ways that also extended his thinking about construction and teaching. The mental model of curriculum composed of blocks built one upon the other, leading to the target of exhibition, provided a concrete image for the abstract concept of constructivism. The model gave him access to his theories. And in consciously revising his theories, he was able to change his practice. He was also able to describe those changes in ways that were coherent, even instructive. Al’s experimentation with backwards-building curriculum is, in many ways, an ideal example of what language can do in the interest of reform. But it is by no

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means the only example I found of teachers using language in active and constructive ways. Throughout this book there are instances of engagement on multiple levels, designed to fulfill multiple purposes. Most of these levels were tacit, and many of the purposes were only tangentially related to the goal of “demonstrating mastery.” Still, analyzing the teachers’ language revealed that they were, indeed, engaged in systematic and constructive thought about practice. They used the languages of accountabilit y, coaching, construction, and fulfillment to transform the espoused theory of exhibition into multiple theories in use (Argyris and Schön, 1974). But because language is an assumed aspect of their everyday interactions with students, colleagues, and with their own thoughts, they were often unaware that their use of language constituted engagement, let alone construction of theory. While much of the theory documented in this book is tacit, it would be a mistake to dismiss these examples of teacher thinking as merely naive misconceptions of the inner intent of reform. Instead, these teachers’ “ways with words” (Heath, 1983) help reveal the process of making sense of reform. And listening carefully to what these teachers say as well as how they say it suggests ways of making the sense-making process even more constructive. Language enabled these teachers to make their theories known—to themselves as well as to me, and it also helped formulate new, more complicated, thoughts. They used language to provoke and inspire new conceptions of teaching, and to support them as they ventured into unknown pedagogical territory. They also used language to shield them from the insecurit y of that unknown territory, to mask partial understandings or misunderstandings, and to resolve contradictions evident in their theories. These instances of language as provocation and mask are instances when language was the teachers’ ally. It mediated between the known and the unknown. In other instances, however, language was even more intimate. When Al, Brian, and Camille used the words themselves, concentrating on their sound even more than on their meaning, through repetition, recitation, and declamation, the words themselves carved space into these teachers’ cosmologies. They inscribed meaning.

L A N G UA G E A S P ROV O C AT I O N The most common form of engagement with reform through language is that of provocation. When Al, Brian, and Camille introduce new terms, such as critical thinking or performance or relevancy, to their vocabularies, their modified diction suggests that these terms have somehow stirred up their thinking about practice. Of course, presence alone is not evidence of provocation. Teachers must use these terms to construct meaning related to their practice; it is in the way they use these terms that the power of provocation is revealed. When Camille talked about critical thinking as “how you don’t just take things off the surface,” she was attempting to link this provocative term to her practice. A close look at her language revealed that while she did not fully understand

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the concept of critical thinking, she believed it belonged in her teaching. She referred to the concept as “one of the things we always talk about,” suggesting that her engagement with the concept of critical thinking began with using the term. Brian embraced the power of language to provoke when he said that exhibition is profound. Here he is referring to the power of the term exhibition to provoke his students to work harder: “Even the word exhibition is profound, and I think it makes students take it more seriously.” The term also inf luenced Brian’s interpretation of the practice of exhibition. When he told me that exhibition stood for “something very large and culminating, and it’s something I don’t do everyday,” he was using the term as a tool to construct a concept of exhibition as a summative evaluation. Sometimes language is provocative by design. This is the case with many slogans of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). The principle of “less is more” presents a paradox in an effort to provoke teachers to contemplate its meaning. The implied response to such a statement is How can less be more? Al attempted to solve the riddle by playing with the language. “You’ve got to have more is more before you can get to less is more,” he said in an effort to explain how he uses more structure to cover less material. In this way, the words themselves function as conceptual tools, which practitioners use to activate and revise their theories, and to change practice.

L A N G UA G E A S M A S K But words do not always function in this manner. In fact, the bud of provocation rarely achieved the full f lowering of change evident in some of Al’s talk and practice. In most cases, the promise of reform remained unfulfilled. In these cases, the teachers tended to use language as mask. They used language to camouf lage what they did not fully understand, to protect them from the vagaries of misunderstanding, and to veil contradictory understandings. Masking partial understanding or misunderstanding was most evident in the interpretation of exhibition as pedagogy, where jargon took the place of words that actually represented practices that the teachers were using. When words stood for abstractions, concepts for which Al, Brian, and Camille had few concrete referents, such as “interdisciplinary curriculum” or even “coaching,” pronouncing the term often substituted for applying the concept. When Brian says “It takes a year of learning how to be a good coach. Learning how to ask the right questions. Learning how to push kids to the next level,” he means to convey the impression that he has, in fact, learned how to be a good coach. And when he describes coaching as “asking the right questions” and “pushing kids to the next level,” he sounds as though he understands. That is until Brian’s talk is compared with Al’s. The contrast is signaled by its specificit y. Where Brian invokes platitudes about inquiry and motivation, Al exploits the analogy of teacher to coach by draw-

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ing on concrete techniques used by coaches. He compares class time to athletic practices. He recalls that practices were usually devoted to skill drills. And this prompts him to note a contrast bet ween the ways students learn when they are practicing on the athletic field versus studying in a classroom. When Al talks about the principle of “teacher as coach” by addressing the implied analogy, I am persuaded that he is fully engaged in constructing personal meaning of the concept of coaching, and that his construction is, at least in part, guided by the metaphor of teacher as coach. When he explains coaching by saying “I never once in my twent y-some-odd years of coaching put a play up on the chalkboard, told the kids how to make a play, then passed out a test,” his language reveals rather than masks understanding. Al, Brian, and Camille also used language to mask contradictions or dissonance in their theories. This was most evident in their use of symbols. Symbols, those most f lexible and pregnant of cognitive structures, contained multiple, even contradictory, meanings. For instance, the symbol of the expert stood for both legitimating authorit y and the illegitimate intruder. Depending on the circumstances, the teachers emphasized one connotation over another. Symbols have the power to both amplify and conf late meaning. Taken together, the multiple connotations contained in the symbol of the expert represent, even celebrate, what Al, Brian, and Camille considered the multipurpose practice of exhibition.

L A N G UA G E A S I N S C R I P T I O N Sometimes pronouncing the words is a necessary step toward constructing their meaning. And in the context of reform, the spoken word is the most potent way in which language can be considered action. When that speech is selected, repeated, and patterned in ways that emphasize the act of saying them, talk becomes ritualized, and its power to inscribe meaning is activated. Repetition, recitation, and declamation are time-honored methods of teaching as well as persuasion; they are ways in which language inscribes meaning (Scheff ler, 1986). Al, Brian, and Camille activated this aspect of speech whenever they pronounced a key word or term or story out loud—to their students, to their teammates, or to me. The impact of inscription is most evident, again, in the example of backwards-building curriculum, which is a variation on the theme of constructing curriculum, first expressed in CES schools by McDonald (1993) as “planning backwards.” As used by Al and Brian, the term is modified, but it is invoked frequently as a guiding principle of their approach to designing curriculum. Brian’s use of the term represents an early stage of inscription. For him it has more the qualit y of incantation; it is a phrase to be repeated as a way of declaring allegiance to the principle. Such a declaration does not assume that he has fully incorporated its meaning. Rather, it functions as a statement of intent, as in “as a team, we have adopted the principle of backwards-building curriculum.” It is akin to the daily ritual of school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. On one

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level, reciting the pledge is itself an act of corporate loyalt y, for the pledge is rarely, if ever, recited alone. In this way it is an enactment of the ideal it acclaims: “One nation, under God.” It is a political and symbolic gesture more than a stage-oftheory development. Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance may also be viewed as a method of democratic education through inscription or mimesis. This is achieved through the repetitive, ritualized pronouncement of words that represent concepts central to the American democratic ideal. When words like republic, justice, and liberty are repeated day after day, out loud, they insinuate themselves into the daily vocabulary of those who pronounce them. This classic rendition of the mimetic (Jackson, 1986) tradition of teaching recalls ancient methods of transmitting culture and values (Lord, 1960; Nagy, 1996). In other words, the talk itself is action, even if it never moves beyond the level of incantation. If, however, ref lection on the meaning of those words and the application of the concepts they represent is built into the curriculum of democratic education, the pledge may become more than a ritual of affirmation and a means of marking the start of a school day. Blending incantation with ref lection is a key pedagogical goal of the reform of exhibition in which students are meant to both “show their stuff” and understand how they came to be able to show their stuff. It is also evident in Al’s use of backwards-building curriculum. Starting with the kernel image of building, Al elaborated by forming the image of building blocks. By remaining faithful to the metaphor of building, Al moved beyond incantation to ref lection so that he was able to extend the metaphor in ways that also extended his thinking about the concept of construction. But he was not simply ref lecting on the concept of construction; he was using the phrase itself to deepen, to inscribe, understanding. Inscription through incantation and also symbolization is a hallmark of all ritual activit y that relies in some way on language. It is visible in political activit y (Edelman, 1964, 1977), corporate culture, and, of course, education (Lesko, 1988; McQuillan, 1994). But it is in the realm of religious activit y, especially formalized religious activit y, or liturgy, that inscription is most deliberately and elaborately employed (Driver, 1998; Kavanagh, 1990; Mitchell, 1977, 1985). All of the world’s literate religions—Islam, Judaism, and Christianit y are the most obvious examples—revere sacred books, and even rituals emanating from oral cultures elevate language within the context of ritual (Levi-Strauss, 1967; Ong, 1982). Chanting, singing, acclaiming, and declaiming are central features of nearly every form of worship. In a liturgical context, talk is action of a very powerful sort. There, the principle of inscription is expressed by the Latin maxim lex orandi, lex credendi, which is usually translated as “praying shapes believing” or as anthropologists call it “creed follows cult.” In the secular world of schools, such activit y is often framed as “communit y building” and it usually takes place in the context of rituals such as inaugurals, assemblies, or commencements, but the same principles apply. Like their religious counterparts, these public events celebrate private concerns for

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meaning, and language plays a central and active role in representing and constructing that meaning. The teachers I studied most purposefully inscribed when they interpreted exhibition as a rite of passage. In this context, the Celebration of Learning was set apart from the normal purposes of school, and the event itself became a context for incorporating the reform of exhibition. Within that context, Al, Brian, and Camille also constructed a role for themselves that transcended the utilitarian and the scholastic purposes of schooling, and the language and practice they enacted shaped their understanding of the event and the principles that underlie it.

S Y M B O L I C AC T I O N A N D T H E AC T I O N O F R E F O R M I have highlighted the spiritual, quasi-religious aspect of rite of passage for two reasons: First, Al, Brian, and Camille demonstrated affinit y for the role of elder and for the purpose of exhibition as an initiation into adulthood rather than a demonstration of mastery, which suggests a powerful impulse to infuse spiritual concerns into their practice. Second, the role of symbolic action (including language as well as ritual) in educational reform has rarely been examined as a meaningful enterprise. Instead, sociologists and policymakers have tended to associate rituals with “vain repetition” or “going through the motions” (Bolman and Deal, 1991; Douglas, 1970). They have often been viewed as mechanisms for numbing the mind’s capacity to make meaning rather than, as I suggest here, strategies for completing and formalizing experience so that it may be ref lected on, critiqued, and revised (Dewey, 1943; Grumet, 1997; Scheff ler, 1986). This study points to a need for a deeper consideration of the role of symbolic action in constructing educational meaning, particularly the meaning of reform. Building on previous studies (Lesko, 1988; McQuillan, 1994; Quantz and Magolda, 1997), further research might undertake more fully the question of occasion in learning, the role of ritual in defining the form of various occasions, and the ways in which teachers as well as students manage spiritual impulses in the highly secular world of schools. The space between policy and practice is clearly not a void. However, neither policymakers nor practitioners have attended very carefully to what, in fact, goes on in that space. Al, Brian, and Camille worked within that space to negotiate multiple and sometimes contradictory interpretations of reform, to construct and manage multiple roles suggested by those interpretations, and to incorporate multiple problems and solutions emanating from the wider reform culture. As they blended interpretations, roles, and solutions into a comprehensible cosmology of practice, they worked hard to make the enterprise meaningful. Language helped make that work both visible and useful. It is the dual capacities of representation and construction that make language a potentially powerful instrument of reform. They suggest that when teachers talk about revolutions in their practice, we should listen carefully to what they

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say and just as carefully to how they say it. Though talking the talk is no substitute for walking the walk, as the language of Al, Brian, and Camille demonstrates, we need not think of talk and action in opposition to one another. Instead, we may appreciate the capacit y of each to support or “scaffold” the other. In representing the multiple meanings of reform, we honor the tensions inherent in those meanings. Once given form, the meanings may be revised, the contradictions made more manageable and the tensions more constructive. We should also attend to the potential of organizations like CES to serve as more intentional discourse communities. In this way, the abstract notion of discourse communit y may be concretized into an actual site for the shared construction of meaning. In many ways, CES reaches toward this goal already. The organization continues to provide opportunities for participants to gather in both regional and national forums. It explicates and disseminates a recognizable rhetoric, which many participants adopt and adapt in highly personal and, at times, communal ways. It promotes deliberation through the employment of linguistic structures such as metaphor, and it encourages discussion and debate. In other words, CES goes quite far in employing language use itself as an instrument of reform. Still, it could go further. To do this would require a more sophisticated command of the ways in which CES rhetoric ref lects the multiple discourses of reform; it would require a more intentional blend of incantation and ref lection—talk and action—directed toward the development of practice as well as ideas about practice. In understanding how the rhetoric of CES mirrors the multiple discourses of reform, we may engage those discourses with greater clarit y and purpose. In this way language may inscribe a path between the actual and the possible, which, in turn, may help bridge the elusive gap between policy and practice.

APPENDIX A

Methodology The research upon which this book is based was originally designed to illuminate teachers’ thought processes related to teaching with exhibitions and other constructivist-oriented practices. My hypothesis was relatively straightforward. I suspected that teachers’ conceptions of practice are part of a wider system of beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes, and I characterized that system as a cosmology. Further, I suspected that understanding how practice develops within that cosmology would require a research design that took into account the multiple and embedded contexts within which teachers think and operate. In other words, this study did not begin its life as an examination of teachers’ talk about reform. Rather, language emerged as an important context in which Al, Brian, and Camille made sense of their work. My goal of creating complex and contextualized portraits of each teacher led me to case-study methodology. In constructing case studies of three teachers engaged in interpreting and enacting theories about exhibition, I drew from phenomenological, biographical, and action research traditions of qualitative research (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993; Eisner, 1991; Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997; Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Stake, 1995). Each case explored the phenomenon of exhibition from the teacher’s perspective, balancing discourse, action, and ref lection, all bounded by the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a single exhibition.

SITE AND SAMPLE Data were collected at Oakville High School (OHS). Described by the school principal as a “test-market” communit y, Oakville is a primarily white (87 percent), middle-class suburb of a major midwestern cit y, and OHS ref lects those demographics. With a student body of 1,750, approximately 65 percent of OHS graduates attend four-year colleges and 15 percent attend technical schools or colleges.1

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OHS has been a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) since 1991, and, at the time of this study, was in the process of considering strategies for implementing the essential principle of diploma by exhibition. Aiming to capture the complexit y of teachers’ thinking and practice around the concept of exhibition, I concentrated my work at OHS in the classrooms of three teachers situated in the same CES school. From November 1997 to July 1998, I observed and interviewed Al, Brian, and Camille, who were among a group identified by the school principal as teachers who had been facult y members at OHS for at least three years, and who had incorporated—with reputed success—exhibitions into his/her pedagogy for at least t wo years. After identifying interested teachers who met these basic criteria, I met with the teachers as a group to discuss the scope and nature of the study. From this group, I selected participants based on t wo criteria: (1) their eagerness to participate in the study as a means of provoking their own ref lective practice, and (2) their tendency during conversation both to refer to theorists by name and to use metaphors such as teacher as coach in explaining their theories about exhibition. In selecting participants who demonstrated evidence of deliberately engaging with and ref lecting on theory, my sample ref lected my desire to understand the multiple strategies teachers use to transform policy into practice. While these teachers represented each of the grades (tenth, eleventh, t welfth) in which exhibition is a featured practice, this sample was not intended to generalize all teachers, even all teachers using exhibitions. Rather, I aimed to generate understanding that will illuminate similar phenomena in comparable contexts (Maxwell, 1992); in this case, teachers’ thinking about reform as made visible in the practice of exhibition in CES schools. My overarching goal was t wofold. First, it was to document what exhibitions act ually are, especially how they are conceived, taught, and evaluated. I aimed to achieve this by observing classroom interactions in the context of teachers’ talk about how those interactions were progressing. I focused all of my observations on activities that related directly to the exhibitions. But I also allowed for tangents. My second goal was to use exhibition as a window into the wider meanings of each teacher’s practice. In following the evolution of each teacher’s exhibition over the course of the entire semester, I hoped to capt ure the dynamic unfolding of meaning, on the part of st udents as well as teachers.

DATA C O L L E C T I O N My field study was organized into three phases: Planning the Exhibition, Coaching the Exhibition, and Evaluating the Exhibition. My original plan included three strategies for gathering data: audiotaped interviews, written ref lections, and classroom observations. Early on, however, I abandoned the written ref lections because the teachers demonstrated resistance to this strategy.

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PHASE I: PLANNING THE EXHIBITION Phase I began in early November 1997. Its purpose was to initiate discussion about exhibition, to probe teachers’ understanding of exhibition, and to gather background and biographical information. During this phase of the field study, interviews were the primary method of data collection. With each teacher I conducted t wo hourlong, semistructured interviews (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982). Questions addressed teachers’ conceptions of exhibition in the context of their pedagogy. I asked teachers to describe their specific plans for the upcoming spring exhibition. I asked teachers to explain any revisions in their exhibitions’ design. Finally, I asked teachers to discuss how this and other exhibitions helped them meet their pedagogical goals, and how they came to formulate these goals. All three teachers maintained documentary material (syllabi, lesson plans, rubric keys, descriptions, and notes). While all three agreed to share these data with me, and I attempted to gather and begin analyzing this material during the first weeks of the field st udy, only Al’s collection of notes and handouts truly served as a record of the evolution of his exhibitions. All three produced several handouts, and distributed rubrics. But Brian and Camille, as it turned out, did not keep notes in the same cumulative or ref lective manner as Al. I also conducted one classroom observation in order to gather a general understanding of each teacher’s st yle of interacting with his/her st udents and the classroom setup.

PHASE II: COACHING THE EXHIBITION Phase II began in late February 1998. At this point in the semester, each teacher had introduced the exhibition to his or her students, and work toward the final performance was well underway. The purpose of phase II was to document teachers’ ref lective practice (as catalyzed, in part, by their involvement in this study), and to compare teachers’ descriptions and analyses of their exhibitions to their enactment of the practice in the classroom. I conducted t wo individual interviews with each teacher, but during this phase, classroom observation was the primary method of gathering data. Observation addressed my fourth research question by enabling me to see the enactment of exhibitions within and across classrooms. I observed and recorded field notes in each of the three classes bet ween t wo and three times a week from approximately February 23 through May 29. I recorded interactions in which teachers enacted the design of their exhibitions, their expectations of student performance, and their approach to guiding student performance toward the exhibition. These included the manner in which teachers referred to the exhibition to their classes, the amount of time allotted for preparing and presenting exhibitions, the techniques teachers used to provide

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feedback and criticism for student work, and the ways in which student ref lection was required and/or supported by the teachers. I attended to classroom discourse as well as behavior, focusing especially on how both teachers and students use such terms as coaching, essential questions, rehearsal, backwards-building curriculum, and performance in the context of preparing and presenting exhibitions. Drawing from interviews, I noted the appearance of teacher-generated words, metaphors, or stories within the context of classroom discussions or one-on-one conversations bet ween student and teacher. To help focus and systematize this process, I used an observation guide.

PHASE III: EVALUATING THE EXHIBITION I expected the final phase of field study to begin when the exhibitions ended. But I found that all three teachers expressed concerns with evaluation throughout the field study. The purpose of phase III was to explore the teachers’ assessments of their students’ work and the completed exhibitions. I conducted one interview on the topic of assessment with each teacher during this phase. My plan was to sit with each teacher as he or she described and critiqued student work. I found that only Al was prepared to show and talk about student work in a systematic way. Brian and Camille resisted my request to look closely at student work, but they did express their concerns about assessment in more general ways during this phase as well as throughout the study. Because I wanted to understand how teachers formulated their understandings of exhibition, and especially how they talked about those understandings, along with a final individual interview, I also conducted one ninet y-minute group interview designed to allow teachers to talk among themselves about exhibitions, teaching, and learning. I held this interview in July 1998, during the OHS annual summer retreat at a local college. I framed this event as a talk in which I presented preliminary findings. I viewed the event as serving three purposes: First, it was a chance to express my gratitude to Al, Brian, and Camille and other members of the OHS communit y for their generosit y. Second, it was an opportunit y to gather data. Third, it was an occasion for checking my interpretations with those of my participants. Approximately eighteen teachers appeared for this gathering, including two of my three respondents, and after I presented early analyses, I asked for the teachers’ feedback and responses. Much of what was discussed at this meeting informed my analysis of exhibition as rite of passage. In both individual and group interviews, I asked teachers to revisit their original goals for their exhibitions. I asked them to evaluate the success of the exhibition in light of (1) any changes they made to its design, and (2) the performances of their particular classes of students. As in previous phases of the study, I also probed teachers’ definitions and images of exhibition, attending especially to any revisions resulting from ref lecting on their exhibitions.

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A N A LY S I S My goal was to understand how teachers constructed and enacted theories related to exhibition, and my primary means of arriving at that understanding was through analyzing teachers’ language about the reform of exhibition in the context of practice that featured exhibition. I considered all phases of the research to be interpretive in nature. Revising field notes after each observation (Miles and Huberman, 1994), documenting emerging patterns in weekly analytic (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983) and “ref lexive” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) memos, and regular debriefing sessions with fellow researchers and mentors all contributed to the iterative and self-conscious manner in which I searched for coherence and convergence in my data (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). But analysis that began after the interviews were transcribed and field notes revised called for even more systematic treatment within, as well as across, cases. I began by analyzing each case discretely, looking first for patterns that revealed the nature of each teacher’s interpretation. I expected to find that the teachers held multiple interpretations of the concept. I also worried that the three teachers might express interpretations so similar as to be indistinguishable. This turned out to be an unfounded fear. Each interpreted the practice in distinctive ways. As I began to identify those interpretations, I considered a number of questions: Do those interpretations build on and inform one another? If so, how? If the teacher espouses a single theory of exhibition, can that theory be traced to published literature on exhibition, or to an important experience from the teacher’s past?

STUDYING LANGUAGE Just as this study did not begin its life as an investigation of language use in educational reform, I did not originally orient my analysis toward linguistics or discourse analysis. Rather, discourse, rhetoric, and language emerged as critical dimensions of the culture of reform and, gradually, I began to discover methods of interpreting the teachers’ talk. In the years since these data were first collected, the transcripts and field notes have been subject to multiple analytic runs. My treatment has ranged from theme-driven content analysis to sentence-level structural analysis to highly contextualized analysis of classroom discourse. All the while, I have regarded these data within the philosophical frame of speech-act theory, returning again and again to the question What are these words, phrases, sentences, metaphors and stories doing in the interest of reform? Interpretation blends microanalysis of teachers’ language with macroanalysis of the social and cultural context within which each teacher operated. I wanted to understand how the teachers interpreted the discourse of educational reform generally and also how they constructed their own language of reform

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using exhibition as a referent. During preliminary analysis, I coded the data based on a relatively crude set of thematic categories that corresponded to my interview protocols. These included definitions of exhibition, metaphors for exhibition, stories about exhibition, goals for exhibitions, and standards for evaluating exhibitions. I noted that there were multiple definitions, metaphors, and stories, and from this early categorical analysis, a broad sketch of the four interpretations of exhibition began to emerge. At this point it became clear to me that the representational question of what exhibition meant to these teachers would yield only part of the story. Since exhibition seemed to mean multiple things, sometimes simultaneously, I turned to the presentational question of how it meant. I began by isolating the language data and analyzing structure. I treated transcripts and field notes as rhetorical artifacts, searching first for patterns in diction and syntax, then for instances of metaphor, narrative, and symbolism that distinguish clusters of interpretation, or what I came to call “languages” of exhibition. Structural analysis revealed linguistic patterns that signaled teachers’ use of language to “dramatize” (Burke, 1966) their understanding of exhibition. I attended to the ways that Al, Brian, and Camille composed sentences, including patterns in usage and syntax. For instance, sometimes they used the term exhibition as a noun and at other times they shifted to the verb exhibit. Considering when and under what circumstances they chose one or the other form led me deeper into the semantic properties of language, which, in turn, led me to questions I may have otherwise ignored. For example, observing that the noun form of exhibition suggested an event while the verb form seemed to connote a f luid series of actions led me to consider what kinds of events the teachers were connoting (I identified two: a test and a rite of passage). I also noted the appearance as well as frequency of images and metaphors such as exhibition as “target” or the curriculum as a set of “building blocks.” I analyzed metaphor as both representation of teachers’ schemata and as presentation of developing conceptualizations. Some, as in the case of Al’s image of curriculum as a set of building blocks, seemed to represent elaborated and integrated frameworks. While others, such as Brian’s use of the CES-inspired metaphor teacher as coach suggested a more tentative, experimental use of the language. In both cases, I posit, the language served to “scaffold” understanding of the complex meanings of reform. The teachers’ stories offered the most intricate presentation of their thinking about reform. When I analyzed narrative, I aimed to discover how teachers joined themes in the context of action, character, and situation to dramatize their understanding of exhibition. Teachers relied on narrative when they were addressing complicated clusters of ideas, such as standards and accountabilit y or transformation and expression. At times, they also blended educational themes with more global motifs, such as good versus evil, growth, or fulfillment. I locate exhibition within the restructuring movement in educational reform, and I identify language as a key “structure” supporting teachers’ enactment

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of instructional change. Looking closely at the language of teachers who were purported to be engaged with this reform revealed as much as observing their practice. And it informed what I saw when I observed them. Discourse analysis led to the final stage of interpreting the data: comparing teachers’ talk about exhibition to their action in the classroom. Here I was interested in links between talk and practice as well as the gaps. I was interested in weak as well as strong links. Where the links were evident, I looked for clues in the language that might serve to guide practice in a particularly clear or vivid way. For example, Al’s use of the imagery of construction turned out to be an especially potent example of the power of language to provoke ref lection about the technicalities of curriculum design. Similarly, all three participants used the terms rehearsal and conference in reference to the preparatory phases of their exhibitions. By analyzing each teacher’s use of these terms, then targeting my observation on the enactment of these concepts, I was able to uncover subtle but significant ways in which these teachers attempted to expand and deepen their practice.

CONSTRUCTING AND DECONSTRUCTING THE CASES During preliminary, intracase, analysis, I focused on constructing individual portraits of each teacher. I regarded each teacher within the context of his or her classroom, OHS, CES, and the biographical narratives they provided in early interviews. Gradually, patterns emerged, and I constructed sketches of each case. I called these sketches “caricatures” because they were overly categorical and somewhat simplistic portrayals of each of the teachers. The characteristics I highlighted in these caricatures included pedagogical focus, purpose of teaching, and level of expertise. These early categories eventually led to my formulation of the four interpretations of exhibition. Early in the process of analyzing and constructing individual cases, I realized that the most interesting insights relative to these teachers’ understandings of the concept of exhibition would emerge through cross-case analysis. In considering the caricatures I had constructed, I noted that some of the characteristics present in each category were also present in others. The most significant analytic breakthrough occurred when I realized that the question I needed to address was not what interpretation each teacher held, but how they constructed it. For instance, as in the case of rehearsal, the metaphor teacher as coach appears in each of these teachers’ talk. I expected that each teacher would ascribe different meanings to the concept of coaching, and that those meanings would be enacted differently in each classroom. As I analyzed those similarities and differences, foregrounding the theme of coaching rather than individual cases of Al, Brian, or Camille, I came to see that the teachers’ interpretations of the concept of coaching were constructed by distinctive “languages,” and those languages were either called on or discarded, depending on the circumstances.

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Understanding that there were, in fact, several ways each teacher understood the concept of coaching, and that each interpretation was linked to a distinctive way of talking about it, led me to a closer analysis of the relationships between the sources of those interpretations, the purpose each different one served, and the circumstances under which Al, Brian, and Camille tended to call up or discard selected interpretations.

VA L I D I T Y, I D E N T I T Y, A N D E T H I C S The challenge of generating valid self-reports from teachers about their thinking about practice is an ongoing concern for researchers of teacher cognition. The dangers of contaminating the research environment through careless interaction are great. This study was no exception, and I built into my research design several precautions aimed at enabling me to minimize and control the impact of my intervention in the language and practice of the teachers. The chief threat to validit y was my dual identit y as a researcher, interested in understanding teachers’ theories about exhibition, and a practitioner, with theories of my own. As a practitioner, my impulse was to treat the teachers as colleagues, to share my ideas about exhibition, and to attempt to support their growth. All three expressed a desire for me to provide feedback and I struggled continuously to resist that urge. I understood that asking questions constituted an intervention, as did my silent presence in the classroom. Throughout the field study, and in this book, I have noted instances in which each of the teachers demonstrated awareness of my presence or seemed to alter their practice as a result of questions I asked. My goal, nonetheless, was to provoke the teachers to generate their own interpretations rather than cue them to produce mine. Drawing from earlier research on teacher thinking, I employed structural devices aimed at neutralizing my interactions with the teachers. Semistructured interview protocols supported my aim of gathering instead of sharing information. However, as the semester wore on, and my relationship with each of the teachers grew more intimate, my interviews grew increasingly improvisational. I walked a fine line bet ween behaving in a scripted but controlled and responsible manner and forging authentic relationships with the teachers in order that they might be forthcoming about their thoughts, hopes, and fears related to their practice. A ten-week break in fieldwork between the first interviews and the more intensive contact with the participants allowed me to evaluate the impact of my researcher bias. In transcribing and analyzing preliminary data, I noted potential contamination, and revised my protocols prior to returning to the field. For instance, during the first wave of interviews, I noted Al’s use of the term backwards-building curriculum. In an effort to prompt similar metaphors, I had introduced that term to both Brian and Camille.

APPENDIX A

143

Despite my initial reasoning that because it was Al’s and not my term it would not constitute an intervention, analysis of the transcipts revealed that when I attempted to explain Al’s use of the term I dominated the conversation, veering into instructor rather than researcher mode. I eliminated the practice of referring to other participants’ language because it seemed to confuse the teachers and also to prompt me to explain more than to listen. In addition, I used the break to analyze documentary data provided by the teachers. Transcribing interviews and revising field notes is standard practice in qualitative research, but in this study, the “fixed” text served an even more explicit purpose (Nagy, 1996). While the discourse that most concerned me—conversation in and about teaching—was most assuredly alive, converting conversation and observation into text crystallized the record of interaction. This was a necessary step toward revealing patterns in language and action, and also toward distinguishing my interpretations from those of the teachers’ or making the familiar strange (Spindler and Spindler, 1982). I followed the standard procedures of confidentialit y and anonymit y in qualitative research. With the exception of mentors and members of my research support group, I did not share information from interviews or classroom observations with anyone in or outside OHS. All interviews, except for the final group discussion, were conducted in private. I used pseudonyms in my field notes, conversations with colleagues, and in this book. Despite the use of pseudonyms, Al, Brian, and Camille understood that they would be recognizable to their colleagues, and they signed informed consent forms. Although I was faithful to these norms, I grappled throughout the study with issues related to my researcher identit y. Research that aims for the kind of intimacy I tried to cultivate with Al, Brian, and Camille inevitably stirs up personal feelings. All three teachers, for instance, requested feedback on their teaching. Whenever they asked questions that implied evaluation on my part, I told them that my purpose was not to assess their teaching, but to understand how they practiced exhibition. At times I struggled to practice what I preached. I often saw interactions between the teachers and their students that troubled me. And at times I was uncertain about how to deal with my feelings. I have attempted to address these feelings along with the impact they may have had on my interactions with the teachers and my interpretation of their talk and practice through regular debriefing with selected colleagues, as well as through ritualizing the process of entering and exiting the research site. I have taken (sometimes elaborate) steps to construct a research identit y that is clearly delineated from my other roles (as teacher, mother, friend) but that is also authentic. I prepared for each visit by writing memos about my goals for the day as well as anxieties. I concluded almost every visit with another memo recording my reactions to the visit. I marked the conclusion of data collection with gifts to each of the teachers, and as soon as I exited the setting, I began referring to the teachers

144

APPENDIX A

exclusively by their pseudonymns. While I found these rituals helpful in keeping me focused on my role as inquirer, I do not claim that they ensured accurate analyses or prevented me from infusing my interpretations with my own anxieties. So that readers may judge for themselves, throughout this study I have attempted to reveal my presence (in interviews as well as observations) where my identit y might be a significant factor in my interpretations.

APPENDIX B

Rubrics History Thesis Presentation Rubric Distinguished

Satisfactory

Substandard

Depth of Knowledge Speaks as an expert on the topic; offers many statistics, quotes, and examples from reliable sources; can discuss specific details with authorit y.

Appears to be knowledgeable about the topic, offers a few statistics, quotes, and examples; understands generalizations well, but is limited in the abilit y to discuss specific details.

Has spott y knowledge; speaks in generalizations, but cannot support them with evidence; presents inaccurate information or unreliable sources.

Representation of Multiple Perspectives

Brief ly discusses several different perspectives, but gives very little attention to other sides of the issue.

Presents only one side of the issue; fails to consider other perspectives (some involved groups would find this presentation unfair and biased).

Gives basic background information (i.e., titles, positions, affiliations) of authors and interview subjects;

Tells name of books, authors, and interview subjects, but gives little or no further information about the sources.

Examines the topic from many different perspectives; shows all sides of the issue in some detail.

Analysis of Research Explains how the Sources background of authors/subjects affects the perspectives and possible biases of the sources.

(continued) 145

146

APPENDIX B

Distinguished

Satisfactory

Substandard

mentions dates and basic background of articles and books. Ref lections on the Research Process

Discusses specific changes they would make in some detail; explains why each proposed change would be necessary; discusses shortcomings and limitations of their work.

Offers specific ideas about what they would do differently; describes the proposed changes and explains how they would go about making those changes.

Offers very superficial generalities such as “I would get more research” or “I would try to keep up with my work.”

Abilit y to Answer Questions

Answers most questions with authorit y and expertise; introduces and explains new research (quotes, statistics, examples) in answers.

Answers most questions competently; introduces new research (quotes statistics, examples) in answers.

Is unable to answer many questions; answers many questions by restating information already presented; offers answers that appear to be guesses.

Engaging the Audience

Speaks in a conversational voice; makes eye contact; offers visuals (and possibly audio) that are engaging and vital to their thesis defense.

Speaks Reads presentation conversationally but from cards; looks is overreliant on down or away from notes; speaks in a the audience; speaks voice that is clear and in a monotone; offers easy to understand; little that is visually offers visuals that interesting or has are interesting and visuals that are not related to the directly part of the presentation. presentation.

Creating an Interactive Presentation

Talks with the audience; engages in conversation with the audience; creates an atmosphere that is comfortable and interactive by asking questions to get audience involved.

Talks to the audience; Talks at the audience; makes a presentation makes a speech and but invites questions then asks for several times questions at the end. throughout.

Descriptor

*Neatness *Typed *Proper formatting *Completeness

*Neatness of product *Creativit y of product

Category

Resumé

Portfolio

*Portfolio is highly original *Organization of portfolio clearly matches resumé *Portfolio is very neat

*High-qualit y, unlined paper *Typed *No corrections *Accurate margins *No grammatical errors *Includes biographical information, career objective, career exploration, academic skills, work habits, and learning outside of school

Distinguished

*Portfolio design is somewhat original *Organization of portfolio clearly matches resumé *Portfolio is very neat

*High-qualit y, unlined paper *Typed *No corrections *Few margin errors *One grammatical error

Very Good

Educational Resumé Rubric

*Portfolio design is basic *Organization of portfolio generally matches resumé *Portfolio is generally neat

*Standard-qualit y unlined paper *Typed *Few margin errors *Few grammatical errors

Satisfactory

Continued

*Portfolio lacks creativit y *Portfolio is disorganized *Evidence is out of order *Portfolio is sloppy

*Notebook paper or dirt y folded unlined paper *Several visible corrections *Several grammatical errors *Missing one of six categories (biographical information, career objective, career exploration, academic skills, work habits, learning outside of school)

Substandard

APPENDIX B 147

Descriptor

*Accuracy of evidence

*Use of detailedspecificit y *Abilit y to answer questions *Clarit y

Strength of Evidence

Explanation of Evidence

Presentation Professionalism *Appearance *Composure *Engagement of audience

Category

*Explains with specificit y and detail *Offers detailed/wellthought-out answers to questions *Has additional evidence to support answers to additional questions

*Evidence profoundly supports each skill or habit

*Suit or dress, professional attire *Highly poised and self-assured *Demonstrates enthusiasm *Makes repeated efforts to involve the audience in conversation

Distinguished

*Jeans, sweats, shorts, T-shirt *Unprepared and nervous *Appears indifferent/ uninterested *Does not make effort to involve audience

Substandard

*Fails to explain pieces of evidence *Unable to answer questions

*Most evidence accurately *Evidence does not supports each skill or support each skill or habit habit

*Dress “school clothes” *Somewhat poised and self-assured *Appears to be completing a school assignment *Makes several efforts to involve audience

Satisfactory

*Explains with specificit y *Explains evidence in and detail general terms *Offers perfunctory *Offers detailed/wellbasic answers to thought-out answers to questions questions

*Evidence accurately supports each skill or habit

*Shirt and tie or casual dress *Poised and self-assured *Demonstrates interest *Makes repeated efforts to involve audience in conversation

Very Good

Educational Resumé Rubric (continued)

148 APPENDIX B

APPENDIX B WORLD CONNECTIONS EDUCATIONAL RESUMÉ RUBRIC

149

Evaluator’s Name ____________________ Student’s Name ____________________

For each descriptor, place a check in the box which best describes the qualit y of the student’s product and presentation. PRODUCT RESUMÉ

descriptor Neatness Proper format Completeness

distinguished

very good

satisfactory

substandard

PORTFOLIO

descriptor Neatness of product Creativit y of product

distinguished

very good

satisfactory

substandard

distinguished

very good

satisfactory

substandard

descriptor Quantit y of evidence Accuracy of supporting evidence

distinguished

very good

satisfactory

substandard

descriptor Use of detail, specificit y Abilit y to answer questions Clarit y

distinguished

very good

satisfactory

substandard

PRESENTATION PROFESSIONALISM descriptor Appearance Composure Engagement of the audience STRENGTH OF EVIDENCE

EXPLANATION OF EVIDENCE

SPECIFIC COMMENTS Comments and evidence to support your scoring Please include your name

Shadow an adult in the field of your choice. Interview an adult in the field of your choice about the qualifications and education needed to perform their job.

Career Exploration Participate in five hours of service to your communit y (this may not be service that was required of you in place of disciplinary consequence).

Community Service

**For each meeting, write a one-page **This work may not summary of your be affiliated with any reaction to how local organization that you government works. are currently involved **For each meeting, in. Find a new obtain the signature program to learn of one official to about and become a prove that you volunteer. attended. **Document hours in such a way that it can be used during your portfolio presentation.

Attend one Oakville School Board Meeting. Attend one Oakville Cit y Council Meeting. Attend one Oakville Mayor’s court session.

Political Locate three articles that contain charts and/or graphs. Write an interpretation of the data (minimum two paragraphs) following the data analysis process learned in class. Identify a political, social, or economic issue that is of personal concern. Research the problem and write a letter to three elected officials (who would be involved in decision making on this issue) recommending a solution.

Technical Research

Must be Create a Powerpoint Write a one-page abstract Read a book about Pick one college that you Choose a piece of completed to presentation in place of are considering attending current state legislation. of this experience which something related to obtain a C one paper in either your career choice (see and research the Research and interview includes:

Must be Locate five Web sites completed by related to politics and all students government and print one page that stood out as the most informative or your favorite page on each site. In your own words, describe how to complete and effective Internet search on the topic of your choice.

Technology

150 APPENDIX B

Must be completed to obtain a B

Career Exploration Political

Conduct an in-depth look at your career choice - demographics - job opportunities - salary (starting/peak) - what would be the next level of employment in this field. Present your state legislative position paper in person to one elected official. Or Using your research on a topic of personal interest, present a position in person to a locally elected official (cit y council, mayor, or school board member).

English or government. curriculum requirements at least five legislators, Present work on the day for the major you would lobbyists, and interested citizens. Determine the the paper is due. like to pursue. cause, stakeholders, possible solutions and your recommended solution. Write a position paper to inform an elected official how to vote on this particular issue.

Technology

Interview participants (five) in the program for the purpose of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the program. Write an evaluation paper that offers recommendations for improving services.

- evaluation of the program - tasks you completed - personal ref lections.

Community Service

Choose one country that is currently involved in some t ype of internal conf lict. Research the causes, stakeholders, and possible solutions. Identify the solution that you would recommend. Contact an ambassador to that country and present your research (by letter, fax, e-mail).

Rogers for suggestions as needed). Based on reading: FICTION TITLES: What were some realities and nonrealities? Based on current career exploration. NONFICTION TITLES: What was some new information learned? How will this help you in your career pursuit?

Technical Research

APPENDIX B 151

Skill Lessons • Interviewing • Internet search • Powerpoint • Charts and graphs (Excel) and analysis • Professional speaking • Dress for success • Scanning • LCD board • Video clips

Must be completed to obtain an A Present your position by testifying at a committee hearing. Or Explain (1–2) pages. Attend one class at a local college or universit y in a course that would be required for your chosen major.

Show evidence of repeated communication and positive relation building with any two adults from your portfolio work.

Portfolio Presention • Powerpoint presentation • Uses multimedia • Scanned • Video clips • Charts/graphs • Demonstrate their learning • Focus (clear) • Handouts for panel • Purpose statement

Present your findings using a Powerpoint presentation to a supervisor of this program (videotape your presentation). Using your research on a topic of personal interest, testify at a committee hearing or a board meeting (cit y council or school board).

Panel Participants • Career person • OHS teacher/administrator • Peer (someone who is considering taking SPS next year or who would be a good candidate) • Parent or family member • Communit y member who is not any of the above • Elected official or someone who has held an elected office at some point in their adult life • Any other guests

Write a ref lection on your career exploration. What did you learn? Do you still want to pursue this career?

152 APPENDIX B

APPENDIX B

153

Resumé Handout CREATIVITY • Collaborated and organized ideas in “Can You Prove It?” unit on the poster boards. • Constructed and prepared ideas while doing the two-perspective drawing project. • Organized and constructed ref lection lines of symmetry. PROBLEM SOLVING • I have skill in problem solving and my proof is I used problem solving in a lot of conditionals and in Unit 2 in geometry. INTERRELATIONSHIPS • Studied a couple of times a week with other students to improve academic skills. • Arranged with other registered nurses to discuss further plans. PROBLEM SOLVING • Compared genes to determine a karyot ype chart in biology. • Conceptualized topic for research paper and executed research on aforementioned topic. MEASURING SKILLS • Applied thought and calculated several geometrical formulas. • Tested measurements many times over. • Presented my knowledge on several selected tests. COMMUNICATION • Organized, instructed ideas, collected data, and presented a “Can You Prove It?” unit to Mr. Arnold. • Presented a cubic arrangement of Kenya to my G studies class. • Applied my knowledge of “Things Fall Apart” to the class when we had class discussions. WRITING

Notes CHAPTER ONE 1. Oakville, as all names in this study, is a pseudonym. 2. Along with the principle of diploma by exhibition, CES’s “Essential Principles” include the following: The school should focus on helping students learn to use their minds well; each student should master a limited number of central skills and knowledge; schools’ goals should be universal, but practice should be tailor-made to meet the needs of every group of students; the governing metaphor of the school should be “student-as-worker” rather than “teacher-as-deliverer-of-instructional-services”; the tone of the school should stress unanxious anticipation, trust, and decency; the principal and teachers should see themselves as generalists first and specialists second; budgets should include substantial time for collective teacher planning, and a per-pupil cost not to exceed that of traditional schools more than 10 percent (Sizer, 1984). 3. Each of the three participants selected the names I use in this book. I gave no specific instructions beyond the question What would you like to be called? Each, however, provided both a name and an explanation. Where appropriate, I have incorporated those explanations. CHAPTER THREE 1. I use quotation marks to designate words used by the teachers at OHS. Longer passages are set as extracts. For data collected from written sources, including words written on the blackboard, I use italics. Omitted text and speech are indicated by ellipses. CHAPTER FOUR 1. They did use imagery related to constructing when they talked about exhibition as curriculum. See chapter 5. CHAPTER FIVE 1. McDonald (1993) adapted the concept from Elmore’s term mapping backwards (1980). APPENDIX A 1. OHS Profile (fall 1997). 155

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Index A Nation at Risk, 25, 27 A Study of High Schools, 27 Accountabilit y, 35–47 Action, and agency, 24, 51 and intention, 21–22, 32, 105, 128, 131–134 symbolic, 21–22, 133–134 Adjustment, 45–47 Assessment, alternative, 35 and authenticit y, 28–30, 38–40 and earning, 25–26, 30 formative, 110 generative, 110–12, 117 and judgment, 39–40, 122–125 and showing, 37–38, 57 and testing, 35, 37–38 Audience, 122–125 Authorit y, 18, 107–109, 124–125 “Backwards-building curriculum,” 9, 67–69, 128, 131 and “backward mapping,” 100 Bellah, Robert, R. Madsen, A. Swindler, S. Tipton, Habits of the Heart, 91 Bruner, Jerome, 28, 100 Burke, Kenneth, 56, 140 Case study research, 135, 141–142 Celebration of Learning, 8, 42, 73, 88–91, 133 Choice, 53–56 Coaching, in athletics, 6–8, 15–16, 31

teacher-as-coach, 15–16, 18, 29, 95, 96, 130–131 in teaching practice, 15–19, 28, 29, 52–59, 95–97, 110–112 Coalition of Essential Schools, ix, 4–5, 8, 14–15, 18, 25, 71, 134, 136 Coherence, and contradiction, 79–80, 86–88, 91–94, 127 in teaching practice, 19, 105–106, 109, 115 Connection, 8 Construction, 68 –78 and connection, 72 Constructivism, 18, 50–51, 97 Core Knowledge, 25 Cosmology, 4–5, 14–15, 19, 92, 97, 133, 135 and beliefs, 5, 14–15, 44, 83 and knowledge, 18–19 and values, 15–18 Critical thinking, 28, 52–53 Criticism, 93, 110, 111, 117–125 Cuban, Larry, ix Democratic education, 63–54, 132 Demonstrating mastery, 3, 26, 27, 28–29, 81, 100 Design, 99–106 and curriculum planning, 100–101 Dewey, John, 15, 50, 77, 100 Discourse, 22–25 of accountabilit y, 23–26, 29 of disciplinary understanding, 27–30, 77–78 167

168 Discourse (cont.) of economic productivit y, 23 of transformation, 27, 29–30 Discourse communit y, 30–32, 134 Elmore, Richard, 155(n) Engagement in curriculum, 107–109 in reform, 127–134 Essential principles, ix, 5, 9, 25, 155(n) Essential questions, 7, 70 as action, 52 as celebration, 81, 84, 86–87 definitions, ix–x, 4–5, 36 as demonstration of mastery, 26, 133 as event, 37–38, 88 as initiation, 80, 84, 133 as policy, 5 as target, 69–70 Expert, 46, 58, 65, 131 Expertise, 54, 65, 92–93, 95–97, 125 and experience, 18–19, 115 and identit y, 119–120, 125 and technique, 114–116 Exposition, 40–41, 86–88 Expression, 13–14, 17, 84–86 expressive individualism, 90–91 Feedback, 106, 117 Fenstermacher, Gary, 114–115 Freeman, Donald, 22 Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 64 Gardner, Howard, 28, 67, 93 Gee, James, 22, 96 Geertz, Clifford, 4, 120 Goodlad, John, 47 Goodness, 81, 83–84, 114 Graham, Patricia Albjerg, 47 Greeley, Horace, 60 Habits of mind, 9 Hample, Robert, The Last Little Citadel, 27 Identit y, xi, 96 and reform, 14, 30–32 and role, 79, 96 (see teacher) researcher, 142–144

INDEX Ideology, 22–23 Incentives, 23, 26 Inscription, 131–133 Intentionalit y, 21, 128 Interdisciplinary curriculum, 70–74 Jackson, Philip, 64 Jacobs, Heidi Hayes, 70, 73 Kennedy, John F., assassination of, 90, 94 Kilpatrick, William, 100 Kordalewski, John, 120 Language of accountabilit y, 35–47 of coaching, 15–16 of construction, 68–74 as distinct from Discourse and rhetoric, 22–25 of fullfilment, 80–94 as a tool of reform, 24–25, 30–31, 71, 94, 127–134 of transformation, 50–65 Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara, The Good High School, 27 “Less is More,” 15, 105–106, 109, 130 Local knowledge, 117 Mabry, Linda, 120 Managing, 103, 107–116 McDonald, Joseph P., 29–31, 68, 79, 93, 117, 131 McLaughlin, Milbrey, 22 Metaphor, 15–16, 19, 29, 31, 68, 95–96, 101, 128, 131, 140 building blocks, 68–70, 101, 103, 140 stepping stones, 69, 106, 121 target, 69–70, 103, 140 teacher-as-coach, 15–16, 18, 29, 95, 96, 130–131 Modeling, 102–103, 109 Narrative, 50, 57–59, 73–74, 140 Negation, 51, 56, 59–64 Pace, Judith, 107 Papert, Seymour, 68

INDEX Parker, Francis, 100 Pedagogical content knowledge, 19, 67, 71 Péron, Eva, 70, 118 Policy, and practice, 21, 127–134, 136 Portfolios, 12 in Resume, 42–44, 89–90 in Senior Political Studies, 11–12, 59, 60, 104–105 Powell, Arthur, The Shopping Mall High School, 27 Power, 53, 54 Progressive education, 14–18, 77–79 Ref lection, 27, 128, 132, 136, 138 Ref lection-in-Action, 109, 113 Reform, culture of, 21–32 instructional, ix–xi, 3–6, 18–19, 25–32, 35–37, 95–97, 127–134 Rehearsal, 65, 78, 86–87, 92–93, 110–112, 140 Reid, William, 36 Responsibilit y, 11–13, 17–18, 40, 52–53, 63, 87–88, 108 Restructuring, 27, 99, 140 Resume, 9–11, 42–44 Rhetoric, ix–xi, 4, 21–24, 133–134 rhetorical codes, 23–30 Ritual, 8, 63, 81–94, 131–134 Rubrics, 12, 46–47, 118–120 and curriculum, 69–70, 78, 104–105 and specificit y, 118–119 and standards, 5, 42–44, 46, 69 and teachers’ authorit y, 69, 93, 104–105, 118 Scaffolding, 30–31, 51, 69, 100–104 Schon, Donald, 109 Scriven, Michael, 110 Searle, John, 128

169 Senior Political Studies (SPS), 11–13, 59–63, 71, 89, 104–105, 107–108 Shulman, Lee, 67 Siddle-Walker, Vanessa, Their Highest Potential, 60 Sizer, Theodore, 15, 31, 35, 71, 82, 99 Slavin, Robert, Success for All, 25 Social efficiency, 44–47 and sorting, 46–47 Socractic questioning, 111 Spillane, James, 128 Swidler, Amy, 17 Symbolization, 22, 91–94 Symbols of exhibition, 91–93 Talk (see language) as action, 3, 22–25, 131–134 Teacher as curriculum maker, 67–78 as elder, 79–94 as facilitator, 49, 55, 63–65 as gatekeeper, 41, 44–47 Teaching and modeling, 29, 100–103, 109 and questioning, 111–114 for understanding, 28, 100 Team Connections team, 8, 99 teaching, 11–12, 70–74 Thesis in History, 6–8, 69–70, 74–77, 105–106 Things Fall Apart, 102 Titanic, 110–111 Tutorial, 112–114 and conferencing, 101–102 Tyack, David, ix Uncertaint y, 55–56, 63, 96, 105, 119–120 West, Cornel, Race Matters, 61 Wiggins, Grant, 29, 93