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Teaching in Mind:
How Teacher Thinking Shapes
Education
by Judith Lloyd Yero, MA
INTRODUCTION
"You may feel like a voice in the wilderness,
but it is your voice we are waiting to hear. Yours is the crucial vote. You are the determining factor.
We reach Critical Mass when we reach you—
and you choose to
reach others…."
~ Neale Donald Walsch 1
I
n the wealth of rhetoric on school improvement and educational reform, one critical factor is consistently ignored. Other than references to "quality," there is a pervasive lack of attention to teachers in educational planning. Frequently, teachers are perceived as constants, much like the books, desks, and other inanimate objects in the educational environment. More attention is paid to the attractive design and packaging of knowledge than on the one factor that may well be the most influential variable in the educational equation—the teacher! Peter Temes, president of the Great Books Foundation, reminds us,
"Once the classroom door closes, once the lesson begins, once the student steps toward the teacher asking for help, it is all up to the teacher, not the school. Good schools help; great schools help more; but great teachers are the far more precious commodity."2
Recent studies reaffirm that "the most important factor that affects student learning is quality teaching."3 Theorists have attempted to define and describe the characteristics of "quality teaching,"focusing largely on academic training and observable behaviors. Yet the unconscious ways in which teachers perceive the world—create their mental models of "reality"—are highly individualistic. Identifying what makes one teacher effective is helpful, but that teacher's behaviors cannot be directly transferred to others. They is why no two classroms are, or can be, the same.
Teaching in Mind: How Teacher Thinking Shapes Education, digs deeply into those individual differences. It probes the realms of subjective experience—the beliefs, values, presuppositions, metaphors, and meanings that shape your personal world. Teaching in Mind is much more than a book for teachers. It is a book about teachers—a book for and about you.
Hundreds of books offer answers to questions teachers have asked since the beginning of organized education. What should we teach? How should we teach? How should we organize knowledge? How should we assess learning? Many books imply that, if only teachers would behave in the prescribed manner, the educational process would miraculously improve. Despite this wealth of available answers, education is still plagued with problems. Why?
Teaching in Mind begins with questions rather than answers. What can educators gain by focusing on what teachers already do and why they do it rather than on generic ideas about how everyone should teach? Why does one teacher wait patiently as students think about a question while another pops in with the answer if one is not quickly forthcoming? Why is one teacher able to maintain discipline with no overt effort while another constantly reprimands students with little lasting effect? What sets Dead Poet's Society's John Keating or Jaime Escalante of Stand and Deliver apart from their peers?
What can be gained by asking those questions? As you'll discover, your answers to these questions are the ones that really count. When you understand the unique ways in which you represent teaching and learning in your own inner reality, you have the opportunity to make reasoned choices. You can accept things as they are or change the only thing that is within your power to directly change—yourself.
Teachers have always had the ability to determine the tone and direction of a school, to create exemplary worlds within the classroom, and to scuttle reform movements that failed to fit their mental models. For too long, those actions have taken place without conscious thought or choice. It's time for teachers to recognize and accept their responsibility in shaping education, to begin mindfully applying stress where the system is dysfunctional, and to take their rightful place as wise and compassionate experts and decision makers. I invite you to my paradigm playground. Have fun!
References
1 Walsch, N. D. in Hartmann, T. (1998) The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Northfield, VT: Mythical Books, 296.
2 Temes, P. (2001, April 4). The End of School Reform. Education Week, 36.
3 Tell, C. (2000, April 20). Fostering High Performance and Respectability. ASCD Infobrief. URL: http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/infobrief/0008.html