A View from across the Grand Canyon

Abstract

After reading the set of four articles on teachers' cognitions in this volume, one of us, in her mind's eye, saw herself standing on the north side of the Grand Canyon, struggling to view and understand the other side. The Grand Canyon, it seemed, represented the initially perceived gap between the perceptions of mainstream classroom teaching as seen through the lenses of special education researchers, and our own view which is from a mainstream perspective. The south side of the canyon is managed by the National Parks Service: it has well-maintained paths with fences, manicured bushes, flowers and lawns. It is controlled and predictable. The north side, on the other hand, has wide open spaces, no fences or guard rails, and little control or predictability is evident. Both sides have their advantages, and from most people's perspectives (at least ours), each could use some of the attributes of the other. These articles allowed us a view of classrooms from the special educator's side of the canyon. Although initially we struggled to bring their side into perspective, we decided to continue our exploration of these articles through dialogue and writing, and to revisit the Grand Canyon metaphor when we completed our analysis. In this article, we will describe three overall themes concerning teaching and classrooms that struck us as we read the articles, review each article separately, and consider the validity of the original Grand Canyon image in the concluding section.