Book Reviews: Deliberating Over Dispositions—Campano, Gerald. 2007. Immigrant Students and Literacy: Reading, Writing and Remembering. New York: Teachers College Press. 135 pp. $21.95 (soft cover); Edmundson, Mark. 2002. Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference. New York: Random House. 276 pp. $13.95 (soft cover); Johnston, Michael. 2002. In the Deep Heart's Core. New York: Grove Press. 240 pp. $13.00 (soft

Abstract

Campano, Gerald. 2007. Immigrant Students and Literacy: Reading, Writing and Remembering. New York: Teachers College Press. 135 pp. $21.95 (soft cover) Edmundson, Mark. 2002. Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference. New York: Random House. 276 pp. $13.95 (soft cover) Johnston, Michael. 2002. In the Deep Heart's Core. New York: Grove Press. 240 pp. $13.00 (soft cover) DOI: 10.1177/0022487107307951 As a new teacher, I am overwhelmed with the details of teaching--getting to know my students, getting to know the school, procedures, timing, classroom management, and designing curriculum, not to mention implementing any of it with any success. It is too easy for me to lose sight of the big picture and difficult to see beyond the challenges of my current situation.... I am finding that many teachers at my student teaching placement sites, both this semester and last, often seem to accept the way things are, rather than challenging the norm and imagining possibilities. I feel that most teachers, though they may share some ideas and talk with each other about what is happening in their classrooms, rarely actually work together to think about and address these large questions of teaching and learning.... Am I content to just survive my first few years of teaching doing the best I can in an environment where I am on my own in my efforts to affect change? Louise (Curriculum Reflection, April 2007) Louise (this is a pseudonym) is a student of mine who just completed the second semester of her fifth-year teacher credential program in California. She chose our teacher preparation program because of its explicit commitment to equity and social justice. Although the year's worth of professional preparation provided her with considerable exposure to the knowledge and skills she will need when she leaves the college and begins teaching full-time next fall, the challenges she faces in the settings where she has chosen to work already threaten to compromise her conviction to teach in a socially just manner. I wonder what we have done--and what we need to do--to nurture and support the development of the dispositions that Louise needs to become a successful teacher in an urban school. Beyond knowledge and skill, what dispositions will help her continue to believe that all children have the capacity to learn and must be held to high standards, to recognize that each child brings unique talents and challenges to the enterprise of learning in school, and to remember that learning about students and how to teach them well is the centerpiece of morally responsible practice? Like many of her novice teacher colleagues, Louise came to her teacher education program idealistic and hopeful--dispositions that will serve her well especially if developed during teacher preparation and nurtured over time. I have learned that one way to build on a novice teacher's hopeful idealism is to help them to recognize the inherent uncertainty of working in a social context such as a school and learn that there are multiple ways to encounter the challenges that they face there. In the teacher education program where I teach, we talk about casting the world of schools as problematic rather than given. This invites teachers to ask questions about why things are as they are and begin to imagine how they might be different. Over time, they can work toward making them so. Building the novices' ability to ask questions about their practice and pursue answers is one way to help them hold on to hope, which is why teacher education must nurture the disposition of inquiry. Asking questions about one's students, for example, is an important part of the work of teaching: Who are they? What do they know? What languages do they speak? What are their goals? Among the litany of questions teachers have about their students is the one inquiring why some students are successful in a particular setting and others are not. …