Making New or Making Do: An Inconclusive Argument about Teaching

Abstract

Educators commonly advance two arguments in support of the belief that teacher preparation must assist novices in breaking with ordinary ways of thinking and acting. The "dead-hand-of-the-past" argument implies that future teachers' "apprenticeships of observation" perpetuate the eternal shortcomings of schooling, while the professionalization argument, in part political, seeks to enhance teachers' standing by arming them with an expertise that seems comparable to knowledge in medicine and law. Yet commonsense understandings are not all pointless or invalid--indeed, though limited, they typically are practical within given contexts--and the trustworthiness of formal knowledge is not matched by its relevance. The dilemma that puts what is close to action and people into strained relations with what is generally true and detached should keep researchers and teacher educators ever vigilant rather than eager for a final solution. This precarious but valuable stance will be supported, the author concludes, by taking a fresh and deep look at teaching itself, in clear view of its standing as a quintessentially human activity.