English Education - Volume 39, Issue 1, 2006

Dealing with this recurrent, nearly archetypal, issue of finding balance between the practical and the theoretical in graduate programs is the task of English language arts educators and the requisite activity of graduate students in our field. The relevance of best practices in instruction is clear, but that is not the end goal of graduate school. Instead, graduate schools must help practitioners rediscover their curiosity and their professional imagination. English educators must create the time and space for inservice teachers who are our graduate students to discern the value and relevance of tying best practices to theory and theory to effective practice.

This essay extends Robert Yagelskiߣs discuss sustainability; in teacher education by examining how the processes of Cartesian-Newtonian thinking limit the ability of both standards reformers and English educators to think in genuinely new ways and to conceive of real change. The essay includes a discussion of how standards reform since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 has been based on arguments and ways of thinking similar to reform measures in the early twentieth century. The essay also discusses four areas of professional practice toward which English teacher educators might look for guidance in initiating real change. One key point of reference is the work of David Bohm, a physicist and philosopher of science, whose critique of scientific thinking represents a unique way of understanding how to understand and reconfigure approaches to educational reform in the twenty-first century.

We argue that the student teaching seminar, a co-requisite to student teaching, may best be construed as a introduction to a teacher learning community and to inquiry-oriented professional development. Using a qualitative case study design and discourse analysis, we examine 60 Teaching Inquiries (TIs) occurring in student teaching seminars over a three semester period to better understand (a) the issues English teacher candidates raise in TIs and (b) how the field of English education manifests itself in the inquiry process. Our analysis finds that TIs reflect complex issues resting both in and out of traditional notions of The inquiry process enables seminar participants to develop the field’s knowledge-base and deepen their own pedagogical and ideological commitments. By complicating and situating English education, discussions bring together the world of the classroom and the world of the university, paving the way for mutual learning.

This interview study with 19 preservice teachers who were enrolled in a teacher apprenticeship program at a major southeastern U.S. university uses Dewey’s (1938/1988) concept of an experience and Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) concept of flow to investigate how participants identify and describe aesthetic flow experiences both inside and outside school settings. The researchers, two instructors of English education, suggest that recognizing aesthetic flow experience in the classroom sets the stage for pre-service teachers to have enriched notions of what counts as learning and knowledge. Further, we posit that these enriched notions of knowledge and learning will point to ways of appreciating the diverse settings, activities, and experiences that secondary students bring with them to school.

So, what have you been reading lately? Such a casual question“when asked of colleagues in English education”often gives way to some very interesting responses. Though this inquiry often yields one or two titles, which evoke nods of instant recognition, the depth of the professional conversation is enhanced when at least one of the titles startles the inquirer. John Harmon, past president of the New York State English Council, provides just such a startling response with his discussion of a book that many readers would consider a text about business and commerce. He calls upon his thirty years in English education, both as a teacher and a curriculum coordinator, linking his main text to a constellation of works, which provide ready recognition to professionals in the field.