Comments from package users (A)
Comments on using the package to rethink a methods course for
secondary English pre-service teachers (by Patricia Irvine)
The following comments are provided by Patricia Irvine, a faculty member at the University of Rochester responsible for the preparation of secondary English teachers. Although Professor Irvine is not a mathematics teacher educator, she found the framework proposed in these materials inspirational for rethinking and enhancing her own methods course for secondary English pre-service teachers. Her experience suggests the value of these materials to support the design professional development experiences in areas other than mathematics.
When Borasi and Fonzi first asked me to review Introducing Math Teachers to Inquiry and offer editorial suggestions, it never occurred to me that a mathematics education program would have any applicability to my secondary English education courses. Imagine my surprise when, after reading only a few pages, I found myself jotting down ideas for adapting their framework to my own professional development sequence. Those notes have since developed into a complex of activities and a new vision of how I might accomplish my English education goals.
In the secondary English education seminar I teach for undergraduate and master's-level pre-service teachers, I face a challenge similar to Borasi and Fonzi in that I hope to contribute to reforming the way language arts is taught in the public schools. To that end, I offer students an approach to teaching reading and writing that is intended to challenge conventional wisdom about language and literacy learning. They learn a critical constructivist theoretical framework that views literacy as a social and ideological practice, not just a collection of school-based activities. But while students may demonstrate conceptual understanding of the theory, it is more difficult for them to put it into practice; not only are they novices at teaching, but they see few models in actual secondary English classrooms of the approach to curriculum and pedagogy that we are learning about. To get beyond mere lip service to any new ideas - whether in math or English - a fresh approach to teacher education is needed, and that is what I have discovered in these materials.
I find the package extremely useful in helping me make my own teaching goals explicit and in designing activities to meet them. Section C, in which Borasi and Fonzi articulate the characteristics of teaching mathematics through inquiry, is an accessible and easily adaptable explanation of what underlies the design of all their activities. It provides an overview of the "big picture" that is adaptable to any subject area. Since I share many of the beliefs about learning that are characteristic of an inquiry approach, this section helps me clarify the rationale for activities I develop for my secondary English students. The concrete activities that the framework offers for implementing a constructivist approach has given me strong support for reenvisioning my approach to secondary English education.
A major change in my approach to teacher education is switching from "coverage" of the many possible topics in English education to structuring activities which allow students to experience new approaches both as learners and as teachers. Borasi and Fonzi write that this is the core of their framework, and it has become the centerpiece of my own courses. While I know at one level that coverage cannot change paradigms, until reading this package I had not encountered a model with the theoretical and practical power to challenge this traditional notion of teacher education. For example, I want students to learn a perspective on writing and revision that values textual product and writing process equally. Moreover, I want them to experience shaping content to reach real audiences for authentic purposes. Using the rationale and many of the activities that Borasi and Fonzi suggest, I have subsequently designed part of the course around writing workshops in which they draft, revise and rewrite their own writing for the course, which includes assignments which have authentic audiences and purposes outside our classroom. Students find these experiences as learners invaluable because most did not learn to write through the "process" model and have never themselves turned in a writing portfolio. However, both are promoted by the NCTE standards and thus foundational in current English education. When students experience process and portfolios as learners, they learn new English content, improve their own writing, and participate in a model for teaching their own students.
However, Borasi and Fonzi do not assume that students will be able to transform an experience as learners into innovative teaching practices for their own classrooms without guided support. Rather, they offer specific, detailed activities to reflect on this activity from both perspectives - learner and teacher - and to ground it in a theoretical framework. I use all the activities in section D that they suggest for engendering this change in perspective. The shared journals yield especially dramatic and visible results. They help students create a community of learners in a very concrete way, and they stimulate a metacognitive process that accelerates learning. I have students share their journals online and find it convenient, timely and efficient. Finally, the concrete ways they suggest for getting students to connect their learning and teaching experiences to a theoretical frame work extremely well. Instead of reading theory first and then trying to apply it, students engage in concrete experiences that they can then link directly to theoretical principles.
Overall, the package is remarkable for its sustained, comprehensive and clear vision of innovative teacher education aimed at educational reform. I think readers will also be delighted by the wealth of practical suggestions that Borasi and Fonzi offer from their years of experience conducting intensive teacher training courses and researching their results. Because this framework and its accompanying materials have changed significantly the way I approach secondary English teacher education, I recommend it enthusiastically to readers from disciplines other than mathematics.