Autobiographical/Teacher Identity Entry #6

"Democratic Practices & Identity"

In this assignment you are expected to examine your life experiences and personal/professional understanding of your identity as related to the concepts and associated with pedagogical practices of democracy and community as presented in this program.

In addition to the knowledge base that you have been building during these two quarters, this assignment draws specifically upon The Art of Classroom Management for items 1-4. Prompt 5 asks you to connect your reflections directly to the formation of your teacher identity.

Items 6-8 are theoretical statements based on Dewey's work and from your program's conceptual framework. For those items you are to make theory-to-practice connections to your developing teacher identity.

Your are expected to incorporate all the questions/prompts in your response.

Questions/prompts that you need to incorporate into your paper:

1a. Based on your own K-12 schooling experience, recall the kind of classroom management systems to which you were exposed. Describe these experiences in relation to Landau's descriptors behavioral, permissive, and democratic.

1b. How did your experiences with classroom management systems help or hinder your own development and learning and that of your classmates?

1c. What moral values do you believe were directly or indirectly being taught through the particular classroom management systems you experienced?

1d. To what extent did you experience trust? (see Landau, p. 177)

2a. In what ways in your own K-12 schooling experiences did you experience power sharing and/or disempowerment in the way Landau uses these concepts?

2b. Recall how your K-12 classrooms were physically arranged and how this physical arrangement was related to issues of power. (Refer to Landau's discussions about the physical arrangement of classrooms to inform your response.)

3. Based on your K-12 education, describe the extent and manner in which you experienced permanent value.

4. Based on your K-12 schooling, plot and describe your experiences on the continuum of high visibility and invisibility as related to your academic grades and overall in-school behavior.

5. Based on your responses to prompts 1-4, reflect upon the impact of those experiences on your developing teacher identity as related to issues of classroom management with particular attention to your disposition toward democratic practices.

NOTE: For items 6-8 reflect upon the degree of compatibility and comfort you currently feel toward each of these statements in regards to your personal belief system and your anticipated future pedagogical practices. Therefore, you are to consider in your self-analysis gaps that often exist between (a) one's beliefs, world view, and ideological orientations (theory) and (b) subsequent actions (practice).

Connect directly to your developing teacher identity by focusing on the concepts of community and democracy/democratic practices.

6. …Dewey (1916, 1938/1974) chastised traditional schooling arrangements that dismiss the importance of an individual's relationship to the conditions of teaching and learning. To create a learning experience, Dewey (1938/1974) contended that educators should account for how learning environments positively "interact with personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities" (p. 44). Because "education is essentially a social process," he understood that educational quality should be judged by "the degree in which individuals form a community group" (emphasis added) (p. 58). For Dewey, the subjectivities of students should be acknowledged within a community-of-learners context in order for the social-psychological aspect of teaching and learning to be accurately understood by faculty. [from Vavrus (2002), pp. 143-144]

7. Dewey (1916) located the purpose of schooling in the larger context of a democratic society. More than a government based on electoral politics, democracy "is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience" (p. 101). Schooling under a democratic ethos requires conditions of community for learning and teaching. In a democratic learning community activities become inseparable from products. To focus only on outcomes of learning renders the education process as simply "materialistic" (p. 143). A democratic learning community for Dewey involved participation that honors a freedom of interaction built upon a development of social relations and shared interests. [from Vavrus (2002), p. 144]

8. "Prospective teachers are guided toward professional action and reflection on the implications for the role of a teacher when enacting (a) democratic school-based decision making that is inclusive of parents, community members, school personnel and students and (b) democratic classroom learning environments that are learner-centered and collaborative." [From the MIT program's conceptual framework]

Due date: Tuesday, March 8