Page 33 - Beyond Methods

Conceptualizing teaching acts 21
structional goals. In order to achieve that, teachers are content with using ideas generated by outside experts and exercises de- signed by textbook writers.
• At the second, practical level, teacher theorizing is concerned with the assumptions, values, and consequences with which classroom activities are linked. At this level of practical reflectivity, teachers not only articulate their criteria for developing and evaluating their own practice but also engage in extensive theorizing about the nature of their subjects, their students, and learning/teaching processes.
• At the third, critical or emancipatory level, teacher theorizing is concerned with wider ethical, social, historical, and political is- sues, including the institutional and societal forces which may constrain the teacher’s freedom of action to design an effective theory of practice.
Incidentally, the three levels correspond roughly to the three types of teacher roles—teachers as passive technicians, reflective practitioners, and transformative intellectuals—discussed earlier.
Reflective task 1.5
What are the benefits, and who stands to benefit, if teachers become effec- tive producers of their own personal theories? What, in your specific learn- ing and teaching context, are the possibilities and limitations you face if you wish to theorize from your practice?
In Closing
This chapter has been concerned mainly with the general nature of teaching as a professional activity. Whether teachers characterize their activity as a job or as work, career, occupation, or vocation, they play an unmistakable and unparalleled role in the success of any educational enterprise. Whether they see themselves as passive technicians, reflective practitioners, transformative intellectuals, or as a combination, they are all the time involved in a critical mind engagement. Their success and the satisfaction they derive from it depends to a large extent on the quality of their mind engage-