Transformative Curriculum Chapter 2
The Art of Transformative Teaching

Reflective Teaching-  An umbrella term covering related ideas such as thoughtful instruction, teacher research, teacher narrative, and teacher empowerment.

Practitioners reflect on their practice at one of two major points:

  1. "reflection-on-practice"
  2. "reflection-in-practice"

Technical Review-  teaching is a relatively precise form of technical rationality and depends on research-identified instructional techniques that help attain the goal of ensuring students' standardized test achievement.

Hunter outlined seven steps:

  1. Anticipatory set
  2. Objective
  3. Input
  4. Modeling
  5. Checking for understanding
  6. Guided/monitored practice
  7. Independent practice

Reflective Inquiry-  reflective inquiry involves continuous reflection on one's professional activities within open-ended but disciplined critical inquiry.

Reflective inquiry can incorporate technical review but not vice versa.

The 5C Scaffolding

Creative Reflective Inquiry
Facilitating Individual Understandings
These teachers do not tell their student what to do; rather, they provide experiences that enable them to build their own interpretations.
Promoting Proactive Problem Solving
Transformative teachers foster energetic problem solving; they are not interested in complaining and blaming but in solutions.
Nurturing Aesthetic Engagement and Expression
Caring Reflective Inquiry
Once plans are creatively conceived, transformative teachers work to enact them in a caring manner.
Teachers must allow students opportunities to create their own understandings through relevant inquiry.
The three key dimensions of caring:
  1. Confirmation
  2. Dialogue
  3. Cooperation
Critical Reflective Inquiry
The focus is on becoming more aware of the overt and covert, interpersonal and personal, institutional and societal, historical and cultural factors that repress, suppress, and constrain inquiring teachers.
Critical inquiry revolves around:
  1. Personal Justice
  2. Social Justice
  3. Postmodern Skepticism
Contemplative Reflective Inquiry
Contemplative reflective inquiry is important because it encourages us to examine why we are attempting to grow as transformative teachers.
Contemplation considers the visions embedded in imagination.
Collegial Reflective Inquiry
Collegial reflective inquiry asks you to move beyond the individual classroom and think of yourself as a responsible professional in your school and community
Transformative collegial leaders are guided by three important considerations:
  1. How do I establish pragmatic relations with my colleagues?
  2. How do I cultivate a sense of developmental sensitivity and tolerance between colleagues?
  3. How do I promote the ethics and politics of responsible teacher inquiry?

Questions:

  1. What items/issues in chapter 2 seem important to you and worthy of the class spending more time discussing?

Why can reflective inquiry incorporate technical review but not vice versa?    [This will require us to understand these terms.]

  1. What questions flow from the reading?

Is it feasible to let students decide what to do in classes?

Will students choose to learn what we think they will need in life?

If they only learn what they think they will need in life, will that learning be sufficient for them?

How do we deal with mandated assessment tools which we must use in "real life"?

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Notes taken from:

Henderson, J.G. & Hawthorne, R. D. (2000). Transformative curriculum leadership (2nd). Upper Saddle River: Merrill.