What makes a good teacher?
Arnold's "mechanical" observations, Moore p111. :
Product of industrial age
Emergence of surface learning?
Juxtaposed by the classical "liberal education"
I myself lost total interest during my final years in secondary school due to a lack of opportunity to really express my opinion of the work. No encouragement of critical thinking, bar a misunderstood English teacher. But even then, how is a 16 year old adolescent really supposed to analyse, synthesise and reflect deeply on the themes of Shakespeare, Heaney and Yeats when it took these authors and poets decades to be able to articulate them?
Werner "to educe"
JFK: "Ask not what can your country do for you"
Moore, p112
It was a revelation to me to discover that I was allowed to have a contrary point of view to the consensus in this class. All I needed to do, I was informed, was to be able to construct a valid and reasoned argument to support my prepositions.
The obvious question begins to arise - a good teacher is someone who I aspire to emulate. Moore p 119
Schooling has simply become a results business
Goudie looks to be harkening back to the classical age of liberal education - when the development of consciousness was the highest ideal to aspire to, so that the polis could flourish as a natural result.
Bernstein would seem to echo Werner; that we need to focus on what resides "within" the student. Moore p119
If reflective practice is not encouraged in the teacher, how can it be encouraged in the student? Moore, p121
The list of stakeholders is intimidating. Moore p129
Authenticity?
This level of competence is so high; no wonder teaching educators resist this discourse. To reflect on one's short comings and limitations is an uncomfortable experience, which requires a high degree of self-awareness and willingness to be corrected. Teacher's often do make the worst student's.
The reflexive practitioner, an evolution of the reflective practitioner (Smyth 1991) is a person who is aware of their constructed self- the self that is constantly changing, shaped by the passage of their own history, habits and actions. A constructivist approach with a tacit understanding that object and subject go together, and cannot be decontextualized from each other. We are in a constant feedback loop with our environment, as such our understanding of our environment, should at the very least, be changing all the time.
The danger of amateur psycho-analysis is real.
Gaudie (1999) teachers who engage in the transmission of expert knowledge rather than construct authentic knowledge...perpetuate the inequity of power, and stagnate or stunt educational growth" - give them only as much information needed, so as to make them useful.
DCSF 2008 Quote. Moore p131