Critical review

Citation

1) Ball, D. L., & Forzani, F.M,. (2009). The Work of Teaching and the Challenge for Teacher
Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(5), 497-511.

2) Lampert, M. (2010). Learning Teaching in, from, and for Practice: What Do We Mean?
Journal of Teacher Education,61(1-2), 21-34.

The first article dealt with the argument of the authors in making practice the core of
teachers professional preparation. The argument is looked from the perspective of
contemporary backdrop of teacher education curriculum centered on beliefs and knowledge.
The main argument of this article also focuses on why we need a system of initial and
continuing teacher education that can reliably help prepare ordinary people for effective
professional practice in teaching. The writers also offer examples of what might be tangled in
teaching practice and resolved with a discussion of challenges in teacher education. The
overview of this article include teaching in the U.S. in the 21st century, the work of teaching
and the need for professional training, teaching practice inside teacher education: Towards a
curriculum and examples on modeling subtraction and rehearsing read-aloud.

On the other hand, the second article dealt on how four different conceptions of
practice are investigated and their implications for how learning teaching might be organized
are explored. In talk about teacher preparation and professional development, we often hear
the word practice associated with what, how, or when the learning of teaching is supposed to
happen. In this article, the author analyzes the various interpretations that could underlie the
link between practice and learning teaching. The purpose of this essay is to incite elucidation
of what we mean when we talk about practice in relation to learning teaching. The overview
of this article include the work of teaching, conceptions of practice, practice as that which
contrasts with theory, teaching as a collection of practices, practice for future performance
and practice of teaching.

Here we can see the main focus of each article where the first article discusses why
we need a system of preliminary and continuing teacher education that can unfailingly help
prepare ordinary people for effective professional practice in teaching. The article also
debates on defies in teacher education and ways centering the teacher education. While the
second article argues on four different conceptions of practice and the authors question is
what practice can mean in relation to learn the work of teaching. Apparently the writer also
tends to discover different meanings of practice and the different repercussions each has for
how one learns or gets better at the work of teaching.

The core argument of the first article focuses on why we urgently need to improve all
students opportunities and learning and as a matter of fact, this requires skillful teaching.
The authors also look teaching as an intricate work, and not natural, and needs to be
learned and, hence, taught. They also supported the argument that, seeing teaching as
skilled, high-precision work, that is not a matter of personal style and preference, is to
acknowledge its professional nature, not to repudiate its creativity. Therefore, we need a
reliable system of preparing many ordinary people for expert practice. According to the
authors, improving educational outcomes in the United States is a challenging problem. This
is looked as urgency in the United States. Equipped with a system that failed to supply a
high quality education to all students, policy makers and educational leaders are asking for
more multifaceted and striving goals to prepare youth for the demand of 21 st century.
Besides, the demand of 21st century also has led to enormous gaps in learning opportunities
and disparities in achievement within the United States and other countries. This is also
added by the rapidly changing school population and more complex academic goals set by
school which also leads to high expectations for all students.

The further discussion of the first article also revealed that teachers matters a lot to
students learning. Teachers are looked as key to students learning and therefore lots of
initiatives have been focused on teacher recruitment and retention in steering new trails in
teaching. However the authors debated that those initiatives are laughable without basic
renovations to the curriculum of professional education for teachers. It is also discussed in
the article that there are obstinate evidence that a large proportion of the variability in
student achievement gains is due to the teacher. Thus, one obvious strategy for improving
students opportunities and learning is to ensure that they have teachers who are able to
help them learn. In this case, professional developments should be designed to help
teachers learn to enact necessary skills needed to teach students. Unfortunately, the
problem of professional training arises in this case. According to the authors, it is mainly due
to the fact that the scale of the need and teaching as unnatural and intricate work. The
authors also stated that there are almost 4 million teachers in the United States, preparing
teachers to meet these demands is a massive undertaking.

Meanwhile the core argument of the second article is the question posed by its writer.
The writer tells that it is not how one learns knowledge or what knowledge is most important,
but what practice can mean in relation to learning the work of teaching. In the article, the
writer analyze the various understandings that could bring about the link between practice
and learning teaching, consider some collective practices about teaching, and take a brief
look at how different concepts of practice might play out in designs for learning teaching. The
writer also aims to examine learning teaching rather than learning to teach. At the same
time, the writer also targets to explore different meanings of practice and the different
implications each has for how one learns or gets better at the work of teaching.

Second part of the first article is focused on teaching as intricate work. The authors
also stated teaching as unnatural work. The notion that teaching is unnatural is difficult to
comprehend because of the ubiquity of teaching activity: In fact, as Cohen claims, most
people teach. Teaching, defined as helping others learn to do particular things, is an
everyday activity in which many people engage regularly. Teaching, however, is not about
being oneself. Teacher is a role word (Buchmann, 1993, p. 147), and the locus of the role
of teacher is other peoplelearners. Teachers must facilitate others to learn, understand,
think, and do. That teachers can themselves do all of these things are not enough to help
them help others learn. Teaching involves identifying ways in which a learner is thinking
about the topic or problem at hand, to structure the next steps in the learners development,
and to oversee and assess the learners progress (see Ball & Forzani, 2007; Cohen et al.,
2003).

Thus the job of a teacher is not natural. To listen to and watch others as closely as is
required to probe their ideas carefully and to identify key understandings and
misunderstandings. Hence according to the writers, it is vividly exhibited that teaching is
intricate work which is inefficient to develop by chance and through individual experience. In
this context, the authors also provide the common way of being compared with the way of
being in teaching. At the same time, the authors also provided model proposed by Cohen,
Raudenbush, & Ball (2003); Lampert (2001); Lee (2007) that teaching as unnatural and
intricate work hints teachers to work with time and groups of students to accomplish specific
goals using resources as well as managing and using environments.

Besides, detailing the work of teaching can give credibility to the level of skill involved
in doing it and much about teaching is predictable and invisible to a casual observer (Lewis,
2007). So, teachers must decide how to use time in each lesson, determine the point of the
lesson (Sleep, 2009), and choose tasks, examples, models or analogies, and materials. The
authors also discussed on the scale of the occupation. According to the authors, since
teaching is a demanding job and many people are teaching, they need to provide equitable
opportunities for the learners although there is a question of how doing it reliably.

On the other hand, the second part of the second article debated on the work of
teaching. The author posed a question to begin the paragraph. The author asked what is
that to be learned when one is learning teaching. The also said that teaching can mean
many things and in teacher education, we are more concerned with the process of teaching
occurring in classroom. Here it also means that the work entails responsibility for whole
classes of students. Apparently, the writer also mentioned that classroom teaching is
relational work and it involves concerted action by the teacher and a student. As a matter of
fact, teaching in school also involves intellectual and social collaboration. Classroom
teachers must act consciously to maintain productive relationships with particular individual
students in a ways that results in those students learning. The fundamental importance of
this collaboration to the work of teaching has important implications for how the work might
be learned.

Apart from that, the author also mentioned that teachers need to work in relation to
the particular subject matter and students are responsible for learning. The author also
argued on the point that, it is the job of the teacher to work with the subject matter to
understand it, plan lessons, represent, demonstrate and explain it. The further argument by
the author is regarding the multiple kinds of problems which arise in establishing and
maintaining relationship with students and subject matter. As a matter of fact, teacher builds
relationship with students around content not only in a single lesson but also across groups
of lesson. Not only that, the writer also stressed that the teacher-student relationship is
fundamental to the work of teaching. However the students do not present themselves in the
classroom only as individuals but they emerge as members of stable and dynamic group
and they interact in those groups around learning content.

Here I would to draw some similarities between the first and the second article. In the
first article, the authors regarded teaching as intricate work. How do we define intricate
here? Intricate means difficult, complicated or even complex. The authors of the first article
provided us some explanation why teaching is regarded as intricate work. For example each
episode of instruction comprises many tasks and moves, many of them invisible to a casual
observer (Lewis, 2007). Therefore teachers must decide how to use time in each lesson,
determine the point of the lesson (Sleep, 2009), and choose tasks, examples, models or
analogies, and materials. Besides that, during class they must keep track of 25 or more
learners as they move through the content, keep their eye on the learning goals, attend to
the integrity of the subject matter, manage individual student behavior and maintain a
productive learning environment, pose strategically targeted questions, interpret students
work, craft responses, assess, and steer all of this toward each students growth. This
intricate work involves high levels of coordination. All of these show that, teaching is a
complex. By the same token, if we look at the second article, the author also provided
example showing how a teachers job is intricate. For example, teachers work on the
problems involved in establishing and maintaining intellectual and social relationships with
students and content by arranging the furniture and the schedule, planning lessons, working
with students while students work independently or in small groups, instructing the whole
class at once, linking lessons over time, covering the curriculum, motivating students to do
what needs to be done to learn, assessing whether progress is being made, managing
diversity of all sorts, and finally bringing the year to a close. From the example given by the
author, it is telling us that the job of a teacher is diverse which is actually giving us a
indication that a job of a teacher is always complex.

The next part of the first article revealed on the teaching practice inside teacher
education. The authors focused towards a practice focused curriculum. In this case,
according to (Ball & Bass, 2003), it is derived from the tasks and demands of practice and
includes know-how as well as declarative knowledge. Here it would include noteworthy
attention not just to the knowledge demands of teaching but to the actual tasks and activities
involved in the work. It would not settle for developing teachers beliefs and commitments;
instead, it would emphasize repeated opportunities for novices to practice carrying out the
interactive work of teaching and not just to talk about that work. Apparently a practice-
focused curriculum would also have to include foundational knowledge, but designed and
developed differently from its usual treatment in teachers preparation. At the same time, the
authors also stressed that the core task of teaching should also be focused in practice
focused curriculum.

The next part of the second article revealed the discussion on the conceptions of
practice. The author explores four different conceptions of practice and their implications for
how learning teaching might be organized. According to the writer, problems with learning
the work of teaching are often regarded between teacher education and some conceptions
of practice. Practice here means different things. For example, a practice-based curriculum
could be compelling for teachers and would help them improve students learning. (Ball, &
Cohen, 1999, p. 6, emphasis added) and Sink or swim induction encourages novices to
stick to whatever practices enable them to survive whether or not they represent best
practice in that situation. (Feiman-Nemser, 2001, p. 1014, emphasis added). In this context,
the author has linked practice with problems in learning teaching. The first argument debated
by the author is that, practice seems to be an ideal that exists in the mind of reformers and
maybe in the work of a few practitioners but at the same time it seems possible to organize
the curriculum of preparation around it. While the second notion proposed by the author is,
practices are not the best things for novices to do, but they are things that they know how to
do in order to survive, and one wonders how they learn to do them. Both ideas are giving us
an indication that practice plays an imperative role. The author further explores different
conceptions about practices which are practice as that which contrasts with theory; teaching
as a collection of practice, practice for future performance and the practice of teaching.

We will further look at the following part of the second article which is practice as that
which contrasts with theory. Probably the most common way in which the word practice is
used in relation to the learning of teaching is to contrast it with theory or research. In this
usage, it means what people do rather than what they think or know. It usually refers to
anything that is not theory or research. Practice is the process of actively carrying out an
idea as distinct from the process of having an idea. This definition suggests a linear
relationship: one gets or has an idea, and then realizes it; one learns or articulates a theory,
then uses or applies it. Often the argument is made that the theorypractice divide exists
because the situations in which use and application are supposed to occur are particular and
different from one another. Thus practice becomes linked with the concept of the teacher as
an independent artisan who must create his or her own techniques (Huberman, 1993). In
this view of practice, the learning of teaching practice is something one does by oneself
while doing the work.

The next conception of practice discussed in the second article is teaching as a

collection of practices. The author stated that, teacher education be organized around a
core set of practices for teaching that novices are helped to develop during professional
education (p. 274). In this usage, the dictionary defines a practice as a habit, custom;
something done constantly or usually. This use of the word practice implies things that
people do, constantly and habitually. Considering the nature of teaching as relational work in
which the teacher establishes and maintains connections of various sorts with students and
subject matters during a 9-month school year (Lampert, 2001), it makes sense to see what
he or she is doing in terms of the development of habits and customs. This sense in which
the word practice is used to mean something like routine does seem helpful to
understanding the problems of learning teaching from the perspective of what it takes to do
the work. To further explain about this conception, we should look into what Hatch and
Grossman (2009) proposed. They regard practices as the fundamental key to linking teacher
education for novices with what practicing teachers do. In this case, high-leverage practices
are approaches to teaching that can be used to address common problems of practice that
teachers face and that novices will almost certainly need to employ once they begin
teaching.

Now lets look again at the first article. Here I will briefly explain on what the authors
of the first article discussed under practice focused curriculum. First and foremost, high
leverage resources for practice should be focused. High leverage practices include tasks
and activities that are essential for skillful beginning teachers to understand, take
responsibility for, and be prepared to carry out in order to enact their core instructional
responsibilities. Then, it should be decided on the core practices where beginners should
master. At the same time, the teachers should be exposed with core knowledge needed for
teaching for example topics, ways of working, skills and thinking. Apart from that, the writers
also mentioned about identifying professional and practical foundations that orient teachers
role and practice. All of these will definitely produce a good teacher focusing on the students
needs.

Here again I would like to draw some similarities between the first and the second
article. Both the authors from the first and second article conferred on high-leverage
practices. According to the authors from the first article, High leverage practices include
tasks and activities that are essential for skillful beginning teachers to understand, take
responsibility for, and be prepared to carry out in order to enact their core instructional
responsibilities. Therefore picking high-leverage elements on which to focus novices
education, and creating language with which to talk about work that experts often perform
tacitly, can begin to build the foundation for a curriculum aimed at developing practitioners
and, hence, improving the quality of practice. Identically, the author of the second article also
reflected on high-leverage practices. The author pointed out the idea posed by Hatch and
Grossman (2009) that, High-leverage practices also enable novices to continue to learn; for
example, learning to elicit student thinking in discussions allows new teachers to learn about
the different ways students may be thinking about a text or problem. (pp. 76-77). At this
point, we can say that high-leverage practices are important in teacher education. This is
because high-leverage practices are instructional tasks and activities that powerfully
promote student learning and are fundamental to competent beginning teaching and
essential for beginning teachers to understand and be able to teach.

Looking back at the third conceptions of practice pondered by the author of the
second article which is practice for future performance. If we look the term in relation to the
work of teaching, it gives us an insinuation on something that could be learned by being
practiced or repeated. At the same time, it could also incorporate the more broad idea of
learning teaching from experience. The author also provided example of idea posed by
(Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2008) that, There is evidence that teachers do become more
effective with 2 years of experience, perhaps from practicing in the sense of repeated efforts
to do the same thing. Practicing here can also be looked as rehearsing. A synonym for the
verb form of practice is rehearse. Rehearsal is something that occurs in preparation for
performance. Both practicing and rehearsing are often done in the context of getting
feedback. In studies of professional learning among practicing teachers, groups of teachers
seeking to improve are found telling one another about classroom incidents, giving one
another feedback, and using those incidents as a basis to prepare for future teaching by
repeating what they have learned from the particular in more general terms (Horn, 2005).
Equally important, the author also provided the view suggested by David Berliner (1985). He
belligerently suggested practicing as appropriate for learning teaching. He also added that
novice teachers would be more successful in developing the teaching behaviors
recommended by researchers if they had opportunities to rehearse those behaviors in
laboratory settings before trying them in actual classrooms. Apparently, we could also look
into Yanows observation. According to this observation, the goal of teacher education is to
prepare novice teachers in using the rules of engagement. Here it implies that both the
teacher and the students learn, from their experiences with one another, what to expect and
what the results of particular actions can be predicted to be. From here it can be said that
the rules of engagement means that what repeatedly done by the teacher and students as
practice.

The authors of the first article also emphasized on designing a system of professional
pedagogies such as close modeling, training, coaching and study of records of practice. This
includes in virtual, designed and real school settings. On the other hand, the authors too
discusses on identifying what to teach. The work of teaching should be decomposed into
smaller practice that can be articulated, unpacked, studied, and rehearsed and can be
reintegrated into real-time teaching. Besides, as mentioned earlier the practices should be
high-leverage for beginners and central to different approaches in teaching. This will be a
crucial way to improve the learning and achievement of all students. Some examples were
also given in the article on pedagogy such as interacting with pupils caregivers, asking
questions of students about the content, putting material up for pupils to use in the form of
diagrams, words, tasks. The authors also provided examples on assessing and diagnosing
pupils skills and knowledge as well as learning about pupils contexts.

Therefore, in order to demonstrate what it might mean about teaching practice, the
authors draw on two examples of teacher education. The first case is teaching students to
use mathematical knowledge for teaching through modeling and critique while the second
case is teaching students to read aloud through rehearsal and feedback. In teaching
modeling subtraction is learning mathematics for teaching and developing skill and precision
with modeling. In this case specialized content knowledge will be used with modeling
subtraction with base-ten materials. Here the students are exposed with mapping closely
between actions with the materials and the symbolic representation. They are also exposed
with the showing that borrowing is actually regrouping, or re-writing a number. This is
actually developing fine attention to details of doing the representing in the subtraction.
 While the second case exhibits on the performing of instructional moves which is
rehearsing reading aloud a model proposed by (Lampert & Scott, 2007). Teacher uses a
word and setting up reading with specific guiding questions. Then teacher Anticipate and
provide directions as well as lastly use ones voice, and writing on clipboard. In rehearsing
reading aloud, the teachers will actually learn instructional activities and try them out in
classroom. After trying out in classroom, teacher brings representation of what happened
back to class and analyze. Lastly teacher modifies instructional activities based on analysis
of how they worked, revise plans and take next steps in instruction.

The last part of the first article is the discussion on Centering Teacher Education in
Practice. The authors further discussed on the challenges and resources. One challenge
involved in centering teacher education in practice is careful deconstruction and articulation
of the work of teaching with an eye toward making the most detailed elements of instruction
learnable without plummeting teaching practice to an atomized collection of discrete and
unconnected tiny acts (Grossman & McDonald, 2008). Another challenge is the insufficiency
of the knowledge base about teaching practice. Effective professional education would
prepare teachers with knowledge and skills that would enable them to engage in instruction
that helps children learn.

The authors too deliberated on centering the teacher education. In order to do that,
they argued that the past history of microteaching and competency based teacher education
should be analyzed for the similarities and differences. Then subject matter knowledge for
teaching, skills, discretionary adaptation and judgment should be integrated. On the other
hand, progress should be made on content knowledge for teaching. The authors also
discussed the idea proposed by (Grossman et al., 2009) that other professions might help
teacher educators develop consensus around a curriculum of practice. This can be done
through developing an agreed-upon curriculum of practice and have broadening idea of
clinical and ways to structure and support it.

Lastly, the authors briefly discussed on the praise of detailed training in teacher
education. Here it is being stressed that, there is an urgent need to build a system of
professional training that can reliably prepare large numbers of regular adults to do the
skilled work involved in helping young people learn and develop. To view teaching as a
highly skilled practice, one that requires close training, is to respect the professional
demands of the work. Therefore, we urgently need to improve all students opportunities and
learning and this requires skillful teaching. Teaching is intricate work, and not natural, and
needs to be learned and, hence, taught. Seeing teaching as skilled, high-precision work, that
is not a matter of personal style and preference, is to acknowledge its professional nature,
not to repudiate its creativity. Last but not least, the authors said that, we need a reliable
system of preparing many ordinary people for expert practice.

On the whole, the authors of the first article summarized that there is a need for a
system of initial and continuing teacher education that can reliably help prepare ordinary
people for effective professional practice in teaching. Thus that will require grounding
teacher education on the work of teaching and focusing developmentally on the highest-
leverage practices. Apart from that, it is also emphasized that extra attention given to the
performance of teaching in the curriculum and in assessments. To finish, the authors urged
on building a system of reliable professional development.