Chapter 6: Ethics, Dissensus, and Traveling Without Moving: Using Videoconferencing to Facilitate Dialogue between Preservice Teachers in Two Nations

For the past three years we have used videoconferencing technology to conduct annual conversations between the groups of preservice teachers we teach in Nicosia, Cyprus and Kent, Ohio. In addition to these team-taught, transnational videoconferenced sessions, we each hold discussions with our respective groups of students in order to provide an opportunity for these future teachers to think about the ideas and ideals that emerge during our videoconference.

Despite marked differences in their life experiences, nationality, and sociocultural norms and values, we continue to find that both groups of preservice teachers tend to ascribe to mainstream notions of teaching. Mainstream notions of teaching tend to construct successful teaching as the delivery of prescribed, observably measurable goals as well as students’ ability to explicitly align their answers to reflect the same goals. Although this ends–means way of teaching has been soundly critiqued epistemologically (e.g., Doll, 1993; Henderson & Kesson, 2004; Kliebard, 1975), pedagogically (e.g., Britzman, 2003; Ellsworth, 1997; Friere, 1970/2000) and empirically (e.g., McNeil, 2000; Page, 1991; Valenzuela, 2005; Valli & Chambliss, 2007), such educational practices remain the driving force in educational policy both in the United States (No Child Left Behind, 2001) and Cyprus (MOEC, 2002).