Chapter 5: Pedagogical Choices Shaped by Beliefs about Students—Mr. Smith

One of the key points that I wish to stress is that Mr. Smith was not some sort of angry individual wishing to limit the futures of his students, on the contrary, he clearly desired to help students see the Earth in a manner similar to this own worldview. This being said, there did exist a sizeable mismatch between what he envisioned as necessary and what students deemed as valuable. Twenty years of the types of interactions, that were depicted in chapter three, certainly played a role in determining Mr. Smith’s belief systems concerning what his students needed from the Earth Science class. In addition, those beliefs fueled his construction of the typical Earth Science student profile. This allowed him to make definitive statements on what he believed his students were capable of achieving, which included, but were not limited to the following aspects of his students: prior knowledge base, ability (or lack thereof), effort, and overall value systems concerning learning. Mr. Smith created a pedagogic agenda that reflected the experiences within his years in the classroom. As a former and future teacher, I am sympathetic to Mr. Smith’s concerns and was conflicted as I watched his pedagogy and witnessed how he and his students interacted with one another. I am certainly not trying to downplay the difficulty of teaching in his context nor downplaying the difficulty for making sense of such large scale issues associated with class and race. It can certainly be a disheartening and frustrating affair particularly when we consider the personal nature of teaching. To this end, Mr. Smith created a strong rationale to make sense of what was happening in his class based on those difficulties, which he often expressed in the form of wisdom or advice to other teachers and researchers as we watched events unfold.