Chapter 5: Teacher Education as Theory Development

As teacher educators concerned with educational foundations, we seek to teach teachers to be more philosophical and self-reflective. Although our efforts are well-intentioned, we often find disinterest. Teachers tell us that educational foundations are dry and useless theory. We, on the contrary, know of the deep and personal growth that can accrue from study in these areas. Why does disinterest persist on the part of teachers, and what can be done about it?¹

In a world of considerable uncertainty, daily newscasts and papers bombard teachers with tragedies of war, catastrophe, impingement, violence, illness and accident. They convey the dread notion that if such is not already one’s plight, he/she is momentarily blessed with good fortune and had better tread carefully. In this set of conditions teachers must relate to students whose backgrounds they scarcely know, and teach them to value that which is often of dubious merit. Indeed, life in classrooms accentuates the alienation and despair, but also the potential for growth, in what Maxine Greene so aptly labels “teacher as stranger.”²