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Teaching and Teacher Education

Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 1993– 2001

0742-05

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Joseph Schwab, self-study of teaching and teacher educationpractices proponent? A personal perspective

Cheryl J. Craig �

Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, 304E Farish Hall, 4800 Calhoun Houston, TX 77204-5027, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 1 January 2008

Received in revised form

12 May 2008

Accepted 14 May 2008

Keywords:

Self-study

Joseph Schwab

History of self-study

Narrative inquiry

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a b s t r a c t

The field of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices, like a number of

other areas of inquiry, appears negligent in paying intellectual debt to Joseph Schwab

who revolutionalized the fields of curriculum and teaching in the 1970s with his ideas

about the practical. In this article, I trace my personal journey of coming to know

Schwab’s contributions and how I came to vicariously know Schwab as a professor who

not only paved the scholarly way to self-study, but also appeared to practice a form of

self-study by making his personal teaching an object of inquiry. To my way of thinking,

Schwab practically and theoretically blazed a trail for the self-study of teaching and

teacher education practices long before the line of research became recognized as a

legitimate strand of inquiry. Furthermore, Schwab’s thinking provides, for me and

others, a possible plotline that could lead to renewal in the field of teaching and teacher

education.

& 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The years teach much which the days never knew—

Emerson (1844)

1. Introduction

In this article, I take the position that the self-study ofteaching and teacher education practices may not havepaid sufficient homage to Joseph Schwab and his ideasconcerning the practical (Schwab, 1969a, 1971a, 1973,1983). I do so by tracing my personal trajectory of comingto know Schwab’s scholarship and my growing interest inSchwab as a teacher. Through featuring certain elementsof his research texts and active deliberations, as well asstories his former students shared with me in interviews, Imake public insights that inform both my teaching andresearch practices. I furthermore explore possibilities forrenewal in the field of teaching and teacher educationthrough reflecting on the story Schwab lived and makingexplicit how it concurrently affected my research andteaching practices. My overall purpose is to shore up loose

ll rights reserved.

ends in the literature while publicly advancing mydevelopment as a teacher educator.

2. Roots of the inquiry

The impetus for my writing this particular articlebegan when Vicki Ross and I co-authored the teacherdevelopment chapter in the Sage Handbook of Curriculum

and Instruction (Connelly, 2008). In it, we built onClandinin and Connelly’s (1992) review essay in theprevious handbook edited by Philip Jackson. In our work,we reasoned that, if teachers are curriculum makers asClandinin and Connelly claimed, then teacher develop-ment implies cultivating the image of teachers ascurriculum makers. To make our case, we drew heavilyon Schwab’s body of research, initially setting parametersextracted from his scholarship to warrant inclusion in ourliterature review (Craig & Ross, 2008). With these criteriain place, self-study of teaching and teacher educationpractices quickly surfaced as a leading approach to teacherdevelopment. What was enormously intriguing, however,was that, in contrast to other approaches, the connectionbetween Schwab and self-study was not as strong as onemight anticipate.

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While Ross and I worked our way through theliterature, a manuscript, Self Study: The Fifth Commonplace,was published. In that essay, Clarke and Erickson (2004)claimed that the self-study field is suffering from‘‘collective amnesiaywith respect to the intellectualheritage underlying self-study as a way of understandingteaching practice’’ (p. 199). To them, ‘‘Schwab’syseminalpapers on ‘The practical’ left an indelible mark on theprofessiony’’ (pp. 208–209). In order to remedy thisdeficiency in the literature (as Schwab would term it),they speculated that his theorizing, particularly his beliefthat any situation could be understood in terms of fourcommonplaces (teacher, learner, subject matter, andmilieu), implied the existence of a fifth commonplace:self-study.

Meanwhile, Ross and I began to experiment with one ofMichael Connelly’s narrative teaching practices (Lyons &LaBoskey, 2002). We adapted Connelly’s notion of‘‘walking around the curriculum tree’’ as a way tore-situate Schwab’s curriculum commonplaces. For Con-nelly, ‘‘walking around the curriculum tree’’ broadenseducators’ perspectives. In supervising Ross (2003), forexample, he urged her not to approach her dissertationresearch from a single perspective but to considerSchwab’s four commonplaces as vantage points fromwhich a metaphorical curriculum tree could be viewed.He explained:

yYou know those treesythink about the trees outWest. When you look at a tree from the south you seeone thing, but if you walk around to the north side,you’ll see something different. There is moss growingon that side. Subtle differences, but important. If youlook at this lesson from the yspecialists’ perspectiveyou will see one thing. However, what will you seefrom the teacher’s perspective? From the learner’sperspective? From the point of view of the milieu? y

Walk around that tree! (M. Connelly, personal com-munication, February, 2000, in Ross, 2003, p. 572).

Connelly’s pedagogy, totally consistent with his devel-opment of the conceptualization of teachers’ holding andexpressing practical knowledge with a number of hisgraduate students (Clandinin, 1986; Connelly & Clandinin,1988; Connelly & Dienes, 1982; Elbaz, 1983), subsequentlyawakened Ross—as it does readers—to a more expansiveview of curriculum as ‘‘a multistoried process’’(Olson, 2000).

As foreshadowed, Ross and I readjusted Schwab’scommonplaces on Connelly’s metaphorical curriculumtree. Because our focus was on teacher development asbroadly conceived, we placed those who work withteachers in the teacher position and shifted teachers tothe learner position. Meanwhile, subject matter wasextended to include the content and processes of teachereducation and milieu to include local, state, and nationalpolicies. In the original commonplace configuration,Schwab maintained that no account would be ‘‘adequate’’(Schwab’s term) without the inclusion of the teacher’sperspective. In our reconfiguration, no account would becomplete without the teacher educator’s perspective.

Thus, while Clarke and Erickson concentrated on a fifthcommonplace, Ross and I underscored the fact thatSchwab’s scholarship had much to say about the relation-ship between teacher development and curriculumstudies. Further to that, Clarke and Erickson linkedSchwab’s practical as a significant source of self-study’sintellectual roots and Ross and I identified self-study as astellar teacher development practice, one that Schwabpotentially would have approved as a leading edgeapproach (Schwab, 1957, 1967), much as he supportedJackson’s (1968) groundbreaking work on life in class-rooms over three decades ago (Allender, personalcommunication). However, deeply embedded in my read-ings of Schwab’s writings, in my discussions with hisformer students and others (e.g., Shubert, personalcommunication), and in my conversations with myco-author, I discovered something else was at work:Schwab appeared to personally engage in inquiries intohis teaching and teacher education practices alone and inthe company of his colleagues and graduate students. Putdifferently, Schwab appeared to be ‘‘a student of teaching’’(Bullough & Gitlin, 2001) prior to the self-study ofteaching and teacher education practices emerging as arecognizable research tradition (Zeichner, 1994). Before Icontinue this line of thinking, I define self-study as aresearch genre and introduce narrative inquiry as mychosen research method.

3. Self-study as a research genre

Self-study involves ‘‘the study of one’s self, one’sactions, one’s ideas, as well as the ‘not self’’’ (Hamilton& Pinnegar, 1998, p. 236). It includes ‘‘the autobiographi-cal, historical, cultural, and political and [takes] athoughtful look at texts read, experiences had, peopleknown, and ideas considered’’ (p. 236) and their connec-tions to teaching and teacher education practices. Inaddition to improving teaching, those who engage inself-study seek to assert or refute understandings, toacquire additional viewpoints, and to deliberate, test,and judge educational practice with the intent ofbuilding and sustaining a teaching and teacher educationcommunity (LaBoskey, 2004). This, in turn, contributesto the knowledge base of teaching, although thesubstance and purpose of such a knowledge base is highlycontested (For example, Shulman (2004) and Wise (1993)support a codified knowledge base, whereas Donmoyer(1996) and Kleibard (1993) do not). To date, self-study hasbeen approached empirically (Allender, 2001; Cole &Knowles, 1998), philosophically (Bullough & Pinnegar,2004; Feldman, Paugh, & Mills, 2004), methodologi-cally (Tidwell & Heston, 1998; Weber & Mitchell, 2004)and from the subject matter point of view (Feldman, 1994;Pereira, 2000, 2005). Primarily qualitative in nature,self-study research is undertaken through the follow-ing research methodologies: reflective practice(e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1999; Russell & Munby, 1994),action research (e.g., Feldman et al., 2004; McNiff,Lomax, & Whitehead, 1996), practitioner research(e.g., Copchran-Smith & Lytle, 2004; Day, Calderhead, &

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Denicolo, 1993), and narrative inquiry (e.g., Kitchen, 2005;Olson, 1996).

4. Narrative inquiry as a research method

A fluid form of investigation, narrative inquiry unfurlsin a non-linear fashion, making it a complicated approachto understand and an even more complicated approach toexplain (Clandinin et al., 2006). Developed by Clandininand Connelly (2000), it is best understood as a humanexperience method in which story serves as both methodand form (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Drawing on a longintellectual history that traverses such disciplines asanthropology (e.g., Bateson, 1994), geography (e.g., Sack,1997), history (e.g., Carr, 1986), philosophy (e.g., Taylor,1992), psychology (e.g., Coles, 1989), theology (e.g., Crites,1971), and women’s studies (e.g., Gilligan, 1982), theresearch approach involves me thinking about, viewing,narratively representing, and contextualizing my knowingof Schwab as a self-study pioneer. Most specifically, I pullon the corpus of Schwab’s scholarship and mingle it withother field texts I have gathered, which then contribute tomy developing argument that Schwab was an inquirerinto his personal teaching practices. This, in turn, informsmy teaching and how I conduct research as a professorwhose studies are situated at the intersection wherecurriculum and teaching meet. It also helps me to imaginehow Schwab’s groundbreaking contributions could ignitewhat he referred to as a ‘‘renascence’’ in the fields ofteaching and teacher education.

Through the process of narrative inquiry, I move insideand outside, backward and forward, through time andacross experiences (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) to makepersonal connections with Joseph Schwab’s teaching andresearch practices. Three modes of analysis particularlysupport the narrative inquiry method in this study:burrowing, broadening, and storying and restorying(Connelly & Clandinin, 1990).

I use broadening as an analytical tool to set up thebackground of the inquiry; that is, to introduce JosephSchwab as a scientist, science educator, teacher, andcurriculum theorist. Broadening helps me to paint thetemporal and social/contextual horizons that scaffold mychosen topic of this article. It brings to light suchcontextual considerations as the years when Schwab’sscholarship first appeared. It also includes major andminor events in his career, for example, his participationin the ‘‘structure of the disciplines’’ movement and theteaching awards he garnered.

Burrowing, the second analytical tool I use, is what I dowhen I present my coming to know Schwab as aresearcher and as a teacher in my personal journey as aneducator. I particularly show how I string differentelements of Schwab’s research and glimpses into histeaching together to make personal sense of them. I alsomake public ‘‘moment-by-moment relationships andhappenings on the landscape’’ (Clandinin & Connelly,2000, p. 76), how they formed question marks in mymind, and how I pursued answers to those wonders andponders.

The third analytical device I use, restorying, captureschanges in how I have come to approach and perceiveSchwab’s research and teaching. To me, restorying allowsfor ‘‘unsystematic, uneasy, pragmatic, and uncertainunions and connections’’ to be made, that give rise to‘‘changing [italics in original] connections and differingorderings at different times’’ (Schwab, 1969a, 1996b, p. 10).Such changes involve ‘‘revisions’’ where ideas are bothdiscarded or introduced (Schwab, 1954/1978). Further-more, ‘‘new connections become probabley’’ (Schwab,1956/1978, p. 136). Here, my idea that Schwab may havepracticed a form of self-study before it became widelyknown about two decades later as a legitimate form ofinquiry comes to light. Also, the contributions Schwab’sscholarship could make to a renewal in teaching andteaching education are entertained from my perspective.

5. Broadening: introducing Joseph Schwab

Joseph Schwab was a well-known scientist whobecame a leading curriculum theorist of the 20th century.In Palmer (2001) book honoring the 50 modern thinkerswho most significantly contributed to education, Schwabis spotlighted (Westbury & Osborne 2001 in Palmer,2001). Schwab additionally is recognized as one ofthe five key figures in the field of curriculum studies(Reid, 1999). Holding degrees in English Literature andZoology and completing his doctoral dissertation on thetopic of genetics, Schwab uniquely understood theexistence of both scientific and poetic forms of truth. Infact, he spoke of scientists as not so much proving truthsas telling ‘‘likely stories’’ (Schwab, 1976, pp. 14–15) untilsuch time new discoveries are made. He also adamantlyrejected ‘‘rhetoric of conclusions’’ (1956/1978, p. 134)—the certainty erroneously associated with the scientifictradition—that he believed was falsely projected in thewording of textbooks and teacher education manuals.For Schwab (1961/1978), subject matter in lessons andtextbooks needed to be filled with ‘‘examples of theuncertainties, the differences in interpretation, andthe issues of principle which characterize the disciplines’’(p. 242). For Schwab, emphasis needed to be placed on‘‘tentative formulations—not facts, but interpretation offacts’’ (p. 270, italics in original).

What is less known about Schwab, though, is his deepcommitment to his personal pedagogy and his unwave-ring support of ‘‘teachersylooking at their own practicesand the consequences of themy’’ (Schwab, 1959/1978,p. 168). In all cases, from matters of curriculum to testingto educational policy, Schwab left discretionary powerswith teachers because he understood that no deliberationcould be complete without their active involvement as‘‘fountainhead[s] of the curricular decision’’ (Schwab,1983). For example, on one occasion in 1950, he enteredinto a heated debate with an unnamed professor at anEducational Testing Services Meeting. The unnamedprofessor maintained that teachers meeting in groupsrepresented ‘‘a pooling of ignorance’’ (Schwab, 1950, inWestbury & Wilkof, 1978, pp. 107–108). In stark contrast,Schwab stalwartly defended the idea of teachers’ learning

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together. For him, teachers’ deliberations result in‘‘a pooling of diversities of experience and insight’’(Schwab, 1969b, p. 30). To his way of thinking, treatingteacher as ‘‘agent[s] of education, not subject matter’’(Schwab, 1954/1978, p. 128) was the only conceivable roadto sustained improvement of practice because

yonly as the teacher uses the classroom as theoccasion and the means to reflect upon education asa whole (ends as well as means), as the laboratory inwhich to translate reflections into actions and thusto test reflections, actions, and outcomes, againstmany criteria is he [sic] a good y teacher’’ (Schwab,1959/1978, pp. 182–183).

Honored with the University of Chicago teachingexcellence award on two occasions (1938 and 1965),Schwab aimed for students not only to be involved in theconstruction of meaning but to participate in generativeinquiries (Schwab, 1958/1978, p. 163) initiated by‘‘thought questions’’ (Roby, personal communication)and fueled by ‘‘begging questions’’ (Schwab, 1969a). Hewas known to reflect on his teaching practice as anindividual, with his students (Lee Shulman, Elliot Eisner,Michael Connelly, Seymour Fox, among others) and withhis colleagues (Richard McKeon, Thomas Kuhn, WayneBooth, and others). Schwab additionally was among thefirst professors in a university to introduce discussionmethods in undergraduate teaching. He, as I will continueto argue, was also among the first to break ground bymaking his personal teaching practice ‘‘a proper object ofstudy’’ (Shulman in Brandt, 1992). As Clandinin andConnelly (1992) assert, Schwab, like Jackson, drew on‘‘[his] own (italics in original) teaching as a basis for [his]ideas about teaching’’ rather than on ‘‘images of research’’as others were doing (p. 380). In this way, Schwabstrove to resist ‘‘the vice of abstraction,’’ a ‘‘flight fromthe field’’ that particularly disturbed him (Schwab, 1969a),one he believed would lead to the demise of curriculumstudies.

6. Burrowing: my journey of coming to know Schwabas a self-study pioneer

When I was prepared as a teacher in the 1970s, myintroductory teaching courses centered exclusively onDewey’s Experience and education. Given that Schwab isconsidered Deweyan in his orientation, my introduction toDewey created a foundation on which to rest my knowingof Schwab, although I did not know it at the time. Then, inmy master’s degree work, I was formally introduced toSchwab’s practical papers, which I ironically came toknow in a theoretical manner (Craig, in press). Later, whenI pursued my doctoral program with Jean Clandinin as myadvisor and my post-doctoral program supervised by bothJean Clandinin and Michael Connelly, I was invited tomake personal connections between the burgeoningliterature and my growing understanding of the field ofteaching and teacher education. A number of narrativepractices similar to ‘‘walking around the curriculumtree,’’ which I introduced earlier, helped to bridge the

theory-practice divide about which Schwab so eloquentlywrote. During this time, the human side of Schwab alsobecame known to me because he had been Connelly’sadvisor when he studied at the University of Chicago andhe had offered Connelly and Clandinin feedback on theteachers’ personal practical knowledge conceptualizationand on their preliminary work on narrative inquiry as aresearch methodology. Also, during this era, Schwab(1983) published his Practical 4 paper, which wasresponded to by some of his former students (Eisner,Shulman, and Fox in particular) as well as others, mostnotably Ralph Tyler. The original article and the relatedreviews were carried by Curriculum Inquiry with Connellyserving as editor.

I then began my higher education career in theteaching and teacher education area, carrying with menarrative practices that I had learned along the way.During my tenure and promotion reviews, but also atconferences, I began to have stories given back to me thatspurred me to want to know more about the curriculumand teaching fields. For example, a discussant of an earlyDivision K paper called me an ‘‘academic blue-blood.’’‘‘What was that all about?’’ I wondered, understandingthe expression, but oblivious as to how it might apply tome. On another occasion in a Division B presentation, Iwas labeled a ‘‘Schwabian.’’ Such terms—along with theexplicit written text of my tenure and promotion reviewletters—caused me to want to probe deeper, to knowmore.

When I was asked to write the curriculum andinstruction handbook chapter discussed earlier, the sam-pling in which I had previously engaged—which reallyhad been a lot more than sampling—turned into afull-blown, all consuming project. During 2005, I readevery published article Schwab wrote. I also listenedintently to the Michigan State University audiotapes of histeaching (1976) and the recently discovered deliberationsat Camp Ramah (1962–1965) that I subsequently hadtranscribed. I also began to ask probing questions ofConnelly (personal communication), Westbury (personalcommunication), Reid (personal communication), Eisner(personal communication) and many others. I further-more became acquainted with Tom Roby (personalcommunication), one of Schwab’s later doctoral studentswho, in turn, introduced me to other University of Chicagoalumni—Peter Pereira (personal communication; articlescited earlier) and Bill Knitter (personal communication),for example, who provided additional insights andpointed me in other worthwhile directions. I additionallywas granted interviews with Bob Floden (personal com-munication) who was at Michigan State during Schwab’saudiotaped session there and with Lee Shulman (personalcommunication) and Jerry Allender (personal communi-cation; volume cited earlier) who Schwab taught asundergraduate and graduate students and with whomhe maintained lifelong friendships. Around this time, Ialso read Block (2004) book, which connected Schwab’stheorizing to Jewish cultural practices and religion, aninterpretation that Slater Stern (2005) and Roby (2005)refuted, and read Hlebowitsh (2005) version of Schwab’sgenerational ideas, an essay with which Westbury (2005)

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took serious issue. In each instance, I learned the under-side of ‘‘interpretation of facts’’—as Schwab earlierdescribed (italics in original). While such endeavors mayundeniably resonate with, and be highly useful to,authors, they may be personally interpreted connectionsthat are not historically true (Spence, 1982) as Slater Stern,Roby, and Westbury were quick to point out in theirrespective reviews.

Despite my knowledge of the possible risks, however, Ipersisted. I began not only to read the lines of Schwab’spapers (as he rigorously prepared his undergraduate andgraduate students to do (Connelly, 2006) but to read hisideas as they took shape across the body of his essaysand chapters (Westbury, personal communication). Myquestioning of Ian Westbury (personal communication)led to the explicit naming of the Schwab/Kuhn connection.My questioning of Elliot Eisner (personal communication)prompted his assertion that ‘‘Schwab changed the fieldforever.’’ And my queries of Michael Connelly (personalcommunication) caused him to wonder why I was askingquestions that he had never posed.

While I supposed my intrigue with the research andteaching legacy that Joseph Schwab left to those whocame after him would end with the writing of thehandbook chapter, it did not. In fact, the chapter forcedme to think about narrative inquiry, self-study, andteaching and teacher education in fresh ways. I had cometo know that the research and teaching of Schwab servedas a precursor not only to Shulman’s notion of pedagogicalcontent knowledge and use of case study methods,Eisner’s commitment to arts-based research and educa-tional connoisseurship, and Connelly and Clandinin’sconceptualization of personal practical knowledge anddevelopment of narrative inquiry as a research methodol-ogy, but also pushed the boundaries and laid importantgroundwork for the self-study of teaching and teachereducation practices (Craig & Ross, 2008). Thus far, I havelaid an evidence trail to this effect. I now move on to whatI believe to be the most compelling evidence concerningSchwab’s teaching and research practices as I see histeacher self appearing to understand them.

7. Restorying: my understanding of Schwab’s personalinquiries into his teaching and research practices

In Schwab’s early writing, he outlined the distinctiveproperties of human nature. The ‘‘human person,’’ hewrote, is a ‘‘self-moving living thing’’ that is able to‘‘produce itself,’’ to ‘‘develop itself,’’ and to create a‘‘personal history’’ that is non-replicable (Schwab, 1964,p. 8). This description, to me, resonates extraordinarilywell with the distinctive features of the self-studyresearch genre that I introduced earlier. Also, when Rossand I co-authored our handbook chapter, we examinedmetaphors of teacher learning through exploring thedifferences Schwab painted between stable and fluidforms of inquiry. While appearing to favor education asgrowth as Dewey before him did, Schwab boldly declaredthat persons are not only products of their education,but products of the choices their selves make (Schwab,

1960/1978, p. 218). Furthermore, in the end result,teachers teach their ‘‘best-loved self’’ (Schwab,1954/1978, pp. 124–125). In his later work, Schwab(1971a, 1971b) went on to add that flexible inquir-ers—those able to adapt to complex milieus—are theresult of ‘‘intelligent rebellion and self-education after[they] are trainedy’’ (p. 23). Joined by the common word,self, the aforementioned assertions, which appear tobe informed by Schwab’s teaching experiences, helpexplain the internal consistency between what Schwabhad to say about curriculum deliberations in his researchpapers and how his live discussions unfolded at CampRamah and at Michigan State University.

For instance, Schwab maintained that a discussion ofterms is paramount to any curriculum deliberation, andthrough Ross’s and my earlier association (Craig & Ross,2008), any account of the teacher and any work meant tospur their cultivation. In the 1976 seminar that he taughtat the Michigan State University Institute of Research onTeaching, I found him introducing the meaning of terms tohis ‘‘students’’ in the following way:

We listen to the other [person]; but we translate what[the person] says in our own terms [which means] weassimilate [the person’s terms] to our interpretationsof experience instead of discovering that there areother possible modes of interpreting experience thatmight be very useful to usy (p. 3)

He then stressed understanding others’ terms from theirperspectives and advised that a term should not beconsidered synonymous with a word. Instead, Schwabemphasized the functions of terms; that is, ‘‘what wordsdo.’’ To him, terms function to ‘‘controly the meaning weassign to facts’’ (p. 3). He furthermore explained thatterms set one person’s meaning making apart fromanother’s as well as one subject matter apart fromanother. Hence, when people are able to grasp underlyingterms, they can ‘‘take hold and learn something’’ andoperate in the realm of ‘‘the plausible; not truey’’ (p. 23).Schwab then deftly substituted the word, principles, forthe word, terms, making it clear that the form of practicalinquiry in which he engaged starts with no principles(e.g., starting points) or terms. As with other forms offlexible inquiry, it begins with the doings and goings on ofraw experience, which, for Schwab’s students, wasfrequently the experiential reading of a carefully selectedtext (e.g., Genesis [Bible chapter] and Faulkner’s shortstory, A Rose for Emily, in the case of the Michigan Statedeliberations).

Readers will now catch a glimpse of how Schwab’sexplanations in his essays and his face-to-face commu-nication with his students/seminar attendees seamlesslyconnected with the way he launched the 1976 Genesis

seminar at Michigan State University. He set the session inmotion by stating that:

I’d like to tell you exactly where we are going, andwhat steps and at what rate, and I can’t at all; becauseif the seminar is properly planned, where we are goingis somewhere you have not been and the words whichwould describe it would make no more sense than to

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talk about dogs to somebody who has never seen ananimal. (p. 3)

Two matters from this audiotaped Michigan State delibe-ration are particularly illustrative of Schwab’s approach toteaching. First, Lee Shulman (personal communication)and Tom Roby (personal communication) who co-taughtat different times with Schwab confirmed that theirformer professor copiously planned/co-planned beforeand after instruction, even to the extent where heanticipated which students/session participants wouldpick up on which narrative threads during the conversa-tions. Second, Schwab demanded a high level of participa-tion from his students. He encouraged their activeinvolvement by tapping into what they knew and theircuriosities about what they needed to know. Thus, he wasable to achieve his pedagogical aims by (1) paying noattention to objectives (but keen attention to meaningsand context outside of behaviors), (2) not discussingeffectiveness (but focusing on complexities and subtleties),and (3) not affording attention to the management ofactivities (but emphasizing the unfolding nature of affairs)(see Reid, 1999, emphasis in original). Further to this,Schwab was quick to distinguish his understanding ofinquiry from others’ more lock-step versions by adoptingthe British spelling, enquiry, in order to set his term and itsmeaning apart from others. In this way, he (1957) soughtto avoid, what he called, ‘‘the corruption of education bypsychology’’ through categorization, classification andcalculation of human behaviors in ways that deniedparticularity. He also was highly critical of curriculumprofessors pursuing legitimization through subject matterexpertise (Roby, personal communication; Pereira, perso-nal communication) despite his own participation in the‘‘structure of the disciplines movement.

On one particular occasion during the height of theaforementioned movement, Schwab offered an insightfulcomment that relates to teacher education, which onceagain belied his personal teaching beliefs—at least to myway of thinking. Rather than hiding behind the disciplin-ary boundaries comfortably afforded him as a well-knownscientist at that time, Schwab broadened the definition ofa discipline by describing

ythe faculty member [as] a possessor and imparter ofdisciplines in quite another sense: mentor, guide, andmodel; ally of the student against ignorance, partici-pant with the student in high adventures into theworlds of intellect and sensibility’’. (Schwab, 1969a,1969b, p. 20)

Once again, I found the real-world conversations to whichI listened confirming these central tenets of Schwab’steaching self that, in turn, fit with the theoretical ideasevident in his practical papers. Once more, my view ofSchwab as a teacher and a researcher was enhanced.

Thus, it is little wonder that Schwab’s students affirmthat they were actively engaged in deliberations withhim (Knitter, personal communication). There also islittle doubt why they speak of having ‘‘clammy hands,damp foreheads, and ever-attentive demeanors’’(Shulman, 2004, p. 240). While Schwab was keenly

supportive of personal meaning making, it was alsoabundantly clear that he did not ‘‘suffer fools lightly’’(Roby, personal communication; also, see Connelly,personal communication).

8. Restorying, revisited

Thus far in this article, I have employed broadening tocapture the breadth of Schwab’s contributions, burrowingto elucidate how I came to know his work, and restoryingto connect his illustrious career in higher education to theevolution and underpinnings of the self-study of teachingand teacher education vein of research as I personallyhave come to know it. Now, I add an additional layer ofrestorying to this analysis. I do so by focusing on how theongoing development of my knowledge of Schwab’sresearch and teaching has informed my teaching andresearch practices and, at the same time, served to offerpossible pathways for a resurgence of intellectual energyand action in the field of teaching and teacher education.

By immersing myself in the full body of Schwab’sscholarship, listening to him in the throes of deliberations,and conducting over twenty hours of interviews with hisformer students and acquaintances, a number of ideashave coalesced for me that are worthy of note. Isummarize three here.

The first is this: I have learned—in an upclose andpersonal way—that the challenges in the field of educa-tion did not begin yesterday or the day before, or with thisadministration or that administration, or this generationor that generation. Rather, they reach back over thehistory of education. The argument Schwab engaged in atthe Educational Testing Services meeting over a half-century ago, for instance, is a battle that teachers,professors, and students of the present generation con-tinue to wage. But what Schwab has done for me andcould do for others is to provide a plotline of how to resistand to be forthright in the expression of one’s righteousindignation. While my human particularity obviouslydiffers from that of Schwab, my students have noted thatI have become increasingly ‘‘fierce’’ when teachers arespoken to, or about, in demeaning ways. For example,when two of the schools with which I work were recentlysubjected to mandatory reviews by total quality manage-ment teams (composed in part by their coerced peers), Iagreed to serve as a partner—to support them, but also tosee what was going on that had so disturbed them. At thetraining session that took place in preparation for theschool visits, some parents and other partners began toquestion the kinds of judgments that would be made onthe basis of 3–5 minute observations of teachers’ class-rooms. A church pastor who served as one of the partnersfor a campus peopled by predominantly Hispanic stu-dents, for example, wanted to know about ‘‘the generalmoral tone of the school’’ instead of looking at objectives,student work samples, and statistical data comparing theperformances of different classes of students taught bythe same teacher. Queries such as this one challenged thetotal quality management spokesperson who respondedwith the authority of the individual’s position (the person

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was a former employee of a Fortune 500 company andwinner of several quality awards and other commenda-tions). At the time, I felt the distinct urge to informthe total quality management representative that theteachers, principals, and other guests assembled in theroom probably represented in excess of 2000 years offlesh-and-blood school-based experience. Alas, I am notquite that outspoken. However, what I did do wasdeliberately share my inner thinking the next time I metwith the teachers and principals in their respective schoolcontexts. I let them know that the devaluing of theirpractices, on one hand, and comments about theirinabilities to render decisions about others’ practicesbased on limited time and evidence, on the other hand,had not escaped my notice—as I hope my writing aboutthe troubling incident here confirms.

The second way Schwab has helped my teaching is byunderscoring the importance of understanding otherpeople’s terms and the meanings they ascribe to thoseterms before proceeding into further discussion. Becauseaccountability is such a dominant theme in education,particularly in Texas, students enrolled in my classes arefrequently confused when they learn that stories innarrative inquiry are referred to as ‘‘narrative accounts.’’Because accountability (as currently conceived) dependsexclusively on quantitative data, the meaning of the word,account, understood in experiential and literary ways, isquickly being lost. In short, that term and many others(e.g., portfolio, data, and evidence) have been taken overby proponents of the dominant paradigm. Hence, I havelearned—through listening to Schwab engaged in theMichigan State and Camp Ramah deliberations, butalso through conversations with his former students(e.g., Michael Connelly, personal communication)—that Ineed to deliberately work to reclaim the termsunderpinning narrative inquiry as a research method inself-study of teaching and teacher education practices, forexample, before any further teaching can take place.Otherwise, my students and I are simply tilling differentground.

This revelation leads to a third major point that I wishto emphasize: Schwab purposefully worked the dialecticin his higher education teaching practices. As Allender(personal communication) put it, Schwab was the greatestamong an outstanding group of professors teaching indialectical ways to address issues concerning the deepen-ing chasm between theory and practice. Yet, he did so in adistinctively ‘‘Schwabian’’—that is, self-informed, way(Roby, personal communication). Thus, for me, Schwab’steaching stands as a testimony that bridging the theory-practice divide—which has become a theory-practice-policy divide in our time (Craig & Ross, 2008)—is worthyof my undivided attention both in my teaching of graduatestudents but also in my day-to-day interactions withteachers in the field and participants in my researchprojects. In short, Schwab affirms for me the necessity ofaddressing the various ‘‘flights from the field’’ that turnboth my students’ and my attention away from theproblems experienced in the schools in one of the fivemost diverse, urban centers in the US. Therefore, when-ever I am invited to participate in various school and

community deliberations (e.g., arts advocacy groups,foundation activities, site visits), I rarely decline. It is inthese face-to-face encounters that I come to know howpernicious the context of schools have become and howthe challenges faced by school-based educators mirrorgreatly those experienced by those of us in highereducation. I also think how unfortunate it is that thatteachers who constitute the largest portion of the work-force (4%), along with university professors who addition-ally constitute one-fifth of the teacher population(Ingersoll, 2004), are unable to ‘‘pool’’ shared concernswith a more equitable and excellent educational futurein mind.

Taken together, the three major revelations that Iculled from my personal inquiry concerning Schwab as apossible self-study of teaching practitioner provide theseeds of a potential renaissance in teaching and teachereducation. In short, they offer me and others a plotlineconcerning how and when to resist; a focus on terms andhow ignoring them leads to miscommunication andmisunderstanding; and a return to dialectical teachingthat bridges theory, practice and policy in ways that canbe educative to both individuals and institutions.

9. Final comments

In this article, I have scratched the surface of amultistoried topic. While there is a great deal more thatI and others can, and will, write about Schwab and thesignificant contributions he made to the emergence ofself-study as an acknowledged line of inquiry, it certainlyappears that ‘‘the new scholarship of teaching’’ (Zeichner,1999) may not be as new as perhaps those of us in thepresent generation think. On the other hand, what others(e.g., Clarke & Erickson, 2004) have termed ‘‘collectiveamnesia’’ may only be indicative of how slow ‘‘the slowrevolution’’ (Grant & Murray, 1999) in teaching andteacher education really is. Whatever the case may be,Joseph Schwab’s practical, to my way of thinking, didmuch to launch many dominant paradigm-challengingforms of inquiry, the self-study of teaching and teachereducation practices—with its own journal [Studying

Teacher Education], biennial conferences at HertmonceauxCastle in England, and largest Special Interest Groupmembership within the American Educational ResearchAssociation—being one of the most prominent. At thesame time, Schwab’s research and teaching greatlyinfluences my research and teaching practices and hasthe potential to affect others’ research and teachingpractices as well.

The past matters more than we realizeyWe walk onits ground, and if we don’t know the soil, we’re lost(William Carlos Williams in Coles, 1992)

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