The Social Foundations Classroom

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The Social FoundationsClassroomMary Bushnell & Sue Ellen HenryPublished online: 17 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Mary Bushnell & Sue Ellen Henry (2003) The Social FoundationsClassroom, Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational StudiesAssociation, 34:1, 38-61, DOI: 10.1207/S15326993ES3401_4

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THE SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS CLASSROOM

The Role of Reflection in Epistemological Change:Autobiography in Teacher Education

MARY BUSHNELLQueens College, CUNY

SUE ELLEN HENRYBucknell University

In this article, we promote the use of autobiography in the social foundations

of education classroom as a means of connecting education to real life experi-

ences, history, and fostering epistemological development of college students.

Autobiography involves students’ awareness of the relation between theory

and lived experience. As a form of reflective knowing, autobiography may

help students understand complex terms such as “learning,” “knowledge,” and

“education” by exploring various contexts that influence such understandings.

Reflective knowing explores some of the experiential and purposive contexts

that influence knowledge creation. Intellectual maturity and self-awareness

may arise from circumstances that can lead students to be more confident criti-

cal thinkers and problem solvers. We describe how we have used autobiogra-

phy in our social foundations of education classrooms and explore how influ-

encing the pedagogy of teacher education critiques traditional epistemologies

toward a redefinition of education for a democratic society.

Now reflecting on my educational history, I realize that everything I have learned

in the past has taught me something about myself. Whether I was aware of my de-

velopment at the time [hinges] on individual circumstances. I have thrived on

learning,broughtaboutbymajorchanges impactingmylife.Thesevariationsand

my necessary adaptations have taught me the most important skill I need to know.

Because of changes in my life, I have succeeded in learning how to learn. (Rita,

Bucknell University, learning autobiography, September 1999)1

If I canmakepresent theshapesandstructuresofaperceivedworld, even though

they have been layered over with many rational meanings over time, I believe

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my own past will appear in altered ways and that my presently lived life — and, I

would like to say, teaching — will become more grounded, more pungent, and

less susceptible to logical rationalization, not to speak of rational instrumental-

ity. (Greene 1995, 77–78)

College students enter university life with substantial and sometimes troublingideas about what it means to be educated. These ideas have been shaped by their ex-periences in schools, yet they often conflict with an expanded understanding of be-ing educated held by most foundations faculty. Central to the notion of being edu-cated for many foundationists is being prepared for the complexity of living as aparticipatory member of a democracy (Council of Learned Societies in Education1996). At the college level (and at all levels), most faculty agree that students need toachieve more than the mastery of specific and often narrow content; they also need todevelop habits of mind and values that promote conscious activity in society.

But what kind of pedagogy encourages this outcome? In this article we arguethat foundations educators should endeavor to support skilled, thoughtful, and so-cially active teachers by focusing on pedagogy and curricular content that embedsstudents in the education they are experiencing. We explore how such a reposition-ing of the student can effect an epistemological change: received and absoluteknowledge becomes contextualized and constructed knowledge and practice. Thismore sophisticated orientation to knowledge is a critical element of social actionand praxis. Specifically, we suggest that autobiography can function as a bridgebetween the student, educational history and theories, and the empowerment nec-essary to make social change through the act of teaching.

Contemporary Problems in Knowing: Absolute Knowledge andTechnical Rationality

Scholars, popular culture, and popular academic discourse have noted thatmany students appear to make their way through school and college without reallypaying attention (Bloom 1987; Hoggart 1991; Rodriguez 1983). Although thereare notable examples of students as social activists while in college (Levine andCureton 1998), for many students their purpose for higher education is to securetheir own economic advancement through the attainment of a credential. Throughour tutelage they have learned that possessing a college degree matters more thanthe content of the degree (Collins 1979)—so why bother to pay attention in the lec-ture hall? Our colleges may continue to be enlightenment institutions, but theyhave also become places in which individual progress is often sought more vigor-ously than social progress. Students frequently focus on obtaining a degree for theacquisition of a job rather than becoming educated for the purpose of improving ademocratic society—and they may not need to bother.

EDUCATIONAL STUDIES 39

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We teach undergraduate and graduate students who are becoming or consider-ing becoming elementary school teachers. Often they have chosen the professionof teaching because they “love children,” a quality similar to other teacher educa-tion students throughout the nation (Ladson-Billings 2001). Their affective moti-vation is admirable, and arguably necessary, for successful teaching. Yet this moti-vation alone fails to fully grasp the profound responsibility a teacher takes on in theeducation of her students. A credential to teach, along with a desire to “love chil-dren” is not enough. Is it possible to effectively educate without an expanded con-cept of what it means to be educated?

Although not entirely the fault of our students, but rather a natural outgrowth oftheconditions inwhichmanyof themhavebeeneducated, this lackofengagement intheir own learning and lack of reflection in their becoming teachers requires our at-tention. Addressing this condition is made more difficult in that epistemologically,college students are just beginning to grapple with what it means to know somethingin a school context. For the most part, they have been cultivated to believe that know-ing in school means to have committed to memory information that someone elsetold them or that they read authored by someone else. Developmentally, the idea thatknowing in school includes understanding the relation between their experiencesand what they have been told is cognitively difficult for many college students tograsp. Perry (1970) was one of the first researchers to explore the epistemologicalchanges students experienced while in college. Since his groundbreaking work con-ducted primarily with male students, several authors have traced the intellectual de-velopmental progression of more complete and diverse groups of college students(Baxter Magolda 1999; Belenky et al. 1986; King and Kitchener 1994).

Although each of these studies has its own particular emphases, consistentamong all of them is the notion that college students typically begin their collegeyears understanding knowledge as if it is solid and concrete. Baxter Magolda’s(1999) work advances four developmental phases of epistemological growth be-ginning with “absolute knowing” and moving through “transitional knowing,” be-coming adept with “independent knowing” and culminating in “contextual know-ing.” Contrasted with the sophisticated understanding of knowledge as embeddedin a particular position, absolute knowers understand knowledge as either right orwrong, typically assume that right or wrong answers exist for intellectual ques-tions, and believe that authorities such as scholars and teachers have these answers.Although their own competence in knowing is uncertain, students remain bound tothe idea that somewhere, someone knows the answer. Not only does this notionhave some specific outcomes for their roles as students, it also influences theirroles as teachers. As Baxter Magolda describes, “As learners, absolute knowers fo-cus on obtaining the information … they expect instructors to communicateknowledge clearly to them to aid in their acquiring it. They do not expect peers tohave legitimate knowledge, although peers can share what they have learned fromauthority figures” (1999, 43).

40 SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS

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Although it is important for students to know that on some concrete and specificitems right answers do exist, there are several problematic aspects about this uni-versally simple knowledge position. First, this position rests upon an assumptionthat there is general agreement among authorities on specific aspects of knowl-edge. Second, in order to gain competence with knowledge, students must identifywith an authority; facility with knowledge from the absolute perspective essen-tially means to know what someone else has said. This required identification ren-ders the student knower a slave to knowledge rather than a producer of it. Third,knowledge slaves are voiceless in the knowing process; as Baxter Magolda asserts,“There [is] really no student voice per se in absolute knowing” (1999, 44).

In addition to these troublesome problems, there is another piece missing fromthe intellectual development of absolute knowers: mindfulness. Mindfulness doesnot refer to merely paying attention to a teacher’s direction or staying on task;rather it refers to patterned, active awareness of oneself in his/her surroundings andconscious reflection on what is going on (Tremmel 1999). Mindfulness can be ob-served in jazz improvisation, which “consists in varying, combining, and recom-bining a set of figures within the schema which bounds and gives coherence to theperformance. As the musicians feel the direction of the music that is developingout of their interwoven contributions, they make new sense of it and adjust theirperformance to the new sense they have made” (Schön 1983, 55). Noted psycholo-gist Ellen Langer (1989) describes mindfulness as having three essential compo-nents, all of which are missing from the absolute knower’s repertoire: (1) creatingnew categories of information and knowledge, (2) welcoming new information,and (3) an openness to multiple points of view. All three of these qualities requirecomfort with ambiguity and the ability to see information in its context rather thanas universal and “delivered.” From the position of absolute knowers, knowledgeexists outside any context other than a book, a lecture, or some other presentationform made by an authority and consequently is dependent more on the quality oftheir memory than on the quality of their mind.

Mindfulness, therefore, may be the mental equivalent of being physically on taskin a classroom. Unfortunately, students working from an absolute knowledge per-spective may appear physically to be on task while their minds and emotions remainunengaged. Rita, a college student, describes this “checking out” characteristic ofher early education, despite being labeled a “good student.” Particularly poignant inRita’squote isher recognition thateducationwasdone toher, rather thanwithher.

Throughout the course of my elementary years, I feel my learning was greatly

diversified, but at the same time restricted. The parochial school system seemed

to encourage many different venues of learning, yet confined my classmates’

and my own personalities. Held to a strict daily schedule, we were imbedded

[sic] with many moral and religious values. My classmates and I were evaluated

by means of conduct, neatness, punctuality, and by rote memorization of


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prayers and religious practices. At this point, I thought of learning as forced and

[as] … distinctly disconnected … subjects … unrelated to everyday uses. (Rita,

Bucknell University, learning autobiography)

Students like Rita appear to be succeeding at school when they have become ac-complished at following directions. They have mastered the dominant technolo-gies of schooling — multiple choice tests, memorization, and recall — forms ofknowledge consistent with the absolute notion of knowledge (Anderson 1989).They learn in the style of Hoggart’s scholarship boy who “discovers a technique ofapparent learning, of the acquiring of facts rather than of the handling of facts”(Hoggart 1991, 229). The sad corollary is that they often succeed in school pre-cisely because they don’t think actively for themselves — they are not mindful re-garding their work. The epistemological assumptions of this banking model ofschooling include the privileging of static knowledge that is transferred intact fromteacher to student. The successful students, that is, those who earn high grades, areoften those who do not challenge, do not question, do not critique—they simply doexactly what is expected of them. Students are rewarded for their mindlessness atthe price of their sense of self and community. The promotion and practice ofmindlessness persists in our society despite its dangers to individuals and groups(Langer 1989). Contemporary schooling encourages “the tendency to accede tothe given … [producing students] unable to perceive themselves in interpretive re-lation to it, the young (like their elders) are all too likely to remain immersed in thetaken-for-granted and the everyday” (Greene 1988, 7).

These students have been educated in a system that often “alienates people fromthemselves” (Greene 1995, 114). It is a system that prefers simple, seemingly per-manent and context-free solutions rather than an awareness of evolving complexityand change. The system has succeeded by making normative culturally constructedconcepts about what constitutes good schooling. C.A. Bowers (1984) suggests thatthe language (and thus the dominant epistemology) of what he terms “liberal-tech-nocrat thought” “adheres to an important principle underlying [the] historical devel-opment of the liberal and technocratic traditions” (18). He further explains the per-sistence of the non-neutrality, or presumed normativity, of educational structures bynoting that “… words (freedom, equality, individualism, key liberal metaphors andmeasurements, efficiency, system, key technocrat metaphors) are to be understood asculture free and are to have the same meaning regardless of cultural context”(Bowers 1984, 18). It is this presumed cultural neutrality that creates the alienationGreene speaks of and which facilitates the false notion of knowledge that is culti-vated in the mindless pursuit of decontextualized information.

Schön uses the term “technical rationality” to describe this context-free view ofknowledge that overemphasizes knowledge gathered through a scientific methodin a linear, often formulaic manner. Technical rationality concerns itself with“problem-solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and tech-


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nique” (Schön 1983, 21). This view of professional knowledge, he argues, emergesout of positivism and enlightenment assumptions of rationality in the service of so-cietal progress. The knowledge of lawyers, politicians, bankers, and other profes-sions dependent on technical rationality became problematic in the late twentiethcentury when it no longer seemed sufficient to solve problems of a nuclear threat,economic decline, or other catastrophic developments (Schön 1983).2 In these andother professions an increased recognition does exist today of “complexity, uncer-tainty, instability, uniqueness, and value-conflict” (Schön 1983, 39). Despite thistrend, we believe that the continued reliance on positivism and technical rationalityevident in absolute knowing helps students remain locked into an undevelopedepistemology that is deleterious to the creation of thoughtful, reflective, sociallyactive teachers. From the technical rational point of view of the teacher, “teachers”“administrate” someone else’s knowledge, applying facts and data from other peo-ple’s work to the problems they face in their own classrooms.

Schön argues that [a] single-minded attachment to problem solving methods

and linear, analytic forms of thought … separate[s] the authorities and sources

of knowledge from knowledgeable practice. This tendency leads to the mis-

takennotion thatknowledgegainedbyscientific researchandrepresented inab-

stract technical formulations is the only legitimate knowledge available to in-

form and shape practice. (Tremmel 1999, 88)

An overreliance on decontextualized knowledge in teacher education not only hasthe possibility of constructing technically proficient but thoughtless teachers butcan also reify the cycle of epistemological growth (or lack thereof) for these teach-ers’ students.

Despite these concerns, hasn’t technical rationality served academics and citi-zens alike rather well? As Tremmel suggests, the ways of approaching problems thatundergird technical rationality,namely,positivismand the formal scientificmethod,have been of “inestimable value to human beings” (Tremmel 1999, 93). This valuenotwithstanding, technical rationality remains problematic in the ways in which itcurtails epistemological growth and influences the thinking required for addressingthe complex and pressing problems of contemporary times. Using only technical ra-tionality ignoresotherwaysofknowing that canaccessknowledgecritical for facingproblems from different perspectives. Moreover, continued use of this strategy rei-fies its centrality and deprecates other forms of learning and knowledge. Accordingto Renee T. Clift and Robert Houston, technical rationality has restricted thinkingabout the purpose and possibilities of reflection and other ways of knowing that arecentral to human experience. “Current definitions of reflection are strongly influ-enced by the Western cultural heritage, which emphasizes analysis and prob-lem-solving as opposed to negotiation, contemplation or enlightenment” (Clift andHouston quoted in Tremmel 1999, 87). We argue that teachers and students need all


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the intellectual tools available to them, including mindfulness and reflection, andthat they should not be limited by traditional epistemologies. Disciplines such asteaching, characterized as “swampy lowland[s] where situations are confusing‘messes’incapable of technical solution,” remain particularly vulnerable to the col-lateral damage of technical rationality’s prominence (Schön 1983, 42).

Reflection and Contextualized Knowing

A teacher has to have imagination and enthusiasm, and both have to be renewed.

That is why I never teach in the summers.… When I work with new teachers, I

tell them that continually developing themselves is the best route to becoming

good teachers. Only after they understand the importance of self-development

are they ready to teach. (Moss as quoted in Foster 1997, 165)

Moss’s suggestion about the continued self-development of good teachersprompts the question of how such self-development might be fostered in pre-ser-vice teacher education. Can a classroom offer the environment necessary to en-courage intellectual development and growth away from absolute knowing to whatBaxter Magolda (1999) describes as the more sophisticated phase ofcontextualized knowing? Our students need to actively engage in their learning tocultivate the habits of mind required for being mindful teachers as well as reflec-tive practitioners of life. As teachers, they should be more than technicians whoimplement established lesson plans on scheduled curricula to mutually indistin-guishable students. Teachers, like all active citizens, need to be “wide-awake”(Greene 1995, 35). The awakening that needs to occur is not planting something inthe pre-service teacher; rather it is drawing out what is already there, uncoveringwhat has been previously unexamined and adding to it other perspectives and waysof knowing that encourage continuing reexamination.

Reflective practice holds promise as a means to cultivate epistemological devel-opment as well as the self-development that Moss (in Foster 1997) advocates. Theconcept of reflection in college education has expanded significantly since DonaldSchön’spublicationofTheReflectivePractitioner in1983.Althoughnumerousdef-initions for reflection abound, all use ways of knowing beyond technical rationalityto inform practice. Schön (1983) introduces the concept of “knowing-in-action” todescribe an alternate view of knowledge, which he asserts holds an important rela-tion between reflection and knowing. Reflection leads to knowing-in-action, whichattempts to reach “beyond what we can say we know to what we know but cannotsay” (Tremmel 1999, 88). The relation between knowing-in-action and reflection isakin to “thinking on your feet” (Schön 1983, 54). As Jackie Blount eloquently de-scribes from her first-year teaching experience, “I only needed a means of breakingfree of my conceptions of what teachers do so I could think through each new situa-tion in a contextually appropriate way” (Blount 1998, 94).


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Tremmel further describes knowing-in-action and reflection as “[using] suchabilitiesas ‘feeling,’‘seeing,’or ‘noticing ’[toexamine]what it isyouaredoing; thenlearning from what you feel, see, or notice; and, finally, intelligently, even intu-itively, adjusting your practice” (Tremmel 1999, 89). Different from technical ratio-nality and the implementation of general research results to specific problems in theclassroom, knowing-in-action requires that teachers examine and become mindfulof their practice in the moment. The goal of such activity is the joining of multiplelayers of knowledge and applying this knowledge to decisions and practice. In suchsituations, the theoretical perspectives pre-service teachers hold about teaching linkwith their knowledge of their students, the context of the classroom, and myriadother important types of information and collectively come together to craft the“pressure of the moment” (Tremmel 1999, 90). Becoming mindful of their “practicein the moment” encourages the type of self-development that Moss describes be-cause it places the pre-service teacher squarely in the situation and includes her as animportant element in knowing. It encourages the student-becoming-teacher’s ownlearning.Asa result ofbecoming familiarwithpersonal reactionsandbeliefs about asituation, greater awareness is cultivated about the origins of those beliefs and feel-ings, thus producing increased understanding of the self and the situation in whichone is working. Working from this logic, Tremmel asks his student teachers to write“Slice of Life” journal entries designed to examine one specific moment in time intheclassroom,describe it completelyand thoroughly, followedbyanalysisof thesit-uation. He suggests that by attending to the situation and deliberately including theself, students, and other salient factors, student teachers are able to move beyondtheirownneedsandattend to theneedsof their students. Inhisanalysisofonestudentteacher’s description of a chaotic disciplinary moment in her classroom, Tremmelexplores the value this sort of writing exercise can have:

Consciously or unconsciously, this student knows right from the start that find-

ing and applying appropriate means of discipline is only part of her challenge;

she knows that an equally important part is for her to recognize and pay close at-

tention to her own anxious state of mind, which arises as a reaction to her stu-

dents’ behavior. (Tremmel 1999, 103)3

Such self-knowledge can be the basis for epistemological change and expan-sion in teacher education. Maher and Thompson Tetreault’s (1994) investigation offeminist college classrooms reveals comparably altered constructions of knowl-edge and authority. The authority of knowledge, they argue, does not exist withoutawareness of positionality. “Postmodern feminist thinkers have seen knowledge asvalid [only] when it takes into account the knower’s specific position in any con-text, a position that is always defined by gender, race, class, and other socially sig-nificant dimensions” (Maher and Thompson Tetreault 1994, 22). Definitions ofknowledge and the recognition of one’s own positionality (as well as that of others)


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can provide opportunities for thoughtfully examining assumptions about the worldand how it is read. It would not be possible to gain the self-authorship to critiqueabsolute knowledge without the reflective knowledge of one’s positionality.

In her extensive work examining epistemological change in college students,Baxter Magolda (1999) discusses the critical element of self authorship toepistemological growth. As she describes, self-authorship is very similar to know-ing-in-action through reflection because is it a way of knowing rather than a set ofskills. “Self authorship extends beyond critical thinking or making informed judg-ments because it is not a skill; it is rather a way of making meaning of the worldand oneself” (Baxter Magolda 1999, 6). Self-authorship is central to BaxterMagolda’s assertion that learning in college ought to alter students’epistemological assumptions from certain knowledge, the position that most stu-dents enter college with, to constructed or contextual knowledge.

Similar to Maher and Thompson Tetreault’s (1994) discussion of positionality,Baxter Magolda (1999) describes contextual knowledge as an understanding thatknowledge comes from a position and that when operating from this position, thestudent sees her position as a valid one among many. Here she draws on Belenky etal.’s (1986) exploration of ways of knowing. “Contextual knowers [look] at all as-pects of a situation or issue, [seek] out expert advice in that particular context, and[integrate] their own and others’ views in deciding what to think (Baxter Magolda1999, 50). Self-authorship is essential to the development of contextualized know-ing because it serves as the point of integration between three factors that makecontextualized knowledge so powerful: cognitive (making meaning of knowledge),interpersonal (making meaning of relationships to others) and intrapersonal (mak-ingmeaningofone’ssenseof identity). “Contextualknowers [feel] that rationality interms of consulting experts and processing evidence [is] necessary but simulta-neously [they value] working through their perspectives by accessing their own ex-perience and others’ perspectives. Contextual knowing [involves] constructingone’s perspective in the context of one’s experience, available information, and theexperiences of others” (Baxter Magolda 1999, 51). A constructive developmentalpedagogy that advances students’self-authorship can change their epistemologicalview of the certainty of knowledge to a view that is contextual and provisional. Simi-larly, Maher and Thompson Tetreault assert that “if the classroom setting can helpstudents tounderstand theworkingsofpositionaldynamics in their lives…then theycanbegin tochallenge themandtocreatechange”(1994,203).Suchapedagogymayfurther help students establish the maturity required for managing this new tentativenature of knowledge and their responsibility as creators of knowledge.

Necessary to a constructive developmental pedagogy is narrative. BaxterMagolda suggests narrative influences students’ conceptions of epistemology intwo primary ways. The first influence is the reevaluation of students’ assumptionsabout knowledge as certain; the reevaluation is made through exploring narrativesof the lives of other people. Second, through these narratives students may recon-


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sider whether “educational practice [has] to be a particular (right) way” (BaxterMagolda 1999, 168). Narrative enables intentional exploration into the lives of selfas well as others. These explorations occur with the guidance — but not the strictdirection — of a teacher. Such an emphasis on narrative and the role of the teacheris consistent with Schön’s ideas about how teachers can encourage reflective prac-tice by “thoughtfully considering one’s own experiences in applying knowledge topractice while being coached by professionals in the discipline” (Ferraro 2000, 1).

In describing an undergraduate education course that uses narrative or “educa-tional storytelling” as a central feature in altering students’ pre-existingepistemologies, Baxter Magolda reports how student experiences with educationserved as texts of similar importance to assigned readings, class activities, and films.Small and large group discussion were the basis for the course. Finding one’s voiceand position within the content of the course was a key goal that shaped the class-room environment. Baxter Magolda maintains that a classroom using this construc-tive pedagogy serves as a “transitional environment” for student epistemologicalprogress. “[The students’] voice development was the goal of the course to enablethem as prospective teachers to author their own perspectives on education” (BaxterMagolda 1999, 201–202). In addition, through the use of narrative, students becomebetterable tosee theirvoicesaspartofanongoingconversation ineducational theoryand practice; alongside the luminaries, their voices count as well.

Furthering support for the influence of narrative on epistemological change,Chris Boyatzis (1994) examines the value of narrative in teaching the social sci-ences. Boyatzis argues that literature, because of its accessibility and rich detail,can be the vehicle through which students can make meaning of theoretical con-cepts in psychology and other disciplines. “Literature captures the complexity andinterconnectedness of child development and expresses it in a manner more acces-sible than a paradigmatic approach alone” (Boyatzis 1994, 34). Epistemologicalgrowth is sponsored by the use of narrative, not only because otherwise abstractconcepts can come alive to students but also because the nature of truth remainsmore complex in literature than it often appears in disciplinary research.4

Narrative materials allow students to confront major epistemological issues such

asthenatureof truthandrealityandhowtheyareconstructed.What is thetruth, for

example, about a person’s childhood? Is there an objective truth that can be cap-

tured in the pages of a memoir? … Students grapple with these ideas and contem-

plate the intimate fusion between truth and teller. (Boyatzis 1994, 36)

Specific research in teacher education suggests similar outcomes for narrativeapproaches to learning. George Hillocks, Jr. (1999) draws together BaxterMagolda’s and Boyatzis’s research in his examination of teacher education. In aqualitative and quantitative study of twenty teachers, Hillocks explores the possi-bility for teacher education to alter teacher epistemology and orientation toward


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students. He finds that many teachers hold an objectivist epistemological stance,consistent with Baxter Magolda’s assertion that students generally move from cer-tain forms of knowledge to contextual, more provisional forms of knowledge asthey mature and as a result of pedagogy that encourages such growth. Hillocks isreluctant to believe that outside forces, such as the standards movement or changesto the curriculum, will encourage teachers to develop new ways of thinking aboutknowledge. Instead, he asserts that something more radical will have to happen.

Change in thinking and reflective practice will almost necessarily entail that

teachers reconstruct their knowledge, especially if the teachers hold

nonoptimistic beliefs about students and if they have adopted an objectivist

epistemological stance. Reformers will have to find new ways and means of

helping teachers reconstruct theirknowledgeandstance. (Hillocks1999,135)

As Boyatzis and Baxter Magolda suggest, such a new way may be found by ty-ing literature and narrative into teaching and learning. We extend this argument fornarrative by proposing the usefulness of autobiography as a form of narrative. Ourexperience suggests that autobiography can initiate students’ epistemologicalgrowth as well as help students to make meaning of theoretical ideas, historicaltrends, and sociological concepts. Through the writing of their own educationalautobiographies and hearing the stories of others, students are able to see their ownas well as others’ lives through these disciplinary lenses. As Boyatzis claims,“Stories … usually provide students with an even deeper appreciation of the per-sonal and contextual influences of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity and socio-economic class (Boyatzis 1994, 34). By balancing paradigmatic with narrative un-derstandings of truth, students are pushed to see knowledge as a constructed facetof human experience rather than a set of timeless facts to be acquired. A con-structed understanding of knowledge also implicates the students themselves asco-constructors. Literature and autobiography, because they emphasize the voiceof the author, give students the opportunity to develop a sense of themselves as ac-tors, as people who don’t just know the facts but have actually lived in a worldstructured by the theories and concepts they are learning in class. This new aware-ness of their agency and the structural components of their lived experience canhelp create students who are powerful architects of their future as citizens.5

Autobiography in the Foundations Classroom

Where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I know

best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town.

But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No: my home. No: my

family. Never mind, I shall start with myself. (Wiesel 1972, 135)


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If teachers do not know themselves, how are they to know their students and un-derstand educational history and theory fully? In graduate school, our history ofeducation professor asked us to construct educational genealogies. With the infor-mation about our families at hand, we traced through the history of education in theUnited States. The experience was profound as macroevents such as immigration,segregation, and compulsory education came to life within our individual familynarratives. Today, as college professors, we extend Jennings Wagoner’s assign-ment and develop it for teacher education students.

Our students are either bachelor’s or master’s degree candidates. Correspondingto the predominance of women teachers nationwide, particularly in elementaryschools, the majority of our students are women. Mary’s students are predominantlyworking class students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college.Her typical class is 80% White, 25% Hispanic (primarily Puerto Rican), 4% AsianAmerican, and 4% African American. Nearly all of the students are either first- orsecond-generation immigrants to the United States, and several are returning to col-lege after several years’absence in the workforce or to raise a family. Sue Ellen’s un-dergraduate population is racially very similar to Mary’s. Most of her students aremiddle to upper class and of traditional college age, many of whom are carrying on along line of those in their family to go to college. According to the Digest of Educa-tional Statistics (National Center for Educational Statistics 2001), these demo-graphic factors in our student populations resemble the demographics of the teach-ing population in the United States. In 1993–1994, approximately 91% of theteaching population was White, with the numbers of minority teachers (9%) laggingsignificantly behind the number of minority children attending public school (16%).Also during the 1993–1994 year, 73% of teachers in the United States were women,67% of whom were over forty years of age and 47% of whom held a master’s degreeor higher (National Center for Educational Statistics 2001).

Through these assignments, students actively construct their educational identi-ties by selecting, examining, and naming family and personal narratives. Theywrite their learning autobiographies and family stories, which serve as the contextsfor the history of education as well as key concepts in social foundations of educa-tion such as social reproduction, tracking, the common school movement, progres-sive education, and the relation between socioeconomic status, race, gender, andeducational experience. Sue Ellen states her assignment in this way:

This experience is a demonstration of your thoughtful reflection onyour experience as a learner. Your autobiography should include twoparts: (1) a creative means of expressing the “critical events or influ-ences” that have shaped you as a learner, your experience of school,how school feels, how you learn best, feel most rewarded and least re-warded in learning, etc., and (2) a typed, reflective statement that usesthe readings to reconsider your experience as a student and that ex-


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plains your creative project in some detail (this paper should be at leastthree pages and include a bibliography). Students have successfullyused some of the following formats for the creative expression: Website, diorama, family educational genealogy, short story about a piv-otal educational experience in your life, portrait or other artistic repre-sentation of your educational life, photo collage, poetry, interviewwith analysis, video collage, music medley, etc. These short papersand the creative project will be shared in small groups in class, so ex-press that which you feel comfortable sharing with me and others.

Mary crafts her assignment more akin to a genealogical history and writes herassignment this way:

Create an educational genealogy. In a creative format of your choos-ing, present the educational history of your family, as far back and aswide as you are able and that you determine is relevant for you. In ad-dition to your creative representation of your history, write a two- tothree-page reflective statement on the significance of your educationalgenealogy for your practice as a teacher.

To complete the assignment, students informally interview family membersabout their families’ educational backgrounds, or students begin writing aboutsome of their most important educational moments. We encourage students to al-low themselves and their families to define what education means. For example, agrandfather may have left school at the end of sixth grade, then apprenticed to anewspaper, eventually becoming a journalist. His education as a journalist did nottake place in school but on the job. Or, students will examine the education they’vereceived by being a member of a sports team or going to an all-boys high school.

Students also define the limits of their families. A student with many cousins,aunts, and uncles may choose to focus only on her immediate family (siblings, par-ents, grandparents, and great-grandparents). A student who recently immigrated tothe United States who cannot locate detailed information about family members“back home” may choose to include all of the family members he can obtain infor-mation about. It is important for students to define their own families, as exempli-fied by one woman who had broken traumatically from her family of origin. She nolonger considered herself a member of that family, so she elected instead to re-search her chosen family: that of her husband and herself.

Using the information they gather, students construct creative representationsof their own or their families’ educational histories or personal learning trajecto-ries. We encourage students to move beyond the familiar presentation of text in aprose format. Instead, they write poems, build mobiles, construct posters, diora-mas, paintings, and sculpture, decorate live trees, and cut out paper dolls. They use


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a variety of educational images including a little red schoolhouse, a school bus, thePantheon, a chalkboard. Some students are moved to create highly abstract repre-sentations of their stories. After they have constructed their creative representa-tions of learning in their families or in themselves, students then step back, exam-ine their work, and write reflective essays on the significance of that history fortheir own work as teachers. Students consider such questions as, “How might yoube different had you been educated differently?” “How might your background in-fluence your work as a teacher?”

Students continue their learning when they share their work in class. Hearingand seeing each other’s stories in class, students draw parallels between personaland family narratives in their discussions. One student recalled, “It was also a goodicebreaker for the class, talking with others about our backgrounds, philosophyand beliefs. When you do something like that, and are being honest with yourself,you want to explain your thought processes because you put yourself in it” (Carol,Queens College, personal communication, 5 August 2002). Many students con-nect their families’ lives to the historical contexts of schools. Students’ lives are notindependent of their historical circumstances, although they are not necessarilycontrolled by them either.6 These historical contexts can extend beyond schools, aswhen one student constructed her family’s educational genealogy against the back-drop of three flags: Poland, Cuba, and the United States. She explained how herfamily immigrated to the United States by this less common route. In the telling, allof the students learned about the diversity of immigrant experiences and the com-plexity of national and ethnic identities.

One of Mary’s students reflected on her family’s historical connection to classicallearning as she explored her Greek heritage. As a recent immigrant to the UnitedStates, Thekla recognized that her family’s educational background involvednonformalaswellasschool-basedlearningandthatall learningwashighlyprized.Herfamily maintained strong connections to Greek culture and traditions including theimportance of literacy and rhetoric for a civic-oriented education. By casting her edu-cational background as occurring on the steps of the Pantheon (see Figure 1), Theklaprivately and publicly acknowledged the relevance of her family to her own becomingan educated person. She described the project as “an evaluation of my heritage, wheremy parents came from, and my family’s level of education. My heritage, traditions,cultural identity came into play. It made me feel really proud of myself that I climbedthose stairs of the Pantheon. It made me feel good. It put things in perspective for me”(Thekla, Queens College, personal communication, 9 August 2002). In addition, sheconsideredandsharedwithherclassmateshergrowingunderstandingof thehistoricalroots of our current educational system and its importance to democracy.

Sue Ellen often receives projects such as music compilations of importantsongs in a student’s growth and development, collages that represent the impor-tant people in a student’s learning, poetry describing the trauma of learning andunlearning important developmental concepts, and dioramas like the one pic-


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tured in Figure 2. In this diorama, a sophomore student named Jay depicts his par-ticipation in a school play as a significant learning experience. In the oral descrip-tion and the typed explanation that accompanied the model, Jay explained how hispersonal definition of learning changed as a result of participating in this play. Therisk taking involved in auditioning and then performing in front of his peers re-quired him to see himself invested in his learning in a way he had not experiencedin the course of his more formal education. The idea that what constitutes learningevolves over time and is related to personal experience is enhanced through shar-ing these definitions of learning in the small group of the social foundations class-room. Such an outcome supports the notion that students must be involved in theshaping of their education in an intimate way and encourages that type of construc-tive approach to knowledge typical of more sophisticated knowers.

Students analyze their relationships to learning, schooling, family, and, by ex-tension, to educational history and theory. The reflective process can be hazardousas students may recognize relationships that are unpleasant and unwanted; only byexploring such dark days can students “achieve a true description of the world”(Heilbrun 1988, 68). Joyce, one of Mary’s students, recalled her life before schoolas filled with light and colors, play and friends (see Figure 3). That image starklycontrasts against her first day of school dominated by darkness, solitude, and anoppressive teacher (see Figure 4). When Joyce posted her collages on the wall ofour social foundations classroom, the entire class became silent as we were collec-tively struck by the despair of a child who felt so alone in school. In her growth as abecoming teacher, Joyce recognized that her own dark experiences with schooling


FIGURE 1 The Pantheon.

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fueled her determination to create a classroom in which all students would feelsafe, welcome, and happy. Her work, conducted privately and publicly, exempli-fies the potential impact of reflection on epistemological change and subsequentpraxis as she experienced the desire to change situational contexts toward aliberatory education and shared that passion with others.

Given possible emotional content and certainly the sharing of students’own con-structed knowledge, the question of assessment often arises when one begins to con-sider using narrative and first-person accounts as classroom assignments. Althoughthe question is a real one given the practice of grading that most university professorslive with, it is important to examine the position from which a question such as “Howdo I evaluate personal work?” emerges. In these sorts of assignments, we find it im-portant to consider the process elements that are critical to the production of knowl-edge in more sophisticated ways of knowing in addition to the more concrete, tradi-tional pieces of grading work. By approaching the assessment of autobiographyfrom a process and content perspective, we support the habits of mind necessary forcontinuing epistemological growth as well as encouraging thoughtful, courageouswork from students in the immediate. In Sue Ellen’s class, the emphasis in assessing


FIGURE 2 The school play.

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54

FIGURE 3 Before school.

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55

FIGURE 4 The first day of school.

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the learning autobiography is on demonstrating sophisticated insight that arisesfrom considering one’s personal learning experiences in the context of other impor-tant dimensions of the course such as educational history, educational philosophy,and learning theory. Sue Ellen focuses on features such as depth of thought, connec-tion and explanation of learning theory, originality of presentation, and various im-portant writing elements. Assessment in Mary’s class is also focused on processmore than on prespecified outcomes. Criteria include the student’s demonstration ofa connection between her educational background and larger educational events,communicationofpersonallysalient information inamannerunderstandable tooth-ers, and the articulation of awareness into what it means to be educated for her andher family.

Self-assessment, either formally or informally, also plays a role. Through the con-struction and sharing of educational autobiographies and genealogies, students reportfeeling connected to educational history and the multiple cultures involved in ourschools. They learn more about themselves and about their own families, sometimesdeveloping greater cross-generational empathy as they learn about the struggles, tri-umphs,andcircumstancesofearliergenerations.AsTheklareflected,“I found[theas-signment]cathartic—no,enlighteningforme.Alotof timesyoudon’t reflectonyour-self so much. Such a reflection was called for at that time in my life and it meant a lot tome” (Thekla, Queens College, personal communication, 9 August 2002). Becausetheylearnnotonlyabout theirownfamiliesandeducationalexperiencesbutalsoaboutthe familiesandeducational experiencesof theirpeers, theybroaden theirunderstand-ing of different students’histories and varied experiences. The classroom communityis supported, particularly as students take risks together while they learn about eachother. We find the practice models a process of reflection that may help students altertheir epistemological stance. Heather, one of Sue Ellen’s former students who hassince become a social studies teacher, responded to the question of what long-term ef-fect writing her racial autobiography had on her in this way:

I feel that if I did not have to write this paper and I never had to do researchon the theories surrounding racial identity, I would not have this focus inmy [own] classroom. Consequently, writing this autobiography not onlyhelped me and my identity, but also will hopefully help my students asthey learn about who they are and where they fit into this multiculturalworld. (Heather, Bucknell University, personal communication, 23 July2002)

Heather’s reflections reveal a potentially valuable application of this work. Wehave not specifically addressed issues of race, class, and sexuality here, but they re-main central to our work with prospective teachers. This approach and the philoso-phy upon which it is based provide fertile ground for exploring issues of identity that


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influence issues of epistemology. In our attention to context, we remain consciousandcriticalofourownpositionalityandencourageother instructors todothesame.

Through the placement of their families directly into the classroom discussions ofeducational history, each student finds that his or her own life “does not only unfold; tosome extent we construct our story, and hence our identity” (Sarup 1996, 16). Carol,one of Mary’s students, recalled the potentiality of the assignment: “[The reflectivewriting] was informative to the writer. If they make the effort, they will discover thingsthat theyneverperhapsconsciously thoughtabout. It canhelpyounamewhereyouareand why you are where you are and how you got that way, and then where you’re go-ing” (Carol, Queens College, personal communication, 5 August 2002). These con-structs remain influenced by individual perceptions and the selected remembering ofindividuals and family members, which are subjective and constructed. “The inter-preter isnolongeroutside theactof interpretation; thesubject isnowpartof theobject”(Sarup 1996, 15). Conflating subject and object entails a powerful shift in stance, oneakin to the progression from absolute to contextualized knowledge.

Toward a Pedagogy for Contextualized Knowing

We asked early in this article whether it was possible to effectively educatewithout an expanded concept of what it means to be educated. In other words, canour students who are becoming teachers foster their students’ epistemological de-velopment if our students themselves have not been challenged to grow in the sameway and to see the importance of their education as something greater than a cre-dential? We believe that the answer is no; we have an ethical obligation asfoundationists to cultivate our students’ critical awareness of their own learning.An inherent role of foundations in teacher education is to problematize conceptssuch as learning, knowledge, and education. We emphasize here that we are notonly concerned with the learning of our students but also with the learning of thestudents of our students, our grandstudents, so to speak. This learning occurs in thecontext of a democracy that, according to Dewey, “must be born anew in each gen-eration and education is its midwife” (Dewey 1916, 139).

Seventy-five percent of these “midwives” in the United States are women, andconsequently, the type of education that we advocate has special implications forfemale students. Many female students come to college with experiences that haverendered them intellectually silent; they have not yet awakened the power to nametheir own lives (Belenky et al. 1986; Pipher 1995). Most of these women are Whiteand middle class, factors that both influence their identity and require further criti-cal examination. Some women may have a greater need to become the authors oftheir own lives than some men. According to Heilbrun, “men tend to move on afairly predictable path to achievement; women transform themselves only after anawakening” (Heilbrun 1988, 118). An awakening may be prompted by an intellec-tual disruption, a life challenge, or other event that shakes students’


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epistemological assumptions. She goes on to argue “that awakening is identifiableonly in hindsight” (Heilbrun 1988, 118). We believe the social foundations of edu-cation classroom is an ideal location in which to encourage awakenings.

This autobiographical assignment is merely one piece of a larger pedagogicalframework. We believe it is critical that foundationists understand that to encour-age epistemological development, assignments such as the autobiographical papershould exist within the context of a constructive-developmental classroom (BaxterMagolda 1999). In addition, because students come to class relatively unfamiliarwith doing this sort of work and understanding knowledge from this constructedperspective, students need appropriate scaffolding to support their learning in asafe environment. Students need to feel comfortable about not having to have theirfirst answer be the right answer, that their answers can be provisional, and that theyfeel their knowledge has value and legitimacy in the classroom.7

Cultivating a constructive-developmental classroom is not about implementinga series of particular teaching methods or strategies. There is no recipe for this ap-proach. Educational research and theory can be powerful in altering classroompractice in productive ways, but these adaptations must be made by a thoughtfulagent who is actively considering all the factors his classroom presents, factors thatare possibly absent from an educational study or general theory. We advise againstfacile adaptations of any educational practice, including what we have describedhere, without carefully attending to the unique context of the classroom, students,and instructor. The theory and philosophy we utilize are thereby more relevantthan the particular practice that manifests.

Such situational analysis is crucial because although pitfalls are likely with anypedagogy, a constructive-developmental pedagogy comes with particular issuesaround student resistance. Commonly, students are not prepared for work that uses aconstructed epistemological position. For example, in a variation of this assignmentin a Multiculturalism and Education course, Sue Ellen asks students to write their ra-cial autobiographies. Students often respond initially with frustration and discom-fort with their lack of knowledge of self that becomes evident through the writingprocess (Tatum 1999). At the conclusion of the class and on course evaluations, stu-dents overwhelmingly say that although the racial autobiography was the hardest as-signment, it was also the most important assignment they completed. We are not sur-prised that students find this assignment challenging; we did, too. Although writingabout oneself might sound easy, we encourage anyone who assigns such an assign-ment to complete it herself. To date, our students report that the results are worth theeffort; they assert that they know themselves better and consequently believe theyhavegreater insight into their teachingphilosophiesandthepurposeofschooling.

The greater pitfall is to continue a state of mindlessness produced by an over-emphasis on outcomes rather than process. Langer (1989) warns of the costs ofmindlessness including a narrow self-image, unintended cruelty, loss of control,and learned helplessness—all problems that can affect the self and others. Greene


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writes often of the “cotton wool of daily life” described by Virginia Woolf; it is ameans of existence that belies delight, discovery, and learning. It is a teacher’s re-sponsibility to move out of the cotton wool, she argues, for “a teacher in search ofhis/her own freedom may be the only kind of teacher who can arouse young per-sons to go in search of their own” (Greene 1988, 14).

A common thread that runs throughout this article is the idea of change. The as-signment Jennings Wagoner assigned to us many years ago initiated our own ongo-ing self-reflection; we now ask our students to reconstruct their thinking by focus-ing their attention inward on the processes and factors that have brought them tothe point of wanting to become teachers. Incorporating such approaches into one’spedagogy requires inviting change that is not always comfortable. In the process ofbecoming a teacher, there will always be discomfort to manage, as is true of all trueeducation. Working with this discomfort and learning to embrace it is good prepa-ration for the messy process of democratic life and of teaching. Teachers shape thedemocracy of tomorrow through their own contextualized knowing today. What issustaining about the hard work of epistemological change is the knowledge that in-dividual, social, and democratic progress relies upon it.

Acknowledgments

The College of Arts and Sciences at Bucknell University provided financialsupport for the completion of this project. We thank the anonymous EducationalStudies reviewers for sharing their insight into this work. We also thank AmyGratch for her editorial skill in bringing together this special section. Most impor-tant, we extend our gratitude to the numerous unnamed students for doing the hard-est work in this project and enabling us to learn alongside them.

Notes1. Pseudonyms are used for all students quoted in this article.2. The failure of technical rationality and its persistent cultural appeal are demonstrated inWhite Noise, Don DeLillo’s 1998 novel of an airborne toxic event and a small college town.3. We suggest that the teacher’s “anxious state of mind” may also influence her students’ be-havior.4. Any of the arts may be useful for exploring questions of truth (see Greene 2001) but thepresent discussion only considers literature and narrative.5. Agency and self-knowledge are tied not only to artistically and theoretically sound ap-proaches to teaching but also to democratic citizenship. It is not enough to be aware of therights and responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic public. Rather, citizens must beable to examine their behavior and actions for the degree to which they are consistent withthe promotion of democracy and social justice. Reflective knowing allows citizens to situatetheir behavior and actions in a context, thereby increasing their liberty through their aware-ness of how they change the world by being in it. The link between reflection, mindfulnessand democracy is hardly new. Plato’s teachings about learning as a form of “recollect[ing]what the soul has encountered in other worlds” (Plato as quoted in Tremmel 1999, 88) sug-gest that if one is to be truly liberated, one must turn attention to oneself and the relationshipbetween oneself and her world experience. In How We Think (1910) and The Public and Its


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Problems (1927), John Dewey advocated a process of public problem solving aimed at cre-ating a form of democracy as “associated living.” Such a practice involved reflective actionwoven throughout a process of defining and framing problems, then experimenting with po-tential solutions and their side effects. The process was to be circular in nature, always re-sulting in a reexamination and redefinition of the problem in its revised context.6. The connection between an individual’s life and history is powerfully illustrated inSalman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children (1991), the story of children born the sameday as India’s independence in 1947.7. Some of the approaches we use include multiple drafts, small group work where studentsanalyze readings and present their analysis to the class, peer response workshops, and stu-dent presentations on primary class topics.

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Wiesel, Elie. 1972. Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters. Translated byM. Wiesel. New York: Random House.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Mary Bushnell, Elementary and EarlyChildhood Education Department, Queens College, CUNY, 65–30 Kissena Boule-vard, Flushing, NY 11367, e-mail: [email protected] or Dr. Sue Ellen Henry, De-partment of Education, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837, e-mail:[email protected]


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