DOCUMENT RESUME ED 325 458 SP 032 689 AUTHOR Conle, Carole TITLE Folk Models and Change in a Teacher's Practical Knowledge. SPONS AGENCY Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ottawa (Ontario). PUB DATE 90 NOTE 30p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Boston, MA, April 17-20, 1990). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Classroom Envirmment; Collegiality; Discourse Analysis; Folk Culture; Foreign Countries; Grade 8; Junior High Schools; *Models; Participant Observation; *Personal Narratives; Story Grammar; *Teacher Stadent Relationship; *Teaching Styles IDENTIFIERS *Knowledge 3ase for Teaching ABSTRACT Folk models have been called unspecified programs that are passed on and learned experientially. Through a narrative reconstruction of a participant observer's fieldnotes on an eighth-grade teacher's professiohal activity, the researcher sensed two folk models at work:(1) knowledge as corpus, hierarchically organized; and (2) knowledge in relation to people that is communicatively structured. By looking at the second model through narrative, the researcher attempts to demonstrate that professional knowledge, like cultural knowledge, is shared and passed on through enactments, particularly through the experience of narrative detail: feelings, moods, imaginative acts, physical arrangements, personal aims and fears, in sum, bits of enacted story. The narrative is seen as a folk model in action whose plot centers on building relationships. According to the narrative, he teacher made specific moves to bring about a sense of community aoong her students and between the students and herself. The narrative also points up a specific goal--to create a democratic community, describes the setting and emotional atmosphere, and has a moral. Top-down implementation of such a cultural model is impossible, but telling and retelling the story will shape teachers' continued living of it and will call for reconstructions. (Excerpts from the narrative under discussion constitute six pages of text in this document. Thirty-four references are listed. (JD) *******************************************Y************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *******1*************************************************************** Folk Models and Change in a Teacher's Practical Knowledge by Carola Conle Paper prepared for a meeti-4 of the American Educational Research Association, April 1990. This work was funded by SSHRC grant #411-83-0001-X2 U 3. DEPARTMENT OF EODCATION "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS Ottce or EducOonal Research and Improvement MATERIAL HAS BEEN CSANTED BY EOUCAIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER /ERIC) 1 Cs TM document hat been reorodueed as Copyright® 1990 C f 7'1 Le rece.ved horn the person or organizaton OrIgInahng ot C MmOr Changes have been made to improve reproduchon Quality points ol wee or oprrnons stated,'" Ms docu- TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES ment do not necessanty represent Oval OERI posdron orf)ObCy INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)" 2 aset90_ab3t_90apr2.mas (cconlasara) Ilsaitbayst,,stor_siss.csre1s1 Juno 15, 1990 ABSTRACT The purpose of the inquiry is to explorethe personal-social interface of professional knowledge. The notions of knowledgeas hierarchical bodyld knowledge as relatingto peopleare common assumptionsunderlying academicwriting,certaineveryday expressions, as well as curriculum guidalines.These notions are described hereas two cultural or folk models which shape theprofessional practice of a grade eight teacher.I take the non-propositional nature of folkmodelc as my point of departure and describethe narrative quality of the second modelas enacted by the teacher and recorded bya participant observer. Theme, plot, setting, moodand moral directives in the narrative, all demnnstrate the potential for change throughindividual variations of the enactment, while they simultaneously maintaina professional prototype. Since the contents of the folk modelwere in part shared among teacher, students and researcher through enacted and perceivednarrative, there are implications for professional development. Top down implementation ofthese cultural models is impossible becauseof their inexplicit and open-ended quality.However, aspects of the modelwere nevertheless learned by students in ells particularteacher's classroom. The research activityitself also contributed to the sharing of the model,besides providing insights into the understandings of a professional group from the perspectiveof individuals, via individual enactmentsand collaborative telling and retelling of thenarrative. 3 3ubctit_folk-90mar8a5 (ceonlasaral (lea*bayst_star_siss.carola] June, 199) Folk Models and Chante in a Teacher's Practical Knowledge In journals and discussions with student teachers thisyear I have beea confronted repeatedly by questions such as "How do beginners relate to and profit by the knowledge of the profession they do not yet consider theirs"? Student teachers tellme they profit most through watching, doing and reflecting, but tensions come up when they compare theirown or associate teachers' practice to models and advice given in the literature. They believe associates fall short of the mark; that they themselves fall short of the mark. Forme this links to the general question of how professional knowledge is passedon. To get hold of this problem in a different way I decided to looka.. professional knowledge as knowledge which is predominantly of a niltural rather than a technical nature. I therefore lookat the passing on of such knowledge not as a technical process, but as a culturalone, akin to the way any of us are inducted from early childhood into the values and b_thaviours of our own culture. Culturalknowledgeisessentiallyinexplicit,tacitlyheldandsociallyshared. Anthropologists have used the term folk model to label tacit stocks of cultural knowledge, e.g., D'Andrade (1981) calls folk models unspecified programs that are passed on and learned experientially, as problems are solved withina network of human relationships. I set myself the task to look at teaching as a cultural activity, perhaps describable through folk models. Thel motivation for this work alsoarose out of a concern I share with Michael Connelly (1987, 1989, with Clandinin 1988), Freema Elbaz (1981), and Jean Clandinin (1985), a concern to view teachers' professional knowledge as both personal and social, and in this linkage not to relegate the personal to beinga mere illustration 3r instantiation of social structures, nor, on the other hand, to create generalizationsou ". of an in-depth understanding of one particular case. II would like to thank Dolores Furlong, Rosalie Young, Michael Connelly, Carol Mullen, JillBell, Hal Grunau and Jessie Lees for their help in the preparation of this paper. 2 Given these concerns it is generally important to stress the influence ofeach member of a professional group on the content of the model, and to point to the linksand implications for individual teacher's development and particular student's learning.2My effort in this paper is to move toward partial knowledge of a professional group through unde.standing particular actions of a particular grade 8 teacher, Carol Burke.3 Inmy work with her I view the group knowledge of teachers through culturalor folk models. I was initially attracted to work with Carol Burke by the emphasison relationships and a sense of community I sensed in the description of her teaching.4 She seemed to be the lund of teacher I would have liked to he during the time I taught high school,a time which I see now as having3en contoured predominantly by a view of knowledge as a body orcorpus, the content of which is hierarchically organized. In 1990,as I read fieldnotes written about her cl'assroom in 1986/87, I wanted to find outmore about her teaching by thinking her narrative through with her.I also began to conceptualize two folk models throughmy reading of her instructional moves, the student/teacher interactionsand the reflective comments Carol Burke made to Cathy Allen, her participant researcher.I began to construct narrative accounts of her teaching activities and her "personalpra ..ical knowledge" (Connelly & Clandinin, 1984, 1988a) and then brought theseto her for her perusal and comments. I discussed what I wrote with her and observedher in a different setting in a new school this year. Burke enjoyed reminiscing and reflectingabout her 86/87 situations and linking these to her current teaching.I enjoyed watching her teach and talking things over wAh her. By doing this I reconstructedsome of my own narrative of teaching and learning.Our telling and retelling had spinoffs in the reliving; Iam a different teacher, I believe, for having heard herstory, and she is more aware of the tensions inherent in her work. 2Zeichner (1989) points to a conundrum in teache:- devolopment, whenhe asks 'whether the profession as a whole can ever develop a sense of shared professional standards,yet sharcd professional standards are one of the defining features of a profession" (p. 1). 3Pseudonym used for the sake of privacy. 4These descriptions of Carol Burke's teachingwere in the fieldnotes Cathy Allen made in 1986/87 as a researcher/participant for the Second International Science Study Caw& (Comielly,Crocker & Kass, in press). 5 i 3 While looking at fieldnotes on her 86/87 grade eight classroom, I began to think of folk models as having