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Discourses and Cultures of Teaching

Pratt, Daniel D. and Nesbit, Tom. (2000). Discourses and cultures of teaching, in Elizabeth Hayes and Arthur Wilson (Eds.). Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Publishers

Teaching adults is a complex, pluralistic, and moral undertaking. Yet, paradoxically, it is also regarded, by scholars and practitioners alike, as unproblematic. It is often enacted habitually without reflection on the hidden values and assumptions that lie beneath behavior. As teachers of adults, we are not usually urged to reflect critically on who we are, what we do, or why. Indeed, the volume of writing on teaching that has poured forth from adult educators has tended to be either descriptive or prescriptive offering a generalized model for teaching adults. Perhaps searching for the universal truths of teaching was once more acceptable; however, in recent years more attention has been paid to the local, pluralistic, and diverse arenas of practice and research. Sweeping and acontextual notions of "good teaching" have given way to a greater respect for those teachers who can thoughtfully revisit certainties, adjust to the nuances of different contexts, and consciously balance regard for the student with a respect for the curriculum.

In this chapter we wish to avoid the suggestion of universal answers in favor, instead, of confronting commonly-held assumptions to help readers critically examine, and improve, their own particular teaching practices and approaches. Specifically, we believe that such reflection will develop teachers' understandings of their work and enhance their abilities to act meaningfully. We are following the lead of several authors, most notably Stephen Brookfield (1995), in calling for more critical reflection that explores how considerations of power interconnect with teaching situations and processes. For us, being able to stand outside of what we do and view our teaching from a wider perspective is central to developing a practice of critical reflection. Our rationale for this approach is based in two parts: first, we believe that narratives of practice and research often present teaching as an unproblematic and skill-based enterprise, not encumbered by social, cultural, historical, or philosophical values or tensions. When this happens there is little likelihood that either practice or research will be critically reflective. Second, if we are to move toward more critically reflective practice, in both our teaching and research about teaching, we need to be aware of the forces that have shaped our understanding of teaching and our identities as teachers.

We approach our discussion from the vantage of two analytic constructs, "discourse" and "cultures of teaching." In the discussion of discourses, we revisit the historical development of teaching in adult education and review those discourses that figure most in our understanding of such a complex phenomenon. But, in our view, discourses alone offer insufficient explanations. What must also be considered is, on the one hand, individual teacher agency, and, on the other, the role of social structures in helping shape, enable, or constrain teaching situations and practices. Consequently, our second focus involves looking at the traditions, interactive rituals, social structures, and working relationships that constitute specific "cultures of teaching." Using these two analytic vantages, we hope to reflect both the manner and the spirit of recent research on teaching. Specifically, that means we move away from a search for totalizing, central theories such as those of Bruner (1966) or Joyce and Weil (1986) towards more social, local, and particular understandings of the work, settings, and approaches that currently inform and describe the teaching of adults.

Discourse

We are using "discourse" in a very specific way. Discourses are currently understood in the social sciences to be systems of thought based on language; hence attention is drawn not only to vocabularies of speech or writing but also to how they imply a whole network of social relationships and regularities. Tonkiss provides a clear illustration from another field of practice:

Doctors, for example, do not simply draw on their practical training when doing their job; they also draw on an expert medical language that allows them to identify symptoms, make diagnoses and prescribe remedies. This language is not readily available to people who are not medically trained. Such an expert language has three important effects: it marks out a field of knowledge; it confers membership; and it bestows authority (1995, p. 248).

In this example, we can see that discourse is the means by which a group (doctors) actively shape and order their relationship to the social world. In so doing, they also establish boundaries that further define authority, membership, identity, and legitimacy in a community of practice. For example, chronic fatigue syndrome is legitimated when referred to by its medical name (myalgic encephalomyelitis) more so than when referred to as the "yuppie flu", or even "chronic fatigue." In much the same fashion the discourse of medicine authorizes certain kinds of medical care, while marginalizing others, such as homeopathic and other forms of alternative medicine.

Discourses can be found in all social institutions: families, schools, churches, workplaces, mass media, government, and so on. We adopt and adapt discourses as we make sense of our world and conduct our lives. At the same time, discourses affect us. Any behavioral changes we make to accommodate prevailing discourses usually involve a personal change in attitude or self-concept, and thus, help position and construct our identities and relationships in systems of power and privilege. Thus, discourses are never "neutral" or value free; they always reflect prevailing ideologies, values, beliefs, and social practices. As a result, a discourse can serve a hegemonic function in that it may promote dominant ideas and practices as normal or natural, and the language used to describe them as a form of common sense.

But in this chapter, we want to add another characteristic to our usage of the term--the scale at which we note the inscriptions of discourse on social relations. Here, the scale lies at the level of the individual. Thus, while our doctors may share one discourse medically, as they diverge and interact with other discourses (say they are involved in a law suit, a television series, a school board hearing), we note personal changes in attitudes or self-concepts. In the following discussion about discourses of teaching, therefore, it is helpful to bear in mind that, regardless of the different elements of these discourses, all focus their attention- for teaching or learning- at the level of the individual.

Discourses on teaching in adult education

In looking at developments in adult education from the vantage of discourses, we must first clarify that, as there can be no teaching without learning, each discourse of teaching operates in concert with discourses of learning. For example, thirty years ago, education was dominated by a discourse of behaviorism: learning was defined as a change in behavior; if it couldn't be observed, it wasn't important. Teaching was, primarily, a matter of identifying what was to be learned, arranging the conditions for that learning, and assessing whether it had been learned. The tools for this approach were well specified. The language was of instructional technology and a systems approach to education. Through task analysis we could discover what skills, knowledge, and attitudes were needed; through instructional design we could translate that into learning objectives; and by matching outcomes with objectives we would know whether teaching was successful. Books on writing behavioral objectives were everywhere as educators looked for guidance on how to implement this new instructional technology.

Adult educators were quick to adopt this discourse (Chamberlain, 1961; Rossman and Bunning, 1978), specifying long lists of competencies, which could then be written into behavioral forms. In each case the discourse of learning and teaching positioned learner, teacher, and knowledge as separate entities. It was assumed that knowledge, whether felt, thought, or enacted, could be specified in precise statements. An important responsibility of the teacher, therefore, was to specify what behavior would stand as evidence of learning. The implication was that learning must be both predictable and observable. Teaching, in turn, was characterized as a set of competencies, which could also be specified in advance. These competencies were assumed equally relevant and effective across variations in context, learners, subject, and purposes. In other words, teaching and learning were portrayed as context free and unproblematic enterprises.

At the same time the competency-based movement was gathering momentum, a very specific discourse on teaching adults was emerging--that of "andragogy." The major proponent of this discourse was Malcolm Knowles who, in 1970 (and again in 1980), provided a construction of the adult learner and the process of teaching that was assumed appropriate for all adults regardless of subject content, setting, or purposes.

This was an important discursive shift. Content and behavioral objectives were still present, but they were no longer the center piece of instruction. Now content, and the specification of what was to be learned, was subordinate to the learner's experience and participation. The (new) focus on the experience of the learner as both a pre-condition of learning, and as an integral factor in teaching, meant learners were now to be active agents, taking control of their own learning. Learners were to be involved in specifying what would be learned, how it would be learned, and what would be an appropriate indication of learning. Within this discourse, learners were assumed to be both willing and able to direct their own learning. The learner's experience, as a form of foundational knowledge, replaced the teacher's expertise as the primary compass that guided teaching. As a consequence, the primary role of teacher shifted from teacher-as-authority to teacher-as-facilitator.

By current standards some may think that the discourses of competency-based education and andragogy are dated. Yet, such discourses are still used by many who would construct notions of teaching around "outcomes-based education", and "train-the-trainers" models of teaching.

However, competing discourses have continued to emerge. For example, at the time andragogy was gaining in popularity a cognitive learning discourse was also influencing adult education. Based upon information processing by computers as a metaphor for how the mind worked, it suggested that teaching was the efficient exchange of information. Learning was constructed in terms of storage and retrieval of information, short-term and long-term memory, speed of processing, types of intelligence, and the effects of age on information processing. It was entirely individual, psychological, and consistent with rational-technical systems approaches to education.

Models of teaching that followed from these assumptions included those of Robert Gagne and his associates (1974). Teaching was, in this discourse, a matter of finding efficient and effective systematic solutions to information processing problems. Teachers were to specify outcomes, manage available resources, design instructional activities, and assess people's learning against pre-specified outcomes. In combination with some of the behaviorist elements, these computer-based models of learning and teaching were particularly popular in the industrial, military, and corporate training world.

In the 1980's a constructivist discourse on learning began to take hold, particularly in science education. In some ways, this discourse was reminiscent of its andragogical antecedent. Learners' experience was the avenue through which teaching gained entry. Experience was individual, that is, constructed and interpreted by the learner and then stored as cognitive maps or schemata. Whether actual neurological paths or imaginary structures, schemata were the building blocks of understanding. As such, they were also the object of teaching. Teaching was about helping people construct better, more complex, differentiated, and integrated cognitive structures.

In adult education, the constructivist discourse on teaching can be seen in the work on critical reflection (Brookfield, 1990) and conceptions of teaching (Arseneau and Rodenburg, 1998). Teaching was to be critically reflective, most often about a set of underlying belief structures. Teaching, within this discourse, is concerned with qualitative, rather than quantitative, changes in thinking and valuing (Marton and Booth, 1997). In contrast to the information processing discourses, where teaching is intended to facilitate encoding, processing, and retrieval of information, the constructivist discourse on teaching has been one of building bridges, challenging ways of thinking, and constructing more desirable ways of knowing. The constructivist discourse, along with andragogy, has represented another movement away from content and teacher-centered education, to learner and learning-centered education (Barr and Tagg, 1995; Kember, 1997).

In the 1990's a new discourse on learning challenged many of the central constructs of all previous discourses. Until then, all discourses engaged in a psychologizing of knowledge, learner, learning, and the organization of teachers' work. Much of the social, cultural, and political subjectivities of learner and teacher were considered irrelevant to the work of learning and teaching. Learner, knowledge, and teacher were characterized as separate, decontextualized, disembodied, and generic. With the publication of English translations of Vygotsky (1962, 1978) came a deluge of writing that acknowledged the role of social context and language in learning. Knowledge was understood to be indistinguishable from the process of knowing; and cognition was no longer an exclusive property of the learner. Learning was, therefore, more than the building of cognitive structures; it was defined as a function of the transformation of roles that occurs as a person participates in, and becomes an experienced member of, a community of learners (Rogoff, 1990). Mind and the social and cultural world were said to "constitute each other" (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p. 63). Content was no longer static, but always moving, continually being regenerated and modified by practitioners within a field or discipline (Prawat, 1992).

In this "socio-cultural" discourse, the learner was no longer portrayed in predominantly psychological terms; nor was the primary learning task one of trying to accommodate new experience within existing cognitive structures. Learning was assumed to start at an unconscious level as people interact, socially, within a community of practice or social network of relations. As they appropriated the actions and ways of relating within that social group they would also take on the goals and perspectives of members of that community or group. Membership and participation would then shape how people think, value, and act in relation to the work and other members of that community. Thus, learning was seen as both a social and a psychological phenomenon.

This discursive shift therefore challenges the very notion that teaching or learning is best understood by attention only at the level of individuals. Instead, it raises three fundamental points. First, the idea that learning is profoundly a social and collective process immediately alters how teaching is understood. Whereas in earlier discourses, idealized images of teachers prevail, many of us know that it is in the less-than-perfect moments where we encounter our foibles, failures and fears, that we learn much about our understandings of teaching. This acknowledgment can also be seen in a comparison of the first and second editions of The International Encyclopedia of Teaching and Teacher Education (Dunkin, 1987; Anderson, 1995). Whereas the representation of teaching in the first edition contains a fairly simple system of relationships between teaching methods and techniques, classroom processes, and contextual factors, the second edition shows a series of more complex relationships between teaching and teachers, schools, classrooms, content areas, students, and learning. Here, as in adult education, the change is toward a search for conditional, contextual, and relational knowledge about teaching, rather than for universal laws. Teachers are described in social status, and in psychological terms. For example, the later edition variously identifies how teachers' work is often regarded as of low status and is certainly not highly-rewarded, that teachers move through a series of identifiable stages as they grow in proficiency, and they have lives outside of work, which also impact on their teaching.

Second, if teachers and teaching are thus understood in a wider social context, it follows that what is taught must also be re-considered as to the importance of context. That is, what one learns, and can then do, is textured and layered with meaning and relationships integral to the context and situation of the learning. Therefore, teaching something in one context, for application in another, is fraught with problems. As one of us has noted elsewhere:

Practicing the skill of listening and paraphrasing within a 2-day workshop on communication skills is not the same as learning to listen to someone under the press of an argument; practicing soccer drills is not the same as playing in an important game; learning to do math problems from a textbook is not the same as figuring out which groceries to buy with a limited amount of money; and practicing first aid in the classroom is not the same as applying what you know at the scene of an accident. (Pratt, 1998, p. 44)

This new socio-cultural discourse view of learning and teaching brings renewed interest to areas such as learning in the workplace and non-formal education settings. It also helps broaden our understanding of teaching and learning within diverse populations that bring with them particular socio-cultural ways of learning, knowing, and relating to teachers (Pratt, Kelly, and Wong, 1999).

Finally, the socio-cultural discourse, which posits that learning is inescapably based on contextualized social relations, precipitates questions about patterns of social relations, power, and particularities of circumstances and settings. For this reason, we find reflections based on discourse alone limiting. Instead, it seems, of critical importance to ask: what does it mean to teach this content, to these people, in this context? How can context inform critical reflection without resulting in a plethora of intensely local, particular, and atheoretically examined practices? How might we take a more grounded approach to understanding context, linking the everyday observable details of practice with their larger social influences?

Shifting the Analytic Focus

To study the social fabric that envelopes individuals and teaching/learning processes requires new approaches to research. One powerful body of research in this area is that of "frame factor" theory (Lundgren, 1981; Nesbit, 1998). This theory seeks to analyze how teaching processes are chosen, developed, enabled, and constrained by certain "frames," themselves the product of larger social structures. Because any society, and the educational system it promotes, are inextricably linked, the cultural, political, economic, and social structures of society have effects on educational processes and can be regarded as frames. A frame can be "anything that limits the teaching process and is ... outside the control of the teacher." (Lundgren, 1981, p. 36) Examples of such frames include the location and physical setting, the curriculum or required content, set textbooks, and a number of institutional influences, such as the size of class or the time available for teaching. Frame factor theory is useful for studying social relations of teaching and learning because it is able to link macro and micro explanations of teaching. For example, it suggests that social structures do not directly cause classroom interactions but act more as influences through mediating variables, even to the level of the minutiae of teaching situations and activities.

Another body of research focuses on the creation of the socio-cultural environment and norms. For example, studying what happens in classrooms (Fraser, 1986), within teachers' work (Hargreaves, 1994), or in their workplace contexts (Little and McLaughlin, 1993) from a socio-cultural and critical perspective allows educators to discern the social character of teaching and the relationships between educational sites and society at large. It can also highlight certain cultural and political issues such as the supposed impartiality of much curricula or debates about what forms of authority, knowledge, and regulation are legitimated and transmitted (Apple, 1990; Giroux, 1992).

For instance, much of the recent literature on teaching draws attention to the concerns and interests of the less privileged. Critics like hooks (1994), Luttrell (1993), Tisdell (1995), and Grace (1996) challenge the dominance of earlier discourses and question how such factors as class, race, gender, or sexual orientation affect teaching. They question whose interests are served in the teaching environment and how certain constructions of teacher identity work on those who wish to practice in particular communities. To those who seek to locate teaching and learning within a socio-cultural understanding, it is illuminating to consider how social structures, frame factors, and socio-cultural norms generate particular "beliefs, values, habits, and assumed ways of doing things among communities of teachers who have had to deal with similar demands and constraints over many years" (Hargreaves, 1994, p. 165). Thus, we move from the analytic focus of discourse, and its implied emphasis on language and the individual, to the wider analytic focus of "cultures of teaching" and its implied emphasis on social structures and social interactions as they define and delimit the work within a community of teachers.

Cultures of teaching

There are difficulties that accompany the use of the concept of "culture." As Plumb (1995) notes, although a focus on culture is central to the critical practice of adult education, culture as a concept is "barely thematized" (p. 169). Partly, we feel this situation arises because culture has such a multiplicity of meanings: "one of the...most complicated words in the English language" claimed Raymond Williams (1976, p. 87). Our first task, then, is to define and use the concept in ways that it might help practitioners critically reflect on teaching.

Culture here can serve as a device for thinking about the social practice of teaching, i.e., the linkages between individual actions and the social structures in which they take place. Grasping the distinction between people and social structures can be difficult. Indeed, in an individualistic society, looking at the social structures of teaching can often be seen as threatening or irrelevant. However, carefully thinking about the existence of structures can also be beneficial. Structures, as we discuss them here, are not large, inflexible, dangerous forces that threaten or ignore individuality. Rather, we suggest the relationship between social structures and ourselves is dynamic: we create them as they create us. As such, we are simultaneously the agents and creators of structures, as well as the objects and recipients of them. So, for teachers, a greater appreciation of the cultures of teaching can broaden understanding of who they are, what they do, and their power to influence what happens. For example, teachers might examine various aspects of their local teaching cultures--such as the layout of the buildings and classrooms in which they work, class size, the structure of their timetable, the nature of professional relationships, the expectations of their colleagues and students, the curriculum, assessment procedures, or the resources made available--in order to assess in what ways they could improve their own practices.

Still, getting hold of how to think about "cultures of teaching" is elusive. How do we operationalize the ideas of frame factors, or norm-setting, or identifying social structures? One way is to explain teaching cultures in terms of interaction rituals--routine interactions of two or more people vested with some symbolic significance. Interaction rituals are also a practical means of studying what's going on within a cultural group (Trice and Beyer, 1984). They represent examples of the members of a culture thinking, feeling and acting appropriately, and in the process, communicating and sustaining the culture itself. These rituals work not only to facilitate specific tasks or social purposes, but also to structure and demonstrate membership boundaries (Goffman 1967). Note, however, that here, the primary analytic vantage concerns the continuity and reproduction of the culture, not the experience of the individual. Rituals can range in scale from the quick greeting in the hallway to highly elaborate and formal activities. Some examples of rituals that are commonly associated with cultures of teaching include staff meetings, coffee breaks, discussions of students, sharing of materials, the process of reviewing and revising curriculum, and the scheduling of classes.

To clarify the concept further, take as an example a common, but critical, ritual--the curriculum meeting. When colleagues gather to discuss changes in their curriculum, such as what texts to use, how to modify the sequence of courses, or to develop new courses, they interact in ways that have symbolic importance to the culture of teaching. It may appear that the meeting follows a routine format. However, as positions are negotiated and decisions made, the curriculum meeting is a place where identities are constructed, contested, and affirmed and social relations are infused with authority and legitimacy. In this sense, curriculum meetings are events that involve far more than task-oriented behavior: they are where members of the culture of teaching negotiate shared interpretations of their knowledge and membership -- who belongs, who does not, and with what authority and power.

These rituals (in this instance called meetings) are "thick" with normative expectation and information. They are sites where membership and authority are constantly tested. It is in such interactive rituals that members discover, create, and use culture, and it is within the accepted norms and expectations that they establish their place within a particular culture of teaching.

As well as these more formal, institutional rituals there is a parallel set of rituals that typify the process of teaching itself. These rituals are sanctioned by the group and become a part of the local culture of teaching. Most often they concern what is acceptable or not to do within the bounds of the formal instructional setting. And, just as it is difficult for outsiders to understand why and how a group thinks, feels, and acts in particular ways, it is equally difficult for observers to enter the arena of teaching on a single occasion, make observation notes, and assume they have captured significant and reliable data about that particular teaching culture. The best we can hope for is a slight opening of the box, and the chance to ask, "What's going on here?"

Sometimes, teachers may deviate from the local norms, and this may pose a cultural challenge to their work group. If they do, they may be marginalized so as to minimize significant changes to the local cultural norms of teaching that subject, to those students, in that particular institution. For example, in studying the teaching of mathematics at a community college, Nesbit (1998) found that the teachers were governed by the textbooks, more than by any sense of what the learners might already know, or need to know, beyond the formal examinations. This meant that, for the most part, teachers saw themselves as subordinate to the textbook, merely responsible for accurately and efficiently conveying its content. There was little, if any, challenge to that role and certainly no evidence of a more learner-centered approach to the culture of teaching math. As with most situations, this teaching culture had developed acceptable forms of practice. Of course, this applied as much to learners as it did to teachers; it suggests that "cultures of teaching", while not impermeable, do resist change.

Thus, as we are using it, culture is both (1) a complex web of interpretations and meanings that people use to make sense of their experiences, and (2) the range of social relationships and practices people find membership in, as they struggle over the material conditions, and the form and content, of everyday life. Defining culture in this way incorporates the notion of discourse. More crucially, it also addresses people's material experiences and the societal influences that help shape them. It contains two additional corollaries: it acknowledges the importance of social structures in shaping experience (such as the formal curriculum in a math class) and it recognizes that peoples' experiences and relationships are mediated by the asymmetrical distribution of power within society. Because of this asymmetrical distribution, we should state clearly that our definition does not assume one unified culture but rather myriad sub-cultures localized by structures, material practices, lived relations, place, context, subject content, and language.

This raises a crucial point about using the "cultures of teaching" analysis to inform critical reflection of teaching practice. It is easy to slip into a pre-occupation with the specifics of one's own local teaching culture to the exclusion of wider considerations. Hargreaves (1994) reminds us that local cultures are a powerful force, not just in the daily life of a teacher, but as a vital context for professional development:

[Local cultures] give meaning, support and identity to teachers and their work. Physically, teachers are often alone in their own classrooms, with no other adults for company. Psychologically, they never are. What they do there in terms of classroom styles and strategies is powerfully affected by the outlooks and orientations of the colleagues with whom they work now and have worked in the past. In this respect, teacher cultures, the relationships between teachers and their colleagues, are among the most educationally significant aspects of teachers' lives and work. They provide a vital context for teacher development and for the ways that teachers teach [p. 165].

This pre-occupation with local teaching cultures, however, can blind us to the ways our teaching may reproduce social injustices and inequities. In discussing her own teaching, bell hooks (1994) reflects on her classroom as a microcosm of society at large, and of the possibility of education as a vehicle for social change. Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (1995) elaborate on hooks' description of culturally responsive teaching:

Leading an ethical professional life often means trespassing--not in the sense of a moral transgression, but to infringe upon the status quo, to question unexamined assumptions or media....This means starting with ourselves and our own course content, syllabi, and materials, being willing to cross the border from what we know to what we need to know. In our opinion, this is the first requisite for culturally responsive teaching: a humble sense of self-scrutiny, not to induce guilt or liberal, knee-jerk responses but to deepen our sensitivity to the vast array of ways we may be complicitous with the inequitable treatment of others and to open ourselves to knowing the limitations of our own perspective and our need for the other [p. 285].

Opportunities for Critical Reflection

Considering cultures of teaching as a focus for reflection can lead teachers to reassess the reasons for their own teaching decisions. For example, teachers in many situations (particularly if they work part-time) often have intense teaching schedules and yet are given little preparation time. Hence it is not surprising that they choose to expend the least effort on that which is so little rewarded. In addition, teachers can be subject to external pressures that discourage any challenge to accepted ways of doing things which can lead to the adoption of more conservative and traditional teaching approaches. The personal narratives of Ira Shor (1996) and Mike Rose (1989) provide telling accounts of struggling against such structural barriers.

Also, teachers can take a "cultures of teaching" analysis to considering how subject content affects teaching. Subjects such as languages, social science, history, mathematics, or music are each differently conceptualized, codified, structured, and translated into "teachable knowledge," taught, assessed, and revised. A wealth of literature exists for the subject teacher: guides for the efficient teaching of such subjects are multifarious and handbooks for the researcher proliferate (Flood, Jensen, Lapp, and Squire, 1991; Grouws, 1992; Shaver, 1991). Adopting a cultural approach allows us to examine how such knowledges can be considered in relationship to each other, classified according to the degree of insulation from other content areas (Bernstein, 1996), and translated into discussions of appropriate ways of teaching it (Kincheloe and Steinberg, 1998; Whitty and Young, 1976).

Indeed, the teaching of adults should provide a fertile ground for critical reflection. Yet, when compared with teaching in other settings, we find it both under-examined and under-theorized. It's true that the recent adult education literature has seen a more robust questioning of teaching than earlier work (which generally presented it as an unproblematic and skill-based enterprise unencumbered by social, cultural, historical, ethical, or philosophical values or tensions). While teaching ability certainly remains a core professional value, more recent literature presents teaching as a moral, cultural, and political, as well as a technical, practice. In addition, recent work on teaching has moved away from a purely psychological grounding in theories and views of the learner, the process of learning and the role of teaching. In the past decade, more sociological views of teaching have emerged as has work drawing on structuration, Marxist, feminist, queer, critical, and postmodern theories. Yet, even in these approaches, a concern for critical reflection on teaching has, too often, either been abandoned or buried while authors probe more pressing social issues or ideological positions.

Why is the teaching of adults so taken-for-granted? Perhaps, for teachers and researchers alike, teaching is such a practical and everyday activity that it's often difficult to find either the time or the space to reflect on our practice, study it, or just think about it in general. Certainly, the realities of many teachers' everyday working lives don't contain much space for reflection. In addition, researching one's teaching seems so unnecessary; teaching is just what we do. For many adult educators, the very ordinariness and routineness of much teaching is blinding--nothing much of interest or significance seems to happen. To study teaching requires that we have to, in the evocative phrase of two British researchers, "fight familiarity" (Delamont and Atkinson, 1995).

We believe that the reluctance to reflect upon the everyday stems from the perceived dichotomy of practice and theory. Teaching, as much as any other educational activity, falls prey to the view that ideas about it can be produced from within theoretical and practical contexts different from those within which such ideas are supposed to apply. However, all theories are the product of some practical activity; thus, all practical activities are guided by some theory (Carr and Kemmis, 1986). They further point out that:

[Teaching] is a consciously performed social practice that can only be understood by reference to the framework of thought in terms of which its practitioners make sense of what they're doing. Teachers could not even begin to 'practice' without some knowledge of the situation in which they are operating and some idea of what needs to be done. In this sense, those engaged with the 'practice' of education must already possess some 'theory' of education which structures their activities and guides their actions" (p. 113).

We also believe that a reluctance to research the everyday practices of teaching lies in the fact that the familiarities of teaching are, by definition, local. In other words, because we see everyday teaching practices as contextually limited in place and time, any reflection upon them is similarly also limited and certainly not linked to any larger concerns in any substantially meaningful way. Too little research explores "how systems of privilege and oppression are played out in the learning environment, or exactly what pedagogical strategies lead to individual and social transformation" (Tisdell, 1995, p. 89). Of course, this situation is not unique to teaching. Although there is a strong adult education philosophical tradition of connecting the political and ideological activity of education with larger social inequities, very little adult educational research seems to empirically examine how the purposes, reasons and motives of localized micro-practices might be linked to the more structural macro issues of institutional analysis, power, and social change. This, we argue, is necessary for a proper understanding of teaching.

For this to happen, we contend that teaching should no longer be cast as a singular, procedural set of activities, but instead should be conceptualized as a social practice. By this, we mean that teaching can be understood to be part of a complex interplay of social structures and individual agency. To understand it, therefore, we must acknowledge that all teaching practices are products of "circumstances transmitted from the past" but which allow for the innovative and adaptive character of each face-to-face encounter. Such an approach would, first, allow teaching practices to be theoretically grounded in those social, cultural, economic, and political conditions that mark out the "cultures" we identified earlier. Second, it would recognize the fundamental role of teacher agency in the reproduction of those conditions and practices. Third, it would acknowledge what Elbow (1986) calls the "rich messiness of teaching." For example, it might help explain why, despite the various beliefs and intentions of teachers of adults, the different content they teach, and the wide range of contexts in which they work so much of teaching ends up "looking" much the same.

Closing remarks

In this chapter we have promoted the view that extending teachers' critical reflection will benefit their teaching. We agree with Freire that, "thinking critically about practice, of today or yesterday, makes possible the improvement of tomorrow's practice" (1998, p. 44). To be successful, such critical reflection requires that teachers continue to teach while they also think about their teaching. To aid their thinking, we have discussed the development of knowledge about teaching using the analytic constructs of discourse and culture. In this way, we hope we have illuminated the questions and the approaches that have distinguished this work in a way that will allow teachers to develop their reflective abilities as well as pique their curiosity. We have deliberately not provided tools for such reflection but would draw readers' attention to the recent work of Stephen Brookfield (1995), Patricia Cranton (1996) and Ira Shor (1992), among others, which suggests a wealth of appropriate strategies and approaches.

Our intent has been twofold: first, mindful of the fact that teachers work primarily on their own, we have sought to shed some light on what is, all too often, hidden. In essence, we have sought to "open the black box" of teaching by regarding it primarily as a social practice, carried out by individuals but shaped by social structures. Second, because we believe that teaching is less the transfer of knowledge than the creation of possibilities for knowledge production and construction, we have suggested how teachers might regard their own local cultures in such a way as to link them with other, allied, cultures while also respecting a notion of individual teacher autonomy and agency.

References

Anderson, L. W. (ed.). The international encyclopedia of teaching and teacher education (2nd ed.) Pergamon: Oxford, 1995.

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