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4 - Improvising within the System

Creating New Teacher Performances in Inner-City Schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Carrie Lobman
Edited by
R. Keith Sawyer
Carrie Lobman
Affiliation:
Rutgers Graduate School of Education
R. Keith Sawyer
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

Teachers’ lives are dominated by scripts: the overt scripts of the curriculum, the “hidden” scripts of race, class, language, and culture, and the societal scripts of how teachers and students are supposed to relate to each other. All of these, however, are informed by the meta-script that the primary job of the teacher is to help children acquire knowledge and skills – a deeply embedded cultural model of teaching and learning that has been referred to as instructionism (Papert, 1994), as transmission and acquisition (Rogoff, 1990; Sfard, 1998), or as the banking model (Freire, 1994). Teachers are supposed to find the best techniques for helping children learn more so that they can know more. Reform efforts that aim at addressing the current problems in education generally attempt to make such learning more efficient, equitable, or accountable through smaller classes, culturally relevant pedagogy, and a major focus on testing and assessment. By many accounts (Darling-Hammond, 2007; Kohn, 2004; Kozol, 2005; Meier & Wood, 2004; Sizer, 2004), these efforts are not succeeding.

Type
Chapter
Information
Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching , pp. 73 - 93
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • Improvising within the System
  • Edited by R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997105.005
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  • Improvising within the System
  • Edited by R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997105.005
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Improvising within the System
  • Edited by R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997105.005
Available formats
×