In Search of Wonderful Ideas

Drawing on the work of Eleanor Duckworth, this volume examines Critical Exploration in the Classroom (CEC)—a learning-teaching research practice that positions teachers as researchers of their students’ sense-making and learners as theorizers and investigators. By integrating CEC into their teacher education classrooms, chapter authors have found that they can reliably unsettle their teacher candidates’ understandings about the nature of teaching and learning and recenter their attention on the intellectual originality and creativity of all young people. In this way, CEC provides valuable tools in the work of creating more equitable and democratic classrooms. Such tools are needed in a broader environment that overvalues instrumental approaches to achieving specified learning outcomes. Readers will find practices that empower and sustain the deep intellectual engagement of all learners. Integrating classroom narratives and other forms of documentation, this resource illustrates the kinds of profound changes in understanding that have occurred for teacher candidates as a result of working with CEC.

Book Features:

• Opens both the teacher educator and teacher candidates to new ways of teaching, learning, and being in classrooms.
• Demonstrates how the practice works to counter deficit thinking by revealing students’ brilliance.
• Uses narratives and other forms of documentation to characterize the potential of CEC within a diverse array of teacher education classrooms.
• Portrays the many ways in which CEC has been integrated into different disciplinary and institutional settings, illustrating the common intellectual and interpersonal dynamics at work.
• Chapter authors all studied Critical Exploration in the Classroom (CEC) with its originator, Eleanor Duckworth.

Mary Kay Delaney is currently visiting clinical professor at Morgridge College of Education, University of Denver and formerly professor at Meredith College. Susan Jean Mayer has worked in curricular development and teacher education and writes on a range of issues related to democratic K–12 practice and the study of learning within schools.

“This text makes a strong case for imaginative, engaging, and content-rich instruction in higher education.”

—Teachers College Record

“With its clear focus on the rich possibilities of centering both the theory and practice of Critical Exploration in the Classroom (CEC) in teacher preparation programs, this volume by an all-star cast is a major addition to the literature on radical approaches to preparing the next generation of teachers. Bravo! It is a thrilling read, as good an early entry point to these ideas as it is a way for those already familiar to go deeper.”
—Steve Seidel, Patricia Bauman and John Landrum Bryant Senior Lecturer on Arts in Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

“Teacher educators should read this edited volume and reflect upon how they are preparing teachers to meet this critical moment in history—a moment that demands that future teachers see the full possibilities of their students and understand schools as places where this awakening of self is possible. When done with a commitment to justice and equity, the awakening does not just benefit individual learners—it benefits us all. The chapters in this volume illustrate this central purpose of education.”
—Gretchen Givens Generett, professor, Duquesne University

Contents (Tentative)

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
Mary Kay Delaney and Susan Jean Mayer

1. Beginnings 9
Eleanor Ruth Duckworth

2. Pedagogy as Counternarrative 14
Mary Kay Delaney and Susan Jean Mayer

3. Engaging the Subject Before the Word 24
Bonnie Tai

4. Awakening to Teaching: Critical Explorations, Imagination, and Equity 39
Mary Kay Delaney

5. Teaching and Learning for Deeper Learning 58
Fiona Hughes-McDonnell

6. Give Them the Butterflies 74
Lisa Schneier

7. Meeting Student Resistance 85
Susan Rauchwerk

8. The Teaching and Learning of Elementary Social Studies 94
William Shorr

9. A “Why” Approach to Mathematics Teacher Education 111
Houman Harouni

10. Observing, Exploring, and Learning in Science and Its History 129
Elizabeth Cavicchi

11. Vital Experience 146
Keri Gelenian and Yeh Hsueh

12. Looking Back and Moving Forward 160
Susan Jean Mayer

Notes 169

References 173

About the Contributors 187

Index 189