The ethical claim of partiality: practical reasoning, the discipline, and teacher education

Abstract Practical reasoning refers to a teacher's capacity to discern particulars and make wise judgements about how to act in pedagogical situations. But how do teachers know what is right? How are teachers' preferences to be grounded and their choices justified? I explore the disciplines as one source of moral perception. Assuming that narrative unities underscore the coherence and continuity of an individual's experience, I generated data in the context of a 2‐year teacher education programme. The case study of an aspiring teacher of secondary school language arts illustrates how the intellectual virtues of a discipline can influence a student teacher's practical reasoning. I conclude that teacher educators must attend to the complex ways in which a prospective teacher's prior discipline may influence aspiring teachers' orientations to experience, their consideration of educational ends, and, finally, their characters. Keywords: deliberationEnglish language artspractical reasoningsubject‐matter knowledgeteacher education Acknowledgement I wish to thank Donald for the opportunity to explore his particular experience of becoming a teacher. Notes 1. See Alberta Education (Citation1997), British Columbia College of Teachers (Citation2004), and National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (Citation2004). 2. See Dunne (Citation1997), Garrison (Citation1997), and Korthagen et al. (Citation2001). 3. This case study is part of a larger collective case study of 10 student teachers in a two‐year, inquiry‐based teacher education programme that emphasized the cultivation of discernment in aspiring teachers. A case‐study design, with its emphasis on the particular and the contextual, fits well with the theoretical frame of phronesis (Flyvbjerg Citation2001). A single case study can disclose an exemplary significance in the setting it depicts so that it proves capable of illuminating other settings (Dunne and Pendlebury Citation2002). As an instance of phronetic inquiry, the case study of Donald prioritizes the particular experiences of one prospective teacher. The study was conducted over two academic years, 1996–1998. There were four sources of data: (1) documents (assignments and instructor‐generated narrative evaluations collected and photocopied at the end of each semester); (2) interviews with each participant (one at the outset of each semester and one following a classroom observation of the participant); (3) focus groups (one per semester conducted with each of two groups of five participants); and (4) classroom observations (one each year with each participant and recorded in field notes). Student assignments included field journals, case reports, biographies of learning (5‐page essays on what they were learning and on who they believed they were becoming as teachers), self‐selected independent studies (30‐page papers on such topics as ‘developmentally appropriate practice’ or action research reports). All interviews and focus groups were audio‐taped and transcribed. The case analysis of Donald was based on interviews and course assignments. A life‐history interview was conducted during the first semester of the programme; this was followed by an interview dealing with programme experiences, during the second semester. The third and final interview was conducted directly after a two‐hour classroom observation during the major 13‐week practicum in the third semester of the programme. The final interview included the participant's reflection on his teaching during the lessons observed. Course assignments included weekly written reflections on his work in the field throughout the four semesters of the programme, case reports, a lengthy independent study that focused on his attempts to teach writing to secondary school students, and an exit presentation in which Donald declared his response to the question: What does teaching call forth in you? What will you bring to teaching? The independent study was drafted while Donald taught his writing unit and the final representation submitted for evaluation by his instructor within ∼ two weeks of completing the unit of study. 4. All names used in this paper are pseudonyms. 5. The data gathered for this research represents reconstructed rationales, in oral and written form, of teaching decisions and actions. Whether these rationales reflect that ‘actual’ practical reasoning that Donald practised during the act of teaching was of less concern than the understanding of the way in which the ‘generals’ of the discipline guided the aspiring teacher's particular insights and decisions during his attempts to engage students in the practices of reading and writing literary texts. Whether researchers can ever access teachers' ‘actual’ reasoning about teaching is questionable. As Ricouer (Citation1991) pointed out, ‘All verbal significance must be constructed; but there is no construction without choice, and no choice without a norm’ (in Nielsen Citation1995: 8). The construction of significance, and the subsequent judgement about how he acted, invited Donald and other research participants to ask: What did I do? Was it desirable in the short‐term and in the long‐term? Who gained? Who lost? (Flyvbjerg Citation2001). Each reconstruction of experience in field journals, independent studies or research interviews provided opportunities to revise the initial understanding of particular events. The research process itself was potentially transformational, providing participants with additional opportunities for the endowment of meaning with significance rather than a manipulation of predetermined meaning experienced in the moment of practice (Phelan Citation2005).

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