How Have Teachers Taught: A Look Backwards
So much policy making aimed to improve classroom lessons is anchored deeply in myth and memory. Both morph into one another as policymakers (aka “reformers) filter their children’s tales of what occurs in classrooms festooned with iPads and Chromebooks through their recollection of what went on in their elementary and secondary classes. Oh yeah, policy makers consult with researchers and look at classroom studies, and ponder the changes that new technologies have made in how teachers teach but these results, again, are sorted through memories of writing an essay for that English teacher or the 5th grade quizzes that constricted one’s intestines. So I do not discount the power of myth and memory to shape policies aimed at getting teachers to teach better even after a decade of new technologies being tamed by teachers to become part of their instructional repertoire.
What is too often missing from the mix of data, Golly Gees over new software and remembrances are accounts by historians of education who have documented–albeit in fragmentary ways–what actually went on in classrooms over the past century. Some historians, including myself, have tried to recapture yesteryear’s classrooms (see here, here, and here). This post initially published in 2009 has been updated.
In How Teachers Taught (1984) and Hugging the Middle (2009), I collected CONTINUE READING: How Have Teachers Taught: A Look Backwards | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
