| Heart In is Heart Of Teaching |
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by Blaine E. Hatt, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education
I was taken aback when I read the opening line of the Introduction to the NASSP 2001 survey of principals, Priorities and barriers in high school leadership: "At the heart of every good school is a good principal." My antiphonal voice pressed me and I immediately heard myself asking: Where are the children? Where are the teachers? Are we not in need of a turning back to the pedagogical relationship between teacher as adult and child and is this relationality not "at the heart of every good school?"
On the conscious level, I know that I shouldn't have been shocked by the inherent omnipotence contained in the statement, nor by its egocentric use of the metaphoric heart; for I, like so many school administrators of the postindustrial age, have been cognitively schooled in the rhetoric of reform. We know, because we have been taught, that the principal is the key to success of the school, that the principal makes the difference in the climate of the school and ensures that the "business" of teaching and learning is of the highest quality in every classroom, that the actions of the principal are noticed and interpreted as what is "really" important in the school, and that, the principal has the pivotal role in the organization of the school to deliver services and produce products. The principal is responsible for the VAR (value-added resource) of the school in the community, in the district, on the provincial and where possible, on the national scene. Every student that attends and subsequently leaves a school bears the VAR of the school and it's principal.
We all know that among the issues that principals regularly and sometimes routinely deal with are: leadership, school plans, teacher evaluation, professional growth plans, school-wide discipline, school climate, learning communities, legal aspects of education, parental and community involvement, professional development, technology and staff wellness. We know that the principalship is a hard and demanding role to fulfill in any school and we know that the duties and responsibilities of the principalship are grounded in ambiguities and that many jurisdictions are reporting that the number of interested and qualified candidates for the principalship is already critically low.
As an educator, I know all these things and while my many years in public school administration dictates that I register them cognitively, my non-cognitive self asserts that there is something wrong in an educational portrait that places the principal at the heart of the school.
"...my mind misgives/Some consequence yet hanging in the stars..." (R&J, I, iv, 104-105).
Part of the reason why such an image has come about has, I believe, a great deal to do with the superimposing of language and meaning specific to business onto education and the transposing of economic, technological and globalization principles and values into education. As a consequence, education has lost its center, its heart is displaced because there is no vernacular which uniquely and adequately expresses its meaning. The professional language of education has, in part, been corrupted by the buzz-words of commerce to the extent that educational meaning has too often become ambiguous, vague and at times, vacuous. The word excellence when and as applied to education provides a good example of lost meaning.
When I was in grade school and received 100% on my Arithmetic test, my teacher, Mrs. Leavitt would emblazon the word "excellent" in red ink across the front of my work. If I achieved a similar result on my geography quiz, "excellent" would again be bannered across the front of the test paper. If I were the last person standing in the weekly Friday afternoon Spelling Bee, Mrs. Leavitt would declare before the entire body of students in our one-room schoolhouse that my performance was "excellent." If I attended school every day for the entire school year I was given a prize for "excellent" attendance. When I arose from having sat for hours dangling my feet over the end of the wharf as I practiced the intricacies of a bowline and presented my work to my father, he declared that it was an "excellent" knot. If, on the other hand, my grandfathers and mother sent me back to redo a chore that was not done to their specifications or standard of performance, then sweat equity soon taught me that excellence exacts a price.
Excellence was not for us as children, at home or in school, a difficult concept to grasp; excellence was the highest achievement possible in any given task or assignment. Excellence was a transitive condition; it required an object to be acted upon according to a pre-established norm or standard. It was not easy to achieve excellence but when it came you knew, in your heart of hearts, that, at that moment, the fruit of your labour or performance could not be improved.
Excellence is a nominative adaptation of the Latin verb "excellere" meaning: "be superior, be eminent, or rise high." The French adapted the Latin verb in the 14th century to mean: "exalted or supreme" and in the 17th century to mean "extremely good"(Onions, 1966, p. 333). In the discourse of the Downey-Landry Report (1992), written as a millennium blueprint for schools in New Brunswick and commonly referred to as the Excellence Report, excellence is referenced in varying contexts. For example: "fostering excellence in education, training and human resource development " (p. 7), "issues ... important to the pursuit of excellence in this report " (p. 7), "the various kinds of excellence education makes possible" (p. 9), "most people ... are capable of reaching some level of excellence " (p. 9), "we are all part of excellence in education" (p. 11), and, "schools must provide opportunity, encouragement, and recognition of excellence when it is achieved" (p. 16). But, the question remains, do these contextual uses of excellence as employed in this Report help us to understand its meaning as evidenced in education?
Readings (1996) provides a possible answer when he suggests that: "no resistance to the discourse of excellence is possible" (p.150). In other words, excellence can mean whatever the speaker or writer intends it to mean. In the Excellence Report, excellence is defined not by what it is but rather by what it is not. For example, excellence is not the lack of high expectations or attendant high standards. Excellence is not a "cooling shade" (p.10) from the discomfort of change or the change process. Excellence is not the elimination of measurement and evaluation of student learning including externally administered provincial and national testing. Excellence is not the unwelcome presence of corporate and foundation financial support in partnership with schools in "the new educational order" (p. 11) because "schools afford the most comprehensive and systematic contact with the young and thus are convenient ..." (p. 14).
Downey and Landry are adamant in their belief that "it is essential to stress the connection between educational and economic achievement," and, "an effective evaluation and monitoring system is essential to a strong curriculum and to excellence in education" (p. 17). They further believe that "competition against high but reasonable provincial standards can generate excitement and greater effort" (p. 17) and optimistically portend that competition could also serve to bond teachers and students into a common cause of mutual achievement as they strive together to meet the standards of external testing. It was the chairman of the Whittle Corporation who said: "The biggest contribution business can make to education is to make education a business" (Smith, 1999, p.12). The Commissioners imply that one way to excellence is to make education a business by introducing competition and competitiveness as intensely cognitive and visceral activities of pedagogy. The consensus of excellence expressed in this Report stresses that the competitive advantage in the global economy goes to the jurisdiction, in this case the Province of New Brunswick, with the best-educated workforce.
In keeping with postmodern trends, excellence in modern usage in education is not so much an accomplishment deserving of praise or recognition but a process of striving to become better than others, a process of becoming superior. Excellence implies high-stakes competition; there are now degrees of excellence. Excellence is no longer, in itself, an absolute but the pursuit of excellence in education has become an absolute. The lessons regarding excellence which I learned through the lived experiences of my childhood and grade school seem to have lost their validity when measured against the present educational, alias commercial, theories of excellence.
Whatever excellence is, while it may remain its own logos, the Commissioners of the Excellence Report erringly advocate achieving excellence through economic accountability measures that were, in themselves, never designed to evaluate the pedagogical nature of education. Excellence in education comes down to an assessment of what is presently valued in teaching; and, "How to evaluate teaching for the [school system] administration, for the teacher, or for the student" (Readings, p. 151) has now become the focus in determining excellence in education. Not surprisingly, key Recommendations in the Report focus on the development of a program of rewards and recognitions that value measurable excellence in teaching.
"...this intrusion shall/Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall" (R&J, I, v, 91-92).
Similarly, accountability measures are applied to curriculum in an attempt to scientifically validate what is held to be true theoretically; namely, that a major purpose of any curriculum is the advancement of student achievement. Curriculum is deemed worthwhile if it succeeds in promoting a prescriptive agenda for teaching and learning. Curriculum is viewed as the "whatness" of teaching. As one senior member of a provincial Ministry of Education said to me: "We [speaking of the Department of Education] determine the what, you [speaking of educators] determine the how and together we will determine the how well of the what that has been taught" (personal communication, 1999). Content, the "whatness," and assessment the "how-well of the whatness" are the concepts directing the development, implementation and evaluation of curriculum. Conspicuous by its absence in this theoretical construction of curriculum is the child as learner. Surely children are an equal component in school curriculum. Indeed, Aoki (1993) reasoned that there were two curricula at work in the classroom, the curriculum-as-plan and the lived curricula of each individual student in the classroom. He saw the two curricula as at "once different in kind" and "resist[ing] integration" (p. 261). Aoki positions the teacher in the curriculum landscape of the classroom as mediator between the language of curriculum-as-plan and the language of lived curricula.
On the other hand, Tom Kieren, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta, posits an alternative notion to the in-between tension that exists in Aoki's perception of curricula as exclusionary and resisting integration. He maintains: "if we examine the curriculum as it occurs we note that it is neither narrowly convergent to a few goals, nor divergent to individual coherent activities. The idea that comes out of an enactivist view is a co-emergent curriculum." Kieren positions the teacher in the middle of a curriculum which is neither convergent nor divergent but co-emerges "with the communities in which it exists and is lived" (Tom Kieren, personal communication, 2001).
What happens to children in school during and as a result of what teachers and other responsible adults do is an integral component in the co-emergence of curriculum. It is in the classroom that experiences of community exist and are lived. If the curriculum-as-plan is prescribed by the Ministry of Education, accepted by the School District and used by the school to accomplish its educational purposes then each jurisdiction must proportionally share in the responsibility of all the experiences that happen to each child during the teaching and learning of that curriculum within the community of the school and its classroom(s).
In addition to the convergent curriculum-as-plan and the divergent lived curricula of each child (biological structuring, personal histories, and context of community), there are other curricula that influence and co-determine learning in the interaction of the classroom. Antithetical to the curriculum-as-plan is the curriculum-not-as-plan, the null curriculum, or that which has deliberately been excluded from the official curriculum. There is the hidden curriculum of routines, rules, policies and procedures which are necessary for order, discipline and the creation of a positive learning climate within the culture of the classroom. There is the divergent lived curriculum that each teacher brings into the classroom on a daily, minute-by-minute basis and which is integral in the co-emergence of the learning community in which it exists and lives. Sometimes the teacher is unable to coalesce her lived experience into the confluence of curricula within the transactional curriculum. The consequence can sometimes be devastating:
I am cheerful and busy with teaching when suddenly I realize that I need to chat with a fellow teacher about something. Hurriedly, I walk toward her classroom. Before I can change my mind, I realize that a situation is unfolding before me. I hear her shouting at someone inside her classroom. Her classroom door is open. She is name-calling, angry -- the student is completely silent. He speaks once to ask "What did I do?" She keeps on yelling. She doesn't even know that I am standing near her door, listening, seeing, taking it all in. I can't believe what I am hearing. My biggest shock comes when I see the student, an older, tall, strong boy crawl quite quickly out of her classroom. He skids across the floor until he hits the carpet in the hallway. She follows him, points her finger at him and yells. He cowers against the wall and sits there, motionless. I can't remember what I want to ask her. (Jane, personal communication, 2002).
From Jane's account, it would appear that her fellow teacher is definitely having a bad day. We, like the student, are uncertain as to what has set her off. What we do realize is that there is at this moment no pedagogical relationship. Intentionality, appropriateness and responsibility have fled before the wake of the tirade which she directs against her student. For the inexperienced, and at times the irrational teacher, the multiplicity of curricula may resist integration. The teacher remains caught in the betweens in the curriculum landscape and her/his language and actions can become exclusionary and at times, as in the situation which Jane describes, highly destructive.
"Now art thou what thou art by art as well as by nature" (R&J, II, iv, 83).
For the experienced teacher there exists a curriculum that subsumes the multiplicity of all curricula and may be referred to as the transactional curriculum or the curriculum of lived experience. It is the curriculum of "now," of the present moment, and is distinguished in its composition by its ability to include and integrate all facets of curriculum in the classroom. If we believe that every curriculum is a response reflecting the values and beliefs of its society, then we must give serious credence to the transactional curriculum with its emphasis on relationality within the educational society of the classroom. The transactional curriculum is the ebb and flow, the give and take, and the to and fro of the complex interactions of humans, their culture and their environment within the context of community within each classroom. Relationality as grounded in intentionality, appropriateness and responsibility is the agent that conjoins all curricula within the transactional curriculum. At the heart of relationality is the heart in teaching.
Intentionality is the direct and deliberate action of an adult toward and with a child. It is accommodating and celebratory of individual difference among the members of the learning community within the classroom and the school. Although we recognize that it is impossible for pedagogues to always act right, intentionality is nevertheless the conscious, genuine striving for rightness and is the pedagogical response to the question, What is best to do here?
Appropriateness is the right action by the teacher at the right time for the personal growth, development and maturity of the child or children in her/his classroom. Appropriateness is characterized by awareness of and respect for Other. Appropriateness is sensitive, evaluative in terms of correct action or response and is highly reflective as a means of improving teacher action or response. Appropriateness is a direct outgrowth of intentionality and both are integral aspects of responsibility.
Responsibility is not infallibility, it is impossible for pedagogues to be impeccable in their preparation, consistent in the application of wisdom and fairness in every disciplinary action and teach challenging concepts with ease while ensuring the necessary clarity of learning and understanding for each student. It is not easy to always "keep the whole child in view, to be an inspiration to students, to understand perfectly a child's need, to help students with deep learning difficulties" (van Manen, 1991, p. 82). While infallibility may free our minds and hearts, as pedagogues, from the "guilt, regret and remorse [of] mistakes and failings" (p. 82), it does not liberate us from the knowledge that responsibility is the consistent application in the transactional curriculum of mature, tactful action on the part of the adult toward the child or children in her/his classroom and on the part of the child or children toward each other and their teacher. Responsibility is the setting of realistic goals in teaching and learning that not only challenge the students' and the teacher's abilities but reinforce the co-emergence of knowledge which is taking place within the society of the classroom. Responsibility is an obligation to act in a thoughtful, meaningful way toward Other as self and when applied over time with consistency and persistency will ensure the self-responsibility of Other.
Like appropriateness and intentionality, responsibility is sensitive to the individuality of each child and aware of the need to act, as educators, in a manner that is consistent with the commitment to educate the "whole" child. We must resist ongoing attempts by critics in the post-industrial era to reduce curriculum to a set of measurable academic standards necessary to sustain our national economic health and global competitiveness. Such reductionism narrows the non-cognitive aspects of curriculum to the point of non-existence and constricts the cognitive elements of curriculum to a fixation on the highly competitive promotion of excellence in education for globalized economic and political supremacy.
"Turn back dull earth and find thy center out"(R&J, II, i, 2).
The transactional curriculum is pedagogically centered. It is not centered on the limiting concept of pedagogy as training and practice which is promoted in much of educational thinking and writing today. I recently conducted an exercise with one of my undergraduate classes as a follow-up to our discussion of trends and issues in the teaching of Senior Years English Language Arts (ELA). They were to investigate the use of the word pedagogy as it appeared in the education literature that they were currently reviewing. Their results were not surprising. They found that pedagogy in a North American context is essentially instrumental and refers primarily to training and/or instruction. In usage, it is equated with the formal study of education and the principles, methods and practice of teaching.
Traditionally such practice is manifested in a pedantic, dogmatic, severe and formal approach to teaching. In short, pedagogy as a rational-technical term is focused on the "howness" of the curriculum-as-plan and is only marginally concerned with the relational aspect of teaching and learning. Pedagogy is something that happens to rather than with children. It is in this context that phrases such as the following evidence the meaning of pedagogy in a post-industrial era: "...engage students in pedagogically sound ways," "child-centered pedagogy," "sophisticated pedagogy," "...modifications to both curriculum and pedagogy to enhance accessibility," and, "...ensure consistency with new developments in pedagogical research" (Werner, 1995). Among these phrases, only the phrase "child-centered pedagogy" approaches the genesis of meaning for pedagogy found in Greek society and, even then, the excessive repetition in the phrase renders it malapropos.
Pedagogue is derived from the Greek paidagögós, a slave who escorted a boy to school and back again. The custodial nature of the relationship of adult to child was one of safety, security and stewardship. But, often, the companionship between the pedagogue and the boy was more familial, more connected with leadership, guardianship and care for the well-being of the boy. I remember from my high school Ancient History notes that the assigning of a pedagogue to a child marked the beginning of the child's school days. The pedagogue's main responsibility was to accompany the young boy everywhere he went outside of the home especially to school and the gymnasium. He was to carry his books and writing tablets, to provide basic assistance with the learning of lessons, to ensure his safety and protection at all times, to teach him social graces and if required administer appropriate discipline, including whippings in the absence of his father or schoolmaster. As the adult, the pedagogue was charged with the responsibility to safeguard and protect the vulnerability of the child and to act, when necessary, in the place of the parent (in loco parentis).
As the boy grew, the pedagogue or private tutor was responsible for teaching the child basic reading and writing skills and also preparing him for learning the important art of rhetoric, or public speaking. Such responsibility in the relationship between the adult and the child required the pedagogue to act with appropriate intention toward the child. The vulnerability of the child literally called upon the pedagogue to act in a responsible and intentional manner toward him. The role of the pedagogue expanded and he became more of a tutor or teacher charged with being "a leader of a child."
Intentionality, appropriateness and responsibility were the qualities of association that distinguished the pedagogue in his role and service to the child. These qualities were endemic in the person-to-person contact of the pedagogue and child and were eventually replicated "en masse" to include more children in schooling. The role of the pedagogue was expanded to include a number of male children under his tutorage at the same time. The expanded role and function of the pedagogue led to a defining of pedagogy as "attendance on children." By direct association, education (from L. educare related to educere or educe) with its attendant meanings: "to lead out, to bring out, to bring up, to rear, to raise, or, to develop from a latent condition" and culture (from L. cultura) which meant "to cultivate, till, improve, or refine the land, the mind and/or manners" (Klein, 1971, pp. 501 & 383) were connected to and incorporated into the expanded definition of pedagogy.
The pedagogue as custodian, the pedagogue as instructional leader, and the pedagogue acting in loco parentis are hegemonic in meeting the educational needs of children in the public school system. Unfortunately, the relational nature of pedagogy has largely been eliminated from the literature and discourse that addresses pedagogy in our post-industrial society. Robert Tremmel (2001) states that the pedagogical information in the English education program at his university: " has a strong focus on teaching practice, including lesson and unit design, workshopping, collaboration, and classroom presentation." He notes that improvement in the program could be achieved through "integrating assessment and evaluation, research, and critical thinking" (p. 23).
Tremmel echoes the thinking of Stephen Wilhot's (2000) vision for writing teacher education. According to Wilhot in his Table entitled "Current Classroom Training Practices," pedagogical information consists of: designing syllabi, designing assignments, evaluating writing, assessing writing, presenting information, collaborative learning, conferencing, teaching research skills, teaching critical thinking skills, and classroom performance skills (p. 22). Tremmel and Wilhot are representative of the belief in Western thought regarding education that pedagogy is about "teaching" or "training" practice. Such a concept of education negates the key responsibility of attendance on children or assisting as from the French assister and has more to do with praxis than pedagogy.
Praxis is contemplative, speculative and insightful of mental conception or schematic thought and is the exercise or the practice of theory. It is the active to do will that transforms theoretical design into implementation and presentation followed by critical assessment and evaluation. Praxis lends itself to an identification of skills that are practical and necessary to effect, accomplish or practice a thing done. Praxis has inherent within it a tendency toward pragmatism or pedantry and if applied in this context to education reduces teaching to practice and teachers to practitioners. Unfortunately, teachers can be viewed, and one might argue that traditionally some have been, as practitioners rather than as pedagogues.
"Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied" (R&J, II, iii, 21).
When pedagogy is reduced to the practice of skills in order to effect or accomplish a thing done, then a thing becomes the what of education. Teaching is focused on what-as-subject and learning is focused on what-as-object. The what becomes the guiding principle or the raison d'être for education especially in our post-industrial society. Werner (1995) in his discussion of persistent curriculum issues recognizes in a negative way the lived curriculum of the students: "Youth who are troubled, hungry, violent, or confused bring this baggage into the classroom, and their learning is affected" (p. 131). He continues this line of thinking and suggests that such a lived curriculum constrains the technical-rational curriculum-as-plan and gives rise to such questions as: "How elastic can the curriculum be before it loses coherence and focus? How can this expanded curriculum be effectively squeezed within the existing school day and year?" (p. 131). Clearly, Werner's focus is on the what of the thing to be done within a prescribed amount of time. There is no recognition of pedagogical relationality within curriculum even when he is aware of the unique lived curriculum of students. Curriculum is not designed to "serve a range of social purposes beyond traditional academic goals'"(p. 131). Werner's point of view is totally consistent with the post-industrial concept of curriculum which as stated earlier is that curriculum is deemed worthwhile if it succeeds in promoting a prescriptive agenda for teaching and learning.
Contrasted with the post-industrial concept of curriculum and its negation of relationality is the wisdom of historical educational thinkers. I believe there is merit in revisiting the educational thoughts of past writers and learning more of what they have to communicate. For example, I like Montaigne's notion: "Il ne faut pas attacher le savoir à l'âme, il faut l'incorporer. -- Knowledge cannot be fastened on the mind; it must become part and parcel of the mind itself" (Quick, 1894, 71). I like the fact that despite their suppression of originality, independence of mind, love of truth for its own sake, critical and reflective thinking, Jesuits encouraged students to take kindly to their learning in the belief that: "that which enters into willing ears, the mind as it were rushes to welcome, seizes with avidity, carefully stows away, and faithfully preserves" (p. 52). Additionally, Jesuit masters deliberately and carefully sought the affection of each boy by showing an interest in everything that concerned him and not merely in his studies. From such intentionality, the master was "to unite the grave kindness and authority of a father with a mother's tenderness" (p.53) and to study the character and capacity of each boy in his class in order that he might appropriately and responsibly determine the quantity and quality of work that should be required of the boy. Relationality was a key component in the pedagogical orientation of Jesuit masters to their individual students. I also like the way a pre-service teacher described the relational process of knowing in the transactional curriculum: "Our task as teachers is not to COVER the CURRICULUM but to UNCOVER it in such a way that children in school DISCOVER it" (May Heather, personal communication, 2002). I would augment that statement with an insertion that recognizes that teachers are collaborative in the discovery of co-emergent knowledge.
"Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast" (R&J, II, iii, 94).
Knowledge is meaning-making and whether cognitive or non-cognitive, it derives from the transaction of teaching, learning and knowing within the educational context of the classroom. The teacher's primary role within the transactional curriculum is to mediate the confluence of curricula in such a way as to maximize individual learning and knowing. Students need to trust in the development of their knowledge which is derived from the multiplicity of their experiences within the transactional curriculum and modified by their unique individuality. Trust enables.
A pre-service teacher recently wrote to me that in answer to the question What do you think makes a good teacher?, the first response from her Grade 8 class was that: "students need to be able to trust the teacher." Thereafter they listed the relational qualities that they felt a good teacher should have: personality; a sense of humour; a fun-loving spirit; no favorites; no holding of grudges; an interest in students; and, should be: firm, fair and consistent in enforcing rules and administering discipline; able to work with students rather than just assigning homework; able to incorporate different learning materials into each lesson; encouraging and positive; and, should be herself/himself and let students be the same. The teacher concluded her remarks with the observation that: "the overall "theme" would be that the teacher recognizes the individuality of each student and not surprisingly, relationality really seems to be important to the grade 8 class" (SG., personal communication, 2002).
The students in this Grade 8 class have experienced the influence of trust within the transactional curriculum; they are enabled and encouraged to have trust in themselves and in their ability as learners to make meaning. They have come to realize that learning or meaning-making is inter and intra-relational and that within the transactional curriculum of the classroom, it is informed by the pedagogical principles of responsibility, intentionality and appropriateness.
The confluence of lived experiences, the ebb and flow, the give and take of discourse between and among the participants and the various curricula in the classroom constitutes the communicative power and influence of learning and knowing with unlimited possibilities for continued personal and pedagogical growth. The transactional curriculum, the lived artifact in each classroom, necessitates the development of a pedagogical relationship between teacher and student that makes possible the co-emergence of learning and knowing for all participants in the classroom. If we, as educators, are truly committed to educating the whole child then we must recognize that neither the head nor the heart is hegemonic in the body. In order for the child to maximize understanding and knowledge that will lead to individual growth and maturity, there must be a balance between educating the cognitive or the mind and educating the non-cognitive, or the heart. Both are essential in balancing the dimensions of bodily living and bodily knowing. Without carefully attending the pathic we cannot fully attend the heart in teaching. In such a lived artifact, knowing co-emerges in the mind and the heart as a shared value.
Pathic, like empathy and sympathy, finds its base in the Greek pathy or pathia meaning affection, passion or feeling for disease and suffering (Klein, p. 540) and is closely associated with pathos, another word stemming from the same root, and meaning the "quality which arouses pity or sorrow" (p. 540). van Manen (1999) reminds us that "pathic knowledge is not new [and] there has been increased attention given to the phenomenon of embodiment in human action. From a phenomenological point of view it can even be argued that the whole body itself is pathic. Thus "the body knows" how to do things..." (p. 84). In the context of lived experience, pathic refers to the felt emotion, the receptivity of mood, and the shared sensibility of the body being in the world as 'One' and as 'Other'. If we want to more fully understand the pathic we must attend to how it presents itself in life by Others; by those who live it.
One of the greatest and most effective methods of teaching is by example or model. Teachers are expected to maintain a deportment consistent with their position of trust and influence over young people. Teachers model their dual focus on the rational and the pathic in the pedagogical relationships in their classrooms. They engage their students in highly interactive and enabling lessons, they teach them to take note of salient points in each lesson, they teach them to reflect on their learning and cognize further learning, they spend quality time developing and maintaining a personal relationship with each of their students and they look for occasions to extend learning opportunities in one-to-one interactions. By so doing, teachers exemplify and encourage in each student the values of trust, respect, and compassion for all persons,
It is French class and I have 25 eager French students noisily trying to write French puppet plays. The new boy is ADHD. He has no mother (she died). He has no previous experience in French. He is a serious behaviour problem and he is standing at my side. He tells me he can't write this play. Then, he gets distracted and he laughs, flies around the room and does anything and everything he fancies. I ask him to sit down. He does. I pull up a chair beside his desk and say: "Let's work together on this play." For the rest of the class, 25 minutes, we talk and discuss and we write a puppet play in French that works for him. I love this "one-on-one" time with a student. It's precious -- practically unheard of these days. The bell rings and we begin to tidy up as they must move to their next class. In the hustle and bustle of all this activity, he hugs me and says: "I'll miss you." (Lorna, personal communication 2002).
If that thy bent of love be honourable (R&J, II, ii, 143).
In the face of being expected to treat the job of teaching more and more technically and with less time to think reflectively on the meaning, purpose or significance of pedagogical relationship, the challenge for most teachers is to remember, as keenly as ever, their pedagogical orientation to each child. Indeed, teachers are increasingly required to place a greater emphasis on their duty to identify and implement learning and evaluation strategies that foster a positive learning environment aimed at helping each pupil achieve prescribed learning outcomes. Love, hope and responsibility from the adult to the child are the conditions of pedagogical orientation (van Manen, 1991, p. 123). The school and the official curriculum should exist to serve the unique needs of each and every child.
Greene (1995) contends that the point of curriculum making is to: "order experiences in such a fashion as to move diverse persons to mindfulness and care...[and to make] connection between diversely lived experiences and an increasingly meaningful world"(pp. 142 & 144). The enactive presence of pedagogical love within the transactional curriculum encourages students to make meaning rather than to find meaning beyond themselves as in an externally prescribed curriculum-as-plan.
Certain principles such as respect, trust and unconditional love operate within the transactional curriculum. Ellsworth (1997) reminds us that a student's relationship to curriculum is often "a messy and unpredictable event that constantly and inevitably passes through the uncontrollable stuff of desire, fear, horror, pleasure, power, anxiety, fantasy and the unthinkable" (p. 46). Oscillation between understanding and misunderstanding occurs in student learning and knowing and is often a result of the flux of emotions, attention and interest within an individual student or within students collectively. van Manen (1991) reminds us that every student, as child, is unique and exhibits: "inclination, sensitivities, modalities of being which soon express themselves in certain choices, interest and desires" (p. 19). Aoki (1993) would contend that these qualities constitute the student's lived curriculum and, rather than being viewed as extraordinary or unusual, must be viewed as common within young people, particularly at the middle or junior high school level. Acceptance of the Other in each student is paramount in the development of pedagogical love between teacher and student at each level of instruction.
Gertrude Buck, an advocate of the progressive education movement at the turn of the twentieth century, believed, as did John Dewey, that pedagogy was founded upon the "democratic ideals of cooperation, freedom of thought and equality" (Bordelon, p. 238). The respect and equality of personhood that a teacher accords a student reinforces the social imperative for human-centered ethics spoken of by Maturana and Varela (1997). Specifically, "as human beings we have only the world which we create with others -- whether we like them or not...and only love helps us bring it forth." (p. 246). Teacher love in the pedagogical relationship of teacher and student breaks the fourth wall, to steal a theatrical term, in which the spectator and protagonist co-determine the meaning of the life-play they are involved in and, of necessity, are required to work out.
Buck contended that in a classroom principled on the ideals of cooperation, freedom of thought and equality that "what benefits the individual also benefits society and vice versa," (p. 257). The transactional curriculum arises out of the interaction of divergent curricula made convergent through the pathic principles of caring, compassion and concern for each child and the democratic principles of cooperation, freedom of thought and equality. All of these elements conjoin in the transactional curriculum through teacher love in loco parentis.
The pedagogical or in loco parentis responsibility of the teacher, as professional educator, consists in respecting each child for what she or he is and for what she or he can become. Pedagogical love draws us, as teachers, in an attitude of caring toward a child or children and is manifested in the concrete real-life situations that represent the give and take, back and forth, the ebb and flow of the transactional curriculum within the classroom. Adult actions and interactions toward a child are intentional and appropriate and are directed toward the positive being and becoming of the child. Pedagogical love gives teachers the patience, tolerance, belief and trust to help children achieve their present and future potential. It also makes it clear that teachers cannot care for children on a daily, moment-to-moment basis, if they do not genuinely love. Love as an auspice of heart in teaching is the condition of pedagogy and the precondition for the pedagogical relationship between the adult and the child in the transactional curriculum that is absolutely essential to the child's growth as a mature, responsible individual (van Manen, 1991).
Coming to terms with the realization that one desires to evidence heart in teaching, requires a re-conceptualizing of one's Being-in-the-world. The teacher incorporates an image of self as Being-in-the-world in a new way that alters their sense of bodily dwelling in the world. The newfound discovery of the interrelated co-existence of heart and mind occupies thoughts and feelings to an extent that appropriate pedagogical action(s) toward children defines their new image of self. Being-in-the-world in the context of classroom teaching means to-be-in-the-world-with-Others. Others form a substantial part of the relationality in the classroom. Teachers interact with Others on a daily basis. Teachers choose the mode or style of interaction with students on both an individual and a group basis. Relationality is part of a social, cultural and educational ethos that has developed through generations of time and, the ontological nature of teaching should not be an impediment to the development of effective pedagogical relationships. Heart in teaching is grounded in attending the pathic and in pedagogical relationship and rests on the teacher's ability to recognize individual student's cognitive and non-cognitive needs and to work with them towards achieving their own goals, hopes, dreams and aspirations.
Each child, as a unique human being, can be enlarged and enlivened in the inclusive, enactive environment of the transactional curriculum. In such classrooms the lived experience of students and teacher co-exist, learning and knowledge co-emerge, the multiplicity of curricula converge, nature and nurture co-originate as product and process; and, the cognitive and non-cognitive learning of each as Other are brought forth through pedagogical love into a new world of knowledge, acceptance and understanding. Truly, in such classroom settings, to borrow a Cohen (1993) line, "the light gets in" (373), and heart in becomes heart of teaching.
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