Inside Teaching: How Classroom Life Undermines Reform [Paperback]

Reform the schools, improve teaching: these battle cries of American education have been echoing for twenty years. So why does teaching change so little?

Arguing that too many would-be reformers know nothing about the conflicting demands of teaching, Mary Kennedy takes us into the controlled commotion of the classroom, revealing how painstakingly teachers plan their lessons, and how many different ways things go awry. Teachers try simultaneously to keep track of materials, time, students, and ideas. In their effort to hold all of these things together, they can inadvertently quash students' enthusiasm and miss valuable teachable moments.

Kennedy argues that pedagogical reform proposals that do not acknowledge all of the things teachers need to do are bound to fail. If reformers want students to learn, they must address all of the problems teachers face, not just those that interest them.

An absolutely outstanding book, and a major contribution to the literature on teaching. Inside Teaching advances our understanding of teaching practice by giving a disciplined, empirical account of the ways in which teachers conceive of and enact their practice, and [relates it to] current debates about education reform. Every student in my class will be reading this book.Anyone interested in the relationship between policy and practice, the (slow) progress of reform, and the nature of teachers' work in the face of persistent but shifting reform pressures will find Inside Teaching a remarkable contribution.This thoughtfully conceived and clearly presented study sheds light on typical teacher concerns and approaches and concludes with the recommendation that reform initiatives will succeed only if their authors are responsive to the full range of complexities that teachers face on a daily basis.A wonderful new book...The reader is likely to come away from Inside Teaching wondering whether the real problem isn't reformers' unrealistic expectations. Essentially, tlC¯