Walking the Talk: The Complexities of Teaching about Teaching

Overview This paper describes and evaluates an attempt to enact pedagogical principles grounded in a neo-Vygotskian framework in an undergraduate level course at a major research university in the United States. The course, 92B: Introduction to Theories of Education, is one of three courses required of undergraduates who decide to minor in education at this university. The course may also serve to fulfill the university's GenED requirements. Offered once each year, the course typically attracts a large number of undergraduate students (300+) from across all disciplinary majors and class years, many of whom are considering a career in teaching. The paper begins with a consideration of evolving approaches to pedagogic practice in public education. A discussion of several calls for an alternative to the didactic lecture-style format of large undergraduate introductory courses follows. Largely, we argue, school routines, roles, and identities, are historically sustained by broad institutional forces shaping several sectors of public life in the U.S. Large lecture formats in undergraduate study are no exception. The discussion then moves to explicate the alternative course design we created to supplement a didactic lecture format, and the neo-Vygotskian rationale guiding that design process. Next, a brief description of the methods used to assess the students' response to various aspects of the course is followed by the results of that analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion of: the student experience of the course as an interruption or contradiction in their institutional careers as " good students " ; the ways in which such interruptions serve as " occasions for sensemaking " (Weick, 1995); and the sensemaking strategies students employed when faced with institutional interruptions.