REVIEW BOOK

REVIEW BOOK :

The Teacher as Expert: A Theoritical and Historical Examination

A.    Book’s Identity

1.      Book’s Title    :           The Teacher as Expert: A Theoritical and Historical Examination

2.      Book’s Cover  :

3.      Author             :           Robert Welker

4.      ISBN               :           0-7914-0797-7

5.      Publishers        :           State University of New York, Albany

6.      Release Date   :           January, 1992

7.      Hard Cover     :           183 pages

8.      Production by :           Dana Foote

9.      Marketing by   :           Theresa A. Swierzowski

10.  Phone              :           866.430.7869

11.  Fax                  :           518.320.1592

B.     Summary

"The question of expertise in teaching runs to the heart of what we have become as a society. Experts are everywhere. What this means and whether this is a good thing are matters that need to be debated. Welker tells us that technology is not enough, and suggests that in teaching, as elsewhere, we can never get by without human judgment and deliberation over values. Welker serves to remind us that even the advocates of specializations and technique must reflect upon and defend their aspiration."--Philip L. Smith, The Ohio State University

At a time of increasing pressure for teachers to become more professional and more technically competent, this book examines in a critical fashion whether teachers should be considered experts. Written in straightforward and accessible prose, Welker examines the concept of expertise through the ideas of notable educational thinkers in the twentieth century--beginning with E.P. Cubberley and George S. Counts and concluding with a chapter on critical theory and the ideas of Maxine Greene and Henry Giroux. Other chapters examine such thinkers as Willard Waller, Daniel Lortie, Alan Tom, Philip Jackson, and Ivan Illich. Each chapter establishes an historical and ideological context and evaluates how the social character of the expert matches the responsibilities. While the idea of the teacher assuming the role of educational expert is gaining increased credibility in the current reform movement, this book shows that the concept fails to describe the senses of moral and social competence required of the teacher. Also the notion of the expert teacher might stand in the way of teachers forming the type of public partnerships necessary for them to complete their tasks adequately.

C.    Contents of The Book

Chapter one: Introduction. This book examines the phenomenon of expertise, especially as it relates to the understanding of the teaching craft. Many publications have either decried or celebrated the emergence of the expert as it applies to specific fields such as politics and medicine and as it applies to social affairs generally. Here we treat expertise as the basis for examining the practice of teaching. At the outset, an important distinction needs to be made with reagard to the meaning of the word “expertise”. In this work, expertise is conceived primarily as a sociological phenomenon rather than simply as a technical or scientific accomplishment. This means that expertise concerns human relations and moral and civic responbilities as much as it does the accumulation of technical knowledge and skill. This has implications for our consideration of the expert as a central and indispensable figure in Western culture. An expert is more than a person who knows, he has become a focus of power and authority in our interactions with one another.

Chapter two: Expertise in Progressive Thought. Chapter two begins the examination with an analysis of expertise as conceived in the progressive era. David Tyack has noted that the progressive education movement contained different strands, and chapter two will attempt to review two of the strands in the thought of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley and George S. Counts. Cubberley led a group of educators whom Tyack refers to as administrative progressives. Counts was a leading social resconstructionist. Both thinkers had different ideas about the practice of teaching, particularly with regard to the place of technical knowledge and social obligation in informing a teacher’s duties. This raised questions about who should have power and control over the schools. In the conflict between the views of Cubberley and Counts and in a concluding examination of the ideas of Jane Addams we face for the first time the limitations of reserving educational decisions to the province of a special group.

Chapter three: Moral Authority and Technical Competence, The Teacher as Professional. Chapter three examines expertise as an aspect of professionalism. Two of the most prominent sociological studies of teaching, written by Willard Waller and Daniel Lortie, will be analyzed in this chapter. Lortie, worried about the development of a technical subculture, advocates a more exclusive profession. Waller, worried about the restriction of a teacher’s role in a highly structured institutions, advocates a more open concept of a teacher’s practice. In many ways it is possible to see Lortie as a proponent of the teacher-expert and Waller as an opponent. Questions are raised about each of their views.

Chapter four: The Teacher as Expert Authority, The Romantic Critique. Chapter four examines the origins and thinking of many of the leaders of the “romantic” movement in education. Focusing on the thought of several of the modern romantic, particularly Ivan Illich, the idea of the teacher as expert is directly confronted, particularly because it has seemed so diametrically opposed to the romantic view of the teaching practice. Nonetheless, as the examination of Illich hopes to make clear, the romantic idea of individualism is in many ways consistent with the idea of individualism that underlies expertise. This suggests that theoretically the positions of those approving or disapproving of a more scientific and exclusive teaching profession may not be that far apart.

Chapter five and six: The Modern Critique and Expertise, Postmodernism & Critical Pedagogy, The Search for the Public Good. The final two chapters bring the discussion into the modern era with a brief review of some of the current debate about the liberal and the technical in the practice of teachers. The recent work of Philip Jackson and Alan Tom will be reviewed, and the thought of Maxine Greene and Henry Giroux will be analyzed. This thinkers have begun to question the concept of expertise most directly. They have seen in expertise an abandonment of moral and social responsibility for the patriarchal language of technical competence. Greene and Giroux especially have seen the professionalization project as another aspect of hegemony, the project of the powerful to determine cultural legitimacy and the language of dominance. Despite the harshnessof this criticism, it is clear that such ideas have a history and follow in many ways the thought of theorists previously examined. Yet they attempt to move beyond the past, to understand the practice of teaching in a more cooperative, interactive, and interdependent manner. Their ideas suggest ways to overcome the excessively technical and dominant concept of the teacher as expert.

D.    Review of the Book

This book examines the phenomenon of expertise, especially as it relates to the understanding of the teaching craft. Many publications have either decried or celebrated the emergence of the expert as it applies to specific fields such as politics and medicine and as it applies to social affairs generally. Here we treat expertise as the basis for examining the practice of teaching.

At the outset, an important distinction needs to be made with regard to the meaning of the word “expertise”. In this work, expertise is conceived primarily as a sociological phenomenon rather than simply as a technical or scientific accomplishment. This means that expertise concerns human relation and moral and civic responsibilities as much as it does the accumulation of technical knowledge and skill. This has implications for our consideration of the expert as a central and indispensable figure in Western culture. An expert is more than a person who knows, he has become a focus of power and authority in our interactions with one another.

Ultimately and unavoidably, this understandings have had great bearing on how people have come to understand the field of education. As in other occupations, educators have continually asserted their particular competence in a specialized area of knowledge. They have repeatedly debated the technical skills required by the teacher’s craft. Even more crucially, they have been concerned with the moral and social responsibilities of the teacher in the modern age. The question of whether regular classroom teachers should assert themselves as educational expert has rarely been faced directly until very recently. Nonetheless, as we shall see by examining the thought of a variety of educational leaders, the issues of expertise have been consistently raised. This work will argue that despite its many obvious advantages, the idea of the teacher as expert has certain limitations. It can be asserted only at some damage to a more public, inclusive, and moral understanding of a teacher’s practice.

Most people think about the prominence of expertise in far less abstract and apocalyptic terms. It arises simply and naturally out of common experience, and out of the need to make sense of an evermore complex technical world. We will be concerned with a particular type of expert, the professional educator, yet experts abound in all areas of contemporary life. The reliance on them seems part of the very fabric of modern existence. The mechanic, the electrician, the small appliance repair person, and even the person who might style our hair or train our dog, can be considered experts.

This does not mean, in any sense, that the modern reliance on experts lacks all rational explanation. It’s just that in the rush of current events, few have the time or the training to check on expert decisions. Bell asserts that the very tenor of life has changed in the modern age, that lives have become more complex, and that common sense and common knowledge cannot solve all our problems. The economy is marked by an unprecedented division of labor, and technical knowledge has exploded fantastically. Theodore Caplow traces such an explosion through the number of specializations that have grown in the academic disciplines and in the labor force overall. Bell notes the growth in library acquisitions and the vast increase in the number of publications that serve such specialties. Others have noted that exponential increase in information, particularly in the sciences. In any case, such growth indicates on the larger scale a greater breadth of human knowledge. On the individual level, it indicates a narrowing of perspective and the need to depend on those who have confined their vision to a particular area of concern.

All of this might be more understandable and less overwhelming if the nature of social relations weren’t so affected. For example, it seems impossible not to recognize the ironic obscurity and mystery that has attended the increase in scientific and technical knowledge and the growth in specialization. Jobs have become so specifically defined that it is difficult for people to tell others exactly what they do. It is more difficult for workers to understand or take responsibility for a larger product, and it is more difficult for people to see themselves affecting the huge bureaucracies that mark modern life. Finally, and perhaps most symbolically, most people seem to have little understanding of the most basic scientific principles, and they have only the most cursory understanding of the technical innovations and conveniences that they use each day.

E.     Conclusion

The service obligation of the professional educator seems not peripheral but central, and it seems inappropriate for it to be thrown into the shadow of increased technical competence. This conveys a central difference between the social relations governing the exchange between an expert and a layperson and the social relations that ideally exist between a teacher and student. Generally the epistemic authority of the teacher seems justified only as it “self-destructs”. Usually the intervention of expert services leaves the reason and nature of client dependency untouched. The client remains in an unequal and subservient relationship; he has not developed the abilities to serve his own needs. By contrast, the teacher whose knowledge has not been used to make the student less dependent has failed. The point of educational service is to get the student to perform, not to reserve performance for the teacher.

No doubt teachers too have much to learn about developing the types of institutional arrangements that make learning truly accessible to all elements of the population. Teachers will continue to be the special group most responsible for the education of the young; this seems unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. But many of the thinkers examined in this work have recommended limits. We must affirm that a public educational system built around exclusive knowledge and exclusive privilege operates at cross purposes. The practice of the teacher, no matter the amount of skill and knowledge involved, requires at the very least this unavoidable connection to both the wisdom and the needs of the common people. To keep that connection alive is critical for the teacher as well as for others who make a living by their special knowledge.

F.     Author’s Biography

Dr. Welker, professor of Education, teaches courses in high school curriculum and instruction, and the philosophy and sociology of education. He has been involved in collaborative school reform efforts and helped found the Center for Professional Development and the Springfield-Wittenberg Teacher Institute. He currently serves as Director of Program Approval, a position that oversees the university’s teacher preparation accreditation. He works on school partnerships as the Director of Wittenberg’s new Center for Educational Innovation.

He has published on topics related to issues of professionalism and professional identity. He also does research on social issues as they affect the schools including youth violence and character education. His The Teachers as Expert: A Sociological and Historical Critique was published in 1993 and won the "Critics Choice Award" as one of the top three books published in the field for that year. He works in the area of service learning and is one of the founding members of Youth as Resources, a grant-giving organization for youth providing service to the community