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
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