Cohen, David K. Teaching and Its Predicaments. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).
Educator David Cohen offers a compelling framework for thinking about the nature of teaching. He begins by proposing that teachers are engaged in the work of human improvement, which is inherently difficult because they can succeed only if students are willing to engage with them. Next he acknowledges that a great deal of teaching and learning occur in many areas of everyday life. What distinguishes these informal activities from deliberate teaching practice is the teachers’ careful attention to the ways in which their efforts and learners are connecting. With these two premises as a foundation, he lays out three terrains in which teachers and learners meet:
One is the knowledge that teachers extend to learners, and how they extend it. The second is the organization of instructional discourse. The third is teachers’ acquaintance with students’ knowledge.
Teachers may choose to attend to these three terrains in fairly direct, straightforward ways that minimize uncertainty and ambiguity. Or they may choose to enter deeply into the terrains, attending to the many nuances of any given teaching endeavor. Having provided this overarching framework for thinking about teaching, Cohen then elaborates on the many issues that complicate the ways in which teachers may (or may not) be able to enact the role they envision for themselves.
We particularly value this book because of the way Cohen’s thesis dovetails with our view of teachers as scholar-practitioners. His ideas are particularly relevant to the scholar-practitioner quality of contextual literacy.