Diem, Josh & Helfenbein, Robert J. (2008). Unsettling Beliefs: Teaching Theory to Teachers. Reviewed by Carolyn Vander Schee, Northern Illinois University

Diem, Josh & Helfenbein, Robert J. (2008). Unsettling Beliefs: Teaching Theory to Teachers. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Pp. xi + 300     $40     ISBN 978-1-59311-670-5 Reviewed by Carolyn Vander Schee Northern Illinois University August 12, 2008 In their book Unsettling Beliefs: Teaching Theory to Teacher, Josh Diem and Robert J. Helfenbein attempt to address the paucity of research devoted to issues related to teaching social theory to preservice teachers. The editors’ intended goal was not to provide readers a how-to guide of “best practices” but a malleable template that can inform and hopefully enlighten the work of teacher educators committed to engaging preservice teachers with critical perspectives on social theory. The editors accomplish their goal through the compilation of 14 rich, varied, and theoretically informed narratives on the ways in which experienced teacher educators introduce, orchestrate and attempt to make social theory critically relevant to preservice teachers. The book's 14 chapters include firsthand accounts from educators who have created transformative classrooms experiences that introduce preservice education students to social theory with the ultimate hope of stimulating radical social change. As a whole then, the book offers a rare glimpse into social theory classrooms across the United States. Each chapter however, is embedded within and informed by its own theoretical orientation (i.e., cultural studies, Freirian inspired, critical pedagogy, radical feminist etc.) as well as distinct in terms of its thematic focus (i.e., issues related to human rights, gender, culture, race etc.). Despite this assorted compilation, contributors successfully address some common overarching issues related to the role, place and pedagogy of social theory within teacher education programs. A number of the authors also address the varied kinds of resistance educators might face throughout the task of asking students to engage in difficult theoretical conversations that inevitably “unsettle” students’ world as they have previously imagined it. The range of topics as well as the diversity in pedagogical approaches employed by the contributors makes the book both thematically rich in breadth while offering significant theoretical depth. Without discounting the careful work and attention to detail on behalf of the editors, in many ways the beauty of this congruous eclectic whole speaks to multifarious challenges and possibilities of the study and application of social theory within teacher education programs. In Chapter 1 Helfenbein employs a cultural studies approach to understand the ways in which individuals become teachers and “take up that new identity of teacher” (p. 1). He first offers a brief overview of the field of cultural studies as this might relate to the developing identities of teachers. In laying this foundation, Helfenbein poses an intriguing question: “What is at stake when preservice teachers take the representations of education in popular culture as an object of inquiry?” (p. 2). He then describes the process of how he went about answering this question in his class. Helfenbein details how he used this inquiry/project as a way to (re)vitalize a capstone course in Elementary Education, a field, as he very kindly put, “not known for an explicit engagement with theory” (p. 6). Perhaps related to students’ dearth of “explicit engagement”, Helfenbein discusses the difficulties he experienced involving students with complex theoretical concepts. Finally, Helfenbein elaborates on some student outcomes as well as his own insights gained throughout the process. While cautioning educators to view cultural studies as a “new paradigm in teacher education” (p. 11), Helfenbein’s approach in drawing on social theory as a starting point for dialogue and “further border crossings” does hold the potential to engage students with theory in new and relevant ways. Avner Segall’s chapter, “Why Teaching Social Theory as ‘Theory’ Might Not Be Enough,” echoes a few of the concerns raised in chapter one, specifically related to student engagement with theory. Segnall laments that too few students are required to implicate themselves and their experiences with theory. Students tend to recite, enact and perform learning rather than deeply engage or implicate themselves within it. Segall argues that students often consume and externalize assigned readings as pertinent to “other places, other teachers, other contexts” (p. 17). This predisposition offers students a convenient way to cerebrally “disengage from a text even as they purportedly engage in it” (p. 17). Segall then provides a very detailed account of how he encourages students to critically reflect on theory through active theorizing, imagining alternative possibilities and crafting theoretical positions. Beth Hatt’s tightly written chapter follows very nicely from the preceding one. Hatt offers yet another creative way for educators to play with theory in the classroom. In this chapter Hatt describes how she draws on preservice teachers’ own stories as impetus for dialogue, reflection and theorizing. Hatt, like Avner, invites students to actively theorize and implicate themselves within theory. Hatt does this by having students perform theory which she argues is an approach that “allows pre-service teachers to have a concrete image of such abstract concepts such as theory, culture, and power” (p. 33). She then provides a concrete example of how she invites students to perform theories related to cultural capital. I can only surmise that that her fine dining performance inevitably leads to rich conversations about the cultural knowledge and access to schooling as these intersect with issues related to race, class and gender. It was less clear to me how chapter 4 entitled, “A Story of Accountability Talk” fits in with the larger aims of the book. Nevertheless, William R. Black offers a very well written account of his research and thus the piece is important in and of itself. Black diverges from the book’s already rather firmly established focus on teaching social theory to preservice teachers and attends more deeply to doing social theory as a researcher. The chapter provides valuable insights on issues such as cultural analysis, researcher engagement and, related to this, he offers a very well informed discussion on researcher – participant conflicts that can arise in the field. I see this chapter as being very useful for a graduate-level research methods course or as a resource for advanced students who are considering ethnographic or case study research. Chapter 5 returns to the issues more directly related to the ways in which preservice teachers might learn how to theorize about themselves as related to the processes and institutions of education. William Gaudelli’s chapter, “Critical Pedagogy as Alternative Crisis Curriculum” offers yet another creative way for educators to more deeply engage students with theory. In this case, Gaudelli uses a critical pedagogy approach coupled with what he terms, alternative crisis pedagogy. Using this approach Gaudelli “create(s) a crisis for [his] students by interrupting their normative concepts about schools and learning, by providing them with an opportunity to retheorize in a way that is socially connected, while setting the stage for acting on warranted beliefs in a recursive manner” (p. 80). Aside from his narrative on how alternative crisis pedagogy might play out in the classroom, Gaudelli also offers an insightful discussion on various obstacles educators and students might face in doing critical, social reflection. Next, Robert K. Pleasants and Matthew B. Ezzell offer various examples of how to model radical feminist pedagogies in the classroom. This chapter reiterates the theme of actively implicating students in producing theory. These authors use issues related to gender and school achievement as the fulcrum of their inquiry. Pleasant and Ezzell offer a variety of ideas and strategies on how educators can model feminist pedagogy as a method for stimulating student engagement. Further, their lengthy discussion on dealing with student resistance is particularly novel and germane. For example, most chapters in the book point out that educators will experience student resistance, however Pleasants and Ezzell provide a detailed account of the various kinds of defensive postures that students actuate in order to avoid theoretical implication. Finally, these authors suggest ways in which educators might suggest counter narratives which can gently move students through their resistance. The theme of overcoming student resistance in deconstructing problematic social issues continues in Josh Diem’s chapter entitled, “But That’s in the Past, Right?: Using Theories of Whiteness to Challenge Meritocracy and Disrupt the Racist Narrative of Racism.” Diem uses this chapter to justify why he uses whiteness (opposed to racism) to disrupt the presumably meritocratic system of schooling. Diem’s pedagogical goal is seemingly straightforward: “I want my students to practice anti-racist pedagogy that is informed by their own pedagogy of whiteness” (p. 111). Achieving this, of course is neither straightforward nor simple as it “moves [students] away from a simplified black/white dichotomous view of race and racism.” Through considering the question, “why we do school?” (p. 122), Diem challenges his students to consider, recognize and name the ways in which they have personally benefited from the institutional arrangements and social structures that privileges whites. Throughout this process he encourages his students to develop their own voice, or he writes: I tell students throughout the semester that in the context of the course I don’t care what they think. The conclusions that they reach, in the context of the bounds of the course, are not what I deem important. Rather, I care that the students have a critical understanding of why they think what they think, and they can articulate that rationale and it can withstand scrutiny and critique… From the moment students walk in the door and the semester begins, they understand that they will have to think, and for most of them, this will be a dramatic departure from what they are accustomed to doing in school (p. 125). Apart from giving me an excuse to use the phrase “I don’t care what you think,” in my own classroom, Diem’s succinct statement reflecting his expectations for students serves as an example of the kind of language that educators might use to articulate similar sentiments. In sum, Diem provides readers a rich account of the ways in which whiteness manifests itself in student lives, classrooms and society at-large. In chapter 8 entitled, “Positioning Culture in the Curriculum: A Freirian Orientation Toward the ‘Thinking that Gets Thought’ in Teacher Education,” Erik Malewski attempts to create interactive learning experiences for preservice teachers that challenge their views on the relevance and place of multicultural education. Drawing on a Freirian inspired social theory and more specifically, the dimensions personalization, dialogue, and praxis, Malewski encourages his students to move beyond the banking notion of education or as he wrote, a “ ‘curriculum of deliverables’ toward ‘curriculum as critical consciousness wedded with praxis’ ” (p. 161). Particularly profound in this chapter is the possibility of using a project such as this as a starting point to engage students by infusing theory throughout both the classroom and fieldwork components of their education. Myers offered a glimpse into one 160-minute class period that he has structured around introducing social studies preservice students to issues related to human rights. While human rights is not typically incorporated into the secondary education curriculum, Myers describes how teaching these concepts is not only pedagogical appropriate but perhaps nationally and globally necessary and responsible. Reflecting on his research, Myers identifies two challenges that arise when introducing human rights into the curriculum. First, “most of the students believed that rights were defined within the national context” (p. 179). Students had a difficult time attempting to decouple rights from its definable place in the United States official documentation (i.e., Bill of Rights.) Second, Myers noted that most students tended to associate the value or need for human rights “with developing, undemocratic nations” (p. 179). These findings underscore the value of using human rights as a pedagogical tool to educate students on issues related to broader social inequities so that students can begin to connect these to “educational inequities, as part of broader patters across the world” (p. 180). In chapter 10 Hytten argues that educators should assist students in becoming philsophers of their own education. Among other strategies, Hytten suggests that educators create classroom spaces that actively cultivate a “pedagogy of questions.” She explains: “a pedagogy of questions is a pedagogy that affirms students as agents in the world and that heightens their engagement with ideas” (p. 193). It is a Freirian inspired pedagogy that draws on students’ curiosity, dissatisfaction with status quo and sense of what “could be.” This, she maintains, is likely to be a difficult and messy pedagogical project for students who have been subject to and have achieved “success” within the kind of a high-stakes, positivistic, true/false academic experience. As Hytten cogently explains “we tend to ask students to come up [with] the ‘right’ answer to questions, as opposed to helping them deal with the fact that there may be no right answers, and instead only more or less persuasive possibilities” (p. 194). As a result students have neither the patience nor skill to deal with ambiguous, perplexing, works-in-progress kinds of issues. Throughout the chapter Hytten makes a convincing argument that by encouraging students to think, learn and take on habits of philosophers, they will ultimately be better able to advocate for social justice. I have to admit that Kip Kline’s chapter “Beyond Utopianism and Pessimism: Teaching Prophetic Pragmatism’s Tragic Sense” made me smile more than once. The chapter begins with what I hear over and over again in my own preservice education classes when I ask students as to why they want to be teachers. The overwhelming response, as Kline echoes is, “I love children. I want to work with children” (p. 202). In my own classes, I typically follow up by very tenderly inquiring (if it is even possible to do so), “What if children don’t love or want to work with you?” Typically, my ever-so-bubbly elementary education students cannot even imagine such a possibility. Obviously, my strategy needs work and that is why I so thoroughly enjoyed reading this chapter. Kline suggests the need for a tragic sense in education; a perspective that would avoid tendencies toward utopianism or pessimism, but would emphasize the possibilities of human agency and change. The tragic sense in education presents a way to infuse hope and a very real promise of “something better” into discourses of education. Kline draws heavily on Cornel West’s writings on prophetic thought to “consider the notion of ‘teacher as prophetic thinker.’ This approach not only invites a deeper examination of the tragic sense in prophetic pragmatism, but also fuses theory and practice as students of education consider the theoretical notion of prophetic thought in light of actual teacher practices” (p. 210). Kline offers a useful framework where he invites students to become prophetic thinkers through developing their capacities to discern, connect, track hypocrisy and hope. Hope, Kline maintains, “is not to be conflated with optimism” but is markedly distinct by incorporating “the primacy of human agency and an audacious sense of hope that yield[s] ameliorative power” (p. 213). Richard Conely’s chapter, “Crying Out Without Hope: The Silence of Teachers,” is, simply put, much less hopeful. This chapter examines the reasons why high-performing teachers leave high-performing schools. From an organizational viewpoint, Conely examines teacher narratives which reveal teachers’ concerns and struggles that influenced their decision to leave their school. Conely offers an interesting perspective and commentary of issues related to socialization, collaboration, collegiality and somewhat ironically related to these activities, frustration and the silencing of new teacher voices. He concludes the chapter with some recommendations and challenges that Professional Learning Communities must reconcile and address if they are to be as transformative as they so widely claim. “Teaching Theory as “Other” to White Urban Practitioners: Mining and Priming Freirean Critical Pedagogy in Resistant Bodies” offers readers yet another example of an educator using innovative and provocative teaching techniques to stimulate students to consider important social issues. In this case, Sherick A. Hughes draws on a Frierean inspired pedagogy to “engage graduate students in dialectical discussions and critical demonstrations of social theorizing coupled with practicing… to minimize educational privileges and oppression in urban preK-16 education” (p. 248). Hughes attempts to accomplish this goal by utilizing techniques of critical reflexive autoethnography throughout his courses. In doing so, he effectively challenges and, to some extent, further complicates (in a good way) classroom conversations of privilege, resistance, oppression, othering, and critical praxis. Finally, Silvia Cristina Bettez’s chapter on “Social Justice Activist Teaching in the University Classroom” provides readers with a way in which academics might be involved in social action – through promoting a pedagogy of social justice. Bettez underscores the necessity for social justice work to involve some action that “deconstructs power imbalances and promotes equity” (p. 276). Considering her own practice, Bettez suggests seven components for educators to consider when teaching toward social justice activism. While cautioning against viewing her list as complete and inclusive, she poignantly reiterates at the end of her chapter what many of the authors have already suggested and, what is perhaps one of the main themes of the book: “It is through reflection and dialogue that we may improve our practice” (p. 294). In sum, Diem and Helfenbeim’s book makes an important contribution to the field of education by offering a theoretically rich compilation of insights from innovative and reflective educators who are committed to issues of equality, justice and social change. The book tackles a number of highly relevant and complex pedagogical issues that many preservice educators encounter in the classroom. The book is accessible and practical for novice instructors as well as advanced educators. As one of the contributors William Gaudelli aptly wrote, “I offer my insights… not as a guide to best practice, but rather as grist for the mill that invites discursive engagement in the spirit of critical social reflection” (p. 85). To this end, the contributors have provided a brief glimpse into the artistry of their particular pedagogical craft on issues that stimulate, impassion and invigorate them and their students. Their hope in so sharing is to be apart of fostering a generation of reflective, critically and socially knowledgeable teachers who are willing to be “unsettled” and, as a result, will create positive radical social change. About the Reviewer Carolyn Vander Schee is Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL. Her research interests include the intersections of educational policy studies, sociology of education, and school health issues. Carolyn received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies from Georgia State University.