Teaching and Its Predicaments

by David K. Cohen

Overview

Ever since Socrates, teaching has been a difficult and even dangerous profession. Why is good teaching such hard work?

In this provocative, witty, and sometimes rueful book, David K. Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face. Like therapists, social workers, and pastors, teachers embark on a mission of human improvement. They aim to deepen knowledge, broaden understanding, sharpen skills, and change behavior. One predicament is that no matter how great their expertise, teachers depend on the cooperation and intelligence of their students, yet there is much that students do not know. To teach responsibly, teachers must cultivate a kind of mental double vision: distancing themselves from their own knowledge to understand students’ thinking, yet using their knowledge to guide their teaching. Another predicament is that although attention to students’ thinking improves the chances of learning, it also increases the uncertainty and complexity of the job.

The circumstances in which teachers and students work make a difference. Teachers and students are better able to manage these predicaments if they have resources—common curricula, intelligent assessments, and teacher education tied to both—that support responsible teaching. Yet for most of U.S. history those resources have been in short supply, and many current accountability policies are little help. With a keen eye for the moment-to-moment challenges, Cohen explores what “responsible teaching” can be, the kind of mind reading it seems to demand, and the complex social resources it requires.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674051102
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David K. Cohen is John Dewey Collegiate Professor of Education and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Improve Teaching?
2. Human Improvement
3. Teaching
4. The Social Resources of Teaching
5. Knowledge and Teaching
6. Instructional Discourse
7. Teachers’ Acquaintance with Students’ Knowledge
8. Improve Teaching
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Cohen draws upon his considerable expertise as he delivers a deeply insightful critique that unravels the mess that has become the current state of public education in the US. He contends that without identifying the predicaments facing American public educators, corrective solutions, reform initiatives, and supportive legislation cannot seriously be discussed or considered. In this bluntly honest little book, Cohen pinpoints both existing and historic obstacles to meaningful educational reform, and dissects failed political attempts at correction with concise precision. This book is not just a succinct, thought-provoking critique; Cohen also provides readers with enlightened comparative vantage points by which they can examine both teaching and learning from new perspectives.

Choice - L. O. Wilson

How do you go about teaching teachers how to teach? David K. Cohen's Teaching and Its Predicaments takes on that paradox...Its descriptions of the task facing teachers are superb...His book offers a thoughtful account of the challenge.

Fortune - David A. Kaplan

Policy schemes abound today for improving teaching in our nation's schools. Yet few seem to comprehend what quality education in the 21st century actually entails for teaching in America's classrooms. 'Take the tour' with David Cohen through Teaching and Its Predicaments. It is an essential primer for educational reformers, as we cannot improve what we do not really understand.

Anthony S. Bryk

In this incisive little book, David Cohen shows why the ambitious teaching that offers students real intellectual challenge is always praised and yet so seldom achieved in America. Expertise is not enough: teachers need empathy, persistence, familiarity with their students, and back-up from their colleagues and the community. Since teachers can succeed only if the students succeed, they always face a dilemma: less ambitious goals and thus easier success, or more ambitious goals with greater chance of failure (and student resistance)? Cohen argues that attempts at teaching reform fail because disappointing student achievement is invariably blamed on individual schools and teachers, instead of a fragmented system without broadly shared standards, skills, and resources. If American teaching is weak, it's because every teacher is asked to reinvent teaching every day. Teaching and Its Predicaments offers a startling new understanding of our problems and points the way to a solution.

Milbrey McLaughlin

In this incisive little book, David Cohen shows why the ambitious teaching that offers students real intellectual challenge is always praised and yet so seldom achieved in America. Expertise is not enough: teachers need empathy, persistence, familiarity with their students, and back-up from their colleagues and the community. Since teachers can succeed only if the students succeed, they always face a dilemma: less ambitious goals and thus easier success, or more ambitious goals with greater chance of failure (and student resistance)? Cohen argues that attempts at teaching reform fail because disappointing student achievement is invariably blamed on individual schools and teachers, instead of a fragmented system without broadly shared standards, skills, and resources. If American teaching is weak, it's because every teacher is asked to reinvent teaching every day. Teaching and Its Predicaments offers a startling new understanding of our problems and points the way to a solution.
-- Milbrey McLaughlin, Stanford University

Policy schemes abound today for improving teaching in our nation's schools. Yet few seem to comprehend what quality education in the 21st century actually entails for teaching in America's classrooms. 'Take the tour' with David Cohen through Teaching and Its Predicaments. It is an essential primer for educational reformers, as we cannot improve what we do not really understand.
-- Anthony S. Bryk, President, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

How do you go about teaching teachers how to teach? David K. Cohen's Teaching and Its Predicaments takes on that paradox...Its descriptions of the task facing teachers are superb...His book offers a thoughtful account of the challenge.
-- David A. Kaplan Fortune

Cohen draws upon his considerable expertise as he delivers a deeply insightful critique that unravels the mess that has become the current state of public education in the US. He contends that without identifying the predicaments facing American public educators, corrective solutions, reform initiatives, and supportive legislation cannot seriously be discussed or considered. In this bluntly honest little book, Cohen pinpoints both existing and historic obstacles to meaningful educational reform, and dissects failed political attempts at correction with concise precision. This book is not just a succinct, thought-provoking critique; Cohen also provides readers with enlightened comparative vantage points by which they can examine both teaching and learning from new perspectives.
-- L. O. Wilson Choice

From the Publisher

Cohen draws upon his considerable expertise as he delivers a deeply insightful critique that unravels the mess that has become the current state of public education in the US. He contends that without identifying the predicaments facing American public educators, corrective solutions, reform initiatives, and supportive legislation cannot seriously be discussed or considered. In this bluntly honest little book, Cohen pinpoints both existing and historic obstacles to meaningful educational reform, and dissects failed political attempts at correction with concise precision. This book is not just a succinct, thought-provoking critique; Cohen also provides readers with enlightened comparative vantage points by which they can examine both teaching and learning from new perspectives.
— L. O. Wilson

Choice

How do you go about teaching teachers how to teach? David K. Cohen's Teaching and Its Predicaments takes on that paradox...Its descriptions of the task facing teachers are superb...His book offers a thoughtful account of the challenge.
— David A. Kaplan

Fortune

An examination of the quandaries surrounding the teaching profession from various angles.

Cohen (The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools?, 2009, etc.) discusses the complexity of teaching, and in starting with the task of defining the profession, he illustrates the byzantine nature of the American education system.He explains some underlying problems that are often neglected, such as how teachers "do not play a central part in setting standards of occupational quality," and he touches upon conflicts concerning testing and controversies surrounding what the results mean. Cohen emphasizes how educators are not practicing in isolation, which further complicates the matter. If there are limited connections between school and real-world experiences, he writes, then students' investment in the system is compromised. "Teaching in such circumstances is the human improver's version of unrequited love: the prospect of success is appealing, but its costs can be enormous when students' and teachers' work is not framed by contracts to work hard together. The responsibility for improvement is one-sided," he writes. The author mentions societal influences such as the emergence of "well-educated and engaged young teachers in Teach For America" and charter schools as a positive response to the issues, but he does not explain how or why. Cohen's focus seems to drift in his exploration of types of instructional discourse. He does not offer solutions to the predicaments of the book's title, but he does prove that "US public education is not organized to help teachers manage the predicaments of their occupation."

Uneven but ultimately useful for educators and reformers.

Kirkus Reviews