(Page 1 of 12) - From Silence to Dissent: Fostering Critical Voice in an Era of Compliance authored by Marlowe, Bruce. and Canestrari, Alan.

From Silence to Dissent: Fostering Critical Voice in an Era of
Compliance

Abstract

Despite their sense of expectation, their enthusiasm and energy, new teachers too often
become assimilated into school cultures that are characterized by cynicism, resignation,
and, ultimately, compliance. The reasons for this negative socialization are obviously
complex, but we believe that such resignation is, at least in part, due to a lack of pre-
service opportunity for potential teachers to think critically about the familiar, cyclical
nature of reform and retrenchment, one of the most salient characteristics of American
public education. This proposal addresses the cognitive dissonance many teacher
education students develop as they begin to reflect on the incongruity between what they
are learning at the university and what they are seeing in public school classrooms, and
offers a departure point for helping pre-service teachers develop a critical voice as they
enter a profession where silence is increasingly expected.

Keywords: teacher preparation, pre-service teachers, critical theory, critical voice,
negative socialization, reform

The expected influx of novice teachers offers both a promise and a challenge for

the American educational system. The promise is that there will be unprecedented
opportunities to foster cultural renewal and widespread innovation. Challenges, however,
will abound as well.
Despite their sense of expectation, their enthusiasm and energy, new teachers too often
become assimilated into school cultures that are characterized by cynicism, resignation,
and, ultimately, compliance. As Albert Shanker once famously remarked, it only takes
about 6 weeks for new teachers to look like old ones. The reasons for this sad state of
affairs are obviously complex, but we believe that such resignation is, at least in part, due
to a lack of pre-service opportunity for potential teachers to think critically about the
familiar, cyclical nature of reform and retrenchment, which is, perhaps, the most salient
characteristic of American public education.

Like the standards movement, which actually began with arguments for a more

student-centered pedagogy, virtually all waves of American educational reform begin by
promoting the value of greater school, teacher, or student autonomy, and then, inevitably,
end with retrenchment, with a return to rigid, top-down mandates designed to insure
everyone does the same thing, at the same time and in the same way.
Dewey (1938) framed this cycle of reform and retrenchment this way:

The history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that
education is development from within and that it is formation from without; that it is
based upon natural endowments and that education is a process of overcoming natural
inclination and substituting in its place habits acquired under external pressure. (p. 17)

Nearly seventy years later, new teachers still struggle to find a balance between

complying with state-imposed mandates and making classrooms their own. In the United