Teaching and Its Predicaments

David K. Cohen

Published by Harvard University Press 2011

Teaching and Its Predicaments

David K. Cohen

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674262720

Overview
Contents

About this book

Since Socrates, teaching has been a difficult and even dangerous profession. Why is teaching such hard work? In this provocative, witty, sometimes rueful book, Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face and explores what responsible teaching can be. He focuses on the kind of mind reading teaching demands and the resources it requires.

Reviews

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

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1 Improve Teaching? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Human Improvement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	4
3 Teaching Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
4 The Social Resources of Teaching Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
5 Knowledge and Teaching Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
6 Instructional Discourse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
7 Teachers’ Acquaintance with Students’ Knowledge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
8 Improve Teaching Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 248

eBook

Published: August 31, 2011
ISBN: 9780674262720