Journal of TeacherEducation, Vol. 51, No. 3, May/June 2000Journal of TeacherEducation, Vol. 51, No. 3, May/June 2000
ON THE NATURE OF TEACHING AND
TEACHER EDUCATION
DIFFICULT PRACTICES THAT LOOK EASY
David F. Labaree
Michigan State University
The effort over the past 150 years to create an effective and respected system for preparing teachers
in the United States has not been easy. A large body of research on the history of teacher-education
reform is a tale of persistent mediocrity and resistance to change. The author’s aim in this article is
not to revisit this sad story, but to examine an old and enduring problem that has long blocked the
path to a truly professional education for teachers, that teaching is an enormously difficult job that
looks easy. The author explores the roots of the gap between the reality and the perception of learning
to teach by first spelling out some of the characteristics of teaching that make it such a difficult form
of professional practice. He then examines key elements in the nature of teaching that make the pro-
cess of becoming a teacher seem so uncomplicated.
Consider some of the major factors that make
teaching and teacher education such difficult
practices.
The Problem of Client Cooperation
At the core of the difficulties facing teachers,
as David Cohen has put it, is that “teaching is a
practice of human improvement” (Cohen, 1988,
p. 55). One problem that arises from being in
such a practice is that these “practitioners
depend on their clients to achieve any results”
(p. 57). A surgeon can fix the ailment of a patient
who sleeps through the operation, and a lawyer
can successfully defend a client who remains
mute during the trial, but success for a teacher
depends heavily on the active cooperation of the
student (Fenstermacher, 1990). The student
must be willing to learn what the teacher is
teaching. Unless this intended learning takes
place, the teacher is understood as having
failed. It was this reciprocal notion of the
teacher-student relationship that Dewey (1933)
had in mind when he said, “There is the same
exact equation between teaching and learning
that there is between selling and buying” (as
quoted in Jackson, 1986, p. 81). That is, you can’t
be a good salesperson unless someone is buy
-
ing, and you can’t be a good teacher unless
someone is learning.
Consider how terribly difficult this makes
things for teachers and others trying to work as
practitioners of human improvement. They
must devote enormous amounts of skill and
effort to the task of motivating the client to coop
-
erate, and still the outcome is far from certain.
The client may choose to spurn the practition
-
er’s offer of improvement out of apathy, habit,
228
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, May/June 2000 228-233
© 2000 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
This is a summary version of a much longer article, “The
Peculiar Problems of Preparing Teachers: Old Hurdles to
the New Professionalism,” which was presented at the
Professional Actions and Cultures of Teaching Conference
in Hong Kong, January 13-14, 1999, and at the Interna
-
tional Conference on “The New Professionalism in Teach
-
ing: Teacher Education and Teacher Development in a
Changing World,” sponsored by the Chinese University of
Hong Kong, January 15-17, 1999. I am grateful to the stu
-
dents in my fall 1998 doctoral seminar for their helpful
comments on an earlier version of this article.
principle, spite, inattention, or whim. In such a
field, success rates are likely to be low, and the
connection between a practitioner’s action and
a client’s outcome is likely to be, at best, indirect.
Therefore, the effectiveness of the practitioner
becomes difficult to establish.
The Problem of a Compulsory Clientele
The difficulty of gaining the compliance of
the student is made even worse for the teacher
because the student is only present in the class
-
room under duress. Acentral fact of school life is
that, given the choice, students would be doing
something other than studying algebra or geog
-
raphy or literature or biology. Part of the com
-
pulsion is legal. But students are likely to feel the
pressure for attendance more directly from their
parents (who want school to take care of chil
-
dren during the day, to help them get ahead, and
even to educate them), from the market (which
makes school credentials mandatory for access
to a good job), and from their own social desires
(school is where their friends are).
No one has written about the consequences of
involuntary learning on both teacher and stu-
dent in more depth or with greater bile than
Waller (1932/1965) did in his classic book, The
Sociology of Teaching:
The teacher-pupil relationship is a form of institu
-
tionalized domination and subordination....The
teacher represents the formal curriculum, and his in
-
terest is in imposing that curriculum upon the chil
-
dren in the form of tasks; pupils are much more
interested in life in their own world than in the desic
-
cated bits of adult life which teachers have to offer.
(pp. 195-196)
According to Waller (1932/1965), control is the
central problem facing the teacher, and every
novice approaching the classroom for the first
time would certainly agree with him.
The Problem of Emotion Management
Another characteristic of teaching that makes
it difficult is the way it requires teachers to
establish and actively manage an emotional
relationship with students. This is in striking
contrast to the norms that govern most profes
-
sions, including those that focus on human
improvement. Consider the characteristics of
the prototypical professional relationship, and
then consider the implications for teaching that
arise from the sharp differences between this
and the teacher-student relationship. Profes
-
sional practitioners in general are expected to
maintain a distinct emotional distance between
themselves and the client. They focus on the
particular problem for which the client is seek
-
ing professional help, they are judged on their
performance in resolving this problem, they
and the client are seen as independent agents
pursuing their own ends through the relation
-
ship, and this relationship is governed by uni
-
versalistic rules of procedure.
These five characteristics of professional-
client relationships are drawn from the “pattern
variables” developed by Parsons (1951), which
are five pairs of alternative orientations that can
be used to define distinctive types of role rela-
tionships: (a) affective neutrality versus affec-
tivity, (b) specificity versus diffuseness, (c)
achievement versus ascription, (d) self versus
collective orientation, and (e) universalism ver-
sus particularism. As the theory goes, profes-
sionals in their interaction with clients are gov-
erned by the first orientation in each of these
pairs. In this regard, they fit in a large category
of limited and utilitarian role relationships that
sociologists term secondary, in contrast to pri
-
mary relationships, which are broad and emo
-
tionally involving.
In comparison to the relative clarity of the
role defined for the typical professional, teach
-
ers find themselves in a much more complicated
role environment. Teachers need to develop a
broad relationship with students for the pur
-
pose of understanding their learning problems
(Fenstermacher, 1990). They also need to estab
-
lish an emotional link to motivate the student to
participate actively in the learning process.
There are several characteristics of this need
to establish an affectionate relationship with
students that add profoundly to the difficulty
involved in being a good teacher. First, there is
no guidebook for how to accomplish this for
any particular teacher in a particular classroom.
Like other practitioners in the professions of
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, May/June 2000 229
human improvement, teachers have to work
things out on their own, without being able to
fall back on standards of acceptable profes
-
sional practice such as those that guide lawyers,
doctors, and accountants. At the start of their
careers, teachers fumble around for a way to
establish an emotional link with students that is
effective and sustainable, for the teaching per
-
sona that works best for them. This persona is
both natural, in that it draws on characteristics
and strengths of the teacher as a person, and
constructed, in that it is put together to serve the
ends of promoting learning in the classroom.
Second, the practice of teaching throws the
teacher into an extraordinarily complex role
that in awkward fashion combines characteris
-
tics of both primary and secondary relation
-
ships. In Parsons’s (1951) terms, the teacher role
combines a mandate for emotional closeness
and diffuse interaction, both characteristic of
primary roles, with mandates for achievement
(giving students rewards based on perform-
ance, not ascribed traits), independence
(encouraging students to develop and rely on
their own skills and knowledge), and universal-
istic application of rules (treating all students
the same), all of which are characteristic of sec-
ondary roles. Teachers are asked to use the lev-
erage obtained from their primary relations
with students to support the teaching of a cur-
riculum that is external to these primary ties. To
be really good at teaching requires a remarkable
capacity for preserving a creative tension
between these opposites, never losing sight of
either teaching’s relational means or its curricu
-
lar goal.
Third, teachers face the strain of trying to
manage the emotional relationship with stu
-
dents by maintaining the teaching persona that
makes this relationship work. Maintaining the
teaching persona is a case of what Hochschild
(1983) refers to as “emotion management.” In
her book, The Managed Heart, she explores a
variety of “jobs that call for emotional labor” by
requiring “the worker to produce an emotional
state in another” (Hochschild, 1983, p. 147). She
never refers directly to teachers in this study, but
her analysis fits teachers all too well. These
types of jobs, she argues, are particularly diffi
-
cult and stressful because the only way one can
produce the desired emotional state in another
person is by effectively managing one’s own
emotions. The role of the teacher, like the role of
other emotion workers, cannot be taken on
superficially if one is going to be effective in this
role. The aim is to have an impact on the emo
-
tions of the student, and in emotional matters,
students have sensitive antennae for detecting a
fake.
The Problem of Structural Isolation
Exacerbating the teacher’s problem in trying
to motivate the captive learner is the condition
of structural isolation within which the teacher
has to operate. Ever since the invention of age-
graded education early in the 19th century,
teachers have found themselves plying their
trade within the four walls of the self-contained
classroom. They normally teach under condi-
tions where they are the only professional in the
room, left to their own devices to figure out a
way to manage a group of 30 students and move
them through the required curriculum.
One consequence of this is to reinforce the
teacher’s focus on control issues. Vastly out-
numbered by students and cut off from profes
-
sional support, teachers are left to confront the
“two rules governing the hidden tension of
classroom life: unless the teacher establishes
control there will be no learning, and, if the
teacher does not control the students, the stu
-
dents will control the teacher” (Britzman, 1986,
p. 449). To rise to this challenge, the teacher must
turn the classroom into a personal fiefdom, a lit
-
tle duchy complete with its own set of rules and
its own local customs. A related consequence of
isolation is to create a vision of learning to teach
as a private ordeal (Lortie, 1975) and a vision of
the emergent teacher as self-made (Britzman,
1986). This leaves little room for the construc
-
tion of a shared professional culture for teachers
across classroom domains, and it also sharply
230 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, May/June 2000
undercuts the perceived value of teacher prepa
-
ration programs.
The Problem of Chronic Uncertainty
About the Effectiveness of Teaching
The technology of teaching is anything but
certain, and teachers must learn to live with
chronic uncertainty as an essential component
of their professional practice (Cohen, 1988; Flo
-
den & Clark, 1988; Jackson, 1986; Lortie, 1975).
One reason for this is that teachers have to oper
-
ate under the kinds of daunting conditions I
have been outlining in this article, conditions
that introduce unpredictable elements of will
and emotion into the heart of the teaching and
learning processes.
However, even if we focus on the more pre
-
dictable factors shaping teaching and learning,
teaching remains an uncertain enterprise for
another reason: its irreducible complexity. What
we know about teaching is always contingent
on a vast array of intervening variables that
mediate between a teacher’s action and a stu-
dent’s response. As a result, there is always a
ceteris paribus clause hovering over any
instructional prescription: this works better
than that, if everything else is equal.
A third source of uncertainty in the work of
teaching is that we are unable to measure ade
-
quately the effects that teachers have on stu
-
dents. A teacher can measure how many of the
spelling words introduced this week a child can
spell on Friday or how well a student can solve
word problems of the type just covered in class.
But what does this show about the larger and
more meaningful aims the teacher had in mind
when teaching these subjects? The most impor
-
tant outcomes that we want education to make
possible, the preparation of competent, produc
-
tive, and socially responsible adults, are
removed from any particular classroom interac
-
tion between teacher and student by many
years and many other intervening factors.
A fourth source of uncertainty in teaching is
the complex and often contradictory purposes
that societies impose on the whole educational
enterprise. In some ways, we want education to
promote democratic equality (preparing com
-
petent citizens); we also want education to pro
-
mote social efficiency (preparing productive
workers); in addition, we want education to
promote social mobility (preparing individuals
who can compete successfully for social goods).
Yet, the kind of teaching and learning that will
be effective varies radically depending on
whether the primary aim is to prepare citizens
or workers or social climbers (Labaree, 1997).
A fifth source of uncertainty is that teachers
are not even in a position to establish clearly the
identity of their client. At one level, the client is
the student. At another level, the clients are the
parents of the student. At a third level, the
teacher’s client is the community at large, which
not only pays for public education but also feels
the effects of the teacher’s ability to produce
competent citizens and productive workers.
Keeping all these clients happy is not an easy
matter.
A JOB THAT SEEMS EASY
If teaching is indeed a practice as difficult as I
have portrayed here, then there is no form of
professional practice that is more demanding,
except, perhaps, teacher education. We ask
teacher education programs to provide ordi-
nary college students with the imponderable so
that they can teach the irrepressible in a manner
that pleases the irreconcilable, and all without
knowing clearly either the purposes or the con
-
sequences of their actions. Is it any wonder that
these programs are not seen as smashing suc
-
cesses? But that is not the end of the problem
confronting teacher educators. In addition, they
face a situation in which the profession of teach
-
ing is generally seen to be relatively easy. And
this perception is not simply characteristic of
the untutored public; it is also endemic among
teacher candidates.
Apprenticeship of Observation
Lortie (1975) makes a convincing case that
prospective teachers spend a long time as stu
-
Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, May/June 2000 231
dents observing the way teachers ply their
trade, and as a result they feel they know how to
teach in some depth before they take their first
course in a college of education. “It may be that
the widespread idea that ’anyone can
teach’...originates from this; what child can
-
not, after all, do a reasonably accurate portrayal
of a classroom teacher’s actions?” (Lortie, 1975,
p. 62). In comparison with teaching, other occu
-
pations, particularly other professions, remain
largely a mystery.
However, the mistake in this reasoning by
prospective teachers is clear: Their apprentice
-
ship of observation shows them a lot about what
teachers do but almost nothing about why they
do it. Teaching from this observational and
nonanalytical perspective appears to be simple
action, guided either by custom (this is the way
teaching is done) or by nature (this is the kind of
person I am). In neither case would teacher
preparation be necessary or even useful. What
students don’t see is the thinking that preceded
the teacher’s action, the alternatives she consid-
ered, the strategic plan within which she located
the action, or the aims she sought to accomplish
by means of that action. These are the things that
teacher preparation programs seek to teach, and
legitimately so, but in so doing, they run into
enormous resistance from teacher candidates
who don’t think they need this kind of profes-
sional education.
Ordinary Skills and Knowledge
Another impediment facing teacher educa
-
tion is the general perception that the substan
-
tive skills and knowledge that teachers possess
are thoroughly ordinary. The root of this prob
-
lem is that elementary and secondary education
is imposed on the entire populace. It is not elite
education; it is mass education. If it does its job
well, the kinds of skills and knowledge that it
transmits to students become generic in the
population at large. Therefore, unlike college
professors who are expected to be experts at a
level well beyond the understanding of ordi
-
nary citizens, schoolteachers are seen as masters
of what most adults already know. What they
teach isn’t rocket science; it’s common knowl
-
edge. By extension, teacher educators, although
technically college professors, are not involved
in an enterprise that is seen as either awe-
inspiring or even particularly necessary.
Subject Matter Expertise That
Belongs to Others
Worse yet, teacher educators have no legiti
-
mate claim to special expertise even in the sub
-
stantive fields where they ply their trade. They
may be specialists in mathematics education,
literacy or English education, social studies or
history education, or science education, but
they do not have academic credibility as mathe
-
maticians, linguists, literature specialists, histo
-
rians, or scientists. Substantive expertise does
not reside within the education school that pre
-
pares teachers, but in the disciplinary depart
-
ments across campus where professors carry
out specialized research and run advanced
graduate programs that explore the more eso-
teric realms of these disciplines, far beyond the
reach of ordinary adults and far beyond the
mandate or expertise of K-12 teachers. This
situation puts teacher educators not only at a
status disadvantage within the academic hierar-
chy, it also puts them in an untenable position in
relation to the production of teachers. Teacher
education does not have control over providing
teachers with the substantive knowledge they
will need to teach, but it takes full blame for any
deficiencies in knowledge that these teachers
may demonstrate in the classroom.
Pedagogical Skill That Is Unobscure
and Freely Given Away
Like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and
architects, teachers have to master their disci
-
plines to be effective in their professions, but
knowing their subject matter is not sufficient.
Professionals are not simply holders of knowl
-
edge; they are people who act on this knowl
-
edge for the benefit of clients. The difference
between teachers and other professionals in this
regard, however, is striking. As Fenstermacher
(1990) points out, most professionals use their
knowledge to help the client with a problem,
but they don’t provide the client with the capac
-
ity to figure it out for himself or herself the next
232 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, May/June 2000