BECOMING A TEACHER

229 Pages·2015·0.95 MB·English

BECOMING A TEACHER:
DESIRE AND IDEOLGY THROUGH LIVED EXPERIENCE

By

Elizabeth A. Kenyon

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education – Doctor of Philosophy

2015
ABSTRACT
BECOMING A TEACHER:
DESIRE AND IDEOLGY THROUGH LIVED EXPERIENCE
By
Elizabeth A. Kenyon
This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of four teacher candidates in
relation to their understandings of teacher authority and citizenship. The medium through which
these understandings take life is the participants’ individual ideologies. These individual
ideologies are studied by looking between the lines of the participants’ lived experiences. The
research is based in the idea that students learn about citizenship in schools not only through the
formal curriculum but also through the implicit curriculum of how authority is enacted between
teachers and students. The participants were all social studies teacher candidates.
The research begins with lived experiences from the participants’ lives as students in K-
12 schooling. These experiences revealed an expected script of the role of authority in the
pedagogical relationship of teachers and students. These scripts were contradicted in the
participants’ experiences, allowing for new desires in regards to enacting authority as teachers.
Then the participants desires in regards to citizenship education are explored through experiences
of troubled belonging that reveal what the participants hoped to foster in their students. Lived
experiences from the final two year of their teacher education program, show how the
participants desires were often frustrated by the ways in which dominant Ideologies are taken up
in the structure of schools, particularly in regards to meritocracy, bureaucratic authority and race.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Several years ago, my mother gave me a small wooden carving of a group of women
cheering. For me this carving represents all of those who have so generously supported and
cheered me on through many of my life’s endeavors. We never act alone, or accomplish things
on our own. I am indebted to many, both men and women, who have brought me to the place I
am today. Knowing that it is impossible to name everyone whose love and support I have
benefited from in this project, I will highlight a few folks here.
The project could not have happened without the research participants who willingly
opened their minds and hearts to my various questions. They gave time, energy, and
understanding to this project, not to mention some amazing stories. I will forever appreciate their
openness, honesty, and courage. It was a great honor to work with each one of them.
Kyle Greenwalt has supported me through both this dissertation process and throughout
my five years at MSU. From offering to look at housing for me, to many conversations over
beers and cider, to parenting advice, to hundreds of emails and countless rounds of feedback,
Kyle has been both friend and guide. He has played a role in who I have become both as a
teacher educator and a scholar. The rest of my committee members, three intelligent and
passionate women, have all been a part of my PhD journey in multiple ways. Corey Drake
supported my adventures in teacher education through her role as program director but also in
offering advice, listening to my many ideas, and helping me think through important aspects of
enacting teacher education in a field based setting. Margaret Crocco has been both an inspiration
and guide through her scholarship, her leadership in the department, and in co-teaching with me
for a semester. Anne-lise Halvorsen has been a huge support both in regards to my teaching and
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my scholarship. This group has engaged several times with me in thoughtful discussion not only
about my work but also about the challenges and possibilities in teacher education. I truly
appreciate their thoughtfulness and care.
My colleagues at MSU have served as a source of inspiration, friendship and support.
From my first classes with the greatest cohort ever, I knew I was surrounded not only by
brilliance, but also by passion and dedication. My colleagues, both from my cohort and from
others, have challenged me, pushed me, and supported me. I hope to use their work in my
teaching and scholarship, have them Skype into the courses I teach and to say, “I went to school
with…” for many years to come.
Life does not suspend itself whilst one is working on a degree. I have had the beautiful
experience during the past five years of falling in love and starting a family of my own. I am
forever grateful to Matthew Steele for saying yes to this adventure. He has supported me in every
endeavor through this PhD process, providing me with love, good nutritious food, sage advice,
and the space to take on different adventures and activities. More recently, he has been a
wonderful father to our son allowing me time to focus on writing.
My parents Diane and Bill Kenyon, and my brother and his family have all supported me
as well. It was my brother Dave’s idea that I pursue a PhD one day. He must know me pretty
well. My dad has helped me in multiple ways and always lets me know how proud he is. My
mother, who has been an ever loving and giving source of support in my life, has also worked
hard to help me in writing this dissertation, serving as a sounding board for my ideas, a
babysitter for Peter, and even a copy-editor. I am forever indebted to my family for their love
and for cheering me on.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
The Citizens We Become: Lived Experience, the Implicit Curriculum, 1
and the Tapestry of Ideology
Citizenship 2
The Implicit Curriculum 5
Tapestry of Ideology 7
Layout of Dissertation 11

CHAPTER ONE
Student and Teacher Interactions, Authority, and Ideology 16
The Lived Experience of Student and Teacher Interactions 17
Ideolog(ies) 20
Authority 25
Types of authority 25
Teacher authority and democratic citizenship 27
Horace Mann and “Affectionate Authority” 28
Dewey, Counts, and the “Indoctrination Question” 33
Authority, ideology and citizenship in the school context 37
Conclusion 43

CHAPTER TWO
The Study 46
Research Questions 47
Phenomenology: The Study of Lived Experience 49
The Research Context 54
Methods 57
Selection of participants 58
Data 59
Written documents 60
Interviews 62
Data analysis 64
Limitations and affordances 66
Participants 69
Robert 69
Jessica 70
David 71
Alicia 71
Living the Questions 72
Conclusion 75

CHAPTER THREE
Teacher Authority: The Creation and Disruption of an Illusion 77
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The Creation of the Illusion 78
The Stories 81
Teacher as expert, file as expert: 82
Authority of teachers and authority of bureaucracy.
Teacher as unimpeachable: 86
The authority of a superhuman and moral character
Teacher as police: The authority of control 92
Assumptions of Teacher Authority: 96
Identifying and cracking open the script
Conclusion 100
Questions for Further Thought 102

CHAPTER FOUR
Troubled Belonging: Contradictions in Ideologies and Experience 104
Stories of Troubled Belonging 107
Where I am from to breaking open new knowledge 108
Citizens who follow to raising critical citizens 115
Futbol and loss to rights and duties 121
Hardliners to multiple nuanced perspectives 126
Troubled Belonging 129
Conclusion 134
Questions for Further Thought 134

CHAPTER FIVE
Frustrated Citizenship 136
Citizenship 137
Participants’ Desires for Citizenship Education 141
The Stories 142
Paternal relations 144
Critical perspectives 151
Second chances: Overwriting “the file.” 156
The noble profession 162
Citizenship in the Classroom 167
Conclusion 168
Questions for Further Thought 169

CHAPTER SIX
Teaching Desires and Meritocratic Structures 171
Participants’ Desires 172
Types of democratic citizenship/education 172
Robert 175
Jessica 178
David 180
Alicia 182
Meritocracy: Legitimacy for the American Dream in Schools 184
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Meritocracy and bureaucratic authority 187
Meritocracy and race 192
Conclusion 197

CONCLUSION 200
Summary 201
Ideas for Teacher Education 204
Education and Change 205
Aims in Citizenship Education 207
Global Citizenship 209
Future Research 211

REFERENCES 213
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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Interview Rounds, Prompts and Purposes 64

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INTRODUCTION
The Citizens We Become:
Lived Experience, the Implicit Curriculum and the Tapestry of Ideology

Several years ago, when my mom was visiting me in Washington, DC, we participated in
a protest march against Arizona law SB 1070. As we were marching down the street with several
hundred other protesters, my mom shared with me that it was her first protest march and that she
was nervous. I looked around, saw the other people marching, saw the police watching us,
looked down at the pavement, the part of the street intended for cars that we were walking on,
and suddenly I felt some of her nervousness. However, until that moment it had not occurred to
me to be nervous. For me, this was one of many protests marches I had participated in and would
participate in.
I was surprised and not surprised that this was my mother’s first protest. She was in her
late fifties; I was in my late twenties. My mom came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a
time of frequent and fervent protest in the United States. However, she also grew up in
Bellflower, a town of 400 people in central Illinois where everyone knew everyone else’s
business. Her dad was the town doctor, a member of the school board and occasionally the
mayor. In college she met, and soon married my Dad, a moderate and active Republican who
worked campaigns and considered running for office himself a few times. They stayed in
Lenawee County where they made a life and a family.
So how was it that I, her daughter, had dragged her to her first protest? That is not the
question I have set out to answer, but there are many components to this story and to this
question. Why was I one to go to protest marches and not one to run for political office or work
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for campaigns? How did my mom’s experience in Bellflower shape her thoughts and actions on
citizenship? How did our lived experiences impact who we were as citizens?
Citizenship
Who my mother and I are as citizens, how we enact that citizenship is largely a result of
our lived experiences. These experiences, which include interactions with others, our experiences
in schools and other government institutions, and our past attempts to enact citizenship all create
an ideological backdrop to our current participation as citizens and to what we were doing on
that sunny day in Washington, DC. These lived experiences were all a part of what got us to that
march and also how we experienced that march. Just as important as that day at the march is the
fact that neither my mother nor I have run for public office nor worked on a campaign. Put
another way, the ways we do not enact our citizenship are just as important as the ways we do
enact it. Also important is my mom’s work on the church board and my work with the graduate
employees union, both being examples of participating in civil society. We are also both
university instructors who enact our citizenship through our teaching. She does it in her first year
writing courses by bringing a critical lens to her teaching and fostering discussions about race,
gender, and class. I enact my citizenship through teaching social studies methods to teacher
candidates, focusing not only on methods of instruction but also the larger questions of
citizenship. Who we are as citizens is not limited to whether or not we vote and whom we vote
for. It includes the actions we take involving formal government structures but also the ways in
which we participate in civil society (Parker, 2003) and the ways we teach. This dissertation has
grown out of a persistent curiosity with how our lived experiences shape the citizens we become.
Every nation-state, whether a monarchy, a dictatorship, or a democracy is composed of a
group of citizens, and in all of those settings, citizens act on and within the nation-state or
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