A Teacher's Dilemma
Balancing High Expectations with Evidence
9781626001022
78 pages
Marquette University Press
Overview
The study focuses on the tension teachers face between the demand that they hold high expectations for their students and the reality that they face when they confront the evidence at their disposal. The author argues that this tension is not easily avoided; there are good arguments for both optimism and evidentialism. We can recast this tension when we recognize that expectations are noisy signals of more fundamental underlying factors. High expectations often signal to us that the teacher is committed to doing her job well. It is that commitment that matters to us. A teacher with keen sensitivity to the evidence impresses us because we take it to mean that she is effectively attuned to her particular students' needs. If a teacher arrives at an expectation without contextualizing the evidence, paying attention to her specific students, or based on
stereotype and prejudice, it fails to engage in the kind of responsive
inquiry essential to good teaching. The author writes that the tension facing teachers can be recast by reflecting on the inquiry at the heart of teaching.
Author Bio
Jennifer M. Morton is the Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Philosophy with a secondary appointment at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, she is also the Graduate Chair of the Philosophy Department. Morton has been a Laurance S. Rockefeller Faculty Fellow at the Princeton Center for Human Values, a Sara Miller McCune Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Professor Morton is a senior fellow at the Center for Ethics and Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an elected member-at-large of the American Philosophical Association’s Board. Her work focuses on how poverty and social class shape our agency. Her book, “Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility” (Princeton University Press, 2019) focuses on the ethical sacrifices that first-generation and low-income students make in pursuing upward mobility. It was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in Education and the Frederic W. Ness Book Award by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
