| In this dissertation, I document how the pedagogical worlds of teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers have been needlessly and harmfully divided into two camps: teacher-centered pedagogy and student-centered pedagogy. This false binary distresses thoughtful teachers attempting to educate well---producing guilt, confusion, and suspicion of theory. I contend that student-centered pedagogy, at least in "progressive" circles, is touted as the only way to teach well and to be a good teacher. Student-centered pedagogy occupies the moral high ground in the educational ethos even when its tenets are not realized fully in practice.; My conceptual study remains rooted deeply in the lifeworlds of teachers and schools. The first part of the dissertation draws on the work of educational theorists who endorse, criticize, and grapple with student-centered pedagogy and its effects on teachers, students, and their classrooms. Student-centered pedagogy has, for some, become doctrine and method, rather than a set of principles to guide educational practice. I contend that the metaphorical foundation of student-centered pedagogy, the margin-center schema, preempts thoughtful, responsive, and responsible teaching by placing teachers at the margins of classroom life.; In the second part of the dissertation, I turn to metaphor and the ways in which it affects profoundly how we interpret our selves, our practices, and our possibilities. Drawing on feminist theorists who have thought deeply about the impact of spatial metaphors on our lives, I argue that while the margin-center schema in feminist theories has been employed largely as a descriptive tool, in student-centered pedagogy it operates as a prescriptive directive that predetermines the proper place for "good" teachers.; Drawing on John Dewey's description of movement as a moral quality, I argue that there can be no predetermined place for good teaching. Rather, there must be space for teachers to educate responsively and responsibly. Appropriating Dewey's map metaphor, I suggest that teacher educators aim to develop teachers who are critical map readers, map users, and map makers who will have the space for thoughtful movement within the place of classrooms. |
