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Cochran-Smith, M. (Ed.), Walking the Road: Race, Diversity and Social Justice in Teacher Education. New York, 2004. Teachers College Press. Review of Walking the Road: Race, Diversity, and Social Justice in Teacher Education by Marilyn Cochran-Smith ‘‘It is the willingness (and the ability) to deliberate civilly about matters of mutual concern that sets democratic citizens apart from both self-interested citizens, who deliberate only in order to further their own interests, and from passive citizens, who do not deliberate at all but simply defer to authority’’ (Cochran-Smith, 2004, p. 22). In Walking the Road: Race, Diversity, and Social Justice in Teacher Education, Marilyn Cochran-Smith offers a collection of essays exploring the conflicting visions and ideologies surrounding teacher education as well as conceptualizing what it means to prepare teachers for a diverse democratic society. As incisively pointed out in the quote above, the quest to foster a democratic citizenry involves the valuing of public over individual interests, the willingness to actively engage in critical but thoughtful dialogue regarding issues that concern society as a whole, and the ability to do so in a civil but constructive manner. Educational reform, as a public interest, requires that even if we do not always achieve the ideals of a democratic citizenry, we at least attempt to do so. Yet, in the current era of standard-based, performance-oriented accountability system, developing a ‘‘highly qualified’’ teaching force is frequently framed as a technical problem of testing and training teachers to implement effective practices in order to produce measurable student outcomes. This discourse on teacher preparation often neglects the political, social, and intellectual dimensions inherent in the work of educators. Throughout the book, Cochran-Smith insists that teaching is intellectual and political endeavor which cannot be separated from the day to day practice of working in schools. One of Cochran-Smith’s central arguments is that teacher education for social justice is an ongoing, life-long process for all those Journal of Educational Change (2005) 6: 395–403 DOI 10.1007/s10833-005-4176-1

Ó Springer 2005

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involved: prospective teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and policy analysts. While trying to be inclusive through this statement, the book is most likely to appeal to pre-service teachers and teacher educators who are directly affected by and who can directly shape the future of teacher preparation programs. The beginning of the book covers the problem of teacher education and addresses why preparing teachers is both a learning and political matter. It also describes how participants in one urban teacher education program came to understand issues related to race, diversity, and multicultural issues. The latter section offers analysis critiquing political agendas shaping teacher education and provides a conceptual framework to examine the multiple meanings related to multicultural and social justice teacher education policy. The book concludes with a call to action around three key themes (p. 157): (1) Public critique from a social justice perspective of prevailing policies and agendas related to teacher quality, recruitment, preparation, and certification; (2) Development of a diversified and rigorous program of empirical research regarding teacher education that rationalizes and operationalizes social justice as outcomes; and (3) identification and analysis of exemplary and innovative programs, projects, and partnerships, and modes of inquiry and assessment that can serve as the building blocks of teacher preparation efforts with the goal of social justice. In her title and throughout the book, Cochran-Smith employs the metaphor of taking a journey- of walking an endless road- to conceptualize and practice the notion of teaching and teacher education for social justice. Accordingly, principles of social justice must be lived out and struggled over continuously because what the author emphasizes in her metaphor is not the route or destination but the journey. Cochran-Smith also utilizes the metaphor to convey an image of uncertainty- ‘‘the idea that there is no path there and that the traveler must make the path while going along, although never passing over the same path again’’ (p. xviii). Cochran-Smith balances advocating for her vision of social justice and inviting readers to arrive at their own conclusions about what it means to teach and struggle for equal access and opportunity. The author’s compassionate yet insistent voice comes across clearly as she depicts and shares her experiences. Reading the book, I found myself both disagreeing and

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agreeing with her, relating her experiences in working with teachers and my own, asking questions, and consistently thinking. As a former classroom teacher with experience working in a large urban school district, I found that detailed accounts of teachers attempting to struggle through inquiry communities and suggestions for building such collaboration particularly enlightening. In the chapter, ‘‘Against the Grain,’’ the author describes how prospective teachers and teacher educators in Philadelphia schools participate in professional learning revolving around the viewpoint of inquiry as a stance. The discussions among the participants centering on the specific interactions between teacher and student or curriculum and policy and then connecting it back to larger principles of educating for social justice present a complex portrait of what it means to be engaged in such efforts. Therefore, the term ‘‘walking the road’’ also indicates the organic interplay between acting and theorizing, practice and scholarship, and between doing teacher education and doing scholarly work about teacher education. Cochran-Smith elaborates that ‘‘it is the synergy and collaboration of participants from both [universities and schools] that create a powerful learning space- the inquiry community wherein prospective teachers learn in the company of experienced teachers and teacher educators who see themselves as learners and are themselves struggling to teach against the grain in their own classrooms, school, and programs’’ (p. 12). The author does not try to gloss over the difficult work required nor does she mask the contradictory and often tension-filled interactions between those involved in inquiry communities. Through these vignettes, interspersed with excerpts of teacher reflections, the author reveals that principles of social justice are not just pie-in-the-sky progressive ideals but are hope-inspiring realities. Thus, CochranSmith persuasively shows that those in the university setting and teachers in schools can and should work more collaboratively and cohesively. Another central theme in the book is the notion that teacher education is never apolitical. She helps readers dissect the current rhetoric surrounding teacher preparation, specifically the debate between the movement to deregulate or professionalize teacher education, and contested definitions about multi-cultural education. Yet, while providing the reader with tools for understanding teacher education and critiquing education policy, I wished she elaborated on how teacher education is situated within larger schools of education that do not always value teaching, teachers’ knowledge, and teachers.

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Cochran-Smith illuminates how teaching as intellectual and practical work for social justice is being attacked by conservative agenda and policies that promote teaching as solely a technical activity. Schools of education can also be accused of being complicit in devaluing the intellectual work of teachers and neglecting to build the leadership capacities of those that enter their programs. The university system is not always set up to provide teachers with the most resources and guidance. Given the pressure-cooker environment that teachers are expected to work in, teachers cannot not engage in or sustain this type of intellectual work alone. Cochran-Smith wisely points out the teacher education for social justice requires structures and contexts that support the ongoing learning of all of those who are engaged in theses endeavors. But how do schools of education structure and organize their efforts so that this can be accomplished? How can universities maintain relationships with teachers once they leave with their certificates so that they are supported? One hallmark of a good book, some would say, is its capacity to provoke or unearth new insights every time the reader returns to it. Cochran-Smith’s thoughtful analysis of teacher education and what it means to educate both teachers and students for social justice manages to meet this criterion. The author consistently raises rather than solves questions surrounding issues of preparing teachers to work with a diverse student body and engaging in the struggle for access and equity. She does not offer prescriptive formulas for directing or developing a teacher education program; rather, she invites and inspires those committed to the ideals of educating for a democratic society to embark on a journey where communities of practice continually strive for social justice. In advocating for her vision of teacher education and reform, she provides a moral compass in the form of principles and questions rather than specific directions, destinations, or time frames. Rather than supply simple solutions to complex problems, the authors asks readers to first critically examine their own biases, ideologies, and values about what educating for diverse society involves. Beyond exploration of these deeply important issues, Cochran-Smith challenges reader to actively engage in the process of change and take a stand as public intellectuals who can articulate loudly and passionately for the values of social justice. Undertaking the journey requires a serious commitment to the ideals of social justice and an understanding of the hurdles that lay ahead. Ultimately, it requires us to step forward and begin to walk to create the necessary path.

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VICKI PARK

University of Southern California Waite Phillips Hall 901 Los Angeles, CA, 90089 USA E-mail: [email protected] DOI 10.1007/s10833-005-4177-0

I start this review with a confession of sorts: With only a few exceptions, I generally don’t enjoy movies based on other published works more than the original pieces themselves. The reader is aware that each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards two writing awards, one for best original screenplay and one for the best screenplay based on previously published material. Educational research books tend also to be divided into similar categories. Marilyn Cochran Smith’s Walking the road: Race, diversity, and social justice in teacher education is of the latter group. Since the work spans some 15 years of the author’s scholarship, it would have been easy for the text to lack coherence. By adopting the metaphor of a journey – one that is both autobiographical, telling the story of Cochran-Smith’s ‘walking the road’ toward teacher education for social justice, and conceptual, pointing out some of the various paths that must be traversed in order to find and make one’s way toward an ultimately unreachable destination – Cochran-Smith is able to tour us through the contradictory, complex and contentious terrain of teacher education for social justice. Casting teaching and teacher education as political activities, ‘Walking the Road ’ positions teacher education as a means toward school and social change and centers teachers’ and teacher educators’ roles as learners and activists. Cochran-Smith argues that teacher education for social justice is a learning problem and a political problem, and reminds us that while the current discourse about teacher learning and the politics of teacher education are located in broader contemporary debates, these problems are not unique to the current era. In Chapters 2–5, Cochran-Smith describes teacher education as a learning problem that must be more broadly conceived than teacher education viewed as individual teacher training. Rather, the work of

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teacher education for social justice is guided by differing conceptions of the purposes of schooling, the meaning of educational equity, and the definitions of teaching and learning. That these meanings are always up for grabs – since they are defined differently by different actors – and that the authority of these actors to define good teaching for all children is hierarchically distributed, with classroom teacher generally accorded less authority than outside experts leads CochranSmith to argue for self-critical and systematic inquiry within teacher learning communities. Without such sustained, participatory efforts (including efforts to link school-based and community-based actors) aimed at confronting the dilemmas inherent in education for all in a democratic, pluralistic society, it seems unlikely that teacher education and the professional learning of teachers will disturb the status quo. Elsewhere, my colleagues and I (Oakes, Quartz, Ryan, & Lipton, 2000) have suggested that participatory schooling practices aimed at making schools more educative, socially just, and caring must be infused with a critical temper (West, 1999). By doing so, so-called common sense solutions for the problems of schooling are subjected to collective inquiry, and deficiency-based explanations of educational inequality are interrogated and interrupted. While such inquiry by no means guarantees redistributive outcomes, teacher education and school reform that models democratic processes and builds on the knowledge of teachers and community members in seeking alternatives to dominant teaching and schooling practices is a necessary, though perhaps not sufficient step along the road to teacher and school change toward socially just ends. The learning communities that Cochran-Smith helped to develop, support, and study demonstrate the power of reciprocal learning, even if the outcomes of these communities on student learning remain, as Cochran-Smith herself acknowledges, uncertain. While many teacher educators, though certainly still a small minority, share Cochran-Smith’s commitment to developing teacher communities that challenge the status quo, Cochran-Smith’s self-critical examination of her ‘own complicity in maintaining existing systems of privilege and oppression’ (p. 101) demonstrates perhaps most powerfully both her own ‘walking the walk’ of teacher education for social justice and the necessity for teacher educators to include themselves in the learning problem of teacher education. By including a narrative analysis of her own learning in Chapter 5, Cochran-Smith underscores the never ending process of learning and struggle in teacher education for social justice and demonstrates her own participation in

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the reciprocal learning processes she advocates for others. In doing so, she also reminds us of the need to increase the capacity of teacher educators to put antiracism front and center in teacher education, a call that has been urged by other teacher educators (Gay & Howard, 2000; Ladson-Bilings, 1999; Oakes, Franke, Quartz, & Rogers, 2002; Zeichner, 2003) and to which Cochran-Smith herself returns in the final chapter. In Chapters 6–8, Cochran-Smith’s turns to teacher education as a political problem. Here she reminds us that teacher education has rhetorical, conceptual, and practical dimensions. More importantly, that beneath each of these dimensions lie complex assumptions and values that are socially and institutionally, culturally and historically situated. Thus, her argument brings together what are often dichotomized as theoretical vs. practical knowledge or ideological vs. empirical research. Particularly insightful is her commentary on the rhetorical turns of advocates of the two predominant agendas for teacher quality, professionalization and deregulation. Cochran-Smith critiques both of these agendas, suggesting that both are necessarily limited by their a priori assumptions, and lays out the ways in which each agenda is politically motivated and based on competing values and conceptions of the common good. Zeichner (2003) likewise points out the adequacy and inadequacy of these strategies to prepare and retain teachers, but includes the social justice agenda in his critique as well. Reaching similar conclusions to Cochran-Smith’s own call to action, Zeichner suggests that the social justice agenda has often stopped at the level of teacher education practices and programs, rather than entering into the political arena along side the more politically visible and influential agendas of professionalization and deregulation. For both CochranSmith and Zeichner, if the teacher education for social justice agenda is to escape the margins of political debates about teacher education and make educational equity a central and expected outcome of teacher education and ‘high quality’ teaching, teacher educators must be willing to take on the role of activist as well as educator. In the end, despite the admitted uncertainty of the paths, the different sub-journeys that Cochran-Smith narrates, and the ultimately unreachable destination of teacher education for social justice, the reader is left with an ironic conceptual clarity that seeks to complicate or rather to unpack the complicating issues that often remain invisible in debates about teacher learning and teacher quality. This is not meant to imply that Cochran-Smith offers simple answers. Instead

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she leaves us, first in Chapter 8 with a list of questions regarding the multiple and conflicting meanings of multicultural teacher education (e.g., the knowledge question, the teacher learning question, the outcomes question) and finally in the concluding chapter with three calls for action in support of teacher education for social justice. Together these questions and calls are meant to prompt teachers, teacher educators, teacher researchers, and researchers of teaching to think and rethink what we know – about our practice and the institutional and policy contexts in which our practice is situated. Still, an appearance of simplicity might still be derived from Cochran-Smith’s conceptual model, which separates so-called ‘external forces’ and ‘larger contexts’ from the questions driving teacher education for social justice. While such separation may be possible and even necessary for analytic purposes, we run the risk of disconnecting local practices from the contexts with which they are interrelated if we read the elements of the model as hierarchically or linearly related. It would be better, I think to view Cochran-Smith’s model as suggesting the mutually constitutiveness of teacher education practice and the social, political, institutional, cultural and historical contexts in which they occur and from which they cannot be separated (see Rogoff, 2003). Doing so supports Cochran-Smith’s broader argument of our obligation to continue to learn as teachers and to teach as learners. The power of Cochran-Smith’s adaptation of her own previously published work, which is skillfully framed, edited, and narrated is its ability to wrestle thoughtfully with the contradictory, complex, and contentious terrain of teacher education for social justice without seeking the shelter that a more certain rendering of this difficult work might offer. Instead she leaves us with a call to do better, to think harder and more broadly, to read more incisively, and to do each of these things more publicly. Walking her readers back along her own path, Cochran-Smith takes readers to what she refers to as a crossroads, but which I see more as a traffic circle, with several possible paths. We can veer around the traffic circle and keep going in the direction we are headed, we can avoid the circle entirely and turn even more sharply to the right, or we can go around the circle and turn to the left. Of course it is also possible that we may remain stuck by our own uncertainty about the direction we wish to head or by the dense traffic around us and keep circling round and round. For Cochran-Smith, who acknowledges that the road is most assuredly uncertain, the time for circling is done. She urges, ‘We need more than provocative conference sessions and inspiring books that

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explore the complex issues related to social justice, equity, and diversity in teacher education’ (p. 156). Instead, she argues, ‘we need to conjoin efforts..., be part of larger movements for social change and demonstrate to others that social justice itself is a valid outcome and an essential purpose of teacher preparation’ (p. 168). References Gay, G. & Howard, T. C. (2000). Multicultural teacher education for the 21st century. The Teacher Educator 36(1), 1–16. Ladson-Bilings, G. (1999). Preparing teachers for diverse student populations: A critical race theory perspective. In A. Iran-Nejad & D. Pearson (eds), Review of educational research (Vol. 24, pp. 211–248). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Oakes, J. Franke, M., Quartz, K. & Rogers, J. (2002). Research for high-quality urban teaching: Defining it, developing it, assessing it. Journal of Teacher Education 53(3), 228–234. Oakes, J. Quartz, K.H., Ryan, S. & Lipton, M. (2000). Becoming good American schools: The struggle for civic virtue in education reform. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press. West, C. (1999). The Cornel West reader. New York: Basic Books. Zeichner, K. (2003). The adequacies and inadequacies of three current strategies to recruit, prepare, and retain the best teachers for all students. Teachers College Record 105(3), 490–519. STEVE RYAN

College of Education Temple University 1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue Philadelphia, PA, 19122 USA E-mail: [email protected]