INTERVIEW: Sorting Out Experience

Brookfield specializes in adult education, an orientation that has formed one of the most attractive hallmarks of his approach: He allows himself to observe and learn from his own experiences as an adult learner and applies these observations to his thinking about students' experiences of teaching and learning. Understanding how students experience learning, he's come to feel, far outstrips the value of any particular approach or technique in becoming a better teacher.

Tyrannical Trends Technique or, rather, uncritical talk of and acceptance of the value of particular techniques, quickly forms what Brookfield has come to call "hegemonic assumptions." Examples? Arranging chairs in a circle is good. Student journals are good. Group work is good. "An assumption becomes hegemonic or begins to exercise a dangerous control over our practice when we accept it uncritically," says Brookfield. In a teaching world where the tide of common conversation reviles the lecture as the most outmoded and ineffective teaching method, Brookfield has developed more and more respect for the lecture and now feels he sees its uses. Likewise, with group work, he's come to feel it has a dark side and cannot be uncritically accepted.

"Group work is something I think I feel particularly strongly about because it is so uncritically celebrated," Brookfield said in our interview. "People do it because they want to make their classes more empathic and participatory and democratic. Those are all laudable aims, and I would support them. But I think the evangelical rhetoric sometimes overpowers attention to context and masks the fact that groups can be forums where egomaniacs can run wild and where some people's voices become silenced. Teachers can interpret students' talking actively

"The evangelical rhetoric sometimes overpowers attention to context and masks the fact that groups can be forums where egomaniacs can run wild and where some people's voices become silenced."

Rules For Learning The more Brookfield has observed groups in action, the more he has felt the need to create rules to guide their operation. "[In my classes] small groups never happen without students bringing in multiple copies of something to be considered by the small group. We start with students reading what everyone else has written, followed by a period of enforced silence. Then, in the discussion, the ground rule is that you are not allowed to talk about your own work, only others'. You can answer direct questions about your work, but that's it. I feel so strongly about this that sometimes I've appointed umpires whose sole task is to monitor and make sure this rule is respected."

Why does Brookfield feel so strongly? Again, the answer lies in recognizing parallels between how teachers operate as learners and how students operate. "I've just seen, for example, when you put teachers in small groups, they often produce the most judgmental, undemocratic, ego-ridden discussions. They very quickly fall apart. People stay physically together, but some people opt out while someone else is off on a roll and the rest are just fazed. And so I've come to realize that genuine democratic discourse is not a very frequent thing, and you have to create the conditions under which it happens. That's why I've found that one ground rule has been very important for me. I think it's a mistake to generate 10 - 15 rules: people can't remember them."

But Brookfield would be the first to say what's proven true for him might not prove true for you. What he has found is that teachers who reflect critically on their practice end up becoming better teachers. They take more "informed actions," he says, "actions which have the consequences you intend them to have and actions which you can give a rationale for."

"So if you want students to be more participatory, and you're setting up groups or team projects

"I've come to realize that genuine democratic discourse is not a very frequent thing, and you have to create the conditions under which it happens."

Teaching Is Researching In a way, Brookfield's focus on teaching has led him to an answer to the ancient dichotomy of teaching versus research. "Teaching basically does boil down to constantly researching," he says. "The thing that I find very encouraging in the last few years is the rise of the classroom assessment movement and the whole idea that you need to keep checking assumptions out. You have to research your context and you have to understand the meaning of behavior in the context in which it's happening."

Can teachers be critically reflective from the outset? Brookfield isn't sure. "Since I've begun to take my own advice seriously, I talk to my students much more. In the last ten years I've learned a hell of a lot. I think I'm a much better teacher than I was. Because I listen to them, I started to question so many assumptions, progressive democratic assumptions that I'd accepted. But it took me 15 - 20 years before I felt confident enough really to start questioning them and probing them; so maybe this kind of stance only comes after a period of experience. That's a question I'm really interested in." One thing seems certain: Like most learning, learning about one's self as a teacher begins with the questions one asks about what one is doing now.