Editors' Introduction: To What End?

Abstract

In this issue, you will have the opportunity to read an unusual piece in our Reviews section. Written by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Pedagogy Collective, it is a coauthored, multivoiced text that rehearses descriptions of a set of key terms taken from the authors' reading of professional writings on teaching. 1 The collective was formed during a required course for graduate students seeking to teach a literature course in the English department. As they describe it, "The major goal for this course was to introduce students to the critical debates in literature pedagogy." As such, students were asked to synthesize their learning through writing a critical book review and a teaching philosophy with an annotated bibliography. Using excerpts from the students' teaching philosophies, the review essay in this issue was organized to expose and elaborate those "critical debates in literature pedagogy." Reading this essay from the UIUC Pedagogy Collective reminds us of how difficult it is to construct a philosophy of teaching. While on the job market, most of us have to write something like a teaching philosophy or create an introduction to a teaching portfolio. At the very least, we are asked in interviews such questions as, "Explain your approach to teaching the introductory survey." How do we construct such overarching philosophy statements without sounding naive, overly idealistic, or abstract? If we embrace an antifoundationalist pedagogical stance (and even if we don't), how do we employ the stance we take? When we turn to theorists (say, to Paolo Freire or Gerald Graff, two whom the collective mentions), do we really believe (that is, enact) the principles they espouse?