Real Teaching and Real Learning vs Narrative Myths about Education

Abstract

All real classrooms are saturated in the fictional narratives about education from TV and movies that swirl about thickly and persistently in western culture, yet the influence that these fictions exert on real teachers and real students is seldom examined. This article argues that since these fictional narratives nearly always deal in recycled stereotypes of both students and teachers, and that since these stereotypes are both ubiquitous and compelling, and that since they seldom receive critical attention, the influence they exert on real teachers and real students is to mislead, confuse, and impoverish their evaluations of and expectations about the nature of genuine education.

Troubling talk: assembling the PhD candidate

“…Each looks at the other and sees themselves, differently ' (2005, 154). Kelly (2009) takes up Green's ideas and explores Gregory's (2007) proposition that figures from literature 'haunt' real classrooms and prefigure our own perceptions. Kelly finds different types of 'supervisory ghosts' in the literature she examines and points out that in none of the texts is there a true 'meeting of minds' between supervisor and student and that the PhD as an object is ambiguous Á or even unfinishable.…”

Public pedagogy and representations of higher education in popular film: New ground for the scholarship of teaching and learning.

“…Finally, some of the films released in 2014 offer particularly complex and nuanced depictions of higher education (such as Big Hero 6); a focused analysis of one of these films would allow for more detailed examination of how higher education is addressed cinematically than is possible here (including, importantly, more attention to choices of film form). Nonetheless, like other work sketching broad patterns (e.g., Gregory, 2007), the present analysis teases out a number of significant ideas that contribute to understanding how filmic representations take up and help shape perceptions of higher education in the contemporary moment within North America. In so doing, it generates potential key areas of inquiry on which teaching and learning scholars might focus going forward.…”

“…Insofar as these relationships speak particularly clearly to views of the pedagogical work of higher education institutions, they are perhaps especially relevant to SoTL scholars. Interestingly, while some previous research unpacks a range of student-teacher relationships and stereotypes within popular culture (e.g., Gregory, 2007;Vandermeersche, Soetaert, & Rutten, 2013), the present set of films is tilted in favour of critical or ambivalent representations of faculty-student interactions, often positioning faculty as abusive, manipulative, or exploitative-particularly within humanities disciplines (Carens, 2010).…”

“…It should be noted that some work has already been done on these themes. For instance, representations of the learning process and the purposes of higher education in films have been the topic of study before (Benton, 2013;Gregory, 2007;Vandermeersche, Soetaert, & Rutten, 2013). Similarly, common patterns and implications of representations of teachers and students are a frequent topic of analysis (García, 2015;Gregory, 2007;Leuschner, 2006;Stillwagon & Jelinek, 2015).…”

“…In essence, such work suggests that media normalizes societal expectations of education by presenting a narrative construction of these institutions as the contemporary reality, leaving little room to imagine an alternative (García, 2015). Film necessarily constructs and reflects dominant ideologies and social anxieties within a historical context, and in providing a framework through which to view education, influences how audiences approach the education system and construct and navigate their identities as either instructor or student (Giroux, 2008;Gregory, 2007;Vandermeersche, Soetaert, & Rutten, 2013). Likewise, such texts often take up, feed, and/or help audiences negotiate common suspicions and concerns about teaching, learning, and educators, particularly in relation to the ways educators wield power within the classroom (Benton, 2013;Carens, 2010).…”