No human is perfect; consequently, every person always has something to learn. In order to learn, we both need to know what we do not know, and care about it. The act of learning is well-captured by the metaphor of a man (or woman) looking intently at himself in a mirror. He looks to see what he does not know, and lingers to see the effects of his lack of understanding on the self.
One role of the teacher is to be a mirror to the learner’s self: to make him aware of the lines of reasoning that define him, the implications of those lines of reasoning, and possible alternatives that he may choose or choose not to follow.
The secondary teacher as mirror
According to Erikson’s Life-Span Development Theory (1959), adolescence is when people go through the stage of ‘identity vs. role confusion’, where individuals are confronted with new, semi-adult roles (such as being responsible for their own finances or taking their first jobs), and begin to develop a strong identification with ideals, causes and friends.
As learners go through identity vs. role confusion, the secondary teacher has a unique opportunity and responsibility to guide students in reaching identity achievement (Marcia 1980), where they commit to an identity only after having considered other possible identities (a crisis). I believe the teacher as mirror leads to developmentally appropriate practices for secondary students.
Implications for teaching practice
Reflecting for critical reasoning
The teacher as mirror actively fosters critical thinking. I believe people are not simply the sum of their thoughts, but that the ‘lines of reasoning’ that make a person who he is also include emotional and social reasoning. In order to be critical about one’s intellectual position on an issue, an individual needs to be adept at perspective-taking, or being able to see things from another’s perspective.
I will attempt to bring across issues and controversies as a conflict between different perspectives on an issue, and routinely involve students in debates and role-playing games to investigate issues. For instance, while covering the problems and constraints surrounding short-term disaster management in my contract teaching stint, I created a game where students role-played governments from different countries with different budget constraints, to choose an optimum division of resources between different needs such as food, water, shelter, search and rescue, and medicine for the injured and sick. Students soon realized the ‘unfairness’ of an unequal distribution of resources available for different governments to respond to disasters, and the moral difficulty of choosing between different priorities.
When assigning roles, I will attempt to give students roles that challenge their current positions, in order to give them opportunities to investigate, and for a classroom period or two, take a perspective alternate to their own. At the beginning and end of units of learning, I will give students the opportunity to present and defend their current views, disagree with one another, and change their minds after being presented with a persuasive argument.
Reflecting for growth mindset
Carol Dweck and her colleagues have shown that students with a ‘growth mindset’ - the belief that intelligence is not fixed and failure presents an opportunity for learning - eventually achieve more than peers with a ‘fixed mindset’. I believe that assessment for learning and self-assessment are integral in shifting students from a ‘fixed mindset’ to a growth mindset.
As far as possible, I will create opportunities for students to self- and peer- assess their knowledge with every learning objective covered. This means small assessment for learning activities that are done at the end of each lesson (a lesson being the covering of one learning objective, rather than a chronological period). For instance, prior to and after a new unit, I will engage students in activities such as KWL (Know-Want to know-Learned) so that they can track their learning. There are also implications on how I give my feedback to students. As far as possible, I will balance praise and room for improvement on a 1:1 ratio (in terms of learning areas covered). In giving both positive and critical feedback, I will emphasize the effort students have put into a piece of work, rather than some innate ability, and give concrete examples of how they have or have not displayed quality.
Reflecting for moral development
The critical reader might ask why I have not chosen the metaphor of a magnifying glass instead of a mirror. Surely, a magnifying glass would allow students to see their strengths and weaknesses clearer than a mirror. However, I believe that the teacher as mirror better represents the kind of teacher I want to be, because a mirror reproduces a truer self-image. Learners who are confronted with a magnifying glass may face damage to their self-esteem if their faults are magnified to the exclusion of their strengths, or become inflated in their pride if their strengths are magnified to the exclusion of their faults.
Concretely, this means that I will not do certain things. In responding to disciplinary issues, I will avoid in-class confrontations and choose to address issues after class instead. In dealing with conflict and bullying cases, I will avoid assigning blame, but will give both victims and offenders the chance to have their say. I will frequently use restorative conferencing, where both victims and offenders come together to express their thoughts about an incident, and suggest ways in which the situation can be avoided in the future.