JAC Volume 12 Issue 1

In their introduction, Kutz and Roskelly describe the state of affairs in English education that led them to write this book:

While this book may be pegged a "how-to" manual, such a categorization is at odds with its purpose and style. As Paulo Freire concludes in his foreword, "In essence, Kutz and Roskelly have liberated themselves from the North American culture of how-to manuals. . . . [This book] is much more a pedagogy of question than a pedagogy of answer." The book is filled with the voices of the teachers and students Kutz and Roskelly have worked with: graduate students preparing to teach, public school teachers, participants in the Boston Writing Project. The style of this book, then, is not to prescribe answers but to ask questions and follow them with the myriad experiences of real teachers, along with Kutz and Roskelly's careful reflections on those experiences«ones that reminded me of the insight and wisdom of Mina Shaughnessy in Errors and Expectations.

Organized into three units, the book begins by discussing the relationships between language, thought, and culture, drawing on research by people such as Shirley Brice Heath, Vygotsky, Basil Bernstein, and William Labov. Next follows "Literacy and the Learner," in which the authors turn more specifically to the traditional components of the English curriculum: grammar, reading, writing, and literature. The final unit, "Theory into Practice," turns specifically to addressing how to implement the theories and practices described earlier. In addition, the book contains a twenty-two-page section called "Strategies for the Teacher and Learner," a series of activities integrally related to the discussions in each unit. These include ethnographic observations as well as classroom activities.

I was most eager to see what An Unquiet Pedagogy would attempt and accomplish in the last unit, "Theory into Practice." I feared I might find a too-simple list of formulas for success; instead, I found a variety of experiences, suggestions, and observations. The practical advice ranged from what one might expect to hear (use peer groups) to the obvious but rarely stated: "One of the simplest, and often most neglected, strategies for creating an environment in the classroom where teacher and student interact is to change the position from which the teacher speaks." Obvious though this may be to experienced teachers, Kutz and Roskelly follow up this advice with a reading of an experience of one of their students that provides evidence and insight for both beginning and experienced teachers:

In discussing response to student writing, Kutz and Roskelly note the disjunction between responding and corresponding: "We have few models for conducting effective dialogue in writing; few of us carry out real exchanges of ideas in writing, and most of us write letters only to make a complaint or to formalize an agreement." To create that kind of dialogue in writing, they suggest letter exchanges: with the teacher, with other students, between prepractice student teachers and first-year college writers.

Yet, this book does not paint an unrealistic picture of the situations in which teachers work. Kutz and Roskelly are aware that changes of the sorts they suggest are often situated in settings resistant to change: "For the beginning teacher, the standard curriculum with its implicit expectations and values and labeling of learners may offer a seemingly insurmountable roadblock to effective teaching." They illustrate this point in the chapter on institutionalizing curricular change. Here, as is typical throughout the book, their approach is to outline the kinds of constraints teachers face and to turn to the experiences of their students to show both the ways in which teachers become dispirited and the types of strategies which they can use to create more fulfilling relationships in the classroom and beyond. Aware that teachers (especially beginning teachers) may be unable or reluctant to change their approaches all at once, Kutz and Roskelly note that teachers can make "quiet change."

At times, Kutz and Roskelly do slip into the overly optimistic generalization that has characterized too much professional writing about the value of using collaborative and liberatory pedagogies. For example, in a discussion of the value of using collaborative groups for research projects, Kutz and Roskelly claim that "collaborative research takes the emphasis off of form and format and puts it onto the process of discovery, with more than one perspective informing the project." We all know that collaborative group work doesn't necessarily end up with these happy results. Still, I'm willing to forgive occasional overly optimistic generalizations in order to benefit from their more frequent insights, such as these: "There's a particular irony in an English classroom that supposedly focuses on the development of language skills yet limits students' opportunities to use language to express what they're learning"; and "Too often curriculum is used as discipline within the classroom. . . . Many [teachers] still give writing assignments or extra reading assignments as a form of punishment."

While this book is exploratory, as Kutz and Roskelly note in their introduction, it succeeds in both explaining and illustrating the two related areas of critical literacy and teacher research. And, more importantly, it walks the very thin line between giving formulas for classroom success and presenting research and theory without adapting them to the needs of classroom teachers. In fact, as soon as I finish writing this review, I plan to fill out an order form so I can teach this book in my course "The Teaching of Writing" next semester.