Cultures of Teaching: A Puzzle

Abstract

The author finds it puzzling that while teacher-centered instruction is a way to maximize teacher autonomy given the structural limits of precollegiate classrooms, university professors who are free from those structural limits carry on the same type of instruction. The author offers three possible explanations, one based on organizational incentives, one on the history and culture of schooling, and one on the socialization of lecturers. The explanations are not offered to explain the phenomenon, indeed, they are not sufficient to explain it; rather they are offered to stimulate the reader's interest in the phenomenon and, more important, his or her interest in explaining the perennial attempts to reform education by attacking teacher centeredness.