The Cultural Myths and Realities of Classroom Teaching and Learning: A Personal Journey

Abstract

In this article, I argue that classroom teaching is structured by ritualized routines supported by widely held myths about learning and ability that are acquired through our common experiences as students. These ritualized routines and supporting myths are sustained not only by everyone's common experience of schooling, but by teacher education practices, the ways we evaluate teachers’ classroom performance, and many common types of educational research. My own research on teaching over the last 45 years has produced a number of apparently contradictory and puzzling findings that have progressively led me to understand the nature and power of these routines and myths. While ritualized routines are necessary to allow a teacher to manage the experiences of 20–30 students simultaneously, they also explain why individual student experience and learning remain largely invisible to teachers. The problem is to find ways to stand outside the ritualized routines and myths to identify how they control what we perceive, believe, and do about reforming teaching and learning.