1st Edition
Exploring Teachers in Fiction and Film Saviors, Scapegoats and Schoolmarms
This book about teachers as characters in popular media examines what can be learned from fictional teachers for the purposes of educating real teachers. Its aim is twofold: to examine the constructed figure of the teacher in film, television and text and to apply that examination in the context of teacher education. By exploring the teacher construct, readers are able to consider how popular fiction and film have influenced society’s understandings and views of classroom teachers.
Organized around four main themes—Identifying with the Teacher Image; Constructing the Teacher with Content; Imaging the Teacher as Savior; The Teacher Construct as Commentary—the chapters examine the complicated mixture of fact, stereotype and misrepresentation that create the image of the teacher in the public eye today. This examination, in turn, allows teacher educators to use popular culture as curriculum. Using the fictional teacher as a text, preservice—and practicing—teachers can examine positive and negative (and often misleading) representations of teachers in order to develop as teachers themselves.
Contents
Foreword
Robert Bulman
Preface
Part I: Introduction
Melanie Shoffner
Part II: Identifying with the Teacher Image
1. Looking into the mirror of erised: Transacting with Representations of Hogwarts’ Teachers and Pedagogy
Dawan Coombs
Jonathan Ostenson
2. Playing the role of teacher: Using film to explore teacher identities
Sheryl Long
Carol A. Pope
3. The Role of the Teacher, Real and Imagined
Jason Whitney
4. Coming of age in the classroom: Representations of teachers in the short fiction of Toni Cade Bambara and Sandra Cisneros
Rodrigo Joseph Rodríguez
5. From content literate to pedagogically content literate: Teachers as tools for social justice
Nalova Westbrook
6. (Re)Imagining life in the classroom: Inciting dialogue through an examination of teacher- student relationships in film
Mark A. Lewis
Ian Parker Renga
Part III: Constructing the Teacher with Content
7. Teacher images in Young Adult literature: Pedagogical implications for English preservice teachers
Benjamin Boche
8. Why Teach Mathematics?: Values Underlying Mathematics Teaching in Feature Films
Amanda Jansen
Charles Hohensee
9. I teach Jim and Jane; I don't teach gym
Carol A. Smith
10. What does it mean to be literate? Examining school film teachers and their literacy values with preservice teachers
Shelbie Witte
11. The hidden curriculum in Room 10: School mythology and professional identity negotiation in the Miss Malarkey picture book series
Sarah Fischer
Part IV: Imaging the Teacher as Savior
12. Moving beyond the teacher savior: Education films, teacher identity and public discourse
Carey Applegate
13. Revisionist films: Detaching from teacher as hero/savior
Chea Parton
14. Deconstructing a new teacher savior: Paladins and politics in Won’t Back Down
Ashley Boyd
15. Chalk: Overwriting the savior narrative
Walter E. Squire
Part V: The Teacher Construct as Commentary
16. Films, governmentality and agency in the struggle over reading education
Patrick Shannon
17. Why Bad Teacher is a bad movie and where the real crisis is: Implications for teachers and teacher education
J. Patrick McGrail
Ewa McGrail
18. Preparing Teachers in the Time of Superman: The Accountability Narrative of Education Documentaries
Christian Z. Goering
Jen S. Dean
Brandon Flammang
19. No human left behind:Falling Skies and the role of the pedagogue in the post-apocalypse
Jeff Spanke
List of Contributors
Biography
Melanie Shoffner is Associate Professor of English Education, Purdue University, USA.
