ABSTRACT

As I began to think about and prepare for the language and learning course in which the experiences I describe in this chapter occurred, I realized I was continuing to wrestle with the differences between being a school-based teacher educator and a university professor. I'd been accustomed to working with teachers who were pessimistic about the possibilities for change and healthily skeptical towards me and school-based professional education. I wasn't prepared, as I look back on it, for the quite different response that greeted me in university courses. The students saw me as an expert transmitter, a‘'lofty’ university professor, who would spread her pearls of wisdom about and expect them to be consumed and regurgitated. Resistance was uncommon. Compliance, especially in the service of receiving high marks, was the norm.