Conversation and teaching: Awakening, nurturing, and sustaining a moral vision

Conversation and its formative potential to awaken, nurture, and sustain a moral vision in teaching were examined using a philosophical inquiry of conceptual analysis. The works of contemporary philosophers and educators provided a heuristic conceptual framework for exploring the meaning of conversation in teaching.;The method of examples and contrasts was used to examine and explore two novels from American literature, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885/1988) and The Small Room by May Sarton (1961). Additional examples were drawn from my reflections of personal teaching experiences in order to provide contextual descriptions of conversations between teachers as well as between teacher educators and teacher candidates in an urban teacher education program.;The study revealed that there is a quality of experience that is present in all the examples of conversations that awaken, nurture, and sustain a moral vision in teaching. Each conversation represents the participants' experiences within a particular context that do not appear to build upon one another in a 'brick by brick' fashion. The experiences are cumulative and take on a transformative quality; the conversations become part of a whole set of experiences in which the teacher, teacher educator, and teacher candidate see a deepening and broadening moral vision in teaching that enables a more full understanding of what it means to be a good teacher. The teacher is at the center of the growth process. The generative quality of conversation suggests that it has a place in teacher preparation.