| In the 1950s, United States' educational policy seemed to shift from endorsing a progressive, student-centered paradigm to favoring a more essentialist, transmission model of instruction. By examining popular fictional representations of classroom instruction and the impact on students' learning from the elementary through the college levels in radio, television, and film from 1945 to 1959, this study assesses these postwar media models and the consequent possible public perceptions of the roles of teachers and students in schools. Using Judith Lindfors's (1999) definitions of information-seeking, sense-making, and wondering inquiry for analysis of instruction, this study argues that both progressive and essentialist approaches existed simultaneously within the depicted classrooms, thus suggesting perhaps contradictory purposes for schools, without revealing any discernible shift from progressivism to essentialism. In addition, because the media rarely portrayed teachers in the act of teaching and the opportunities for student-initiated inquiry were rare, teachers and schooling were defined more through moral character than pedagogical methods. These images of teachers further embody gender role expectations for the postwar era that constrain professional identities for men and women. |
