What do I do next? Teaching an ancient text by listening to what students say: A case study of pedagogic dilemmas

This dissertation identifies and analyzes my own practice as a teacher attempting to implement an approach to teaching Mishnah, a classic text of the Jewish tradition (circa 220 CE), by having students' learning emerge from an engagement with the material rather than having the teacher convey knowledge directly to them. This practice entailed my confronting a series of pedagogic dilemmas and making a series of decisions about what to do with my own knowledge while teaching this ancient text in this fashion. My task as the teacher, therefore, was custodial and facilitative: I constantly sought ways of keeping the students thinking about and interested in the material, while refraining from the traditional approach of "giving them the right answer." That process required me to decide how to draw on my own knowledge in order to help the students gain more complete ways of understanding the material for themselves. This dissertation identifies, describes and analyzes a selection of six important types of dilemmas that arose in the teaching, and investigates the decisions I made in response to those dilemmas. The orientation of this research, the assumptions that the role of the teacher is to help students deepen their understanding of material through their own direct engagement with it, and the imperative that the teacher be the primary researcher of these types of dilemmas, places this dissertation within the tradition of "critical exploration," a research tradition founded by Eleanor Duckworth and developed and applied by her students.;This research is important for several reasons. First of all, no research has been conducted of this sort identifying pedagogic content knowledge for the teaching of Torah sheb'al peh (sacred texts based upon ancient Rabbinic teachings). As such, I hope that this dissertation will make a contribution as an exemplar to a growing corpus of case studies about how teachers use their knowledge in teaching ancient texts in general, and texts of a specific tradition in particular. Second, this research addresses an imbalance in current practice in education nationally, which tends to favor teacher knowledge over student autonomy. Third, accessing knowledge requires a pedagogy which motivates students to find ways of making sense of the material for themselves, in their own way. This research, therefore, documents a pedagogy which nourishes student motivation to learn by thinking for themselves as a result of engaging material directly. Fourth, this research empowers teachers to take their own processes of pedagogic thinking seriously. It recognizes the teacher as the ultimate authority of his/her own teaching, since that teaching is situated in a particular setting with specific students studying material in a particular way. Only through such empowerment can teachers cultivate a reflective practice, take responsibility for their craft, and master it. Finally, this research is important because it reflects a philosophy of education which emphasizes non-literal, open-ended, dialogic thinking as a primary mode for transmitting cultural values. Such a philosophy provides an important foundation for a democratic approach to education in a world which currently emphasizes literalist, fundamentalist, dualistic thinking, and which therefore delegitimizes the importance of diverse ways of thinking about issues shared by many different people.;The conceptual framework supporting this research rests on two bases: a contemporary interpretation of an ancient Jewish view of the biblical figure, Abraham, and the conceptual foundation of the research tradition of "critical exploration." Ancient rabbinic tradition raises the pedagogic query of how the biblical Abraham acquired knowledge of the Torah if he lived before that knowledge was revealed or transmitted to humanity. To answer this question, the ancient rabbis present an epistemological paradigm for acquiring knowledge which does not rely upon external transmission by an expert. Rather than knowledge being transmitted to him by a master, Abraham's knowledge was a function of thought flowing through him. I develop this ancient image of knowledge emerging from "the inside out" by interpreting its implications in light of modern insights provided by Hans Gadamer, Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey. This image provides a conceptual basis for this research from within the tradition of Jewish wisdom. This foundation provides a continuity with the material as the content of the teaching and learning. The conceptual framework also rests upon the tradition of "critical exploration.".;I summarized the findings of this research by describing ways I accessed my knowledge in the wake of these dilemmas, and by making suggestions about the philosophical implications of these findings for certain trends in contemporary schooling. This dissertation presents only a small sampling of data; the recorded transcripts contain much material for future analysis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).