| This study investigated the existent nature of educational policy formation and the resulting influences of those policies on classroom practices and teacher training. The research revealed that the United States in general, and the State of California in particular, has a history and a present practice of developing educational policy out of a formalist, technological paradigm. The results of this paradigm are characteristics of measurability, reproducibility, componentiality, and the mechanical being valued in instructional design, curricular design, teacher education and student achievement.;This tendency was compared and contrasted through a literature search and analysis with critical hermeneutics, (Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas) which places value on communicative competence and values tradition, linguistics, culture, and the ability to interpret reality rather than accepting the interpretation of others.;The research of this study was done through a participatory design, through interviews of teachers. The process of dialogic retrospection (Keiffer, 1981), through which the teachers were recorded, transcribed, then re-interviewed, presented a base of information and description concerning the instructor's view of role, their significant others, their perception of the classroom as a culture, and their recommendations concerning the most important "what" and "how" of teaching.;The reports of the instructors contrasted greatly with the paradigm of educational policy being promulgated by the State of California. The instructors reported placing greatest value on relationships with students and communicative competence rather than subject matter and methodology.;The report recommends a review of existing teacher education programs and makes recommendations (Bowers, Eisner) for the expansion of teacher education to include critical hermeneutics and the concepts of the classroom as text and the teacher as an intentional mediator in the student's defining and negotiating reality. |
