Educational Implications on Professional Stress and Its Scope

This hierarchical vision of social diversity draws on what Sleeter and Grant (1988) call a "deficiency orientation." Problems exist for those who are "different" from the norm--for limited English speakers, students of color, and so on. Learners were seen as varying in the degree to which they differed from the norm. Respondents often described in apparently sympathetic tones the" victims" of difference, their need for self-esteem, and a reaffirmation of their "right" to education. This view of differences carried consequences for teachers, according to many of the respondents, although their sense of the consequences tended to be quite general: chiefly, giving more attention, encouragement, motivation, and help. Most often, problems of diversity were implicitly described as the concern of the individual "different" student and, in some cases, the teacher. The dominant approach of interviewees saw social, cultural, ethnic, and racial differences as significant for their potential barrier to learning and for their consequences for the individual learner and, to some extent, teacher. A minority of those interviewed considered the impact of diversity on the social relations of the classroom or social organization of learning, as one interviewee did in describing the ways in which "kids definitely perceive those differences, and they oftentimes think of those kids as inferior to themselves, we know, if they have different colored skin or something" (Mindy). Equally unusual was the perspective that saw difference as a positive resource for teaching and learning.7 In summary, prospective teachers expressed elaborate visions of ways in which students differ. Psychological and categorical differences predominated, but both of these types mattered to our respondents because of the apparent effect they have on individual behavior and, most important, motivation. Their dominant conception of diversity is thusfundamentally psychological in its orientation. At thesame time, however, our respondents tended to viewsocial categories of difference in hierarchical terms and as having individual, not larger social, consequences.For the most part, "difference" was implicitly treated as a problem.

Emerging from the questionnaire and interviewresponses is a view of teaching which sees all students as different and the teacher as reactive to difference.This model of teaching is essentially individuallyoriented: the individual teacher working with theindividual student and his or her unique set ofcharacteristics. As one prospective teachercharacterized this view, "my teaching would differ . . .with the individual" (Sonya). Associated with this individualistic orientation towardsteaching and diversity is the importance assigned topersonality and attitude. On the questionnaire,respondents most often cited student attitudes as thesources of success (42 percent) and failure (35percent) in student's learning experiences (see Table3). The frequency with which student motivation wasmentioned in the interviews echoes this findings. Aspart of this individualistic orientation, these prospective teachers tended to think of teaching as relating toindividual students. As a result, they emphasizedteachers' need to find out their students' interests; theirresponses to diversity often centered on developinginterests among students who are different from thenorm. The interviews suggest that these prospectiveteachers at this point in their professional studies tend to consider diversity as something affecting individualstudents. Except for the occasional interview whichpointed out the status hierarchy in classrooms or thepositive potential of classroom diversity, the majority of respondents talked about teaching as working either with individual students or with an entire class, where a class is the sum of individuals. Generally absent from these discussions of differences was attention to the social relations of the classroom, the dynamics of group interaction, as well as the school context. With this orientation, a standard response to diversity is to individualize. Recall that approximately 70 percent of students surveyed agreed with the view that teachers are able to tailor instruction to accommodate individual differences. For many, individualization appeared to mean making the content or approach of class interesting to the individual student. It was the rare respondent who considered other meanings of individualization, took this idea of meeting individual needs to a more specific level, or considered the complexities associated with this practice. One interviewee who did do this described the teacher's obligation to attend to what she sees as differences in cognitive stages and teach at two or three different levels at the same time, so that you're not just teaching two people who can understand you analytically, but you're also teaching people who don't have the analysis, the capabilities. . . . So it's really a time where, especially in older grades of elementary, where you have to teach and make sure it's getting across to everybody, and everybody is spread out. (Mavis) Implicit in the majority of the interviews was the expectation that teachers would find ways, though undefined, to engage all students. The prospective teachers we interviewed talked at length about how children differ and why teachers need to consider diversity. Yet a striking finding from these often lengthy conversations is apparent limitations and difficulties students had in discussing diversity in depth in the context of pedagogical action. Interviewees were most eloquent when talking about individual differences. Where their talk bogged down (and sometimes came to a halt) was when they were asked to consider categorical differences such as gender, race, and social class. Responses tended to be one of two kinds. Some reflected limited exposure to and understanding of the category, as for example, when handicapping conditions were described as simply using wheelchairs. The other common type of response reiterated the importance of equal treatment or the sameness of educational goals and activities, as in one prospective elementary teacher's claim that "I do not think race is an excuse or reason for anything" (Gabrielle) and another's that, "as far as education goes we educate everyone the same" (Sonya). Despite our interviewees' oftentimes complex notions of the ways in which students may differ, they had the greatest difficulty analyzing and being explicit about the pedagogical implications of diversity. A prospectivesecondary school teacher expressed an unsurenessmany shared regarding operationalizing their concernfor equity: I have had a deep concern about this [genderdifferences] for a long time. . . . And if you ask mespecifically what, I am not sure whether I can tell you,but I know that is going to be something that I amconcerned with and going to be looking for ways ofdealing with it as positively as possible. (Sheila) Many faced difficulties in going beyond familiarphrases about fairness and individual effort.8 thequestionnaire responses similarly reveal a pattern ofvagueness or confusion in response to questionsdealing with specific teaching practices. One particular area of concern is grouping andtracking. The proportion of respondents who were "notsure" about a set of items dealing with these issueswas very high, higher than that on most other itemsdealing with general teaching issues. Between 18percent and 25 percent of the respondents were notsure how they would operationalize their visions offairness in the face of classroom diversity andpressures to use grouping or tracking (see Table 2).Asked about the merits of high school curriculartracking, for example, these prospective teachers gave responses that were spread out across the possible 7-point range, with each possible option for agreement or disagreement garnering more than 8 percent but lessthan 19 percent of the responses. The categoryreceiving the largest number of responses was "notsure," with 23.8 percent of the responses. Thisvariation and doubt may suggest a general confusionabout grouping. Interestingly, at the same time, 64.8percent of respondents disagreed with the practice ofwhole group instruction for children of lowsocioeconomic status (SES) background. What is thealternative? For these students, grouping is one,although many had doubts about it as a viable method.Individualizing instruction is the other commonalternative, but clearly there are problems with that, some of which interviewees themselves indicated.9The questionnaire and interview data from theseteachers indicate that the teacher education studentshave much disagreement and a good deal of doubtabout grouping and tracking. At the same time, theyseem unclear about alternatives. Given the dominance of an "individual difference"perspective, it is not surprising that prospectiveteachers had a hard time conceptualizing working withgroups of differing students. Even students who articulated perspectives of categorical difference had trouble when pedagogy entered the discussion; they had a clear sense of categories that make a difference, but they were not clear what to do about these. A view of difference that does not include some understanding of social interaction does not prepare teachers well for thinking about the dynamics of classroom diversity. A second area of confusion concerns teacher expectations. Our respondents discussed diversity in terms of fairness and equal treatment. Yet they encountered difficulties in discussing teaching standards and expectations. Some students' responses were marked by internal inconsistencies, ones which might suggest potential for self-fulfilling prophecies, particularly for children of color, poor children, or children with limited English proficiency. The comments of one prospective elementary teacher are a case in point. When asked how her teaching might differ for students who are of different races, she said, "Really no different . . . but all the kids are going to have to do what I expect of them in class" (italics added). She was next asked about the way she would respond to language difference. During this section, the interviewer raised the issue of black English by asking "would you accept things that you might not accept from other kids because they have learned in a different way?" Her response was, "Yeah, but um, yeah,I guess" (Shelley). For this teacher, as well as others, identifying standards and expectations for different students poses a problem. Her general orientation is to treat all students the same and expect the same of all, yet when asked about specific differences, she suggests applying different standards for different students. Implicit in much of the discussion of standards was the idea of an orthodox approach or orthodox knowledge. Another prospective elementary teacher said that I know people of different, different races have different words to explain things and the way they pronounce things would be the reason for them spelling things wrong, and that has, that has to be taken into account but I think that they should be taught the right way. (Gabrielle) This student, like many of her peers, took a strong stance on expectations needing to be the same for everyone ("I would expect the same from a black or a Hispanic person that I do from a white person"). At the same time, however, she explained that thinking about how teaching would differ for students who are from different backgrounds "is a hard question because you want to be fair but then you know you cannot expect as much . . . out of one person as . . . another." The tension between accepting difference and maintaining a common standard concerned many prospective teachers, especially as they discussed the teaching ofwriting. The difficulty in dealing pedagogically withdiversity was particularly evident in the respondents'reflections on categorical differences and teachingexpectations. When talking about race, gender, class,language and handicapping conditions as categories of difference, some students invoked educationalresearch to explain and perhaps justify lowerexpectations for poor children and children of color. The comments by a prospective secondary schoolteacher, though slightly more explicit than those ofmany of her peers, typifies an implicit message thatwas present in many interviews. This particularrespondent (R) argued to the interviewer (I) that itwould be important for her to know the racial and SES background of her students. I: What about their SES and their race would beimportant for you to know as a teacher? R: The kids do not perform as well on some tests asothers do. They are more concrete oriented. Lessabstract oriented. Higher SES kids usually come from amore motivated background education wise. You wouldhave to know that if you have got an entire class of lowSES kids you are going to have to work on motivationmuch more than if you are working with upper middleclass kids. The interviewer then asked about ethnicity, and thestudent explained: R: In Hispanics it has been recently found are theworst educated of all. Blacks have . . . as I understand it they have somethingagainst learning sociologically because it is the whitething to do and a lot of peer pressure is put on blackstudents not to learn and not to succeed so you wouldhave to know that whether or not these black studentsare going through peer pressure. (Sena) For thisprospective teacher and others like her, research hasprovided frameworks for understanding inequality inclassrooms those results from social diversity. Givenan implicit model of teaching that stresses motivationand the tendency to attribute this to contextual factors, these frameworks may at the same time serve toabsolve the teacher of responsibility for challengingthat inequity. Much later in the same interview, Senatalks about various types of diversity that are bothrelatively easy and difficult to deal with. She considers racial diversity potentially difficult because the blacks with their peer pressure, they are among their friendsall the time. The way they grew up was not to be like"whitey." It is ingrained in their social structure attimes, and you cannot expect to change someone's grain just by saying, well, you are in a classroom now and I am your teacher and you are going to change your attitude. For Sena and her peers, diversity may well be something teachers cannot do much about, and this perspective may be reinforced by research. In sum, our respondents called on research to define categories of difference and, in some cases, to explain why these categories are important for education. Yet when it came time to define a pedagogical approach, their previous experience and professional courses had not as yet given them any helpful direction, although these experiences and courses may well have supported in some a view which removes teachers from responsibility for learner success. For most of these teacher education students, however, they were hoping to learn from their programs constructive approaches to complex questions about learner diversity. These questions, associated with and highlighting dilemmas all educators face, and ones for which we as a nation have had little success in identifying solutions.

These findings raise conceptual and methodological questions and implications for research and practice in teacher education. These are puzzles associated with four findings: the dominance of the individual, the emphasis on personality and attitude, the diversity of response to concrete situations, and the presence of confusion.

Our data point to the power (or popularity) of an "individual difference" understanding of diversity and to conceptions of teaching as working with a collection of individuals. How can these be explained? There are several possible explanations, yet each requires additional research to be evaluated. One could argue that teaching attracts candidates who highly value the individually and a psychologically oriented approach to diversity, and our sample simply reflects this. Certainly, other research (King and Ladson-Billings, 1988) suggests the dominance of individual over structural-level explanatory frameworks among teacher education students. But are teacher candidates distinctive in this regard? Comparative analysis of teacher education and other students needs to be done if we 10The liberal arts students surveyed and interviewed as part of the NCRTE's work can help us test the effectiveness of this explanation are to make claims about a distinctive perspective held by our sample (and other prospective teachers).10 A second possibility--that this finding reflects the impact of teacher education--also offers itself as anexplanation. While our findings draw on baseline data,many of the students interviewed had already hadsome (small) exposure to teacher education coursesand not infrequently referred to educational research they had been exposed to in their programs. But wealso know that teacher education is commonlyunderstood as being a weak treatment. It is importantto examine the stability of this "individual difference"orientation over time. Comparisons of this baselinedata with subsequent waves of data will make thatpossible. In addition, we need to find out about theorientations to diversity of specific programs andanalyze the ways in which programs influence theselearners. A third hypothesis is that what we find representssocial rather than professional norms, society-wideideological foundations rather than specificprofessional orientations. One finds support for this inthe critical sociology of education (see, for example,Giroux and McLaren, 1986, and Popkewitz, 1987). Yetto gain clearer understanding of the force of social norms requires comparisons across cultures. Researchon teacher education in China (Paine, 1986), forexample, indicates sharp contrasts in approaching thebalancing of individual/collective concerns in theUnited States and China. Cross-cultural research canadd to our understanding of the impact of U.S.culture(s) on American teacher education. Finally, a fourth explanation needs to be considered.What appears as the predominance of an "individualdifference" perspective may in fact reflect the methods used to learn about diversity. Given the power of the concept of the individual in U.S.society, teacher education, and social scienceresearch, we find it difficult to ask questions aboutdiversity that do not lead to an "individual differences"response. The content of questions often may suggestthat differences occur at the level of the individual. It is difficult to find lay language to use in asking questions about patterns of difference, differences in context, andpedagogical implications. Anyon (1981), for example,in her educational research makes an importantdistinction between static notions of social class (likeSES, in which the individual is positioned through static measures of income or occupational prestige) andrelational notions of class (which incorporate thedynamic relationships of individuals, work, and socialgroups). Yet these and other distinctions have notentered popular discourse. Thus, in analyzing how prospective teachers thinkabout diversity, we need to be aware of the ways in which the concepts, language, and situations posed themselves convey hidden messages about orientations to diversity. Do our questions imply an individual or categorical difference orientation and exclude a contextual approach (like Anyon's use of "class")? The very choice of the word "different," for instance, may imply something that is not the same as "diversity" and may suggest a normative view or a deficiency orientation not intended by the researchers. That is, "different" may suggest variation from a norm, whereas "diversity" may simply suggest heterogeneity. I believe we need to examine more closely the implicit meanings--conveyed and received--by the language and form of research we use. This poses a challenge for future research. It also adds to the difficulty of interpreting our current data. Each of these possible explanations is plausible and, thus, emphasizes the need for further investigation. Surely the sources of influence on teachers' views of diversity are important to examine, particularly if we are to consider implications for preservice and inservice teacher education. Specific recommendations for action will vary depending on which of these explanations holds. In all cases, however, the dominance of an individual perspective suggests that teacher education needs to help teachers analyze differing interpretations of the causes of educational inequity, consider critically the consequences of an individual difference view, and understand different pedagogical implications of alternative orientations to diversity.

The data reveal a conception of teaching which relies heavily on relating to students, encouraging their motivation, and building on their interests. When it comes to dealing with diverse learners, personality appears to carry more weight with these prospective teachers than knowledge of content. How do we interpret this finding? I think it is important to consider this attitude in connection with teacher education students' attitudes towards content knowledge, as well as their own educational experiences. While this particular section of the data does not speak to this point, one might hypothesize that the emphasis on attitude represents the prospective teacher's undervaluing of content knowledge in their own academic background. This finding, like that related to the dominance of the individual, makes us wonder about the ways in which prospective teachers are likely to change over time. Is this emphasis on teaching as relating personally to students something that beginning teachers bring to their professional studies and later abandon? Is this the result of their ownexperience as students and hence likely to changewhen they learn about and experience the teacher'srole? Longitudinal study of our sample, as well as acomparison between prospective teachers andexperienced teachers on this dimension, could produceinteresting and useful information. This finding also raises some challenges for teachereducators. If prospective teachers approach diverselearners as people to relate to, what is their motivationto think about content in different and potentiallyconstructive pedagogical ways? Considering the stressthese beginners place on attitude, teacher educatorsconfront a serious problem in justifying and makingmeaningful their own courses to students. This is not anew issue. Teacher educators frequently lament theirstudents' conviction that "loving children" is sufficientmotivation for teaching. The diversity of learners,however, adds complications to this stress on attitudeand "relating." How well prepared will prospectiveteachers be to deal with the frustrations and dilemmasof teaching when attitude is not enough? How thorough can their commitment to fairness be when certainstudents will be easier to relate to than others? These questions, I believe, pose significant challenges for teacher educators. In particular, the data suggest prospective teachers need support in developing acommitment to educating all learners, regardless offrustrations over student attitudes and motivations.Accompanying this is a need for teacher education tohelp teachers critically examine their implicit model ofteaching and offer an alternative view that brings boththe social organization of learning and subject matterto the fore in teachers' thinking about teaching (Florio-Ruane, 1989; McDiarmid, 1989).

A third set of questions and implications is brought upby another finding, that is, the high degree ofdisagreement and uncertainty over specific approachesto diversity. Recall that at the level of general norms,these prospective teachers shared a common valuingof equity. Yet when asked to respond to specificpedagogical decisions (such as grouping and trackingdecisions), they displayed wide disagreement andfrequently were not sure of their position. What do we make of this range of opinion? We could see this as areflection of the diversity among programs of teachereducation or as an indication of diversity across theindividuals in our sample. The presence of suchdivergent views may illustrate the lack of teachereducation consensus on "answers" to the dilemmas of diversity. Yet I am wary of reading much about programs into thisset of data. As baseline data, it comes from students who are at an early stage in their professional studies. In addition, the traditional weak effect of most teacher education programs makes it unlikely that this wide range would be caused by short exposure to teacher education. Instead, I find it more likely that this variation represents a lack of consensus in society. The teachers in our sample, like Americans generally, are in agreement about broad democratic principles and abstract ideals, yet there is not a similar agreement on how these ideals and principles get spelled out in practice. In addition, more important than the obvious disagreement over operationalizing instruction for diverse learners is the lack of confidence displayed by our sample. The large proportion of respondents who are "not sure" may indicate broad differences of opinion in society. This confusion or lack of confidence shown by our respondents may also signify the difficulty individuals have in conceptualizing the unfamiliar. Recall that the interviewees encountered great difficulties during discussions of the contextual or pedagogical implications of diversity. This likely reflects the limited background of prospective teachers; they tend to lack both experience of the teacher's view of classroom diversity and exposure to people different from themselves. Without classroom experience, these prospective teachers find it hard to talk about classroom complexities or even conceptualize a class as anything more than an additive sum of individuals. In addition, many of our samples were also constrained by their own backgrounds, which tend to include schooling in settings absent of visible heterogeneity. As one prospective secondary teacher explained, "I have not come from any place that has really had that big of a difference. You know,my high school was strictly Caucasian" (Geoffrey). This study suggests that we need to find out more about how prospective teachers coming from homogeneous backgrounds understand diversity: What does the concept of diversity mean to them, and how do they arrive at that understanding? Our first wave of data collection suggests that these teachers have many abstract labels for categorizing people, but these labels have not provided them with systematic and dynamic understandings of diversity. This preliminary analysis suggests a need to pursue further the labels themselves, to uncover the individual meanings that these teachers give to categories like "family background," "social class," or "handicapped." At the same time, this pattern of responses raises questions for teacher educators. Prospective teachers enter teacher education with little personal experience of diversity. Yet they also claim to be drawing onpersonal experience as a major influence on theirteaching (88.4 percent of the survey respondentsagree that a lot of their ideas about teaching derivefrom their own schooling experiences). And manytalked about learning to teach as essentially a trial-and-error process. How well prepared will theseteachers be to recognize and respond pedagogically to patterns of difference? If these prospective teachers are calling upon theirprior experience to make sense of that "trial-anderror"process, it is likely that they will be particularlyconstrained in their ability to work with the diversity--both visible and invisible--that is part of all classroomsand to see this diversity as a resource rather than aproblem. Certainly this learn-by-doing approachsupports the reproduction of familiar practices,including those that perpetuate educational inequity. Given this orientation, which is essentiallyconservative, it is not surprising that our baseline datashould reveal lack of confidence and confusion. (It can be confusing to apply familiar solutions to what may be very different and unfamiliar contexts and situations.) Itwill be important to watch over time to see how teacher education programs affect this conservativeperspective and, in particular, how this influencesteachers' orientations to diversity. Related to thisconservative thrust implicit in much of our data is thepresence of internal inconsistencies--for example,between ideals of fairness and self-fulfilling propheciesof unequal achievement. How much of this inconsistency is malleable throughprofessional studies? One could claim that the inherent tensions in the prospective teachers' approachessimply reflect the novice stage of their professional and intellectual development. Yet other research onAmerican education may offer a differing explanation:that these responses reflect fundamental tensions inAmerican education--between ideals of equity andexcellence, the rights of the individual and the needs of society, and so on. It will take further observation andinterviews with our sample to see if they haveexposure to discourse that acknowledges andchallenges these contradictory tendencies. As for teacher education practice, these data imply that students could benefit from broader exposure to therange of human diversity, yet this exposure needs tobe supported by conceptual understanding andanalytical frameworks. In particular, sustained anddirect consideration of contextual understandings ofand pedagogical implications of diversity is required toavoid re-discovering that "good liberal intentions arenot enough" (Delpit, 1988, p. 296) and instead support teaching that is "multicultural and social reconstructionist" (Grant, 1988; Sleeter and Grant, 1988). The prospective teachers interviewed were generally hopeful that diversity does not pose impossible challenges. Differences were described as "difficult, but hopefully not impossible. Otherwise, why go into teaching?" (Mercy). At the start of these prospective teachers' professional study, it appears that the teacher's ability to respond to learner diversity is an article of faith, firmly held, deeply rooted in a dominant liberal American vision of education. "Right now I'd like to believe that I can have the ability to overcome these obstacles, and until I'm proven wrong, I'm goingto have to believe it" (Monica). For teacher education the obligation is to provide support to Monica and her peers to examine their implicit assumptions critically while grounding their beliefs in dispositions, skills, and knowledge.

It is clear that prospective teachers bring much to the discussion of diversity. Their views are idealistic and more coherent in abstract than concrete situational terms. Their approach, chiefly psychological in orientation, focuses on "individual difference" and, to a lesser extent, "categorical difference" levels of thinking about diversity. As a result, they tend to see diversity issues as decontextualized. Their view of classroom diversity appears to reflect a static, rather than a dynamic conception of individuals and groups. We find that they bring to discussions of diversity, much as they do to consideration of teaching more generally, an enthusiastic appreciation of personality factors and an underdeveloped sense of the role of content and context. In discussing diversity, these prospective teachers bring with them no small measure of confusion and tension. They face enormous challenges, thanks to persistent dilemmas that have shaped our educational system and classroom life. These future teachers are unsure of how one makes concrete the abstract goals of fairness and equality. And not infrequently, when pushed to do so, they propose approaches to teaching which treat diversity as a problem rather than a phenomenon;it is a view which places responsibility for the problem often on the student's (or family's) shoulders. The expectations some hold for students of differing backgrounds appear to be unequal, despite claims to the contrary. In short, these teachers bring approaches to diversity that have the potential for reproducinginequality and reflect larger social and historicaldilemmas. These findings pose problems of interpretation. Onecan make plausible arguments for these findingsreflecting diversity within teacher education, but one could also explain these as the products of a societywhose educational and social ideologies themselveshave a history of long, unresolved tensions. Ourinterpretation for the present is limited by both data and concepts. These findings also offer real challenges to teacher educators concerned with diversity. Thegrowing diversity within our schools makes theinherently conservative, individualistic orientation ofthese prospective teachers a particularly worrisomeproblem. With longitudinal analysis and carefulexamination of the ways in which we ask questionsabout diversity, we can begin to make choices betweenalternative explanations and, only then, about suitableaction in teacher education. Both researchers andteacher educators have much to learn about theorientations to diversity that prospective teachers bring to their professional education. We have even more tolearn by seeing over time what these teachers make ofwhat they bring.