Professing and Pedagogy will be of interest to teachers interested in reflecting on their own practices, but Stenberg is concerned primarily with challenging ‘deeply entrenched conceptions of the research professor and the discipline’ (xvii). In this she certainly succeeds, and the book’s structure (following a preliminary chapter on teaching in a research environment, Stenberg’s chapters consider different aspects of the teaching experience: Teacher as Scholar, Teacher as Trainee, Teacher as Owner and Teacher as Learner) encourages serious reconsideration of teaching in a university environment. Stenberg’s discussion is informed by a rich pool of pedagogical theory, but the most interesting moments are those in which the author reflects on her own experiences as both student and teacher. She reflects on her teaching across time, providing journalistic material from her days as a student, supplemented with comments from her later life as a teacher. Stenberg’s approach does not break the distinction between teacher and learner, but does assert the ongoing development necessary for fruitful teaching environments.
Aimed primarily at a North American audience, its arguments may seem more fresh to a British reader. Self-reflection is not absent from British teaching practices, but exercises such as journal keeping among students, and the writing of letters from students to their new teacher, are far more common in American universities than they are here, and are much less common in disciplines outside Composition. A teacher or student unused to such practices may approach them with some hesitation. An American colleague commented, with regard to student journaling: ‘most students only fill it out because they have to’. This might be the case, but it is also true for assessed essays, whose value we almost never question. Stenberg’s analysis of teaching at university level espouses an ‘opening up’ of the teaching space.
Stenberg argues that the teaching space (envisioned as a theoretical space, but also, quite literally, as the teacher’s classroom) tends to be envisioned as private; the teacher is in control. According to this paradigm, trainee teachers can be ’visited’ by experienced teachers, but the space of established teachers is never reciprocally invaded. Furthermore, one of the challenges facing university teachers is the changing nature of students’ expectations; increasingly, the student experiences university as a customer. This is a substantial break with previous models of the teacher-student relationship. Stenberg tackles both these issues with an alternative vision of the teaching space: ‘I would like to suggest that we prepare the next generation of professors differently – that they learn, from the start, to think of the curriculum not as a fixed structure owned or managed by an administrative “boss”, but rather, as Derek Owens describes it, as the "educator’s artspace ... Neither [curriculum nor classroom] is the property of one or the other [student or teacher], but instead both are community spaces to which all contribute, and in which all have a stake’ (116, 122). Stenberg supports her approach with three specific revisions of teaching practice ‘that are essential for moving beyond normative modes of disciplanarity and for promoting teacher development’ (135). New teachers should not be thought of as ’blank slates’, nor should established teachers be thought of as ’finished products’ – Stenberg looks for the ‘mutual development of teachers across traditional boundaries’ (135). As part of this process she looks for teaching to be made more public (and public in this sense seems to mean ’public to other teachers’). Finally, she encourages teachers to discuss their teaching with others across traditional boundaries. Her arguments suit the present moment very well, with inter-disciplinarity becoming increasingly attractive to academic institutions as an engine for fresh ideas. She acknowledges that Composition specialists tend to be more focussed on pedagogy as a productive aspect of their discipline, compared with other disciplines which think of themselves as simply transferring knowledge through teaching; her focus on interdisciplinarity may interest many in disciplines beyond Composition.
Stenberg distinguishes between teacher training and teacher development: training produces a ’finished product’ while development encourages ongoing self-assessment in a mutually open teaching environment. Her most convincing argument is that university teaching should be a process of development, and it is one which speaks as much to the teaching of English in the UK as in North America. The more personal material is both informative and entertaining, and will perhaps prove the most useful aspect of the book for a teacher engaged in their own self-development.
Shane Collins
Durham University
