Brookfield’s method for ‘hunting assumptions’

Brookfield takes a commonly held assumption, for example:

‘It’s common sense to visit small groups after you’ve set them a task, since this demonstrates your commitment to helping them learn. Visiting groups is an example of respectful, attentive, student-centred teaching.

He then goes on to give some different interpretations of this behaviour.

First he says ‘Visiting small groups after you’ve set them a task can seem like a form of assessment—a way of checking up …This can be insulting to students, since it implies that you don’t trust them enough to do what you’ve asked...’

Second, he points out that the habit might even get in the way of students doing good learning: ‘Students might change their behaviour during your visit to the group as a way of impressing you with the kinds of behaviours they think you want to see. Their overwhelming concern is showing you what good, efficient, task-oriented learners they are, rather than thoughtfully analyzing and critiquing the task at hand.
In this example, Brookfield looks at the supposedly ideal teacher behaviour from another perspective—through the eyes of the students, in terms of,

(i) the students’ interpretation of what the teacher’s behaviour stands for, and

(ii) the students’ ideas of what they think teachers want to see.
This move, from the ‘me-centred’ perspective of the teacher, to the perspective (‘lens’ is his word) of other agents in the teaching situation, is the crucial one. Our actions as teachers will unavoidably be interpreted through the multitude of factors that constitute the learning and teaching belief system of each of our students—their age, gender, personal disposition, economic circumstances, the previous education they experienced. We can not, in other words, expect that what we mean by what we do and say is experienced by our students as having the same meaning. Behaviour is not transparent between people—it is interpreted, and its meaning is constructed by those who experience it.