La variación de la tortura (como práctica)

Another approach for considering how practitioners proceed is to introduce research recommending various chronologies of stages of activity. The inclusion of literature with a focus on schemes, themes, routines, and stages presents a further means for understanding the complexity of practitioners‟ activities. This approach is problematic in relation to this study because either the literature does not address practitioners‟ processes specifically in the moment of first encounter, or it fails to provide any depth or strictness of discipline in coverage. While Beynon refers to “situations of performance” (1985, p. 36), and others report on the isolated aspects of practitioners‟ activities that occur sometimes in the first moment and at other earlier and later moments, rarely are these activities linked, sequenced or connected to initial encounters.

Ideally, the order of presentation of practitioners‟ activities would follow stages such as those posited by a number of researchers. However, the time

span of their stages always exceeds the moment of first encounter and so it is only possible to estimate whether the parameters and the content of each stage are relevant to this thesis. This makes it difficult to link stages with the diverse aspects of a practitioner‟s activity already reported in other specific psychological and educational literature.

Shavelson and Stern (1981) introduced the metaphor of “routines” to describe how teachers manage many of the moment-to-moment processes of teaching. Smith reported that, “we have to fall back on routines in which previous thought and sentiment has been sedimented. The ability to draw upon a repertoire of metaphors and images that allow for different ways of framing a situation is clearly important to creative practice and is a crucial insight” (2001, p. 10). Berliner referred to “the enormously important role played by mental scripts” (1987, p. 72), a view that echoes earlier research on schemas as unconscious mental structures used by individuals to represent the world (Rumelhart, 1980; Piaget, 1970; Bartlett, 1932). Anderson reported that it is impossible "that people have stored a schema for every conceivable scene, event sequence, and message" (1977, p. 421). Berliner (1987) promoted the idea that teachers performed in terms of behavioural routines, and Kwo (1994) discussed using standardised, automated routines to handle instruction and management.

Yinger offers four planning routines: activity, instructional, management, and executive planning. The routines specify events in the „empty classroom‟, a situation that occurs at any time before a class of students comes together. Of these, this study considers the fourth routine representing a “system of established thought patterns set off by specific planning tasks and results based on experience in similar situations” (2001, pp. 165-7), seems the only

likely contender that might exist after the „empty classroom‟ in the moment of first encounter. Possibly Yinger‟s executive planning routine could cover the use of pre-existing knowledge and paradigms in association with

observations in the moment of first encounter, as part of a planning device that involves development of perceptions, predictions and consequent preferences for further action. In such a circumstance, the concept of an executive planning routine is one that has the capacity to extend from the time of pre-class planning into the classroom, but probably only as a high level and broad brushstroke series of processes.

In his study of classroom dynamics, Mehan (1979) formulated an initiation- reply-evaluation sequence to explain how teachers interact with students. Seemingly, this study‟s topic may sit most appropriately with his first initiation stage. It would allow practitioners to commence the communication process with initial eye contact. However, even though Mehan was referring to the moments after the moment of first encounter when teachers initiate active solicitation of responses from the students, the concept of an initiation stage is such that it might encompass the commencement activities before a teacher speaks.

Clark and Peterson categorised teaching activity as “preactive (included

planning), interactive (included decision making), and postactive” (included

planning) phases of teaching (1986, p. 257). The choice of the word

„interactive‟ implies that motion, action and activity occur in all moments associated with the class group. On this basis, the procedures associated with practitioners in their moment of first encounter with a new class group, may sit in stage two. Similarly to Mehan‟s sequence, the amplitude of these stages exceeds the moment of first encounter.

A selection of literature concerning initial encounters has been previously acknowledged. Beynon tells us that, “during first initial encounters teachers cannot hide behind routines, but must establish them” (1985, p. 2).

According to Woods (1981), initial encounters can be mapped in terms of three negotiative phases; “a reconnoitring phase when parties gather data to identify each other, a playing safe phase when organisational demands are met, and an experimenting phase when strategical work to secure interests is undertaken” (1981, p.37). This suggests the initial encounter continues for a period of time. Beynon (1985) researched English comprehensive school teachers and pupils and how they behaved towards each other when they first met and worked together at the start of the year. He believed the phases offered by Woods were not discrete but scrambled, and that they were taken up at varying speeds; also implying the passage of time. Based on the information provided, it would seem that the reconnoitring phase most realistically represents or includes the moment of first encounter, with a person using that moment to make decisions about how to execute the last two phases.

Ball (1980) isolated two crucial stages through which he proposed that initial encounters pass: firstly, an observatory period in which people are quiet, passive and unsure where they stand followed by a testing and information exchange stage. The pattern in Ball‟s first period may be relevant to the teaching context. It suggests sensory data may be collected by practitioners in readiness for the second stage. The testing and information exchange stage involves the escalation of activities, and exceeds the time frame of the moment of first encounter. While it is not practically possible to test and exchange information in the first moment, nevertheless, initially practitioners

may be preparing for various degrees of active experimentation (Serafini, 2003; Osterman & Kottkamp, 1993) as part of a process of learning

(Fleming, 1959). The study notes that Ball‟s framework does not provide for any activity between observation and testing.

In the education field, the elementary stages of formation of knowledge have been described by Piaget (1970) as involving sensation and perception plus what action adds to the data. Others, talk about newly received unedited knowledge (Russell, 1918) accumulating with practical professional knowledge previously acquired (Buchmann, 1986), so that learning is cumulative (Rumelhart, 1980). Hofer believes “teachers arrive at their judgements by means of differentiated considerations, best explained by a two-staged process of information integration” (1986, p. 113). The processes become automatized and routinized (Clark & Peterson, 1986; Shavelson & Stern, 1981) into an „idealized strategy‟ that provides additional information towards developing an understanding of practitioners‟ activities. These strategies can be used as practitioners begin to be operational in the sense of a “speculative stage” and a “process of establishment” (Beynon, 1985, p. 36) before engaging in “improvisational performance” (Richards, 1994, p. 3).

Ornstein considers teaching to be “intuitive and interactive” (1991, p. 67). This raises the question as to whether the shape of any intuition and

interaction in the moment of first encounter is patterned into sets of activities. Marland (1977) focused on the thoughts of teachers in the interactive

process, and derived five principles of practice; „progressive checking‟ and „suppressing emotions‟ are the two which might be partly activated in the first brief moment. Connors (1978) elaborated on Marland‟s work, and deduced the new principles of teacher authenticity, self-monitoring and cognitive

linking, all of which may assist with enriching an understanding of practitioners‟ first moment activities. Corno (1981) talked about

„transformation‟ of information, which involves a number of activities that may be sequenced: comparison; integration; rehearsal; and elaboration. He believes these processes enable teachers to simplify and make sense of the complex classroom environment.

Despite the extent of the literature discussing stages and routines, it remains unclear whether patterns of difference exist within a practitioners‟ moment of first encounter with a new group of adult learners.