Summary

In The Call to Teach, author David Hansen employs the idea of teaching as a vocation or calling to analyze and interpret case studies drawn from fieldwork. Based on a 3-year study of the everyday working lives of four teachers in a large urban setting--two work in a public high school, one in a Catholic high school for boys, and one in an independent middle school--this book provides a wealth of detail and insight. Hansen combines his findings with sources outside the standard education literature to develop an original conception of the meaning of a "calling," one that is helpful in understanding both how and why these four teachers--and, by extension, others like them--are able to teach with conviction and success despite the difficulties and challenges presented by today's schools. This artful marriage of philosophical and qualitative analysis will appeal to scholars and practitioners alike.

This book will serve as a supplemental text in graduate and undergraduate courses in teacher education, philosophy of education, foundations, curriculum theory, and qualitative research methods, and will be of particular interest to faculty and researchers in those fields and to all practitioners.

Choice Review

Hansen uses hours of interviews and observations of the work of four teachers in an effort to define teaching as a vocation. He suggests that the elements entailed include public service, personal fulfillment, attention to details, degrees of uncertainty and doubt, and intellectual and moral decision making on a constant, daily basis. He believes that one teacher is not interchangeable with another, and that the interrelationships among teachers and students and among teachers and colleagues are interwoven with personalities and character traits. Although the four teachers scrutinized share certain common characteristics (paying attention to students, being consistently prepared, being conscientious about their roles), one could not take the place of another readily, if ever--an interesting thesis, and one not typically addressed. Hansen realizes that being "called" to teach does not equate teachers with a figure like Mother Teresa, but he does suggest that for teachers to "act ... enthusiastic, interested, committed, can make it possible for those very qualities to take seed and grow." He concludes that teachers who view teaching as a vocation have a "hopeful perspective" that turns challenges into opportunities. General; academic, all levels. B. L. Nourie Illinois State University