Teacher’s Work and Teaching Practice: Critical Review of the Film Beyond the Blackboard

Ritika Srivastava | pp. 105-114

Abstract :
Film as a pedagogical tool is used in diverse contexts, perspectives, and objectives. All types of films possess interdisciplinary components and can be used for various educational purposes. This review focuses on an educational film titled Beyond the Blackboard, released in 2011, in the context of the United States. The film is a biographical drama adapted from a memoir Nobody Don’t Love Nobody published in 1994 by Stacey Bess. I selected this film for review as it sets an example of a teacher’s work, stages of teacher development, and a teacher’s reflection on her teaching. This critical review aims to analyse a teacher’s actions and her development using the concepts, namely “stages of teacher development” by Katz (1977) and “reflection-in-action” by Schön (1983). The review is relevant to the larger teacher community as it portrays how the protagonist, the teacher, learns to work with and teach transient children through her everyday understanding of children and context. The film review concludes by focusing on the teacher and the context of teaching, portraying the teacher as a person whose experiences are largely built on and rooted in her commitment to teaching and her sense of responsibility toward homeless children as a “teacher.”

Keywords: Teacher professional development, teaching practice, critical film review in teacher education