Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

of the “Deweyan” community – the teacher as “learner” – they
explain that, during McCarthy’s observation, “Students were
responding in a way that suggested they saw Fishman as a learner
and that they had information which he and their classmates
needed” (351), thus deepening that “opportunity for conjoint
exploration and evaluation of alternative points of view” (352).
Fishman’s adoption of the role of “learner” would seem to
have happened because he presented himself to them as a neutral
“questioner.” Because of this, then, while they had witnessed
“slow, piecemeal change,” there was change nonetheless in terms
of how Fishman’s students perceived “truth,” realizing that
“[A]ll claims – religious, political, scientific, and ethical –
are social constructions, fallible and always subject to
revision” (347). Such was the case with Fishman’s student
“Eric,” who, while he “steadfastly denied that [his] experiences
[in Fishman’s class] […] had changed [his] fundamental beliefs,”
in reality, “provides […] a portrait of a student in the midst
of reconstruction. His position fluctuates, changing from one
example to the next, and he clings to old views while
acknowledging contradictory new ones” (359). Again, without
that “community,” with Fishman as a fellow “learner” and
“questioner” rather than as “leader,” Fishman’s “Eric” would not
have undergone that “reconstruction,” regardless of the fact
that it was “gradual and halting, not dramatic and decisive”
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