This week, I experienced one of the most delightful and most illuminating moments of my doctoral journey. In the course “Instruction: Theory and Research,” we were looking at the formidable resource before us (the book Contemporary Issues in Curriculum). While we are usually expected to analyze topics one by one, our professor stopped us and asked the following question, which demanded the “meta-cognitive” perspective expected of a doctoral student:
“Friends, why might the editors have brought together these seemingly completely opposite names the humanist Noddings, the technical Walberg, and Palmer, who advocates for spiritual depthin the same section? What might be the invisible conflict or the common concern here?” (N. Öztürk, personal communication, November 27, 2025).
The silence that fell at that moment was actually the sound of our minds shifting gears. Because this question required not just reading the text, but deciphering the “architecture” of the text. The “invisible conflict or common concern” that took shape in my mind as we went back and forth between Walberg’s treatment of education with medical precision and the human-centered stance of Noddings and Palmer throughout the course, I want to share with you in light of the notes I jotted down on the pages of my book and in my notebook that day.
The thing that ignited my thought was one of the chapter authors, Herbert Walberg’s, analogy of instruction to a “Medical Model.” Walberg (2014) asserted with a rightful rationality: Just as a disease is treated with scientific research in medicine, learning in education must be guaranteed by “evidence-based methods” (cues, reinforcement, feedback). Simply put, by likening educational research to medical research, he assigns the teacher the role of a ‘doctor writing a prescription.’ This approach appears flawless on paper. However, precisely at this point, the other giants of the section, Nel Noddings and Parker Palmer, quietly rise and raise this objection: While the biological structure of a virus in medicine is the same in every patient, the reasons for ‘failure’ in the classroom (poverty, trauma, language) are different for every child.
In medicine, the biological structure of a virus (for example, the influenza virus) is universal. The virus produces similar biological reactions in my body and your body; the doctor writes the prescription, the medicine enters the cell, and the virus dies. Biology is largely predictable. But what about the classroom? Is a child’s failure in mathematics a biological “virus”? No. Ahmet’s inability to solve the equation is not biological, it is biographical. Ahmet may not have understood that lesson because he didn’t have breakfast that morning (physiological), because his parents are going through a divorce (emotional), or perhaps because he couldn’t form a secure bond with his teacher (relational).
This is where Walberg’s prescription falls short: It gives us the “technique” but misses the “person.” Noddings and Palmer, however, remind us that the classroom is a “human community,” and that success does not come only with technique; sometimes “contact,” “relationship,” “understanding,” and “caring” are needed first (Noddings, 2014).
The answer to our professor’s question, “Why are they together?”, actually lies in the structuring of the teaching act as an organic whole, not a mechanical assembly. The editors (Ornstein et al., 2014), by placing these names side by side, show us the three vital dimensions of teaching through the anatomy of a tree:
Under the soil, in those deep roots that are unseen but hold the tree upright, Noddings and Palmer are located. Here the question is not “How do I teach?” but “Who am I?” With Palmer’s (2014) jarring statement, we actually teach not what we know, but “who we are.” If the roots are rotten (if ethics and identity are absent), the majesty of the trunk is insignificant. The teacher here is not a technician, but an autonomous being nourished by their own moral stance and “heart.”
When we move up from the roots to the visible and functioning part of the tree, the branches and the leaves wrapped around them, we are met by Ornstein and Walberg. This is where the work is put into action: “Is instruction a science, or an art?” Walberg defends the “science and technique” side of the work (method), like the biological processes of the tree, while Ornstein emphasizes the “art and intuition” side, like the curve of every branch (Ornstein, 2014). This layer is the concretized form of instruction.
However, no matter how strong the tree or how deep its roots, it is not independent of the conditions of the forest it is in (system and policy). It is on the outside that Pajak and especially Linda Darling-Hammond confront us with this harsh reality, that is, the “climate.” The question is painful: “How does this tree survive in this arid climate?” Because even if you have the most compassionate roots (Noddings) and the most technical trunk (Walberg); if the soil is toxic, the system is not nourishing you, and you are constantly exposed to storms, that tree will wither (Darling-Hammond, 2014).
At the end of the lesson, the conclusion I reached while questioning my own stance as an educator, both academically and professionally, was this:
If we stand only on the side of Noddings; we risk turning into “therapist teachers” who love their students very much and build wonderful bonds with them but fail to provide them with academic competence. If we stand only on the side of Walberg; we become “robot teachers” who mistake exams, grades, and standards for “education,” but cause irreparable wounds to the children’s souls.
My answer to our professor’s question and the summary of this writing is:
This section is actually asking us a single question: “Is teaching about implementing a prescription; or responding to the uniqueness of that moment, that person, that child?” Walberg advocates for the prescription, and Noddings and Palmer advocate for holding the patient’s hand. But the truth is; you cannot make a patient swallow the prescription if you do not hold their hand. But if you do not have a prescription (your method), you cannot cure the patient just by holding their hand.
Good teaching is exactly this compulsory meeting between competence and compassion. We can give up neither the prescription nor the act of holding that child’s hand.
References
- Darling-Hammond, L. (2014). Why preventing good teachers from leaving matters, and what leaders can do. In A. C. Ornstein, E. F. Pajak, & S. B. Ornstein (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Curriculum (pp. 111–125). Pegem Akademi.
- Noddings, N. (2014). Themes for caring teaching. In A. C. Ornstein, E. F. Pajak, & S. B. Ornstein (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Curriculum (pp. 47–54). Pegem Akademi.
- Ornstein, A. C. (2014). Sensitive issues in instruction. In A. C. Ornstein, E. F. Pajak, & S. B. Ornstein (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Curriculum (pp. 68–86). Pegem Akademi.
- Pajak, E. F., Stotko, E., & Masci, F. (2014). Honoring the diverse styles of beginning teachers. In A. C. Ornstein, E. F. Pajak, & S. B. Ornstein (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Curriculum (pp. 103–110). Pegem Akademi.
- Palmer, P. J. (2014). The heart of the teacher. In A. C. Ornstein, E. F. Pajak, & S. B. Ornstein (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Curriculum (pp. 55–67). Pegem Akademi.
- Walberg, H. J. (2014). Productive teachers: Identifying the knowledge base. In A. C. Ornstein, E. F. Pajak, & S. B. Ornstein (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Curriculum (pp. 87–102). Pegem Akademi.